Posts filed under Rearview Mirror

First quarter of 2017

I can not believe that 2017 passed so fast. My first whole year in Madison, Wisconsin. As always a lot of things happened during the year. In January we celebrated the second day of the new year by going downhill skiing, and in February we all of a sudden had 61 degrees F. Finally came March with a trip to my favorite place in the world, Alaska.

January

We spent the second day of the new year at Maverick Mountain, which is an old ski resort that just recently got reopened again. We drove there on January 1, braving bad road conditions and snowstorms. When we finally arrived we went to the hot springs, well they were hot springs but not really that hot unfortunately, but still fun (could also be because the temperature was between -20 to -30F). The next day we braved the cold (-20F) and were the first people on the ski lift. We skied in our down jackets, and I got tired after only a few runs. Before we traveled back to Madison we went to the Madison river outside Bozeman for a short hike and saw some cool wolf tracks. It was still cold in Madison once we got back, of course, but we did some curling indoors.

February

February brought some weird weather. It was cold, but then all of a sudden we got 60 degree weather. We went to Devils Lake state park on a very icy hike. We made some sausages with our new attachment to the Kitchen aid that we got for christmas. We went up to the Northwoods, no skiing but pretty hikes and lights. I finally got my sign up for my office, and felt like an official research specialist, finally. And then before you knew it, the ice on the lakes had melted.

March

February might have thawed the ice on the lakes and made the trees disoriented, but we still got snow events in March. I made the Swedish baked good Semla, but the mini version, for the second time this year. We also went to Guillermo del Toros exhibition at the art museum in Minneapolis. I love that director. Going through the exhibit was a mixture of wow and oh and eek. We also finally went back to Alaska for about a week. We went skiing to Castner Glacier, east of Fairbanks, on a sketchy ski trip that could have ended up in one of those pools of water by the trail. We also timed our visit to Denali and were lucky to be able to borrow our dear friends dry cabin there. What a trip.

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In the rearview mirror 2016:

In the Rearview Mirror pt.4

In The Rearview Mirror pt.3

In The Rearview Mirror pt.2

In The Rearview Mirror pt.1

Posted on January 5, 2018 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Flashback Friday, Rearview Mirror and tagged rearviewmirror2017 Alaska Denali Denali National Park Madison Madison life Montana Skiing Ski Mountains Hiking Northwoods northern Wisconsin Wisconsin2 2018 rearviewmirror Spring Winter.

In the Rearview Mirror pt.4

Flashback Friday

My flashback Friday kind of disappeared last week, mostly because I was upset on so many different levels because of what is currently going on in the US. I'll talk more about that in another post, but if you are interested in some of my posts and my views you can check them out below:

Science

Cli·mate Change

"As far as I can see, there's Nothing Out There"

Remote Areas of Alaska

The Land God Forgot - ANWR

When the USA dumped Climate Change 11/08/16

Even though we started off on pretty good terms with the fall season by attending yet another wedding (in Florida none the least), fall quickly turned into a pretty dark ordeal for me. There were certainly many good times, but also my mom passed away in November, so we went to Sweden. What happened afterwards is apparently pretty common when someone close to you die, families tear apart a bit, and without going into more detail our family is not as close as we once were. Either way, Christmas came along and we had a wonderful time in Bozeman, MT. It's weird because I had been thinking about maybe, just maybe going back to Sweden for Christmas, I know that mom really wanted us to, but we didn't. We finished off December by going on a pretty adventurous cabin trip and also a trip to Yellowstone.

October

October started off good, but the temperatures, can we talk about the temperatures. 66F in October, incredible! You could definitely see some color changes on the trees though, it appears that fall in Wisconsin is very beautiful too. Im learning to appreciate our neighborhood, and there are these super pretty streets all around town, and sometimes you see pretty unexpected things, like the picture of Greta Garbo, just like that, hanging on a wall along one of the streets. When we went to Florida we actually went through 6 different states, including Wisconsin and Florida. We drove to Chicago which is in Illinois, and took the plane to New Orleans in Louisiana. Then drove through Mississippi, and Alabama before we finally reached Florida. Of course we tried fried alligator in New Orleans. Then Halloween happened and all of a sudden October was over.

November

November was pretty warm too, I mean compared to Fairbanks :) We had some beautiful mornings and evenings with magical light. When mom died I received so many cards, and flowers from people and W was doing his best to keep me from falling apart. He made sushi for me, we had mussels, twice in a week! I kept myself busy at work, and we went hiking. At the end of November we traveled to Sweden and had some wonderful days there too, even though parts of the trip was completely horrible. Dad took us to the opera to see the Swedish take on the Nutcracker, and it was the first time W got to spend time in the same lounge area as the king and queen usually does, he was impressed!

