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AFU

Updates log & blogg from your webmaster

March 9 Went to the garage after work to fetch a batch of matters from the postal box that I had forgotten in the car, last Sunday. A number of magazines like the UFO Newsclipping Service, Fortean Times and Share International. And a nice book gift from Stefan Johansson: Paul A. LaViolette's Secrets of antigravity propulsion. Plus a number of invoices - of course.
March 8 Another day off from work (compensation for Saturday when I was at work). Went first to the bank to open a fund account for AFU where we can stack away money for future needs and hopefully have the money grow. Then walked to the archives where the entrance hall was full of people - we were nine counting me.

Benny was the new face in the crowd. He will start a digitizing project this week, working (at least in the beginning) from his home in Ljungsbro. Benny and me went to the D-archive to fetch a first batch of 23 audio interview cassettes. We then walked to the pizzeria for a nice lunch. Later, Tobias came by, 'after work', and the three of us did some planning of the project. Tobias had bought a USB cassette tape player and will help Benny (his brother in law) to get on foot with digitizing sound tracks. We also paid a visit to Ingrid in the library and inspected the old archives (now almost empty) that may become a future center for digitizing audio-visual materials and pictures. I but wonder where we are one year from now? Thrilling!!!

March 7 Me, fiancé and sister went to the local IKEA. Anyone who doesn't know what IKEA is? My mission was to search for good things to buy for the AFU archives. New work chairs is a major priority! The 2nd- or 3rd-hand worn-out office chairs we have are hopeless, except for maybe two or three. I bought a sample of the most expensive chair to test out myself. Work lamps is another priority - several work places lack the proper lighting - at least for my own eyes. Also bough a sample lamp for the AFU people to test.

I had a look at the new 40 cm Billy book case that might fill out a few empty spaces in the book library. I found a folding chair (made from wood) that would be excellent to have for extra seats when we are many people round the breakfast table.

March 1-6 Six days completely given away to my professional work. I am often irritated by the amount of time and energy I have to use up there; still it is also a very interesting and rewarding job... Very mixed up feelings here!

With some 'pushing' by Tobias I finally got to the project of starting up Benny on his job of digitizing audio cassettes. We have booked Monday as an introduction day for Benny, meeting the AFU staff, and with Tobias joining us in the afternoon. Almost daily I receive parcels of books & magazines bought on eBay for AFU. Checking up on eBay items is virtually the only project I have eye energy left for doing, in the evenings. One evening I spent, however, checking the IKEA web site, since fiancé & me are planning to go there tomorrow. I will reconnoiter for a 'big buy' from IKEA of shelves, furniture and office supplies to be sent to AFU by lorry - a project that seems finally feasible now when the big heaps of snow slowly melt away in front of our entrances. 

I have also completed our reply to a questionnaire sent by the National Archives, seeking information about digitizing projects among archive institutions. The Swedish government is formulating a national strategy for digitizing, electronic access and digital preservation and the National Archives collects info from the various local archives.

