Woe is me.

Five days ago, they closed a Stockholm institution, the Lydmar Hotel. Kinda funky, definitely hip in its way, nice lunches, great for afternoon drinks, and we put up my family there when they came for our wedding.

According to the husband, the bank that owns the building wanted the space for offices, or something like that. Which is typical bank behavior, actually.

Why wasn't I notified?

The Swedish phrase for the day is vad trist. It means, more or less, how depressing.

- by Francis S.

It is amazing how a little 12-pound human package that basically drinks, sleeps, shits, cries and smiles can create so much work while simultaneously making you fall profoundly and hopelessly in love. And I got the worst case of uncle-tourettes, saying my two-month-old nephew's name over and over (Owie, Owie, Owie!) just because it cracks me up, and repeatedly telling his parents that he is going to grow up to be a cowboy (on account of his initials are O.K.) while doing that really annoying thing where you point your fingers as if they were guns and then blowing away the pretend smoke.

In between perseverating on my nephew's name, feeding the boy countless bottles of breast-milk (those breast pumps are pretty scary devices) changing a diaper (I only had to do that once when I was babysitting alone), eating dinner at two very fancy schmancy restaurants, freaking out while sitting in Washington Square Park and eating a falafel from Mamoun's (it was altogether too much like some creepy drug-induced flashback to my college days at NYU), going to the doctor so Owen could get his first vaccinations (which was a big deal due to his hemophilia, but which came out fine), attending a naming ceremony at the gay synagogue that my beloved little brother and his wife belong to (why they belong to a gay synagogue is a story for another time), watching the Oscars at an apartment on the upper east side somewhere because my brother doesn't own a TV (we left before seeing Brokeback Mountain lose to Crash) and taking Owen for his first big art experience, the Met, through which he dutifully slept while my brother and I checked out room after room of Greek urns and drinking cups, (while being checked out ourselves by countless fellow artgoers who obviously had decided that Owen Has Two Daddies), I managed to have drinks and dinner and more drinks with the marvelous Mr. Justin Kerr Sheckler, who instantly became a friend (it was a case of extreme like at first sight), and having a brief coffee in Union Square with Eric, who is not only a high-quality individual, but wonderfully like his writing (I somehow never got around to telling him he really should try to write for money) and has scary stories about Danes.

New York has definitely not lost the ability to boggle the mind (You can get any food you want delivered just about anytime you want it!) The only bad thing about the whole trip was that in my mad rush to get to the airport (after an afternoon of walking around and last-minute shopping, we arrived home ten minutes before the car was due, and I hadn't packed yet), I somehow managed to leave my phone at my brother's.

The Swedish word for the day is parenteser. It means parentheses.

- by Francis S.

How many times do you think one can play Bach's English Suite No. 2 in A minor on the piano before one has completely squandered the good will of the neighbor who slipped the note under the door saying "I'm always so happy when I hear you playing the piano when I walk past your door," not to mention the goodwill of the neighbors above, below and next door?

It's a lovely thing, the suite, but forcing it on everyone within hearing distance once a day for a month is probably cruel and unusual punishment. And whoever wrote that note is no doubt wondering whatever possessed her to write it, and sending a wide range of colorful curses in my general direction.

The Swedish word for the day is besatt. It means obsessed.

- by Francis S.

Sometimes, no matter how hard I try to suppress it, the testosterone just gets the better of me.

So I end up doing things like watching my first hockey game in, uh, 35 years.

But we won.

"I love it when you say 'we' when you talk about Sweden," A., the TV producer said, as she jumped up and down and screamed, along with the husband and C., the fashion photographer and me.

We won!

You have no idea what it means when a little inconsequential country like Sweden manages to kick some hockey butt in front of the whole world.

I think surely 6 million out of Sweden's 9 million inhabitants must have been watching and cheering just like us.

Goddammit, we won!

And then, as I was walking home from the office today, who should come down Sveavägen but the whole winning team, complete with loudspeakers announcing that it was them, their faces grinning from the bus window, the people on the street clapping and shouting "hurrah!"

(Okay, I admit it. I'm a hockey opportunist jump-on-the-bandwagon kind of guy. But hey, we won. Maybe I should watch more often?)

The Swedish word for the day is guld. It means gold.

Addenda: I was reminded by my local hockey expert that good sports always mention the competition, in this case, the Finnish team, who played an excellent game, at least as far as I could tell.

- by Francis S.

One week and five hours from now, I'll be in the air on my way to Manhattan to meet the newest member of the family.

I haven't been to New York in nearly a decade. I guess it's changed a bit.

I can't wait.

The Swedish word for the day is lillebror, which had been the Swedish word for the day before. It means little brother.

