I never make New Year resolutions.

Fell asleep at 7 last night and slept till 5:30. feeling a little tired and run down today. Seems like things are filling my In-Basket again and I just want to live a life of leisure. Email not working this morning either.

The uplifting Cheese and Pickle Pancakes Song © Monsieur Chef

Cheese and pickle pancakes
I eat them in the morning
Then I cook them up for dinner
I like to do things my way

Now back to puttering about the house in a housecoat. Wonder if there's any offices out there where this is acceptable attire.

Wondering where the money dumped into Air Canada is going? Obviously not to upkeep. Behold the seat with broken tray held together with elastic band.

Lunch on SAS. It was cold. I think it was beef. Still not sure.

Home again to 2 demented cats. Trip was pretty uneventful except for the crazy lady with the baby who ran around the luggage trollies while they tried to load them on the plane to Frankfurt. Then managed to jump around the aisles while deplaning - hipchecking me sideways causing a bashing to my head on the overhead compartment.

Let's see, managed maybe 3 hours sleep last night. Coughed a lung around 4am. Should be a great trip home.

Not sure if it's the touch of flu I unsuccessfully fought, giddy regression from accident, residual burnout, the unpreparedness for a trip, or maybe all the above. I'm very happy to have come here but on another level I've had this completely disjointed feeling the whole time. Kind of wandering in a daze especially today. Plus the added feeling of not accomplishing what I was supposed to get done.

The tram didn't get any happier since the last time I was visiting.
 
Not much to report over the last 2 days. Trying to go easy because of this flu bug I've been fighting the whole time here. All my last minute shopping attempts have come up as failures. Saw Lord of the Rings with Swedish subtitles last night.

There are Boxing Day sales and then there are Swedish Boxing Day sales - as in full contact, run for your life, wall to wall people shopping.
 
Most of my shopping has been fairly disappointing anyway. If I had lots of money there's lots of stuff to spend it on. But $150 Canadian for a cheaply made sweater, as nice as it is, doesn't really seem like all that great a deal. I might splurg on some Swedish disposable pop music for the pure cheese of it.

Off to a rollicking good start today. Almost got the entire bathroom cabinet to fall over on me. Which again proves my point to family members who suggest that I give up cycling because of all my accidents. If I'm not wiping out on a bike, I'll just find some other way of inadvertantly causing damage. Just call me spaz.

The last picture in this series is what you see under Liisa's and Markus's table. Which is pretty much where I almost ended up after the assortment of liquor I went through.

If you want to be fashionable here, for men this "moussed mohawk" is very popular. there's several variations to it. Remember the fan/plate of hair at the front of the head look for women in the 80s? It's kind of like that.

Don't sleep in. You'll miss all the sunlight. Also, people over here are generally taller so you may find toilets higher than in North America.

Took a day day trip to Stockholm today. The city looks beautiful and would been fun to look around more but there was a bloody cold snow storm that coated your clothes in wet freezing ice from the sideways blasts of wind. So it was hard to really see the city as clearly as I'd want through iced up glasses and clouds of white. The day was spent running to the next museum where you could spend some time drying off and warming up. Wasn't really that bad because the Museum of Modern Art had a great Botero exhibition on; the Vasa was really cool; and the National Museum had a good portraiture through the ages type show going.
 
If you have a dog or a cat you can take them on the trains really easily here and sometimes into the downtown stores. Oh yeah, no paintings were harmed by taking pictures. The Portable CrapCam has no flash so it's natural light.

Hope I can get Advil over here. I'm almost out.

Today's features include a cat hard at work and expensive office furniture from House.

After a rousing opera, step outside the concert hall and have a wank with Posiden. His eyesight is a little worse for wear but he's always happy.

Wonder if there's some physiological link between a sharp stabbing pain in the right shoulder blade and the intestine. Or maybe it's just sleeping on the shoulder wrong and eating greasy food.

The penance for lucking out on such a great trip is having to make chicklet buttons.

Not much happened today. Actually trying to get some work done on the website but not being terribly successful. But here's where I was working, the view from the office, and some of the fun things that are laying around the office.

Car simulator was broken when we got in so didn't get to drive it. Did get to see lots of neat crash study related stuff though.

Some pictures from today.

It's 3PM and it's getting dark. mmmmm moist air.

My filthy mind. Guess this store's name means something else in Swedish.

Doesn't seem to matter what city I'm in - I'm a magnet for lost tourists wanting for directions.

One good thing about having my sense of smell not working is not noticing the huge clouds of cigarette smoke that are about. Frankfurt Airport is like a fog bank of smoke fumes. Also here in Sweden, the touristy Pippi Longstock paraphenalia I've normally come across is based on the Canadian Nelvana version of Pippi, not the original illustrations. Sort of like how Winnie the Pooh merchandise is usually the bastardized Disney versions not the great original ink drawings from of the books.

Tarnhelm!

