High-Entropy Home Decoration

Here are two snaps of my new home, taken just after breakfast today (the first bread I’ve baked in the house!). Both are taken toward the north: one from the kitchen door toward the dining room, the other standing just west of the dining room and looking down the length of the living room.

Note:

• Many Swedes hang a star-shaped lamp in their windows during December. It harks back to the star of Bethlehem but is really just a feeble attempt to alleviate seasonal affective disorder (cf. our celebration of St. Lucy).
• The semi-assembled book case ended up like that because I haven’t found the steel rod thingies that support the shelves. They’re probably in one of the kids’ boxes since the book case was in the nursery before the move.
• As can be seen faintly through the dining room window, the building’s exterior is pale grey calcium silicate brick. This funny material was en vogue for a brief period around 1970 and is for reasons unknown to me called mexitegel, “Mexican brick”, though it was made in Nericia, Sweden. It’s not considered good taste, but it’s very robust, taking on a slight rusty tinge with time. I’m not sure if that’s because iron leaches out of the brick or if red algae form a biofilm on it.

In other news, today is my third anniversary as a blogger. In October of 2005 my lovely journalist wife started a pseudonymous blog. I followed suit in December, my first entry discussing rape statistics because that’s what said wife was reporting on at the time. Ever since, I have blogged about once a day, and it’s one of my main hobbies.