Category Archives: Projects/Topics

What is my risk?

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Taking a calculated risk at a favorite restaurant’s outdoor patio

Ever since the covid19 stay-at-home orders were relaxed for my state, I have been struggling to find some rules to guide me as we try to safely host small gatherings with qualified friends (today’s rules: outdoors, safe-distancing, maximum of two guests–who have also been in semi-quarantine).

I’d like to know “what is my risk?” after encountering N people in a day and spending a certain amount of time with each.  In particular, if I interact with store clerks for a few minutes each, walk or bicycle past maybe a hundred people, or sit in a (sparse) movie theater with a few dozen others for two hours, what risks am I taking?  I want to put it in relative terms with the risk I willingly accept when I drive a few miles for an everyday errand.

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Swedish Candelabras

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A modest Swedish house in Skalo, Poldi’s ancestral home. Nearly all the houses are in this traditional red color with white trim.
A close up shows the candelabras in the windows, a wintertime custom here.

While in Sweden over the Christmas season, we noticed the popularity of candelabras placed in the windows of people’s homes.  In these northern latitudes where the darkness of the winter night dominates the few hours of daylight, the distinctive chevron of lights provided a cheery greeting from the windows of the traditional-styled Swedish houses.  

I thought it would be a nice accent to our own home with its not-so-traditional windows cut into a mansard roof.  Surely Ikea would have such an item, with some suitable unpronounceable name, but I was disappointed.  Perhaps I needed to shop the Ikea stores in Sweden rather than our Americanized versions of them.

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