A family friend wrote this beautiful text about my mom, in Swedish:

Du, min vän i livet.
Du var en av de som såg mig, som tog till sig av saker jag sa.
En av de som gav mig trygghet.
En av de som alltid ställde upp.
En av de som alltid svarade i telefonen när som helst.
Du har lyssnat när jag sjungit,
Du har läst mina dikter,
Du har berömt mig när jag ritat och skissat,
Jag har varit vaken sent på kvällar då vi setts och suttit och pratat om ditt och datt, om allt möjligt.
När jag var hos dig som yngre fick jag alltid oboy, det var innan jag började dricka kaffe.
Senast vi sågs drack jag vin, man kan säga att tiden gått sen jag var liten.
Jag vet att du alltid trott på mig,
De har du även visat.
På midsommar ett år utnämnde jag dig som "extramamma", den titeln har stått kvar sedan dess.
Vi har skrattat, vi har gråtit, vi har haft många fina stunder.
Nu är det minnen,
Minnen jag bär med mig för resten av livet,
Det kommer bli tungt utan både dig och bullpojken,
Idag både nynnar och sjunger jag
"Här Rosemarie, syns blåa Nämdöfjärden",
En av de sånger jag minns och tänker på dig.
Jag älskar dig Rosie❤️

December

Moms funeral was December 2nd, and after that I had yet another week in Stockholm. My mom used to work at the open air museum Skansen before she retired, and we went there with dad. After W left I was cleaning out all my boxes I still had at home, old boxes with lots of memories from the best of friends. Then I flew back to my new home, over here in the US. There are still so many things I have at home in Sweden, and I have no clue how I am suppose to get everything over here, time will tell. Madison got really cold in December, we had quite a few days of below 0 F. We left for Bozeman on Christmas day, and had a great time there. Skiing, skiing, skiing. We also went to Yellowstone, of course, and did some skiing there as well.

How was the last quarter of the year for you?

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Rearview mirror 2016:

Feb 3, 2017

In the Rearview Mirror pt.4

Feb 3, 2017

Jan 20, 2017

In The Rearview Mirror pt.3

Jan 20, 2017

Jan 13, 2017

In The Rearview Mirror pt.2

Jan 13, 2017

Jan 6, 2017

In The Rearview Mirror pt.1

Jan 6, 2017

Posted on February 3, 2017 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Flashback Friday, Rearview Mirror and tagged rearviewmirror2016 Stockholm Skansen Florida New Orleans memories happy memories cold ice cold Bozeman Montana utlandssvensk utlandsboende utlandet Sverige Yellowstone Yellowstone National Park Homestake Pass Madison Wisconsin2 2017 Sweden rearviewmirror.

In The Rearview Mirror pt.3

På Svenska

Flashback Friday

Summers in Madison are hot, I mean hot for being a northern girl. A girl who spent the last six summers in the field in Alaska. There was a reason for us to buy that air conditioner to put in the bedroom as soon as I arrived in Madison. Before I moved to Madison I looked up different diseases and alike that cats could acquire in Madison during the summertime. Bot fly came up, and surely I told W about this, but he insisted that this was something that would not ever happen. Well, it did. Tycho got really sick and he eventually threw up a bot fly larvae, and that is when I called the vet. She said he was lucky to be alive. Poor Tycho, my little kitty cat. Other than that the summer was pretty calm, once W got back from Yellowstone we started to venture out on both long and short hikes around Madison. The best thing that happened was probably that I got a job!

July

W went to Yellowstone so I tried to explore most of my immediate surroundings by myself. I realized pretty early that I had no clothes suitable for hot summer weather, but after a trip to the local thrift store I had updated my closet to a more "summery" closet. In some way July was the worst month for me, I was trying to find a job, W was gone and it was hot. And then by the end of the month Tycho got the bot fly larvae. But everything turned out great anyway. Both W and I have July birthdays but we haven't celebrated them together the last couple of years, which is kind of sad. Maybe next year? Oh wait, probably not. I did a lot of gardening and also went to the local farmers market to get cucumbers so I could make Swedish pickles.

August

More hot summer days, and ice cream. Did you know that Alaska has in the past been the no.1 consumer of ice cream per capita in the US? I don't think this is true anymore, but either way, I love ice cream. I can't say that I eat more ice cream here compared to Alaska, but I definitely had some days by the ice cream shop. W's mom and aunt also came to visit, we did what I like to call the tour of the midwest, well a light version. We went to Minneapolis to meet up with them, also because W's brother studies there. We went by the Swedish institute and Ikea of course, gotta love Ikea, well, gotta love Ikea bed sets, cause I at least haven't found that quality for that price anywhere else. After that all of us went to Madison for a few days. There are no mountains here, so I do the best of the situation, practicing macro shots and finding new avenues in my photography.

September

September came, with more hiking, and helping W out with his experiment. We did quite a bit of exploring outside Madison, and found several nice places to hike. We also went to La Crosse, for a biking and camping trip. W met up with his brother to go road biking and I went on my own little tour. It was still hot of course, but you could start to see signs of fall. We went on a beautiful hike at a place that I like to call the fairytale forest, because it really did look like a fairytale forest. We camped that night and of course ate s'mores. Have you ever added a slice of banana to your s'more? Well, just do it! After that we went on another trail which is an old railroad, and goes through several sets of tunnels. Even though my garden wasn't that successful in 2016 we did harvest quite a bit from it during the course of the summer. In september the harvesting kind of trickled down but the garden was still producing! At the end of the month we traveled to Colorado, colorful Colorado as they say, for a wedding. We of course encountered our first snow for the season there.