Need it!

Well today no problem what to blog about :-).

Yesterday it happened! The thing that I don´t want to happen, I do get so helpless without my glasses!
Mattias and Lena (his girlfriend) wanted some help with putting up a curtain in the window that is high upp above the office stairs. I walked over to them. I was frezing so halfway down i started to tie the sweater round my shoulders, crasch I heard and my eyes was suddenly blurry!! I had in some way when I was tieing the sweater reach my glasses (I had them on) and accidently pushed them off me. Crasch bang, :-( one of the glass in my glasses was broken :-(. Noooo we all said.

Then it was just to go into town trying to get a time for a check on the eyes, I had not get the glasses from there before so I had to do a eye check. I just saw money flying away. But they did not have any time until in the afternnon, suck. Then back to office, but on the way we did go to my home and collected a pair of my older glasses. Luckily I had them left! Did not see too good in them but it was better than noting. So after lunch Mattias again drove mee into town for the eye check. Thanks Mattias! In the end it tourned out that I needed stronger glasses!! So it did get out a good thing from a bad thing anyway :-)):-)). Not so strange that I had have headache a bit moore than I use to have the past weeks.

When things like this happens you really notices that you are depending on something, for mee this time my glasses. I need them to see good on the screen and be able to work, and I need too see good on Tv and so on. I can moore than well understand people that are depending on some things to help them in their daily life. So Sara I do understand that you needed glasses too :-)).

Hopefully I get the new glasses in the end of this week or maybe in the beginning of next. I need and want them Now!

My old glasses (the reserve pair) at the laptop and on the screen honour office dog "Ubbe". It´s a picture from the mobile phone so it´s not he best quality.

So take care of your things in the daily situation, say nice word to each other and give a hug even if it´s not needed!

bye bye until next time
Mari

Sleep on sofa

Hi all out there!Hmm this morning it was cold to bike to work, brrrr. Well the sun was kind half up but not warming at all. I was quite tired but not as much tired like the tuesday morning. Well I have a tendency to fall into sleep in the sofa with the television on, and the laptop too :-)). Well it was like that in this case. On the monday evening I watched the TV, answering some mails, chatting a bit and then "bonk" or what you say, I was suddenly fall to sleep and wake up in the night at 02.30 (swedish time). I was very clearly wake i could hardly fall to sleep again. So that is the reason why I was so tired. This is so typically me always falling to sleep in the sofa and having the tv on. The tv is the most perfectly sleeping pill in the world :-)):-)).

Like right now :-)). I´m doing the blog, chatting a bit with my sister, answering mail (yes I have several windows open, I have a widescreen:-)) and at he same time watching the football match between Sweden and Albania, right now they have half time breake and Sweden is in the lead for the moment. Hmm maybe i should not do so much at the same time but I´m like that want to help and have really hard to say no. But I like to help, that´s me in a nutshell (don´t know if you can say so but I do).

On the book front I´m right now doing the setting on two books, two totaly different ones. I´s fun to do the setting o n so different books. It´s one poem book and one about horses. Well we all like horses here :-)) and we have two just outside the office door, Ofelia and Sunny.

Ohh the football starts again, I must end this or else it disapears :-)).

Until next time, have a nice week

Mari

Mixed stuff

Ohh, now my time to blog again!
The week go so fast I think, well at least it felt like that today. Todays blog will be about some different things.

Last saturday my sister and me was at a tracking test with Ubbe (honour office dog) up in Hällefors, about 6 swedish miles from here. It was quite early so I was up already at 06.00 in the morning. The test is a working test for hunting dogs as daschhound is. He did rather well and got a second price, hmmm he missed a bit in a angle but hasen't he done that he would have got a first price. It is the first price you want and for that you get the CC:s (certifikate). But it was ok because the time was excellent, 32 minutes :-), he has been quite slow before. After that we stayed an watch when they had the badger tests, Ubbe and Molly has only tried it once but will continue with it next season. It was a good day and long day, we was home at about 16.00-16.30 something.
They day after (sunday) I was really tired and fall to sleep on the kitchen sofa (it is a hard one) and sleept there for about 3 ours!! I was kind of "after tired". But it's no good to sleep in the afternoon, I couldn't sleep in the night instead!