February 28 Sunday, and some feelings of remorse before the upcoming week. My planning at work, last Thursday, indicated I have roughly three weeks of work to perform during the two upcoming weeks. I spent four hours at AFU, first preparing 4-5 heaps of books for classification/cataloguing by Ingrid, also made a backup of the library database for PDF release on this site, soon. After coffee & cake, I spent a few hours tidying up one of our 'acquisition tables' from a number of troublesome 'old problems'. Created a few new folders for some of the materials. 
February 27 A lazy day on the sofa, very well-earned. Later in the day, I finalized the 2009 economy report to the Swedish Tax Agency. AFU, being a foundation, is exempted from income taxes and VAT, but we need to make an annual statement to keep them informed. Hurried off to the letter box and dropped the form with enclosures, with a big sigh! 
February 26 Another day intended for AFU work on 'compensation' time from my work. The winter is very tiresome, however, and I felt all washed out as I arrived at the archives, pushing my bike through the snow-drifts and mud. Seems we are loosing several hours each day to the winter and cold. I only managed a few hours at AFU, meeting a Canon salesman who will come back to give us some further information, and some idea of the costs, we hope, on Canon's system for document handling. We are looking for a good retrieval system for, primarily, our picture library. We had hoped that Håkan E and Clas would have brought UFO-Sweden's home-developed picture library system for us to see last Monday but as you can see, below, their tour to Norrköping had to be cancelled. Anyway, we need to turn every stone to find the most cost-effective system that fits our needs. In the noon I walked my bike home and spent several hours sleeping, resting my eyes from the white snowy winter. The whiteness wear out my retina.
February 23-25 Three 'heavy' work days at my (prof.) job with long evenings in front of the PC screen. On the Thursday all of us in the Administrative department had a fine joint lunch at the new Asken restaurant in the old Knäppingsborg centre - wonderfully renovated from being a tobacco industry one hundred years ago. Very far away from the impersonal huge shopping centers that now grow up like mushrooms around major cities! Recommended for every tourist to Norrköping!
February 22 I was at AFU throughout the day. Clas and Håkan E was to come in the afternoon with a carload of 4-5 second-hand book shelves for the library, and some archival materials, but Håkan had developed eye problems, so the tour had to be cancelled for some later day. I know something about eye troubles; the symptoms Håkan had developed suggested retinal detachment but was diagnosed as an hemorrhage in the eye. Hope it works out for him!

I had definite plans for what to do during the day but - as usual - I came away with completely other things done, not on my list! With united forces we refurnished the work area at the AFU center, to make better spaces for the ladies, Susanne (left) and Elisabeth (right).

In the afternoon I re-designed the Swedish clippings database somewhat by dividing it into two separate 'bases', one for dailies and another for weeklies and special publications. I also deleted hundreds of references that were . more or less - just question marks! Not useful data, so deleted. 

February 20-21 I have used Saturday & Sunday - while the heavy snow storm has kept many of us Swedes indoors - on preparing five years of AFU bookkeeping for auditing by Tobias. Sorted out unnecessary papers from the five folders, numbered each paper with a verification number and wrote comments of explanation. Discovered a few minor mistakes. On the Sunday evening, while watching the winter Olympics on TV, I had a nice Facebook chat with Cherie in Kansas City, the daughter of Bill Caulfield whose UFO collection we bought in 2008.
February 18-19 Another two days lost to oblivion - at work
February 17 Ahh! In the evening a big sigh after having FTP:d the final invoice file to the Swedish Post for distribution. 11.000 invoices every month that our customers expect to be correct down to every minute detail! Walked rather slowly home feeling good as I usually do when the big hump in our monthly agenda is finally behind me. Coming home, I had a letter from Benny who had been approved as AFUs fifth 'Phase 3' co-worker. I singed the papers and hurried away with them to the grocery store/post where I also collected a couple of eBay books from the US and the UK. One of the parcels was nearly impossible to open. Must give the seller a big ++++++ for the packaging!   
February 15-16 Another two days buried at work with the computer systems and SQL coding, shuffling about with data.
February 14 Went to work downtown and had a couple of work-fellows even on a Sunday! Annual reports and other special projects are like magnets this time of the year! Worked six-seven hours on designing new SQL code for direct import of data from our system for invoicing electricity, water and heating, which we have installed in about 1.000 of our flats.
February 13 In the noon we went by car to the summer cottage, 15 km out in the country. Me, fiancé and my sister. We hadn't seen the house for several months so we were very uncertain about the shape of it. Buried under a 50-60 cm cover of deep snow the lawn offered us half-an-hour of hard work digging a narrow path the 25-30 meters up to the house. Wisely I had done some stretching before starting this adventure. You can see me & my sister with our snow-shovels:

Well, the house was in fine shape and we had a nice coffee break with some leftover cookies from the bygone summer. After that I worked a few hours at the professional work - but on line from home.

