2023-02-16 21:52
After 14 years and 1,435 posts, I think it's time to close the blog. When I started, blogging was a new thing. Linking to albums on the web was about the only way to share pictures widely. T… Read More
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Hus Langford Blog
huslangford.blogspot.com
A blog about a modern Swedish summer house (or cabin, or stuga) in the Stockholm archipelago.
2023-02-16 20:42
It was a perfect day for a run, the weather was good and I had a great support team in Sooz and Marcia. The number of runners were a bit smaller than usual because of the change in date. But… Read More
2021-09-24 13:16
One of the new additions to our archipelago is Strandbaren restaurant at neighboring Idobörg.The restaurant is part of an expanded facility which has recently been redeveloped. The food… Read More
2021-09-23 15:02
The Stockholm marathon is typically run at the end of May every year. I ran it in 1990, 2000, and 2012. I had entered to run it in 2020, but the race was cancelled along with pretty much eve… Read More
2021-09-23 15:01
I've found a great alternative for my long weekend training runs. On Saturday mornings, I can take the Waxholms boat (or our own boat) to Nämdö and run there. There's a gravel… Read More
2021-09-23 14:12
The biggest personal impact of Brexit on us was our loss of citizenship in the EU. We were able to stay in Sweden for up to 180 days with no issues as UK citizens. However, since the UK made… Read More
2021-09-23 14:00
We've made it to our house, and on Midsummer Day, too! I'm happy to report that everything here is in excellent shape. You could hardly tell that we hadn't been home for over 20 months; a bi… Read More
2021-09-19 12:45
Our welcoming committee!It was a long journey, with lots of moving parts: flights from Florida to Dallas to Paris to Stockholm, covid tests in Texas and Paris, wearing a mask for 24 hours st… Read More
2021-09-19 12:36
Even though Sweden is still keeping its borders closed for non-EU travelers, other countries in the bloc have opened up to vaccinated Americans. At the urging of a friend, I decided to write… Read More
2021-09-19 12:24
The vaccine rollout is continuing but much more slowly than any of us would like. Sooz got her second dose on time but I am still waiting for mine. Sweden has just barely started its vaccina… Read More
2021-09-19 12:22
The US has maintained its morbid lead since my last post, although both Sweden and the UK are doing their best to catch up. The one glimmer of light on the horizon is that a vaccine may well… Read More
2021-09-19 12:21
We've felt pretty safe here in Florida; we are able to do most things outside thanks to the weather. But it's not looking good in general. It would be great to be back in Sweden or the UK ri… Read More
2021-09-19 12:20
I've avoided posting about Sweden's response to the coronavirus over these past months. Suffice it to say that it's been much more relaxed than its nordic neighbors, which has caused compara… Read More
2021-09-19 11:54
With a little bit of luck and perseverance, Sooz was able to get an early appointment for the coronavirus vaccine. I'll have to wait a while longer myself as I don't yet meet the age cutoff… Read More
2021-09-19 10:08
Good news from Annika and Olle, the internet fiber has been installed in our house at last. The junction box is in our bedroom so all I need to do is find an internet provider and hook up my… Read More
2021-08-27 16:17
During our road trip, Sooz and I talked a lot about possibly coming to Aspö this summer. We both desperately want to come. We've been to Sweden at least once every year since 1988!Howev… Read More
2021-08-27 14:36
I've been watching statistics on Covid closely, trying to decide if we should try to go to Sweden this summer. Although travel is banned for US citizens, we could use our UK citizenship to f… Read More
2021-08-26 15:40
Things have moved fast since my last post. The Coronavirus has taken hold in the USA, and our governor has declared a health emergency. Most businesses and indoor activities have been s… Read More
2021-08-26 15:39
Since air travel is pretty much shut down these days (and of uncertain safety as well), we decided to take a real road trip for the first time in our 33 years of marriage. We've been gone fo… Read More