In the evening the other day, i think it was on monday. At round 21.00 or something it started to blow and storm quite a lot! It sounded much and then it started to rain also, hmmmm - grrrrrr I just say. This is a typical autumn "thing", autumn storm. I don't like it at all, neither do my dogs! Hopefully it was just this "storm" but I know it will come moore :-(.



Yesterday evening Gun has arranged a "Wellness" evening here at the office. It was one of her son's that came and tell us about some good stuff that you can eat and drink to feel good both in mind and body. We also got to taste a lot of things, like a herbal tea, that tasted quite good actually :-). It was nice so, Thanks Gun!

A normal day in my office room start with me putting on the computor and then I check the mail, answer some, send some further. Then I check if there is some book that I have to start the setting on or continue with one. Maybe I do some corrections on a picture and so goes the day.
Today for exampel it was a short breake when I helped Mattias outside at the stable, I just hold some board. Then some school friends to Josephine came and took a short ridning tour on Sunny. At the same time, Ofelia entangled in the tail in one of the wacky spring gates, they are rubbish and now Mattias understand why I think that :-). Well it did go well and I hold Ofelia so Marianne could take it out from her tail. Then me and Mattias fixed a new normal rope gate instead.

I have in the evenings a bit hard to go to bed, I am an evening and night "owl" :-). I look at tv, internet or fixing with some other stuff on the computor or maybe anything craft things, it depends on my mood at the time.
Quite late, I was actually on my way to bed:-) I got a nice sms on the mobile phone. That made my evening and I was really happy about that :-).
So you all out there make your friends happy with some "small" words, it does not need to be much, just some nice words. Perhaps a few words that you know would make that person happy.

Words are not just words;
a few barely audible sounds
can link up people
for life.
~Logan Pearsall Smith

Use nice words to each other!
Mari

What to blog about today?

Well today it is a day that I don´t know what to blog about at all!!! It is all stopped in my head at the moment!

Well I at least did a banana/chocolate pie for fika today and everyone seemed to like it :-)), at least I hope that. It was kind of a test because I had never done this one before. My co-workers was kind of testing "tasters" (testing pilots) for the pie :-)).

But I have also got a really nice movie from John, it was from YouTube I think. He, well they all know that I like music by Toto and specially "Africa". This one was by/with a choir that started the whole thing by silently clapping their hands. It sounds that it was raining! Really amazing version of "Africa". Thanks, it made me happy :-)), it made my day bright as the sun outside the window. Yes it is sunny a bit today :-)).

At the lake a nice sunny day.

"True friends are like jewels,

precious and rare. False ones

are like autumn

leaves, found everywhere."

Until next time - hopefully with some idea what to write about!

Mari

Late blogging

Well I´m kind of blogging late today. The reason is that I had ½ day at the office. Taking some time to do something for my self, well I was also company to my sister. Everyone should do something for themselves from time to time, it doesn´t need to be much but just something. I have actually had my hair cut today, it was really a long time since I did that about; 1½ years so it was definitely time for it. It´s nice to go in to Örebro (the nearest big city from Gyttorp, about 4 Swedish miles) to do something fun or just go around looking at people, studying them. And it was also nice weather :-)):-)) a bit windy but okay.

Nice weather bring forward some animals like bugs (not so pleasant) and some other creatures that are not so nice. But some week (weeks) ago I actually manage to catch a frog on a photograph (with my film camera). Well the truth is that it almost jumped on me when I was going up from the ground. I had been lying down trying to take some close up pictures at some flowers. It is fun to take pictures and I´m still trying to learn how the digital camera works, and I´m not pleased with my self on how it goes. But that is me in a "nutshell".



At my last blog I was mentioning that I hoped we should send another book for printing. Well that was a bit wrong but not much. It took a few more days to get it ready for printing. But it is now sent for printing. Sometimes it takes a bit longer than you think but that is a thing that happen to everyone and everything.

Hopefully we will send another book for printing in a short time, the first one for our sister company Gandalf Publishing. That is a bit special and it is a very nice book. That kind of book that you want to have in your bookshelf, well I want it :-)).

over and out
Mari

"Are we insured?!"