In the evening me and fiancé went to Flygeln, the new concert hall in the industrial landscape where we and about one hundred other people listened to Ebba Forsberg & her five men orchestra, playing Leonard Cohen songs in Swedish translation. A very strong performance by everyone on the scene, but why so few in audience? Where were the other 500 who could also have enjoyed this show so immensely as we did?

February 11-12 Two days with very little time for AFU or anything else, except professional work.
February 10 Met Håkan B during a lunch at the library's restaurant. We discussed the future of AFU and the new horizons that have opened with the good monetary compensations for out-of-work 'Phase 3' project. There are many possibilities that open if one of us (me as a pensioner!) can work full time at AFU and manage the project in more detail.
February 8-9 Days spent completely on professional work - even during evenings, then from home. I am sure you wouldn't be interested in how I shuffle about with facts & figures! Received an email from the government's Pensions Agency in answer to my query. Going for pension at age 61 will make you a poor man, but what is poverty? Some lack of money can be weighed against owning your own time and being able to go directly for what comes into your mind without so many obstacles! 
February 7 Lazy in preparation for an upcoming week of hard work. 
February 6 Slept 'til ten, then spent several hours at one of the shopping malls to replenish on groceries with fiancé and sister. Coffee with my sister, tonight she will come to us to watch the first in the series of Eurovision Song Contest selections for a final Swedish ESC contribution for 2010. I guarantee - there is no people in Europe more crazy about the ESC (we still remember our first success with ABBA's Waterloo in 1974)...

Clas Svahn reports, with picture, on his UFO-Sweden blog here, that he has just fetched 13 kilos of Brazilian UFO magazines donated by A.G. Gevaerd, Brazil's most well known UFO activist. I remember we discussed this several years ago with Mr. Gevaerd. Clas finally finished the deal! Great addition to AFU's shelf of South American magazines.

February 5 Seven hours, a full workday, spent at AFU. No less than four (4!) new, prospective collaborators came to the archives today! Must be a record! Young Jenny and Alexander will both start work-training next week and we all had a good, calm chat with them around the breakfast table. Alexander is sure to stay with us for five weeks. Jenny is also seeking another work-training with a company with better chances of a salaried job in the future, so we understand if she would prefer that place, if offered. 

Tobias Lindgren, manager of UFO-Sweden's report centre, came with his relatives (father, sister and brother-in-law) to discuss Phase 3-engagement for the brother-in-law with AFU. If the Public Employment Service in our neighboring town of Linköping will allow it, we would like Benny, the brother-in-law, to work for us on digitizing audio tape cassettes. It will possibly be a combination of work at home and coming to AFU for exchange of work materials and taking part of the 'social environment'. Another possibility is daily commuting Linköping - Norrköping and arranging a workplace for Benny at one of our facilities.

I also managed to recruit Tobias as a temporary, retrospective auditor for AFU for the passed five year period, when we have not had the time for many administrative procedures due to moving about with our collections from facility to facility. We do have another person in line for becoming our future auditor, but I have hesitated to put five years of book-keeping under that man's eyes. Tobias has now a permanent job with the digital maps department of the LFV (the Swedish Board of Civil Aviation) and is looking for a flat close both to his work & AFU here in Norrköping. He will be elected as a member of the AFU board at our next board meeting, the first in five years (except for daily contacts on the internet and by phone), which we will be able to hold when the auditing is finished.

At the archives, during the day, we also discussed a future change of work assignments. I will plan that and make it a reality after the upcoming professional work-period for about a fortnight (when there will be very little time for AFU). Going home, I brought two heavy report files for 1977 in my bag, to continue my report archiving project. In the process of carrying that heavy load on my bike I had to jump across the HUGE heaps of snow, bike in hand, and hurt my back. I now have symptoms similar to sciatica.