2021-08-26 14:04
It’s been an engaging couple of months! We had a wonderful Christmas. Marcia and Rutger joined us and Grant for the Christmas holidays. It was nice to enjoy a warm, palm-tree holiday f… Read More
2021-08-26 12:30
It has been a whirlwind few weeks, that’s for sure. We left Sweden to go straight to our new home! Sooz and I wanted to retire in a place that was on the east coast of the US, warm in… Read More
2020-02-03 17:20
It's been a fantastic summer. Eventful in some ways, and completely non-eventful in others! We have just finished nearly 6 months here on Aspö. Next comes a totally new adventure back i… Read More
2019-07-05 17:02
We arrived to Aspö as planned on May Day, Wednesday the first. The good news is that our shipment arrived into Stockholm as planned on the Monday. To our surprise, though, the delivery… Read More
2019-07-05 14:18
Time is really flying, it’s hard to believe we’ve been here two months. June was as busy as advertised. We started the month at Marcia and Rutger's for a celebration for Camille… Read More
2019-04-30 16:25
We have a jam-packed few days ahead of us. Tomorrow, we arrive in Stockholm and spend the evening with Marcia and Rutger. We have a taxi to take all our collected luggage out to Stavsnä… Read More
2019-04-30 16:17
We're in Sweden this weekend, visiting Margaret and celebrating Marcia and Rutger's birthdays. We will be taking a tour through the USA the next couple of weeks for a few visits before we re… Read More
2019-04-01 13:11
We've had a good month. It's been getting warmer steadily, and we had a bit of rain as well. This is exactly what we want for March!April will be the last month without us in residence. We w… Read More
2019-03-23 09:34
I've posted a few times in the past about the move away from cash in Swedish society. It is harder and harder to spend our kronor these days. The airport and Stockholm city center are still… Read More
2019-03-11 09:40
It's now the home stretch of our move from London. In early April, the movers will be picking up our goods and sending most of them to the US. Then we'll be on Aspö for at least the nex… Read More
2019-03-05 17:17
Dwell magazine has had a couple of articles on small and stylish Scandinavian homes recently.This first is about the cube from Kodasema, an Estonian company who have a range of small houses… Read More
2019-03-05 15:16
I read recently about the "world's first recycled mall" operating in the city of Eskilstuna.The idea of re-using and recycling is a big part of Island life. Given the cost in bringing things… Read More
2019-02-03 12:01
RIP Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, J. P. Richardson and Roger Peterson. The Independent has an excellent article today about the "Day the Music Died."This is Buddy and the Crickets on the Ed S… Read More
2019-01-11 18:19
I'm back in London after a quick trip to our house. It's always odd to go to Aspö in the off season. Everything is so quiet and dark. Only five people (plus two dogs and a cat) were on… Read More
2019-01-06 16:59
I was going to start the new year with a post about my retirement, and our plans to move from London and become full summer residents on Aspö.However that post will have to wait, becaus… Read More
2018-12-01 11:59
The Guardian recently published an article about a new push for affordable prefabricated housing in the UK.As the article states, though, "The term prefab has been shunned by the new housebu… Read More
2018-08-27 15:48
I read recently about the completion of the world's largest cross-laminated timber (CLT) building in Hackney, east London. Since I've posted many times in this blog about wooden skyscrapers… Read More
2018-08-12 08:46
Sooz found a Finnish company that makes a range of prefabricated homes.Pluspuu's website has a whole bunch of different designs. I've had a lot of fun clicking through all of their photos Read More
2018-08-11 08:37
We managed to squeeze in a 4-day weekend to catch a bit more of the summer. It was still plenty warm and dry—nice for a holiday but not good for our island. We had some significant thu… Read More
2018-07-28 10:30
I've posted a lot over the years about new types of building techniques. The most recent one is the idea of using a giant 3-D printer to build a house out of concrete.A US company, ICON, is… Read More
