I had them prepared though, I think it was done as long ago as April, but I didn’t get the last touch done. Here a little sample from the pictures.

Now I did get it done, so here they are:

2018 in pictures

Here some highlights from 2016:

Here you find the pictures of 2016: wolfmaier.se/2016-in-pictures/

And some highlights from 2017:

Here you find the pictures from 2017: wolfmaier.se/2017-in-picutres/

Enjoy!

(Picutre from Ringsjön runt)

On Saturday I’m going to cycle Ringsjön runt. It’s a local cycle-race around the lake we live next to. There are 4 different distances, 3 road and one off-road, I’m going for the middle road one of 65 km, as that one passes our place just out on the main road. The other two don’t even come close. (35 and 125 km)

There still are spots open if you want to join me: www.ringsjonrunt.se/index.htm (Page in swedish)

If you want to follow my progress just check out this link: www.greenalp.com/RealtimeTracker/index.php?viewuser=wolfie217 on greenalp. I will also try to make it possible to track me on Runtastic for you of my friends that have facebook. (I haven’t tested that it really is Live, a link should show up on my feed there).

If you want to cheer me on in real life you can look at this map and find a spot. www.ringsjonrunt.se/index_htm_files/ringsjon-runt-alla-rundor-2014-2.jpg

I’m on the yellow route.

Here a little preview:

Here comes the link to the pictures: http://wolfmaier.se/2015-in-pictures/

Enjoy!

The last bridge with clue is this one: 3d December Bridge Tomorrow there will come a new clue…

Good luck!

(See my post from the 10^th of January last year: http://blog.wolfmaier.se/wolfie217/2013/01/10/new-year-what-will-you-bring/)

Here are the points that I thought of as certain last year:

“

• I will go back to work. (Just the date is not decided yet).
• Our daughter will turn two. (She actually turns 16 months today).
• We will travel to Skåne a few times, the first trip to see my cousin in law become a priest in the Church of Sweden.
• Our daughter will learn so many more things.

“

Little did I know then that some of the things on the list would be bigger, more altering than I thought.

We had already been thinking of making the move when I wrote this, but nothing was planned. So now to what actually happened:

• I did go back to work, just not the work I used to go to. I’m doing so many new things. I’m having great new colleagues. It’s in a new town.
• Our daughter turned two and is easier and easier to understand. She even talks in two languages some times.
• We travelled to Skåne many times. Now we travel to Stockholm. First we travelled to look for houses, then to get the key to our apartment. After that the direction changed and we travel to Stockholm to visit family and friends.
• Our daughter is still learning so many things.

But the biggest things that happen were not thought of:

We made the move, leaving our home in Stockholm for a new one in Skåne, first in Höör, then in our house in Gamla Bo.

• I got a new job. A great job at Ramböll in Malmö.
• We bought a house on the country side.
• We are expecting a little Poff to join us in 2014. Poff being the working name of our next kid.

This leads me up to the headline question: 2014 – A year to remember?

It definitely will be. We will have our second kid; that is really big. We have been looking forward to have at least one more kid, but as things dragged along it wasn’t easy for me at least. I wanted the kids to be closer in age. One just has no say in how fast things go. Now there won’t be too long between them, just a little less than three years and that is fine, it was just longer than I hoped for.

I don’t know how our daughter will react to Poff arriving but I think she will become a great big sister. She already talks about the little little baby living in mom.

I do know that Poff will be born into a nice home.

By the way, Poff comes from the fact that at some point a friend of ours called Susanna and me Piff and Puff, as the chipmunks in Donald duck. Our daughter had the working name of Paff before she was borne.

Now we just have to get the home in order. We have had my parents here for Christmas and New Year and they have helped us a great deal, making our home liveable. There are still plenty of things to be done until some real ordinary life will show up, many boxes to be unpacked, lamps fixed (they have to stay at the apartment until it is clean; we keep it until the last of January). Curtains and pictures on the walls might take a longer time.

Owning a house is much more an ongoing project than renting a place. The list of what is to do will grow faster than we can check things off.

Back to the question, now a few points to remember from 2014 that we already know:

• A trip to Zambia.
• Poff being born.
• The first summer in our house.

There will probably be a few more things. It won’t be an ordinary year. It will just not be the life changer that 2013 has been.

(And we do have a guest room).

One Sunday evening a few weeks ago I wanted to chill in front of the TV and I started it, thinking it would take about 10-15 minutes (it had after the move started to take a little bit longer to start up). Half an hour later it still clicked away in the living room and I started getting worried. After one hour I gave up. I had chilled in front of the computer instead (not as chilling as the TV) and it was about time to go to sleep. I did not go to sleep, but started searching the internet if there are other people out there with the same problem.