February 4 Spent the evening with sorting & re-archiving the November and December 1978 reports in front of the TV. The three files finally became four file folders in the new format. More space needed! Some of the cases might have become interesting if investigated more properly, but this was a "down" period in Swedish ufology.
February 3 It has been snowing all night and continued throughout the day! Heard from the archives that Sven Olov's bus was cancelled and he couldn't get into town. Everyone at the company where I (and my fiancé) works went by bus & cars to the Bråvalla airfield, former base of the F13 wing of the Swedish Air Force. There we had the shortest kick-off in company history, just 2-3 hours, in the former officer's mess, and then the bus took us back with narrow margins on the roads. Nice food and strong wonderful coffee. After work I went by bus to the petrol station with our post office box and walked home several kilometers through the heaps of snow.
February 2 The problem at the archives have been sorted out. It seems - among other things - that I had mistook the number for our new archice cell/mobile phone - interchanged two digits. Damned! Sorting & archiving UFO reports for October 1978 took the whole evening in front of the telly. The late 1970s were not a good period for UFO investigations in Sweden, with a few exceptions. Very little good and detailed field work, most of the reports in the file are just simple newspaper clippings with very little evidence value. Demonstrates also  the change that took place a few years later, when UFO-Sweden was revitalized under new leadership in the early 1980s. On a similar note, colleague Håkan Blomqvist reports, on his blog, that he has just finished writing the new edition of UFO-Sweden's history. The organization will celebrate it's 40 years of existence at the annual national conference in Kalmar this spring.
February 1 No one at the archives in the afternoon when Lisbeth came with two new work-trainees. Work load prohibits me from going there myself. I just thought it would resolve if Sven Olov was contacted beforehand but seemingly no one answers the phone at the archives - or is it somehow disconnected?

After work I took the bike to the grocery store to fetch another second-hand eBay book authored by forteanist William Corliss, plus a heavy (10 kilo) package of UFO books from France, credited today on Recent donations. I also put up two other credit notes to fine collections from the UK & Russia - see Recent donations (click on Recent donations 2009, there).  

January 31 No AFU jobs today - worked seven hours with the database at my professional job.
January 29 and 30 Saturday and Sunday, when so called 'normal' people rest from their jobs. Ufologists sometimes don't. That's the free time we can use for what we would prefer to work with, if economically independent. And, if you are in my clothes, you still have to spend some weekends now and then at your regular job because six hours each day isn't enough to get all needed work done, at the peaks of the job curve. Usually these periods come in the winter, with concentrations in November, December and January.

But then again this allows for compensation hours and days later on at AFU. Anyway, two days lost into oblivion on feeding new parameters into a computer system that is ever so thirsty for details. Woke up Sunday morning with the obvious solution to a problem at work, I am impressed with how the brain can sort out things during sleep!!

Two evenings spent in front of the television, cutting out news articles on local buildings for my local historical collection on the community of Norrköping. You cannot put all your eggs in just one basket, can you? If there is one word that I like then its 'crop rotation' (växelbruk in Swedish). When tired, the easy work of managing your clipping collection relaxes and redirects your inner system.

January 28 Slept late; staggered into the shower at 8.30. After breakfast I got a call from AFU where one of the computers wouldn't start, the one with the Access database of Swedish ufo reports. I grasped the nettle (hmm, seemingly a translation of our Swedish 'took the bull by its horns'...) and walked through the heaps of new-fallen snow down to the archives. Plodding through the heaps of snow, sometimes half-a-meter high, keeps your body fit - that's the proper positive attitude! The report database simply wouldn't start up. Finally solved the strange problem (- the ET's are seldom supporting us at AFU, is that because we sometimes make fun of them or because we have forgotten to pump up the green plastic ET doll...? -) by creating a new database and importing the old one into the new. That did it and everything started up!

Plodded the snow down to my work in town and did some further problem solving. The walk through the white snow got me an headache coming from my overexposed eye, so I had to leave work one hour before my original intentions for the day. Friday-Saturday-Sunday I will be completely engulfed by my professional work, the project will probably make a big hole in time for AFU.