2018-07-21 10:24
This nice warm and sunny weather is great for those of us on holiday, but the drought is terrible for most everyone else. Farmers are warning of a very poor harvest. I read an article that s… Read More
2018-07-15 12:08
We're back in London now after a fantastic time spent in our second home. The weather has remained sunny (and worryingly, dry) the whole two weeks. Some of the highlights:Marcia, Rutge… Read More
2018-06-24 15:00
Today's my birthday, which is always important to me as an Aspö resident. A key reason it that it falls around midsummer; sometimes it coincides exactly with the holiday. I like to thin… Read More
2018-06-23 08:54
Wishing a happy holiday to everyone from London this year. We've decided to wait a bit and spend our summer vacation later in July this year.It looks like we made the right call, too. As eve… Read More
2018-06-04 14:47
We went back to Aspö this past weekend, bringing along Sooz's childhood friend, Lauris, on her first visit to the island.The weather was spectacular. In fact, we're starting to worry th… Read More
2018-05-23 21:14
I posted over two years ago about Sweden's progress in becoming a cashless society. I can report that project is still on track. It's no longer a surprise to find small shops that take cards… Read More
2018-05-15 13:00
We're back from a surprisingly eventful week. The weather the first few days wasn't great, but it became glorious the past few days. Although we hadn't planned it, we were able to have dinne… Read More
2018-05-13 17:28
Sorry for the lack of posts, lots has been going on lately. We are back to the house for a week's visit in a few days. I will get a photo page up and I promise to start posting more regularl… Read More
2018-04-01 10:22
I've read an interesting article in the Washington Post about the "Thousand Islands" in the St. Lawrence river.There are actually over 1800 islands in the archipelago on the US-Canada b… Read More
2018-03-17 17:00
The New York Times magazine has a long article about Gotland this week. It touches on Swedish culture, the role of Gotland in the summertime, and a crop of modernist buildings going up in a… Read More
2018-03-10 12:05
One thing our recent visit showed us was that we would really need a fireplace if we ever want to spend time at our house in the cold weather. I've written about fireplaces many times on the… Read More
2018-02-16 08:06
We're going to make a rare cold-weather visit to our stuga at the end of the month. Now that we have our remote-control luftpump, we can have the house nice and toasty for our arrival.I'll b… Read More
2018-02-12 08:04
59 years ago. RIP Buddy Holly Read More
2018-01-23 11:04
I've written many times in the past about Guns Livs, the grocery store on Nämdö. Its been in the same family for over 50 years. People's options about Guns on Aspö are divided… Read More
2018-01-13 17:35
I found an article in Dwell about a cool prefab house in the wilds of Uruguay.It is designed by MAPA architects in Montevideo. Their website shares lots of great photos of the house and its… Read More
2018-01-07 16:19
It's only a partial report this month. My Netatmo mysteriously stopped reporting on December 15. The power and wi-fi were still on as I could see the webcams and the luftpump, but no weather… Read More
2018-01-07 12:14
This may not look too exciting, but it is to me. These are the contracts I just received from the Nämdö Fibre association.My broadband internet dream is becoming real. The schedule… Read More
2017-12-16 10:39
Thanks to the people at 99pi.org, I found an interesting article about wooden skyscrapers, one of my favorite topics. The video above details a building recently completed in British Columbi… Read More
2017-11-30 17:14
The webcam spotted the first dusting on Aspö today. I'm sure it will melt shortly. It is nice to see the island all nice and white, however! Read More
2017-11-28 18:30
Marcia recently sent me a link to a dangerously addicting website. Blocket is essentially the Swedish version of eBay for online selling. The link she sent was for something even better, for… Read More
2017-11-20 10:39
When Sooz and I lived in Stockholm in the late 80's, we used to go to the big IKEA in Kungens Kurva and spend our Sunday afternoons looking around (and having meatballs for lunch!)As we've w… Read More
