Mega Post

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I'll be spending all day preparing our home, along with a few of my favorite holiday dishes, for dinner with The Swede's folks.  We haven't entertained here yet and I've never cooked a full meal for anyone other than us and we are highly indiscriminate when it comes to food, so I'm a bit nervous.  I'm shaping the image of this fine holiday for these people so EVERYTHING HAS TO BE PERFECT.  With that in mind, I hope you'll forgive me if I don't find time to blog tomorrow.  And because I so appreciate your flexibility on the matter, I'm going to do a jumbo-sized post for you to luxuriate in today.  So without further ado...

This afternoon I met Petra and baby Dylan at Kista Galleria, a fabulous mall nearby that was debuting a new section today.  I walked through the park by the lakes to get to the train station and met these geese, who apparently didn't get the memo that they were supposed to have flown south. 

Petra and I did a lot of looking around in clothing shops and navigating our way through thousands of holiday shoppers.  All of this shopping was simply exhausting so we stopped to have a little coffee break.  A fika, if you will. 

Then the best thing happened.  Remember the rapper Rigo Pencheff who I mentioned last month?  Well, he had a choir in Körslaget that was just grand and diverse and talented, but they were voted off early in the program.  While they were still competing, though, they were our favorites because they, and Rigo, were so different from everybody else and, frankly, had a heck of a lot of sass.  And today I saw Rigo at the mall!  And of course, because I have very little pride, I walked up to him, explained our admiration and asked for a picture.  Rigo, a true gentleman, obliged and in doing so made my day.