January 27 The annual rent increases have finally been negotiated and the result can now be updated to our the computer files, which will keep me occupied for a couple of weeks. A rather tedious job with thousands of small details that few can imagine. It is also a rather 'sadistic' work to, each year, raise the rents that 10.000 citizens of Norrköping will have to pay for their flats, knowing some of them are not the rich & wealthy.

In the morning, me & my fiancé went to the bank office to plan for the future and look after our future monetary situation. I signed for an endowment policy to help us keep our necks over the water after my planned pensioning 1,5 years from now. I am quite determined! 

An Irish researcher had booked for a visit at AFU tomorrow but emailed he had to postpone the trip from Stockholm until his next trip to Sweden in the spring. He's welcome anytime!

January 25 Temperature has not risen above zero degrees Celsius (Centigrade) for many weeks now, and the snow is mounting at cross-roads. Tomorrow more snow & storm is in line, says the meteorologist, so I took the opportunity to walk to the archives today, with my portion of wonderful raggmunk ('potato panncake') in the right hand. Everyone was there except Ingrid. Some problems with the NAD registration routine on the web. Otherwise we discussed politics, more specifically the moderate Swedish cabinet's policy of robbing the poor, the out-of-work & the sick to lower the taxes for the working people and the rich and famous. Where is Sweden and the famous "folkhem" (welfare state) heading? The crew wished for a daily newspaper subscription at the archives so that they can follow ads of upcoming jobs - without work you cannot afford a subscription. Reasonable, but then AFU also needs a letterbox! I wonder who might help us with putting one up on the concrete?
January 24 2-3 hours on AFU work in the evening, re-archiving the report archives for May-September 1978. All metal (paper-clips, staples) and plastic pockets removed and the material sorted carefully by date-and-time into acid-free day/date covers and the covers are filed in acid-free professional archival boxes. So far about 30-35 boxes have completed for the period 1979-1989 with work now continuing with 1978.
January 23 Updated Recent new books with a review of an excellent new local history that includes the written history of a well known Swedish UFO society.

'Bikewalked' (my new word for the combination of biking (when possible) and walking) to the archives for a few hours of logistic work moving papers and stacks of papers here and there. Then home to start - for real - the process of becoming a pensioner. Wrote emails to six institutions/companies where I have saved-up money for my older days, trying to put questions on how to get my money back when I now need them, in a couple of years. I am very determined now to make it all work. Fiancé and me will go to the bank on Wednesday for more planning. 

January 22 I should have gone to Örebro, early in the morning, to visit mother-in-law but felt nauseated and, as a safety precaution, her daughter (a.k.a. my fiancé) went alone. Sorry for her. For once, this guy had really looked forward to a car trip through the snowy Christmas-card-Sweden! But, with winter vomiting decease around I didn't dare, for my own sake as well as for the possibility of spreading a virus around me. Heard on the news that Swedish docs had located a new and even worse mutation of the WVD (that hit this household hard last week, see below). Look out, it's everywhere! The cleaning lady at work had to go home yesterday, with nausea. Wash your hands! When no one around seems to catch the swine flu it's easy to back down on safety precautions and other little fellows sneak in...

A brief report on current on-going AFU work: There are now 44 Swedish UFO groups represented on the National Archival Database, thanks to our co-worker Susanne, who has spent this week on NAD, and will continue. Elisabeth has taken over Susanne's previous job of checking the report archives against our database, and Håkan L is completing the report files before Elisabeth's check-up. Anci continues to re-archive the Danish report archive from SUFOI while Ingrid has gotten to the letter "P" while cataloguing the Perry Petrakis book collection. Sven Olov is still filing American magazines from the huge Bill Caulfield collection and checking the material against our existing (previous) collections, while Sandra continues to enter Swedish clippings in our database. Christer works from Malmö on translating materials from the 1946 ghost rocket wave. At least two other people (Clas and Karl-Arne) are doing scanning work of pictures and news clippings from their respective homes. Håkan B has a busy time writing the updated version of UFO-Sweden's history (before the 40th anniversary this coming spring) and he has a lot of new organizational archives on his desk to take care of. Myself (Anders) I am trying to figure out how we should develop AFU with new shelves, new workplaces, computers and a scanner. So much that needs planning! If I counted correctly we are presently no less than 12 people working every week, and some of us every day, to develop AFU. Cveta and Malin have ended their short terms at AFU, and we are awaiting possible new work trainees.