After lunch the sun decided to join us on the first working day of the week, the weather is truly beautiful today! Which quite obviously lead to me and John doing some filming, since we are working with the Bombadilian author school at the moment. The author school which will be made into two parts (to begin with); part one is a short film that is introducing the Bombadilian philophosy and lifestyle in an easy manner and a quick pace. The second part of the author school is a summarize of background, philophosy, publication process and some other bits and pieces of information which will be of great value for all of our Bombadilan authors.

Since we had such lovely weather, as mentioned me and John headed outside to get some nice filming done! The afternoon therefor has more or less been spent sitting on roofs, throwing news papers form roofs, throwing manuscripts from roofs, picking up news papers and manuscripts from the ground. John also showed off his acting skills whilst wearing his winter coat, summer cowboy/crocodile dundee hat and a pair of sun glasses, all he had to do was to throw a news paper in a big, green bin, but John being John, it had to be done with glory and drama! After today I´m starting to suspect that John once dreamt about being an actor, I think the best way to describe it would be in a chavy way: "He was being well dramatic, innit?!" He really was, but in a good way of course. Me on the other hand was as usual the one having to climb the really dangerous roofs!! A tiny crack in on of the roofing sheets and a terrified Sara later, John managed to get some nice shots of me sitting and writing on top of one of the Bombadilian houses. Which also finally leads me to todays title...."Are we insured?" was pretty much the only words that slipped out of my mouth whilst being on the roof. If I had been clumsy enough to fall from the roof it wouldn´t have been to bad tho, I insure you. It´s barely 2 metres to the ground which is covered with nice, thick, green grass, plus my backside is quite safe to land on. And that is the voice of experience talking since I fell of a horse last week...

All in all it has been a very creative and productive Monday, indeed, and the sun is shining!! Can´t get much better than that =D

All for now,
Over&Out
/sara

I'm not dead...

I have been absent from the Bombadil blog for a few weeks now. No, I haven't been shipped off to Finland as punishment for eating all of the Bombadil biscuits, it's just that there have been rather a lot of public holidays lately. They invariably fall on a Friday, so we are not in the office.

I have been working on a couple of Bombadil's flagship projects, whilst at the same time wishing that things would move just a little faster. Sahil's fantasy adventure book is finally nearly ready, after we decided to undertake a major page referencing exercise on it. Perhaps not the most sensible thing, looking back on it, when I consider the amount of extra work that it generated, but it will make the book infinitely more readable. It is a book that allows the reader to make their own choices throughout the story so it must be carefully checked, then re- checked, otherwise it will not make any sense.

The May Fire at Örebro and the Archery Club party (in my villa) has been extensively covered by other Bombadillians elsewhere, so I shall not harp on about that. I am, with Steinar's help, building a kayak. I have recently discovered the joys of paddling along a river in a beautiful wooden craft and so I have started on my own construction. It appears to be growing quite quickly, but I have a feeling it will start to take a lot longer once it is time for sanding.



I am also learning Swedish. It's not really necessary as nearly everyone here speaks impeccable English (even the bums outside the off-licence) but as I have been here for a while now, I thought it was time to learn. It's going rather well (I'm on week two of learning).

I andra nyheter, Bombadil hunden är för närvarande mycket blöter.

The Bombadil Ear

Hello all Bombadilians,

I got a mail from a Peruvian guy who wrote about the feelings he felt when he found Bombadil Publishing on the Internet, and the certainty to be listened to. As he wrote, I just smiled, because I read this mail – not listening to anybody - but, of course I understand this young boy, and I’m very happy to do that. Like this boy, there are many young people who are writing e-mails to Bombadil and express that they get this same feeling, they get inspired, happy and they show their enthusiasm, and start to write the books on many different matters. At the same time I’m very surprised for this rich experience this young people give me, and not only from Latin-American but the entire world. Be sure young Bombadilians, that here in Bombadil there are several of our staff who is ready to listen to you!

Melvin González

Swanning around

Rather a short week for the second time in the last fortnight. Melvin Gonzalez, our Spanish countries coordinator has been hard at work translating the website into his native tongue, the Indian market is continuing to grow far beyond our expectations and I demolished a glass brick window.

Spring is here, and I'm rather enjoying it.



Mute swan



Coltsfoot (also mute)

In other news, the Bombadil dog currently smells like Febreze, which is most unusual.