2017-11-13 10:18
My friend Chuck sent along an article from the Telegraph recently. The author spent 72 hours in the Gothenburg archipelago as part of a project to measure the health benefits of is… Read More
2017-11-07 21:36
To quote Game of Thrones, "winter is coming". The temperature showed a steady decline through the month. We're getting pretty close to freezing by Halloween!One good sign was that we had nea… Read More
2017-11-04 07:57
I’m desperately sad to share that our beloved Ollie passed away peacefully this week. Ollie was handsome and strong and stubborn and smart. We will miss his beautiful face and his… Read More
2017-10-23 12:11
I've written over the years about the idea of customising IKEA products. (For example, see here or here.) The New York Times recently published an article about the growing community of comp… Read More
2017-10-16 11:41
We all know that Sooz is not a fan of ticks. I was surprised when she sent me an article recently about research underway. New medicines may be developed that build on the survival tec… Read More
2017-10-10 11:33
Although September looks rainy on the graph, the month's total was only 1.6 inches, well below the Stockholm average of 2.1 inches.It's been fairly dry and cool all summer. We could use a tu… Read More
2017-10-07 11:35
We're leaving shortly on a taxi boat. I'm hoping it's not a small boat as it is blowing up quite a storm outside right now!We had good weather over the past few days, though. Our own boat is… Read More
2017-09-22 18:48
Sooz and I have carved out a 4-day weekend and we will be back at our stuga next week. We'll close things up for the winter as usual.We are hoping to use our new luftpump to enable weekend v… Read More
2017-09-15 18:38
From now on, when I'm asked why I enjoy being out at the stuga so much, I'll show them this cartoon. Says it all, really! Read More
2017-09-09 18:36
It looks like I am starting out my next blogging decade at a snail's pace! I have been distracted by lots of happenings back in my "real life". My time available for Swedish stuga blogging i… Read More
2017-08-19 16:10
Believe it or not, today marks the ten year anniversary of my first blog post. Over the past decade:- I've made 1400 posts. The most viewed post was, inexplicably, about November's weather… Read More
2017-08-04 20:38
It was a pretty dry month. We could definitely see the impact on the island. For example, the blueberry crop is a lot smaller than usual, and a number of the traditionally wetter parts of th… Read More
2017-07-30 10:05
Marcia and Rutger arrived on Friday afternoon, at almost the exact time as our Mat Hem delivery, so that was perfect timing. The Aspö Marathon was on Saturday morning. I'm not in full r… Read More
2017-07-25 09:15
We flew in on Sunday because Ollie's dog sitter was busy on Saturday (and we won't leave him with anyone else!) That gave us a nice evening with Rutger and much of the day Monday to shop in… Read More
2017-07-15 18:07
It's time for our official summer holiday! We leave this weekend for two lovely weeks on our island.Ollie's back with his dog-sitter, and everyone's happy about that. I have a few projects a… Read More
2017-07-06 06:46
Time for a quick catchup. We did indeed have a successful trip to Guns and retrieved a huge amount of alcohol. (Clicking boxes on the internet is a lot simpler than carrying bottles of spark… Read More
2017-07-02 21:09
Here's the June recap. We appear to have hit the nicest days when we arrived on the 17th! There was a bit of rain when we were there, but a lot more fell earlier in the month. We could certa… Read More
2017-07-02 12:33
And I'm happy to report excellent weather so far. The island is ablaze with flowers and greenery and it looks superb. Our transportation and logistics worked perfectly; we've become experts… Read More
2017-06-04 14:22
Ollie's dog sitter was able to keep him for the bank holiday weekend, so we decided to do a quick trip to the stuga. Our biggest job was to get the boat into the water. I also wanted to trim… Read More
2017-06-04 13:15
As expected, May showed a warming trend. We got lucky with the weather on our weekend visit; they were the warmest days of the month! We even avoided the rain perfectly.We could use more rai… Read More