- by Francis S.

Correction: The Internet is seething mass of information and misinformation, and it seems I've done my part on the misinformation front.

Remember back, oh, 11 months ago when I wrote about the crazy family of Isaac Merritt Singer? It seems that I got it all wrong. Singer had 24 children instead of 22, Daisy Fellowes had four daughters and not three, and it was Virginia Woolf who made the comment about Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac, that "...to look at [her] you'd never think she ravished half the virgins in Paris..." and not the other way around.

How do I know that I was perpetrating a pack of lies and calumny? Because I got an e-mail telling me so from Sylvia Kahan, pianist, professor and author of Music's Modern Muse: A life of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac.

I asked Professor Kahan how the hell she happened on my falsehoods, and she replied that she periodically does a web search on "Winnaretta."

So, the moral of the story is, on the one hand, you can't trust the internet and we all do our part to make sure bad information is a gift that keeps on giving; on the other hand, there's a lot of room for self-correction and when you do lie, Professor Sylvia Kahan will definitely find you.

Now, if only we all had a Sylvia Kahan to keep us on our toes. I think she's the bee's knees.

The Swedish word for the day is förtänksam, which is the closest translation I can find to the English word circumspect. If you take the word apart, it literally translates to something like thinking aheadful, more or less, and seems to be more accurately translated as prudent.

- by Francis S.

The husband and I had lunch with the priest last week at a peculiar restaurant with three counters for three different types of semi-hemi-demi fast food. "Pinnar eller bestick?" the girl behind the counter asked, and I held up the line for a minute, unable to decide whether to go for chopsticks or regular utensils (there, you've got your Swedish phrase for the day). Which was stupid, because wooden chopsticks always work so much better than plastic forks and knives for eating just about anything.

We sat down to our little cardboard cartons of food and dug in, and the conversation meandered onto the subject of funerals.

"The most horrible are the ones where it's just me, the organist and the funeral director in the back or outside smoking cigarettes," the priest said.

The husband and I were taken aback. Do they even have a funeral for someone if no one comes?

"Yes," she said, and sighed. "All the time. I just had one yesterday. It's unbearably sad. Instead of speaking to the people who have come, I speak to the person who has died. It's one of the worst parts of my job. And I think I couldn't stand it if I didn't believe in God."

We sat silently for just a second or two, among the clatter all around us. And then we moved nimbly on to the topic of the husband's trip to Spain, or the book I was reading, I don't actually remember what it was.

by Francis S.

It's time for the second annual Satin Pajama Awards, given out by the folks at Fistful of Euros. Last year, I won for best writing. This year, among other things, I am nominated for a lifetime achievement award. I guess that means that four and a half years of blogging means I'm ancient , if you're counting in blog years. Holy mother, sisters, cousins and aunts of god.

I stand among some of many of my other favorites: Stefan, Jill, Zoe, P.A., Curiosa, Veronica and especially Mig, who is definitely the most unappreciated of bloggers.

The Swedish word for the day is populär. It means popular, surprisingly.

- by Francis S.

Don't be afraid, be ready! (via the illustrious Mig.)

The Swedish word of the day is rådjurshagel, which is how my Swedish-English dictionary translates the word buckshot, although I'm skeptical about how accurate that may be.

Francis S.

Sometimes, melancholy is a good thing.

Depression, grief, heartbreak, these are never good things, but melancholy is something else altogether.

There's something heartrending but terribly satifying about seeing a movie where people betray true love, and themselves, and the objects of their love, and that moment where they realize the terrible thing they have done and the regret is almost too much to bear. Like when Timothy Bottoms comes back to Cloris Leachman at the end of Larry McMurtry's The Last Picture Show, and first she curses and throws things, and then, she breaks down and comforts him, holding his hand, and he can't even look at her, his eyes the saddest brown eyes in the whole world.

Shamelessly manipulative. But to every thing there is a season and a time, and there is definitely a time to be shamelessly, but oh so wonderfully manipulated. Just lay it on thick, and let me wallow in the melancholy.

Somehow, it doesn't surprise me that Larry McMurtry wrote the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain. I think Heath Ledger must have the second saddest brown eyes in the whole world.

The Swedish word for the day is cowboy. I don't think you need me to translate that for you.

by Francis S.

I should have known: The voiceless palatal-velar fricative, voiceless dorso-palatal velar fricative, voiceless postalveolar and velar fricative, voiceless coarticulated velar and palatoalveolar fricative are unique to the Swedish language.

