Finally...a clothesline! And what's "Welcome to Sweden" all about?

This will be a two-topic post, but I need to start with our completed clothesline!  You may remember, we had the upright posts for our clothesline installed a couple weeks ago.  Our carpenter took all the remaining parts home so he could drill the holes in the cross pieces that the coated wire would thread through.  And all the parts came together finally today!

We had a complicated assortment of hardware selected for us at the hardware store to connect the coated wire to the posts.  Fortunately, Leann and Dustin who was helping us got it all figured out.  The lines are nice and tight and ready for wet sheets and towels tomorrow...if it doesn't rain!

And the new clothesline was my big event of the day, and then I turned on the TV tonight.  What was on?  A new show..."Welcome to Sweden."  I had heard about it, Amy Poehler has something to do with producing it. But I could only wonder how weird this was going to be.  I think it's based on someone's real experiences going to live in Sweden with his Swedish girlfriend, but you never know what they will do for the sake of getting a laugh.  And now I see that it has already been airing in Sweden.

I wasn't really paying attention to the show because too many other things were going on, and then I looked up and saw them all sitting around a table eating...kräftor! And suddenly it was September, 1979, and I was back in Ludvika, Sweden, visiting my cousins Rutger and Pia, and sitting around their table enjoying kräftor or crayfish Swedish style!  As I remember, it was a seasonal delicacy enjoyed in August and September.

And they were delicious, if not a little messy.  So I'm still not sure how this TV show will be, but I could relate to at least one small part of tonight's show! And I discovered a new Swedish language/culture blog in the process of posting this!

http://www.swedishfood.com/crayfish-parties

Trying not to be obvious

The obvious topic for today would be snow.  We got at least another foot last night but it's blowing around so much, you really can't tell how much new snow there is.  And, really, at this point who cares?  And the winds are howling and just WHIPPING the snow around.  I'm not even going to go out and check the mail today, because (1) he probably didn't get here because the roads are so bad, and (2) I may not get back here to the house.  Remember the scene in Laura Ingalls Wilder The Long Winter when they tied a rope from the house to the barn?  It's THAT kind of weather outside.

So, on to warmer thoughts...of Greece.  The main motivator that got me thinking about doing a blog myself was reconnecting with my (second) cousin, Ingabritt, from Sweden.  I spent time with her two different times when I was visiting Sweden in 1978 and 1979.  Here we are sitting on a Dala Horse in a park called Skansen in Stockholm.

Now she has lived in Greece with her family for the last 20 years.  She went to school to be a journalist and is now using that and other experiences to write a travel blog about Greece but written for people back in Sweden.  I think Greece is a popular warm-weather vacation spot for people in Sweden.  Also, her blog is right now in third place out of ten in a travel blog competition.  (It's called Aktuellt i Grekland if you want to vote.)  And, I found out that using Chrome as a browser, it does a pretty good job of translating it for me, or enough so I know that today's topic is what's happening in her town as people are celebrating the days leading up to Karneval or what is Mardi Gras for us. So her blog inspired me, however, she has been doing this for seven years.  And I am only on post #2!

Last thing, we are expecting B&B guests tonight coming up from the south.  They already know the ice caves have been closed until tomorrow morning when rangers will check to see how the ice is under all this snow.  And they know that the roads are bad up here, so think good thoughts for all travelers out today!

Adjö!

P.S.  They all arrived safe and sound!