From Switzerland with love

I've been out of the office for a few days this week, visiting the British Council at the UN headquarters at Geneva.



I went to see their "Turning the Tide" exhibition at the Palais des Nations. We are planning a collaboration with them which should be launched soon. More details to follow!

We still have snow, but I am assured that spring is on its way. The Bombadil vegetable garden is expecting a delivery of topsoil in the next few weeks, so assuming the ground ever thaws out, I can start to grow Swedes. And other vegetables, of course.

In other news, the Bombadil dog currently smells like the epitome of mustiness.

Bearly there

So, Bombadil has acquired a bear.



As Niklas said in his blog yesterday, he and I went to the mine to collect a water sample. He went into the mine whilst I stood at the top of the shaft waiting for the inevitable loss of life that would surely follow. Strangely, the whole operation came off without a hitch. So I had hauled up the water container on the end of a 40 metre rope when when Niklas asked me to send the rope down once more.

"What else are you sending up?" I asked.
"I've found a teddy bear," the reply floated back up. "It's badly wounded."
"It's extremely heavy," I pointed out as I heaved on the rope once more.
"Ah, it's quite waterlogged..."

Does anyone know if Rolf Harris is still at Animal Hospital?

In other news, the Bombadil Dog currently smells like elderly pantaloons.

Fast times, fast books

Friday is here again! Well, it may have been here yesterday actually. Thanks to Mari for reminding me that I am blogging today - oops. But yet another week has flown by; we're well into March and it seems like only a couple of weeks ago that I was sliding from one end of the cabin to the other on my epic and uncomfortable boat journey to Sweden (well, to Denmark at any rate, I still had a ten hour drive through several blizzards until I reached Bombadil Towers).

I'm very busy with my own projects, which I will reveal in the fullness of time. I have been working on the artwork for the Bombadil posters for World Book Day in my spare time. Niklas, having made peace with the pneumatic Ms Anderson, has been busy with some drawings of his own, in the shape of expansion plans on the back of paper napkins.

Back to the UNESCO World Book Day, which is on 23 April. We wanted to do something to mark this event, so we thought about it and decided to publish a world book, comprising of short stories, letters, poems and essays from around the world. To spice it up a bit, we will be starting the actual publishing process in the early hours of the 23rd and aiming to have the first copy of the finished book available by midnight of the same day. Will we succeed? Who knows!

Posted by John

Media Centre is afloat!

Our acquisition of Veronica Hägg as the driving force behind the Media Centre heralds a new dawn in dynamic and proactive media-centric community orientated projects. Or put more simply and without the unnecessary and frankly ridiculous "middle management" waffle, "things will be 'appening 'ere".



We have lots of ideas at the moment, centring around creative writing workshops, journalism, kayaks, art projects, photography, theatre, cinema and a cafe.

Steinar, whose kayak building and other expertise will be an important part of the Media Centre, has nearly completed work on his latest kayak.







It's a timber kayak with a fibreglass overlay. The construction is light enough to be carried and strong enough to bounce off stones when in shallow water. It will also survive being dropped from a car roof rack.

In other news, the Bombadil dog currently smells like scotch eggs. And there is a loaf of bread in the middle of the driveway - make of that what you will.

Posted by John

It's a late Monday today one said to oneself.

It's a lateMonday indeed, it all staing started this morning with me having to return home three times before I managed to remeber to bring everything I kept forgetting. Along with the rather crucial weather situation I was not off to a good start.

I managed to get to the Bombadil office at a sensible time (fika-time) and the day turned out to be quite productive! My book "where's the manual" was completed today for exampel, me and Mari did the final touch and after that I proof read my own book, very interesting experience actually. It's hard killing your babies, luckily I didn't have to go that far, but managed to remove a couple of dots and adding a few capitals every here and there. So yes, this week Bombadil is sending off a new title for printing!

Another exciting thing that took place today was our new coworker, Veronika! She started her first day with painting her office, I fully understand her reasoning since the former colour was a very bemusing greenish sort of tone... Now Veronika's office has a light, shaded purple shade, much nicer indeed. Veronika will be participating in the media centre, which is going to be a place for young people to meet up and learn about media etc, it's very exciting to have Veronika with us since that means that it will start running quite soon =) which we all are looking forward to a lot!