In other words, no other recorded language uses this weird sound - spelled with an sk, sj or sometimes even skj - which to my best reckoning is like trying to say an English sh and w at the same time. It is, undoubtedly, the most difficult thing to approximate when you start learning to speak Swedish. And plenty of people never master it, I suppose, opting for a plain old sh, which is more or less how upper class ladies (at least they would describe themselves as ladies) from Stockholm's upper class neighborhood pronounce it.

I've long gotten over the voiceless palatal-velar fricative, though. Strangely, it's the vowels that still get me sometimes - being consistent with my long and short vowels (or is that vowels before long and short consonants?).

The Swedish phrase for the day is sjuttiosju sjösjuka sjömän sköttes av sju sköna sjuksköterskor, which means 77 seasick sailors were nursed by seven fair nurses.

- by Francis S.

The kind of earwax you have is controlled by the ATP-binding cassette C11 gene, according to Japanese researchers.

Who would've guessed? And here I always thought the ATP-binding cassette C11 gene was so innocuous.

And who knew there were two types of earwax?

And who starts to feel a little queasy just contemplating the whole earwax phenomenon?

The Swedish word for the day is forskning. It means research.

- by Francis S.

Happy New Year.

The Swedish word for the day is hundåret, which means a dog of a year, say Hanna and Ban~ken. As opposed to hundens år, which means the year of the dog.

- by Francis S.

If anyone asks me if I believe in ghosts, I tell them it's not that I believe in them, it's more that I just don't not believe in them.

But the truth is that my heart, the irrational part of myself, most definitely believes in them, no matter how skeptical the rest of me is. I remember when I was nine or ten, I would play the piano and wonder if the ghost of Bach was listening, and if he was insulted. Or if I played well enough would he appear and tell me how good I was (he never showed up, definitely a testament to my poor fingering, overuse of the damper pedal and tendency to play so fast that the notes would get all tangled up in knots and I'd have to start over again, which drove my father mad).

Just last weekend, when the husband was in Gothenburg over Saturday night, as I finally turned out the light and pulled the covers up tight to my chin, feeling very alone in bed, I wasn't worried about someone breaking into this vast apartment, I was actually worried that I would open my eyes to find a nasty spirit floating above me. Or something like that.

Not that I've ever actually seen a nasty spirit floating above me, or for that matter, a spirit of any kind above, below or beside me.

The problem is that no matter how hard I try, I can't will myself to really not believe, no matter what I say about not believing and not not believing.

I think it's time that I just give in and tell people, well, I've never seen any but yes, I suppose that I believe in ghosts.

Do you?

The Swedish word for the day is Spökslottet, which is the name of a mansion not far from Odenplan, and means the ghost castle.

- by Francis S.

Miscellaneous item No. 1: Walking to work in a heavy pair of work boots, my ankles and shins aching from the extra weight on my feet, I was suddenly wafted back to junior high school when it took a couple of days for my feet to get accustomed to my winter boots, and the day Deborah Newman threw one of my boots into the girls' locker room after school in a mad fit of 7th grade flirting. Sadly, it's been more than a week and my ankles and shins haven't adjusted.

Miscellaneous item No. 2: Yet another friend has jumped onto the blogwagon: Billy. Like me, he's having to face up to the fact that the only hairstyle available to him for the rest of his life involves the shortest setting on an electric razor. Stop by and leave a comment.

Miscellaneous item No. 3: The food was great, but the more I think about it, the more I find it disturbing that I ate at a trendy restaurant called "Döden i Grytan" - which means "Death in the pot" - along with the husband and P., another fashion photographer and I., the former backup singer to David Byrne. The fact that the name is Biblical in origin only makes it worse.

Miscellaneous item No. 4: Does having a black chandelier put you at a 6 on the Kinsey scale?

The Swedish verb for the day is att banta, which means to diet, which is something I've decided I really must do, after looking at holiday pictures.

- by Francis S.

The Swedish phrase for the day is så lyckades Birgit Nilsson hålla sin död hemlig. It means how Birgit Nilsson succeeded in keeping her death a secret.

I knew Birgit Nilsson was one of the world's great opera singers, but I didn't know she was actually able to manipulate things from the grave - obviously, she's not just a fabulous soprano, she's also a zombie.

(Cue magic fire music.)

- by Francis S.

Can there be anything more harrowing than parenthood?

Not that I can figure.

The thing is, when my little brother and his wife brought Owen home from the hospital to start his life in the big bad outside world, the doctors and nurses told them to watch out because he seemed a little jaundiced. And then, after a couple of days, he had become even more so, and the pediatrician said that he better go back in the hospital. And it turns out that Owen, poor little baby, is a rather severe hemophiliac. Which is quite treatable. But that is poor solace.