2017-06-01 20:29
My furry boy has become an old man! He is 14 today. He's darned slow these days, but he still remains as happy and handsome as ever.I've made a little slideshow of his birthdays over the yea… Read More
2017-05-20 09:48
I've posted last year about my desire to add a railing to our deck.Originally, I thought of something more temporary but the more I think about it, such a big deck needs something substantia… Read More
2017-05-15 12:34
For the first time ever, Portugal has claimed the Eurovision title. Salvador Sobral's fey ballad was a convincing winner, in both the the jury and popular votes. It wasn't my style, especial… Read More
2017-05-13 16:17
We're hosting a party as usual this evening, lots of old friends and new ones, too, including one Eurovision virgin! There will be 15 people jammed into our little flat, which will be intere… Read More
2017-05-08 17:42
Lucie Jones was chosen to represent the UK this January in an one-hour BBC show (as opposed to the six-week extravaganza held on Swedish television. The good news is that Lucie can sing, and… Read More
2017-05-06 19:00
We're exactly a week away from the big show in Kiev. As usual, Sooz and I are hosting a viewing party. It's going to be interesting cramming a dozen people into our tiny flat, but that's par… Read More
2017-05-06 14:51
I posted in March 2015 about Bemz, a company that makes custom covers for new and discontinued IKEA furniture in a wide range of colours and fabrics. Here, for example, is our old standby Kr… Read More
2017-05-01 07:37
April was a typical Spring month in the archipelago: windy, wet (although not wet enough) and not that warm. I added the indoor temperature which shows very clearly the days we were at the h… Read More
2017-04-23 16:48
We're back in London after a whirlwind week. We had a houseful of guests for a few days, which was nice. Rutger helped me with some chain-sawing and electrical work. The weather stayed dry b… Read More
2017-04-11 13:58
I posted about 6 weeks ago that Sooz was going to buy an Eames rocker for our house. We thought it would be a stylish and easy way to add guest seating.She found a company in Amsterdam, popf… Read More
2017-04-10 14:53
We started our Friday in Slussen and decided to go to Gustavsberg for mid-day so we'd have lots of time to do our yearly shopping. We always seem to be rushed for time and so we made plans t… Read More
2017-04-04 13:06
The stirrings of Spring are visible. The temperatures are on a gradual rise, notwithstanding a big dip in the last days of the month. The majority of days were pretty windy, with gusts over… Read More
2017-03-30 06:17
We'll be leaving in a week from for our usual Eastertime opening up of the stuga. We're going to have Friday in the city so we can be at our leisure, and take the later afternoon boat to Asp… Read More
2017-03-17 11:05
I received great news from Nilla at the Nämdö Fiber association last week. The news recently hasn't been great. My last post of many on the subject was not hopeful for the associat… Read More
2017-03-13 08:48
The Melfest 2017 was a darned good show, in my humble opinion. The hosts did a great job, keeping the show moving, and hosting funny parodies and skits. Our winner was Robin Bengtsson, the m… Read More
2017-03-07 09:51
I just spotted this on the webcam and I thought I'd share Read More
2017-03-01 19:00
It was a mild and dry month. High temperatures were above freezing from the middle of the month, and we had only a few days of sprinkles. Even the wind was consistently calm.The length of th… Read More
2017-02-26 17:34
Last night was the end of the semifinals in Skellefteå. There was a bit of a bombshell in that Loreen, a previous Eurovision winner, only made it to the "second chance" round.Wiktoria… Read More
2017-02-22 12:18
Sooz has always wanted another chair for the house. When we have guests and it's not nice enough to sit on the deck, everyone tends to pile onto our couch.She wanted to have a simple but nic… Read More
2017-02-16 06:43
It's been a few years since I posted about the Economist's Big Mac Index. I think it's time for a revisit.To recap, the Economist started the index as a way to measure global currencies agai… Read More
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