A post in whence I briefly recap the latest goings-on in my life.
- Did: We went to Axel’s family reunion in Kansas last weekend, where there was a Swedish festival taking place in Lindsborg, KS, also known as Little Sweden! We saw lots of people dressed in traditional Swedish garb, ate Swedish food, and saw many members of Axel’s extended family. It was great to get away from the city and experience country life for a bit- we spent our last night at the farm of one of Axel’s relatives and I couldn’t believe how utterly silent it was. The weather was very cold and windy, however, so I will say that we were happy to hop off the plane at LAX to 85 degree weather.
- Made: While in Kansas, we went to a great little coffeeshop called Blacksmith Coffee and tried one of their homemade cardamom buns, which is a Swedish baked good. I had never had one before but liked it so much that I made some of my own when we got back. I definitely need more practice coiling the buns because only a couple turned out how they were supposed to, but they tasted right and that’s what’s important. I also shipped one to my dad for his birthday so hopefully he enjoys it when it gets there in a couple days.
- Bought: I saw that the Uniqlo Round Mini Shoulder Bag was on sale and ordered one in the Natural color. I usually try to pack as small a purse as possible but I wanted to get a larger bag because of another recent purchase: a new Kindle. I’ve actually never owned a Kindle e-reader before, just a Kindle Fire tablet (which I also still use to download Netflix content on for plane rides), but I have been wanting one for a while and had planned on buying one during Amazon’s October Prime Day 2.0 sale. It is very small and compact and is super easy to carry around. There are a lot of occasions where I would like to be able to read and not just kill time on my phone but don’t find it worth the hassle to carry around a book all day. Now, I can just slip this thing into my new shoulder bag, where it easily fits with room to spare, and can cart around thousands of books if I’m so inclined.
- Watched: We watched the new Haunted Mansion movie with Owen Wilson, Danny Devito, and Tiffany Haddish on Disney+ recently. I didn’t have high expectations because the reviews seemed lackluster but we actually really enjoyed this movie. It was pretty funny and improved upon the original movie a lot. I thought the visuals were great and it was somewhat scary while still remaining kid-friendly (just our speed).
- Read: After two and a half years, I finally finished Barack Obama’s memoir, A Promised Land. I originally started reading it in March 2021, which is crazy, but it is a formidable 800 pages and had to repeatedly go back to the library and get checked out again because I could not finish it in time. I really enjoyed this book. Obama definitely had an impactful eight years in office and his book helped contextualize a lot of what was going on at the time, which was helpful for me because I was still pretty young when he was president. It was also interesting to read about his experiences as a law student. I never realized that Michelle was an attorney at the firm he was a summer associate at! Slightly scandalous. I passed this book on to Axel for him to read next, let’s see if he manages to beat my record for reading time.
