Lights to stave off winter

Tomorrow is a big day because we are going to pick up a couch.
So far sitting on the floor has been our one option.
There are thirty stairs from the front door of the building up to our apartment door.
When your shopping list is as basic as 'condiments', toilet paper, step ladder, trash bin there are a lot of trips to various stores and up and down the aforementioned stairs.
We did have boxes to move but that mostly consisted of all of Zok's paperwork from the last twelve years of tours in Sweden.
Oh, and many, many bags of apparently very important free clothing that has never been worn...
The apartment is way too white.
Zok was very happy to find out that there are like seven chopping boards built into the kitchen.
I plan on fixing that as soon as I know what our furniture that we haven't found to buy yet looks like.
I don't think or I don't remember ever living in an actual apartment before.
At least never in a large building. Mostly I kept to guest houses, or bungalows where my front door opened to the outside world. I came close when I first moved to Seattle, I lived in a small brick place with six apartments.
But this place is large, we have maybe 8-10 per section and maybe 20 sections? I am just getting used to all the differences. However, the design of our building is a half circle, and our apartment has great windows, a small enclosed front porch and a large terrace on the other side.
I am happy.
I am also very tired.

In Sweden 'Jul' or Christmas starts about the 30th of November.
All at once almost every window has lights in it, mostly paper stars of various sizes and colors and sort of punctured with designs so the light streams through in patterns of shadows and light.
I choose a copper star. There is also a wooden traditional light fixture with about seven small lights-painted in a Swedish folk style. We have one in Tasmania that gets very little use as the seasons are reversed. When darkness falls by 3:30 p.m. lights seem much more of a necessity.
Also almost every apartment complex has a live tree with white lights adorning the branches.


Meanwhile Team Sweden is playing in the Blood and Thunder Roller Derby World Cup and I have been getting up at odd hours to try and watch them play live, streamed online.
http://www.derbynewsnetwork.com/live/events/2011/12/blood_thunder_roller_derby_world_cup