Birgit’s blog

And I don’t even like horses

Przewalskis, originally uploaded by anotherme.

- but these were too beautiful, colourwise as well as shape wise. They are Przewalskis, the last wild horse species and a symbol of Mongolia, according to Wikipedia. The ones I’ve captured weren’t exactly “wild”, being that they were living in a zoo, but at least the zoo in question - Nordens Ark near Smögen in southern Sweden - is a decent one.

The last few weekends have been spent partly at home, partly in Sweden - first we took a trip to the Anderstorp car race marking the 30th anniversary of F1 driver Ronnie Peterson’s untimely death (he survived a crash, but not the stay at the hospital..), combined with a walk at fun fair Liseberg plus a day at explore center Universeum; some photos are up at the kids’ flickr account (click towards right to see them all). Then a weekend at home, then another weekend in Sweden - we were supposed to spend a few days in England for the Donington Park MotoGP plus a visit to Drayton Manor, but being that work is really stressful for my s/o at this time of the year, things got canceled in the very last minute. In stead, we spent a night with my parents, then headed south for a stay at the mentioned Nordens Ark zoo (they have a hotel there). We spent Saturday evening walking around the small coastal town of Smögen, watching all the young folks celebrating midsummer’s eve. Such beautiful scenery! The town is popular with sailors (the modern species, that is - the ones with the moulah…), all the idyllic wooden houses, painted in pastel colors and scattered out on the skerries, and of course the constant wind - making things fun for those with an urge to live life _on_ and not _by_ the sea. Sunday, we walked through the zoo, watching all kinds of Nordic species and some foreign ones; they have wolves, owls, goats, lynxes, raindeer, wolverines - but also red pandas, Amur/Siberian tigers, snow leopards, and Amur leopards (so, so beautiful!). Everything is situated in a forest of selected valuable broadleaved species (oak, elm, ash etc.), and in the midst of it is a small cafe offering the most delicious baked goods.. brownies, muffins, cheese cake and more! Anyhow, we had rain that day, but because of the trees we didn’t really notice. How neat!

At work, things are a bit slow right now, but I guess that’s normal with less than two weeks left until the summer vacation. We just moved to a new office - what a vast improvement from our previous ones, now that we are 7-8 people and not just the four of us! We even have a (huge) kitchen now; our previous one was a closet where we’d stuffed our coffee maker, that’s all there was room for. Now we’ve got a dishwasher, a fridge and all kinds of handy appliances, hooray. But I digress. What I was meaning to say is that I am a bit between jobs, waiting for the designers to finish their stuff and the clients to approve of it, so that I can get to the coding. I work with WP quite a bit, but most of what I do is actually static HTML pages. Occasionally, I also code for more complex CMSes, but then I am not the one deploying the design, I just prepare everything for those who do (and then grind my teeth when I see the finished site, noticing all the shortcuts and errors made.. ). I’ve registered with an online school for two shorter courses to properly learn how to make templates for Word and Powerpoint; with Office 2007 all the menus have changed so much I can’t find my way around anymore..! My job is paying for the courses, which is all good - I also get to order text books and go to seminars; I want to learn how to set up and adapt Umbraco, meaning I will be going to Copenhagen once or twice in the near future, yay!

This weekend is Adrian’s, he’s 9 on Sunday and has been counting down for months already. I’ve gotten him a couple of Star Wars LEGO sets, a Pokemon game for his NDS Lite, and a Nintendo Monopoly. All of those are items that his younger brother wants too, so I am anticipating some disappointment on his side - but then, his birthday is in just a month from now, so I reckon I will be able to keep him somewhat comforted. I am planning on making Mario bros cupcakes for the kids’ party on Friday, will be interesting, at the least… I probably should have a plan B..!