My brother told me they cried, they felt guilty, and then they had to face it; a three-step process that no doubt will be repeated for the rest of their lives. And me, I just felt sick and all I could think of was Owen, and of something my sister wrote to me, about how becoming a parent changes your life not in the way you think, but more in that you become so very vulnerable just because your children are so vulnerable. I can only imagine, since I lay awake all night thinking about my brother and his suffering for his son, and worrying about Owen, who is so very little, so very vulnerable.

But, the first reaction in my family is to be stoic. When my brother called to tell me all of this, he sounded a bit hoarse, but his voice was steady.

"The doctor said he can never be a boxer," he said.

We laughed.

The Swedish word for the day is blödarsjuka. It means hemophilia.

- by Francis S.

My beloved little brother and his wife, the rebel, are the proud parents of Owen, who arrived propitiously, two weeks early and with all tax advantages, on Dec. 31 at 9:30 p.m. in Manhattan while all of us in Stockholm were drunkenly swigging champagne at 4:30 a.m. here, a good four and a half hours into 2006.

Welcome to the wide world, baby boy.

The Swedish word for the day is farbror, which is what you call a paternal uncle; morbror is a maternal uncle.

- by Francis S.

Somewhere in the far north of Sweden, between Kalix and Boden, lies a lake ringed with hills, an abandoned sanatorium on one side, train tracks on the other, in a deep forest of pine trees heavy with snow.

If you are going to ice fish here, you come down a long road and park next to the sanatorium, which supposedly was sold to some Norwegians for 200,000 kronor a couple of years ago for them to turn into a spa, although there is some debate as to whether this is true; regardless, it remains empty.

From there, you walk past the sanitorium and beside the huge yellow villa - all verandas and fretwork and bay windows - and on down to the frozen water, where someone has made a path on the ice.

After a good half a kilometer's walk, you end up at a little shelter with a roaring fire burning beside it, and three guys drilling holes out on the ice, waiting for you to come and fish.

They give you a fishing reel and a couple of nasty pink maggots for you to spear on a hook and then plunge into the hole they've drilled for you. And you stand and fish, and it's minus 20 degrees celsius, though it doesn't feel it, and one of them talks to you with the thickest northern accent you've ever encountered (the worst is that somehow L becomes an R, which no one seems to believe me when I tell them, it took me a good 15 minutes to convince A., the TV producer, that this might possibly be true).

Then, suddenly, the former football star pukes violently, and the husband is complaining that his feet have frozen dangerously, and half of the group leaves in a hurry.

But you remain on the ice, failing to catch a fish but watching the northern winter sky, a curious pale eggshell blue that is at that moment the most beautiful color you've ever seen, but delicate, and the train goes past in the distance, and the trees are black green under all that white, and you think that winter could hardly be more romantic and how much you like the cold and ice and snow.

On the way back, you stop in and have coffee and cake and cookies and cloudberries at the house of a friend of the family who set the whole fishing thing up, and someone calls and asks about the football player, and when you get back in the car to go to Kalix, A. tells you that all of Kalix and Boden and Töre will be talking for decades about the time when the football star and the Spaniard - the husband, that would be - and the rest of the Stockholmers went fishing on the lake.

The Swedish word for the day is årsskiftet. It means the turning of the year.

- by Francis S.

The Ghost of Christmas Present is on my ass, and I don't know what I've done to deserve the persecution. After the frantic buying of presents, the days of frantic packing at work because we're moving offices, on top of trying to get all my work done to get ready for the long holiday, I'm actually enjoying myself at the office Christmas party strategically planned the day before we get up at the crack of ass to take a jet plane up to the far northern reaches of Sweden. I'm on my, oh, fifth beer or so, thinking about whether to dance a little before I leave, when the husband calls.

"The Christmas tree has fallen, and all the ornaments are smashed and the water has ruined the dining room floor," he tells me. "I just got home." It's 10:30 p.m., how could he have just gotten home? He was supposed to have been finished hours ago.

I'm leaving now, I told him. And so I left, thinking to myself on the No. 4 bus that he was just joking.

But no, when I get home, it's all shards of colored glass and pine needles, it's after 11:00, we haven't even wrapped the presents, done the laundry or packed.

A sadness settled deep into my chest, but I didn't say anything.

Now, it's 6:45 a.m., I've got a headache and in about 15 minutes we leave for a place even darker than here to celebrate, and I'm silently begging the Ghost to be gentle, because I'm feeling about as fragile as one of those ancient ornaments lying in the trash bin under the kitchen sink right now.

So, well, Merry Christmas, eh?

The Swedish word for the day, which usually pops up this time of year, is Jul. It means Christmas.

- by Francis S.