The unofficial update of today is that John somehow has managed to look more tired than me this evening, which is an achivement one might say, certainly is. A qoute from John taken from a conversation me and him had last week will explain this very detailed:
"You might wanna put some make-up on"
We discussed taking a picture of me for the back of my book (soon to be published!) when John very kindly dropped that comment, the picture in the end was decided to be a black&white close-up shot of me with my eyes closed. So yes, an achivment indeed to manage to look more tired than I do, well done John!

Over&Out
Your monday-blogger Sara

Coffee, fruit and cheese

Ah, Friday. As loyal readers of the Bombablog may have gathered, Sara, my erstwhile and erudite colleague, doesn't really like Mondays. I, on the other hand, don't much care for Fridays. It signals the end of the week and I rather enjoy my weeks at Bombadil. On the plus side though Friday does tend to be even madder than the rest of the week. Here is a brief outline of the sequence of events that occurred this morning.

• Everyone drinks coffee in the fika room, at 10 o'clock sharp, like good Swedes/psuedo Swedes
  
• Twenty minutes later, everyone gets up to leave the fika room to continue Bombadilling
• Niklas (upon inspecting the contents of his mug and with a genuine tone of surprise in his voice), comments: "Ah, I have not drunk any coffee, I have only eaten fruits."
• Everyone sits down again
• Niklas drinks coffee
• Swedish chi is restored
  

Our Media Centre is gathering pace (well, it is gathering staff at any rate). Veronica will be joining the Bombadil stable next Monday, hopefully she'll be able to put up with our horsing around in the fika room.

In other news, the Bombadil dog currently smells like cheese.*

*She smells of cheese bacause she stole several kilos of cheddar from the kitchen table last night.

Monday blogging on a Tuesday morning....

I give up, I surrender and I confess: I FORGOT. Ok, happy now? I forgot to blog yesterday, Monday is my holy day you see, I blog and I have kitchen duty. Both was more or less forgotten yesterday, I did manage to put on some coffee, but forgot to do the washing up (I did it this morning). For anyone who is not very familiar with the routine of kitchen duties at Bombadil Publishing shall now be enlightend:

"During one´s kitchen-duty-day one shall make sure that breweries such as coffee and tea is available at 10.00 am and at 15.00 pm. One shalla also keep the kitchen neat, clean and tidy"
I´m embaressed to admit that I failed yesterday. One can not succeed every Monday I guess.

After all it was a very productive Monday yesterday, the weather was maybe not at it´s best, but I don´t mind, everyone knows that Mondays has the delegation of being the weekday with crappy weather, that just how the world works. Today is beutiful though, snowy, sunny and freezing. Yeah, we still got winter for sure. I´m waiting for spring, I know it might be a bit early for expecting spring in February if you are located in the midlands of Sweden, but as a wise man or woman once said "Hope is the last to surrender".

As I said, yesterday was a productive Monday, indeed! It involved doing the setting for my book "Where´s the manual", which was great fun, Mari is really awsome and is helping me out a lot=)
I got a new collection of poems which I´ve been going through and the day finished off with me and John runing around the town church of Nora to get the last pictures for my book. Well John was taking lots and lots of artistic photographs whilst I was on the phone. But still, a very productive Monday, indeed.

Dancing the can't-can't

The neighbours invited us over for dinner last night. I know that this is a blog of office news and that dinner with the neighbours is not, strictly speaking, office news, but most of us were there and it did mean that we were all slightly more sedate this morning than we might otherwise have been. I tend to judge the success of a dinner by the number of different drinks that are served at the table and let me assure you this particular culinary event was absolutely excellent.



And now an apology. Sara has been responsible for editing the Bombadil Shorts this week. It turns out that I do rather a lot of singing and dancing in front of the camera, usually whilst wielding power tools and other manly paraphernalia. I have no idea why and generally don't realise that I'm doing it. If I'm editing, I consign it to the Bombadil dustbin. However, Sara has decided that me shaking it with a cordless drill is what the public are baying for and consequently Youtube's servers are groaning under the (metaphysical) weight of scores of video clips featuring my rather dire dancing. You all have my most sincere condolences and rest assured it was NOT my idea!

In other news, the Bombadil dog currently smells like fermenting herring.