Very empty flight to Frankfurt. The night before, the plane was full according to the check in person sort of sent a slight chill down my back when I figured out it was the end of Ramadan and people probably weren't flying because of fear of more crashes. Did everyone not flying tonight know something I didn't? Learned all about Albania from the guy next to me. Probably thinks I'm a idiot Canadian since it's a country I know absolutely nothing about and most everything I asked got lost in the translation.

Trying to load up some travelling music. Keep looking at my CDs thinking that a) there's nothing I want to listen to and b) does this CD collection reflect my love of music or love of kitchy crap. Today I'd have to say kitch.

Hoped I wouldn't have to witness the Hairy Grunter ravaging a fitness ball again. I know it's core strengthing he's doing but it sort of has the look of Brando with the butter in Last Tango in Paris. Butter it and win Hairy.

Brontë just played her game of "IT'S COMING OUT MY ASS AND I DON"T KNOW WHAT TO DO!" It's what people in the entertainment industry might call a Dramedy.

I think I've linked here before but it's just so fitting for my christmas.

Brontë was in the giving mood while I was gone. She gave a lot near my basket of laundry which worries me that a present might be lurking in there.

Upstairs Cat

No Cat's Land

Downstairs Cat

Tonight's skating hijinx started with Leaf 2 going through the Lost and Found bin; examining every item as if it were a scrap of papyrus oxyrhynchus containing some lost treasure. Followed by hardy stretches then sit ups on the dirty rubber mats that hockey players have spit on and people are lacing up their skates. Finished with his normal "speed skate" where he spastically yet slowly careens across the ice. His blueness gave him the hey how yah doing finger pistol salute and wink. Oh Eyemodule. If only I had brought you.

Now the fun begins. Got my Eyemodule2 today.

Here's another great windows feature. Try to navigate through all the setting menus when it doesn't recognise your mouse. Piece of shit software...

Having my first experience with installing Windows on to a computer tonight. Microsoft is lucky they have a monopoly because who would want to buy this piece of shit if they knew about all the better OS's Microsoft nuked? Absolutely arcane compared to installing a system on a Mac. Type what where? extract ebd.cab format.com? That's pretty obvious.

Stopped in to pick up the Blue Ramona PC from the old office. Something about going near the place puts a chill in my body.

Fixed the Princess mp3.

It's the Christmas animation season so it's time to find out...
 

Who's the biggest Christmas Bad Ass?

Heat Miser Pro - says he's "too much". Cons - has limited sphere of influence and bad fashion sense making him hard to take seriously. Snow Miser Also says he's "too much" but seems like a clone of Tony Randall. Winter Warlock Pretty scarey until given a Choo Choo train then turns pretty wussy. Burgermeister Meisterburger Definitely a tough bastard but easily injured by small toys. Bumble He's scarey alright however he can easily be duped by oinking sounds.   See results without voting   Read comments about the Bad Asses.

Let's go Gobblin'

hee hee hee hee hee

An added reference for the last post. A few of the movie reviews the comments were pulled from (in no particular order) were: Lady and the Tramp II, Josie and the Pussy Cats, Thomas Crown Affair, Austin Powers, Joe Dirt, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, among others.

This site rivals Mr Cranky with the most entertaining reviews of movies. Ned Flanders must be the editor - it's a goldmine of hilarious over zealous analysis. A few highlights:

• rub dancing
• punk dress
• sneaking to avoid parents
• ghosting of female anatomy through thin clothing
• suggestive eye movements
• homosexual presence
• repeated occurrences of adults in underwear
• 33 uses of the three/four letter word vocabulary
• dinner wine drinking
• spiritual meditation without God
• songs of licentiousness, including arrogance at father and freedom form accountability

Changed my mind

Haven't put in a couple days like this since the dark ages of gettyworks.

Decided my bedroom had bad Fung Shui so spent sometime this afternoon moving shit around and also finding dried shit that was tactfully tucked under dressers and wardrobe by a fluffy feline. Wanted to clean the bedding too but someone left the drier filled with their cootie filled clothes.

Tonight's healthy dinner:

• Bag of Twizzlers
• 1 can Brio Chinotto
• Bowl of Just Right Cereal
• glass of water

Today Hairy Grunter demonstrated this technique only it was even more graphic than the diagram suggests.

Every winter I come out of hiding and go to the University weight room for a couple months. Every year I see the same group of regulars - the guy that looks like Ray Bourque, the hairy grunter, the skinny middle-aged runner guy, etc etc. Of course with your generic new crop of meat market shoppers thrown in as well. I suppose all the regulars probably remember me too - "look the blonde guy with no upper body strength is back". The regulars I like seeing are a couple of 80 year old men that are still kicking those good tires. One is usually dressed in a short sleeve button shirt complete with undershirt, dress socks, and gardening gloves which is a refreshing sight compared to the latest fashion work-out attire many people appear in. It's functional for him and he looks kind of cool amongst all the would be jocks.