went to my first karate lesson today. we didn't get to break anything with our bare hands. maybe that will be next week... muscles i didn't even know i had are starting to ache. i didn't know you had to use your behind muscles so much in karate! this must be the perfect exercise for all of those women who want to shape their bottoms... (or maybe i was just doing it the wrong way :)  ¶ 10:18 PM

  another productive day! the floor in tommy's music room is now covered in fake cherry wood. i have to admit it looks much better than the old dirty plastic floor with holes in, even though i don't really like fake wooden floors. i also threw away the ugly plastic towel hangers in the tiny upstairs toilet, and replaced them with a black metal one from ikea. and i unpacked a few unnecessary kitchen things, and put them on the new shelf in the dining room (as the kitchen is almost too small even for the necessary things).  ¶ 9:57 PM

  today we've had a very productive day:
* went out driving, and ended up buying two chairs and a table for our after-work-dinners in the garden (so far we've been sitting on cushions on the ground) and slippers for me
* had a nice vacation-ish lunch in a little greek restaurant i kramfors
* put up 6 shelves (one in the kitchen, one in the dining room, two in the tiny little upstairs toilet and two in the cupboard where we keep the vacuum cleaner and other boring things
* hung a painting, to cover a couple of holes in the dining room wall
* polished and painted one of the chairs (only three more chairs, a table and a sofa left, and the dining room will look brand new)
* adjusted a little table and a huge mirror in the bedroom (it looked crooked, but only because the floor is sloping. so now it *is* crooked, but looks straigt :)  ¶ 11:32 PM

  my first post from my first house!

...and i don't really know what to write... lots of things are going on right now! new house, with tins of paint, screw drivers, hammers and boxes with clothes and books and millions of other things everywhere. almost no lamps up yet (and evenings are getting darker). wonderful garden and balcony with an amazing view over the hills and the city, which in combination with the wonderful weather makes us feel like we're on a vacation to some warm and exotic country. brushing my teeth on the balcony in the darkness while looking at the lights from the city... i could never have guessed anything could be so nice! and it only takes 5 minutes to go to work by bike! 15 if i walk. woooonderful! and we don't really have any neighbours. only an old couple who lives in a small yellow house across our gravel road, but i think they are too old to stand the heat, so they are almost never outdoors. which is great, as i'm not a very neighbour-friendly person. i'd prefer not to have any neighbours at all... i've never seen any of the other neighbours, as they live so far down the hill so we only see their rooftops.

today i had lunch with a friend/colleague. a very sweet little girl has opened a cafe where you can buy wonderful sandwhiches and borrow a blanket and a basked and have picknick in the park. before going to the cafe we went to the library, so i could use their toilet. i love the library toilet by the way. i have great memories from there. it's the only public toilet in sollefteå that i know about, and i've visited it before many nice experiences i've had in this city :). this time i needed it to change into a t-shirt i bought before meeting the friend/colleague, as my sweater was too warm for a pick nick. after changing i saw a note on the notice board, about karate lessons for grown ups! fun! and they are only a few hundred meters through the woods from where we live! the pick nick was very nice too.

some not so fun things are going on as well. somehow our landlord has decided that we have ruined the home we've rented the last two years. i know he's wrong, but it doesn't feel nice that he is probably lying (or maybe he just doesn't know... it was a neighbour who let us in when we wanted to look at it before we moved in, and it was the same neighbour who gave us the key. it took the landlord 4 months to give us baking plates to the oven after we asked for it, and he never came to fix the blocked pipes in the bathroom. so maybe he really thinks the house was in perfect condition before we came and runied it all). anyway, he was very very angry when i told him we weren't going to pay for the renovation as we claim the entire house needed renovating long before we came there and we don't think we are responsible for any of the things he says. to try to calm my nerves i've called the hyresnämnd and a legal expert at our insurance company, and they both said we shouldn't either worry or pay. but that hasn't stopped it from keeping me awake for weeks. to make things worse: the other day the new owner of the house (who has been very nice and friendly when we've met him before) started yelling and shouting and waving his fists, saying that it's our fault that he has had to put his furniture in a storehouse somewhere. he was really really angry! i've been thinking and thinking about that ever since, and haven't yet been able to figure out what he meant... but we talked with him again yesterday, and he was nice and calm again. apparently our landlord has told him things about the state of the house that weren't true (which is a bit weird too, as he's been visiting the house several times before he bought it and should be able to see with his own eyes) and now he feels that he's been cheated. he asked if it was ok if he could pay our rent for september and start moving in at once, we shook hands and he looked nice and pleased and i really really really hope we are now friends again...  ¶ 7:19 PM

  just a quick one (i'm at work, feeling guilty for using the internet for private matters...)

* i'm alive
* we live in sollefteå now
* the landlord from nyland has threatened to sue us, because he claims that we have destroyed the windowsils and wallpapers. as i know we haven't it's quite exciting. i've never been sued before. i wonder if leif silbersky can defend us... but of course it's a bit sad too. if he actually thinks we've destroyed the apartment he must be really upset with us for refusing to admit it. and if he knows we haven't he must be lying, which is even worse...
* my vacation started out a bit badly (see earlier post), but turned out to be great. the sun has been shining and it's been the warmest summer i can remember. we spent (about) one week at the cottage, one week at my parents' and one week moving. because of the great weather the vacation feeling stayed about two weeks after i started working again. after work we spent the evenings in the garden and on the balcony
* yesterday the weather decided to go back to more normal summer weather, with grey skies and rain. but after such a long warm summer it's almost nice
* i've bought a new wallet. i've been looking for one for years, as the old one was falling apart. and finally, at a big market in piteå last weekend, i found a nice one to replace it with. i really like the new one, but it feels sad to finally have to say goodbye to the old one... he's going to get a new home in a drawer beside my bed

hopefully we'll be connected to the net again sometime towards the end of this week. moving our internet connection is a funny (or irritating, depending on how you look at things) story. there was no problem moving the phone (same company as the adsl). but i've had to order a move of the adsl at least 5 times, and they still haven't been able to confirm that the order has actually been received. the best they could do was to tell us that "it looks like something is going to happen the 17th of august", but that "something" could be anything. i'm keeping my fingers crossed that we'll soon have internet in our little white house on the hill :)  ¶ 5:22 PM