I was not alone. Not alone at all. There are plenty of people who had the same problem as I had. Some got it fixed by the warranty. Most (that I found) didn’t due to the fact that the TV was more than three years old. Bad quality Samsung TV, with things in them that just barely survive the warranty. And it was all kinds of models affected. Ouch, that didn’t feel good. I already saw myself trying to find a new TV (from a different brand) spending lots of money we really don’t want to spend. (And no, I don’t want to live without TV, it’s just too nice to chill in front of it after a hard day).

But then I looked at the links that Google had shown me a little closer. And there were some people talking about fixing the problem. So I looked at one of the links; http://redpushpin.blogspot.se/2011/08/repairing-samsung-lcd-tv-with-clicking.html

and it looked kind of easy to fix. So I decided I would give it a try. One or more of the capacitors could have popped. The fix being replacing the capacitors and then it would work again. Just make sure you don’t use the same ones as they were not really good enough only coping with 10 V, one should use at least 12 V or higher (all other things the same).

The day after, in the evening when our daughter was asleep, I unscrewed the back of the TV and saw the problem right away. Two of the capacitors had popped.

Here they are marked.

So I unsoldered them and ordered new ones. Then the big wait started. It took ten days until the parts came. Ten long days without TV. Okay it was not that bad, but still.

When the parts arrived I soldered them into place. I’m actually kind of proud of my soldering even if they are not as perfect as the others on the circuit board:

It is the two objects called CM 852 and CM 853 that I replaced.

This is how they looked from the other side. (It’s the two black ones with a “K” on top).

After that I put everything together again and plugged all the parts in. I pressed the on button, it started right away and I had a little victory dance.

Sure all warranties are void now but hey, they were void already before due to high age. And watching TV isn’t an activity that needs to be planned ahead anymore.

The reason we stayed up late last night was that we watched the third and final part of the miniseries “Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter” (our mothers, our fathers) or “Generation War”. It made me thinking, this is what my grandparents lived through. Maybe not exactly, but the things going on around them were the same. It made me think of grandfather’s diary that he wrote during his imprisonment in France. It made me remember the things grandmother told me of the time, mostly the time after the war. How they had to walk home. How life changed.

I can really recommend the series. It’s three 1½ hours episodes so it takes some time, but it is time well spent. And you get a free lesson in German, as the series is a German production. Here is the link to the IMDb site: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1883092/

Here is a short preview:

Many pictures of our daughter:

A few from my trips:

A few from our trips:

And some other more random pictures:

Enjoy: wolfmaier.se/2012/2012%20in%20pictures/

Some years are just normal years. The last one was that in some way. Normal years are good, they give you time to reflect on life. No real life changing thing happened. As far as I know anyhow. (Some of the life changing things have the tendency to first show themselves after some time).

Will 2013 be a normal year again, or will it bring big change? I don’t know. There are things brewing, but nothing is actually planned.

A few things are more certain:

• I will go back to work. (Just the date is not decided yet).
• Our daughter will turn two. (She actually turns 16 months today).
• We will travel to Skåne a few times, the first trip to see my cousin in law become a priest in the Church of Sweden.
• Our daughter will learn so many more things.

None of these things will qualify this year as non-normal.

I just hope I can make the most of every moment of this year anyway. I have started out good I think. Like today, when I took our daughter for a ride in the bicycle wagon to go shopping despite the snow. (You who know me know that I like bicycling in the snow). After dinner tonight I also took a few rounds down the slope beside our house on the snowracer. I think I might enjoy it more than her, but she likes it too. Now the snow is really fast so we have to turn around the house to not go through the thorn bushes and down the steep slope into the nature reserve (that contains plenty of trees before ending in the lake Mälaren, that isn’t frozen over here so far).

This morning I saw this post on facebook where there were 45 good advices given by a 90 year old lady named Regina Brett. I looked it up, since I liked the advice given and found out it wasn’t a 90 year old lady after all giving the advice and it wasn’t only 45 but five more. But it is good advice anyway so I shared it there, and I share it here too: http://www.reginabrett.com/life_lessons.php

I think I might print them and post them on my board here at home.

The other day as I was bicycling home from church I went by a little group of people that were taking photos. I thought that one of them looked familiar, but she lives a bit away nowadays so I thought it is just someone similar. Then when I glanced through her blog the other day, I recognised a picture taken at the spot I bicycled by. I should have stopped and said hi. (And here is the link to that blogpost: http://litenlisa.blogspot.se/2013/01/en-ovantad-grej.html)

After Susanna proofread this post she said she wanted to show me a thing. We had the book that Regina Brett wrote on the 50 advices standing in our shelf (translated to Swedish). Now I have a new book to read.