Work + candy

Pixie here.
I wonder if Mari has any candy for me today, I shall shout for her.


-Mari, where are you.
-What is It Pixie? (Mari)
-Do you have anything for me, fast please?
-Is this chewing thing OK for you or shall I have it into two pieces? (Mari)
-Oh come on, just give it to me. Hurry up!
-Not so fast little friend. You will get one piece now and one in the afternoon. (Mari)
-Hmm. I want it all now, and fast.
-Well here you have it, but just one. (Mari)
-Crunch, crunch, crunch.


And small paws going away......


Well Pixie likes candy and bones, but she is not allowing anyone else to come near It.





Ubbe discovered that last week when he was with me at the office. Being at the office was a new experience for him and when we came home he sleept almost the whole evening. We will see if he will come with me one more time.
Or else the work has going fine and I´m getting into it more and more. I have helped Sara a bit with her book and Niklas with the Moon-Mine homepage. And right now we are looking at pictures for a book cover. That is really fun because I like to look at picture and trying to do something with them. I think I´m a "picture reader" :-)). And writing English in a blog is new to me, a bit difficult because I put the words in wrong order from time to time. But I luckily have John and Marianne looking at it before it is published :-).


Have a nice evening Mari and Pixie

HTML-coding might be the way forward...(?)

I´m suprised by myself, I´m amased by myself. Stunned by my own capacity.
This is not said in a cocky or rude way, just in an honest one.

I never ever thought that I, Sara Karlsson would be a webmaster, when I first was introduced to role and tried my best to shoulder this burden I was truly pettrified. Me, who never got futher than Facebook when I put a computer on, on a good day I managed to access Majhong and Word. Should I become a webmaster?! Since I quite recently had started working with Bombadil Publishing when Marianne informed me about my tasks I didn´t dare to mention my rather limited skills regarding websites and computers. I seem to remeber that I nodded and replied something like:
"Mhhm, that sounds interesting"

Marianne hopefully didn´t see the fear in my eyes or saw the sweat that came pourring down my forehead. If she did see these signs of insecurity she was kind enough to ignore them, instead she said: "I believe you can do it Sara". At the time I didn´t put that much trust into her words, I was concentrating too hard on not fainting. One can say that I was struck by suprise.

This is why I now dare to say that I´m stunned by my own capacity, before I used to say that I acted as a so called webmaster at Bombadil Publishing (among many other tasks of course). But now about a month later I can proudly introduce myself as webmaster of the Swedish Bombadil website. Because today I´m a webmaster, and I enjoy it. I know how to work all the different functions and I even get to help others at the office (John mainly) with updating the English website even! I set designs, upload pictiures, insert advanced hyperlinks and bookmarks. I AM STUNNED. Funniest part of all this is that I´m really enjoying it. Of course some days I do wanna tear all my hair of because stuff won´t work etc. But most days I have a smile on my face because I managed to for example start a new page on the site och link to our newsletter. I have become such a computer geek. It´s a fact.

One thing that must be mentioned is the tiny, little detail that even made all of this possible:
Andreas the support-guy. I really can´t recall how many phonecalls and hours I have spent with him to finally have reached this stage of development. But I did because of him. Bless his cotton socks, really please do. And I guess Marianne should have some credit for actually believing in me to begin with. And that kind of sum up the Bombadilian spirit I guess; believe and inspire. You might become an author or maybe even a skilled webmaster, in my case both.

Over&out from your proud Monday-blogger Sara

Dog multiplication

I'm blogging just before going off to the airport to pick up a friend who is coming for the weekend to see Sweden. Rather a good choice of weekend too - snow and sun.

It's been a successful week. Marianne has been on the hunt for some more high-level people to sit on our board and early indications appear to be excellent. We've been featured in the regional newspaper and our website statistics seem to suggest that lots of people have read the article and are looking us up. I'm particularly pleased as the authors that I'm mentoring, some great ideas are coming together and we will have new titles in print before too long.

Honorary Bombadil dog Ubbe has accompanied Mari into the office today. Pixie is mentoring him and guiding him through the important steps that will mean that he is proficient at barking at the postman.



In other news, the (original) Bombadil dog currently smells like an elderly dishcloth.

Posted by John