January 21 After work I went across the street and bought tickets for the Killer Queen concert in March and for Ebba Forsberg (singing Leonard Cohen materials) in February. In the mail I received another eBay item - The Mountain of Mist by Patrick Coulcher. An SF novel touching on UFOs. Before tucking in, I calculated what the cost would be for IKEA shelves for a new storage for UFO Sweden's (unsold) UFO-Aktuellt magazines - landed at 9.600 SEK for 56 meters of shelves.
January 20 Work day - concentrating almost exclusively on one project. Concentration gives calm and tranquility.

Took the bike to the post office (grocery store) to bring home another 9 kilo parcel of archival materials from France - see Recent donations for 2010 - a new page I opened today. I also brought home two British ufo-related books I had never heard of before, bought for AFU on eBay. Despite the opened new 2010 page there are still a couple of donations from 2009 to credit, so check that up, too.

January 19 A full day at work again - being physically there, even! Had to use most of the afternoon correcting an acute problem caused by someone (not me!) not doing his work. Tried to compensate for that by being even more service-minded and foresighted. Time will tell if it works out.

Walked (snows everyday, impossible to bike) to AFU after work, made some copies and then went over to inspect a possible new facility that we may hire to keep UFO-Sweden's stock of unsold magazines. UFO-Sweden has been ordered out of the club cottage and magazine store they now rent at Enköping. One alternative is to place the mag store in 'AFU custody'. Made measurements of the locality and will try some mathematics before I go to bed, to see if we can fit in 150 cartoons of magazines in a possible IKEA shelf system on 16 square meters without sending the UFO-Sweden guys on extreme slimming cures. Hmmm, I wonder...

January 18 A 'free' (vacation) day with AFU work, from early morning, till late evening. At least 10 hours on the AFU account! Spent most of the day at the archives, talking to and discussing our work and future plans with our new and old co-workers. A majority spoke for taking back our old archives into 'active duty' and setting up 2-3 new workplaces there. The advantage would be a more noiseless working environment than can be arranged on the possible remaining areas of our main (present working-) facility. We shall have to divide us into several groups but then again we can all meet for 11 o'clock breakfast together! So, it's now about saving up money for new-or-used desks, office chairs, shelves, computers and peripherals like scanner(s) and hard disc drives. The sky is the limit!

Spent 1.5 hours walking to the post box at the petrol station in the southern outskirts of Norrköping. Not very efficient use of time, but what to do when more and more of this western society is built around his Majesty The Holy Car, and you don't want to be a part of that world? As I passed through the snow-covered biking lane close to a school I was (again) flabbergasted by the young lazy 'motorist' generation who cannot park a car 200 meters away to walk to the gym for an hour of training? Instead they trespass on the biking lane and destroy it by skidding up snow with their 4-wheel SUVs. Completely crazy! Just think if a gang of bicyclists would invade the motorway in protest???

January 17 Slept til' ten, then the damned (sorry!) PC frightened me by refusing to start. After many attempts I did the classical one: disconnected every cable and let the computer rest for half-an-hour while having breakfast. That did it! I was elated, the thought of a restart procedure with loading up the whole system again made me nervous. Computers are like UFO phenomena, elusive and unpredictable. I shall have to realize my plan to buy a new PC this spring and 'dump' the old on AFU - as I usually do. There are two older generations still on duty at the archives. I believe the older of my AFU 'pensioners' is now "singing on the last verse", so...

Spent four afternoon hours at AFU sorting and carrying the remainder of yesterday's incoming 'goods' closer to where they will be archived, and cataloguing a batch of new magazines. AFU is more and more becoming a 'logistic' operation. Everything would be so much simpler if we had it all under one roof, instead of under four roofs.

January 16 Up early - too early - in the morning to be in position at 9 to take over new archival collections from Clas Svahn & colleagues, who were passing by, on their way to a UFO-Sweden board meeting down in the very south of Sweden. Then spent six hours at AFU doing the first rough sorting of probably a hundred kilos that came in... Very interesting stuff: like the original Imjärvi (Finnish humanoid case from 1970) file from the Gothenburg group GICOFF, the Gothenburg group that saw to that the case got world fame through articles in FSR. Thumbing through the file I decided to have another more careful reading of it, some time in the future. I saw & sensed that there were more info there than what has been published! Seemingly there were paraphysical dimensions to the case not covered in the published reports. Kudos to the old GICOFF gang who did a superb job of investigations from 1969 until the mid 1970s.

Did a write-up to credit a few of the other collections that came with Clas & his gang of followers. See more under the entries of gifts from Mikael Westersund, Carl-Anton Mattsson and Erland Sandqvist on Recent donations. Also a note to credit a gift subscription for an interesting magazine - we should do more of such credits for other mags we receive for free like UFO Newsclipping Service and Fortean Times!

January 15 A day lost to my professional work - working virtually from home - five hours. Interesting job for a systematic freak like me, but I could do the same kind of work at AFU. Considered myself in quarantine. No AFU time today.
January 14 Felt fine again after a final vomiting period at nine yesterday evening. A good nights sleep can do wonders! Back in business! I have been (virtually) at work all day, working from home. No deceases spread outside of the home environment. Hope I didn't cause any such trouble by being physically at work on Jan. 12. "Let's dance" contestant (and poet) Marcus Birro has also had the WVD yesterday, reports the media, so I have been in very good "company", and I don't have to make a dance performance on Friday!! Life is full of happy things - large and small. :-)

At AFU we welcome Elisabeth Booth (married to an Australian if you wonder about the un-Swedish surname) who started working for us today. My self-imposed quarantine (see below) forbids me from going to AFU HQ until perhaps Saturday morning when Clas and a gang of UFO-Sweden people will pass by for new archival deliveries.

A winter walk to the post office (in the grocery store) brought home a copy of Raechel's Eyes by Helen Littrell & Jean Bilodeaux. I have read some intriguing articles on the case in the MUFON UFO Journal (why don't we get that - despite repeated contacts with MUFON HQ? - is there an administration at that org?) so.. am a little curious. The previous owner from eBay seems to have tired at page 34-35. I doubt that my lone right eye will have the energy to read the whole book, despite my interest in abduction accounts. More interested in abductions than in 1950s contactee sagas, I must admit. Both are equally mysterious. In the 1950s it was mostly contactee men, in modern abductions it's mostly women. Why? 

January 13 WVD (winter vomiting decease) hit me 04.30 in the morning. Periods of vomiting but not as intense as it has been the previous two times I have had it. Spent the day in bed watching dumb sitcoms on TV, feeling nauseated, but still VERY happy NOT to be one of those trapped in the ruins on the island of Haiti. Despite its cruelty, the WVD is very, very far from that hell. One thought came to my mind: if I had been living in Haiti and the buildings had been falling around me, while having the WVD... Maybe there were several lonely souls in that pour position? News every day give you reasons for many kinds of paranoia.
January 12 Despite WVD viruses at home I went to work - just because I had to. Felt good to be away from the little invisible creatures invading every little corner... In the evening I had a few hours session working with the 1978 file of Swedish UFO reports. Managed to put some order to the January-March period.
January 11

This could have been a 'lost' day. I should have been at work, but my fiancé experienced - once again - the nasty winter vomiting decease. Feeling nauseated myself, in the morning, I was afraid I had caught it too, it's very contagious, but the day went by and I still feel like I am alive (- something you doubt very much when you are inside & experiencing the world of the WVD, that nasty little virus..).

More positively, AFU is now represented on the Swedish National Archives Database (NAD) with a first few of our several hundred archives from UFO groups, organizations and ufologists. (Just type the word 'UFO' in the search field and press "Sök"). In the coming months we will see to that ALL of our archives will be registered there! This is only just the archives indexes, of course! Like most archives we see no possibility (and cannot prioritize) digital scanning of all that we have, and receive - it would be a most bewildering task!

January 10 An evening walk to the archives through the glistening and snowy landscape can be nice experience! Compensates for the cold. I brought with me sixteen pages of new clippings that I had just scanned and sent out on our mailing-list, but also brought the new fire extinguisher, and a number of other items that had come in the mail, including a nice little slip from a guy in California who wants AFU to send him "information on UFOs". Well, we have a lot to choose between! :-)
January 9 I spent a few hours today searching eBay for interesting items. Found some, and plan some bidding, but the more original ones are often way to much for my cash. Maybe its time for AFU to put up a new series of sales to draw some more money from the second-hand magazine market? If I only had time!! Money from eBay sales would pay for the new shelves AFU does need at three of our facilities (our library, our work facility and our upcoming new work facility).

Anyway, today's investment was a small 2 kilo fire extinguisher for our work facility. I plan to buy another two or three extinguishers and also a number of fire blankets to keep for increased safety at our different facitilites.

January 8 I did a sum up of the contributions to AFU during the five years 2005-2009. It all adds up to at least 557.000 SEK, meaning our sponsors (more than 260 individuals & organizations!) have invested about 80.000 USD or 55.000 EUR in us during the period. Wow! 

Håkan spent the day in the AFU library putting more order into our huge collection of books, and creating more space for new titles. You can see new pictures and a report on his Swedish blog today.

January 7 I spent 2-3 hours this evening updating the list of money donated to the AFU foundation during the 2005-2009 period. The list is for our upcoming combined annual reports for those five years. So far I have listed more than 250 nice and intelligent people (mostly Swedes, so you other people have a lot to accomplish :-) ), in the list. Very generous people!

Sweden experiences weeks of extreme cold (more than -40 Centigrade in north Sweden), and daily snowfalls, so I have had to postpone both a trip to our post box and checking up on what is happening at AFU. It just isn't possible to use the bike, you have to rely on walking or buses/trams.

From Clas Svahn's Swedish blog it is apparent that he is probably the most active AFU coworker these days. He has spent several full days scanning photographic material for the AFU/UFO-Sweden picture library.

January 6 Among today's many small AFU-related occupations I scanned and mailed out twelve pages from recent Swedish clippings on our 'AFU-klipp' (AFU clippings) mailing-list on Yahoo. The service is free for the asking, just mail us and you'll get a service that would cost you the equivalent of 4.500 USD each year! But the articles are all in Swedish - of course. The scanning procedures takes me several hours each week, sometimes my PC crashes under the burden and has to be restarted. Not so this day, however. Hurray!
January 5 A new decade - literally a new age for AFU. The 2009 contract with the Swedish Public Employment Service (Arbetsförmedlingen) will give us completely new resources for developing AFU, both money-wise and through personnel that we can employ on relatively long term periods. We are starting to see the effects of this. Before Christmas I had the joy of buying the first new PC for our work, the first one financed without collecting the money from out of private citizens (taxed) pockets. Now the money comes from the tax money we all contribute to. See our new internet-connected computer on the Projects page.
January 4 The local TV channel NT24 has been airing an interview with AFU founder & board member Håkan Blomqvist, throughout the evening.
January 3 I entered the first ten records into the National Archives NAD database, where we have been sadly lacking representation for years, despite the fact that we have about 200-250 archives from different sources. More about our NAD project when we have accomplished more results that can be searched through the NAD page.
January 2, 2010 Spent the day at the archives with making backup copies of our new PC installation and do some more updates to our new internet connection (10 Mbit/s broadband). 
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