Brother.

Tomorrow morning I'll get a visit from my brother. Hence I need to get into bed at a resonable time. I need to get up and prepare some things.

Wednesdays are good days. It's all fun stuff. It's all good people who do what they should be doing at work. I like wednesdays.

Sweeps, metal, tapping and stories.

Yum.

Heavy.

Darkness is really coming down thick. Hot poo it's tough to get up and do stuff every day. And I still don't do enough. I need to get further and faster with my essay writing.

Argh. It's always something.

But I'm pulling through. I'm not swamped. I get to do fun things and be with loved ones during the weekends. (except some of you bastards who live too far away... you know who you are.)

I really want to write some more. But I'm tired. So very, very tired.

Wörking.

Work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work.

And study.

Oh-oh, vindaloo

Been back at work for a week. Alot of kinks to work out of the new schemes, ideas and how things work. Not to mention the overwhelming feeling of the first week.

The words are knackered and manky.

Trying to study in the mornings and on the train rides. Got alot of stuff to fix tomorrow, especially for the singing lessons. How am I to get any effective teaching done in 20 minutes? Plan, plan, plan.

Managed to have two days of straight roleplaying though. Alot of fun has been had, but I'm running on fumes and coffee. I belive I've had five double espressos today. I can't say that's a good thing. I've had some of those fever spikes I get when I'm way to tired. Not a sick thing. Just from being tired. Wish I knew a physiological explanation for that.

Tomorrow. Planning. Laundry. Gym. Study. Make food for the week. Practice guitar. Sleep. Argh.

Hammer smashed place.

Argh. 3 weeks of stone sawing, digging, steel pipe welding and all kinds of annoying things. The noise is giving me a permanent headache. Which is interesting since I'm in a Cannibal Corpse kind of mood and listening alot to that.

I can see some sort of equation.

Again the septemberness makes itself known in how bad, sad and crappy things just spring out and hit people in the face.

Been training today. And I'm pretty tired. Going to try to use that to get to bed a bit earlier.

Enter the darkness.

Fall has arrived. Rain, wind, greyness and darkness.

Just about everyone I know is slightly depressed or sick. I feel it too. I've had trouble sleeping again, for no good reason.

There's a basic feeling of... uneasyness. Feeling unsafe.

Fight back. Huddle up. Love. Care. Go forth and wear rain proof clothes.

Spinn me baby.

Went back to the gym today after a weeks illness. Hot poo. It was a massive hour of cycling whilst sitting still.

Turned most of the room I live in upside down yesterday in search of research books and roleplaying papers. I've found everything except ONE damn book. I have a pile of unsorted books in a... hard to reach area of the room. (sounds implausible I know, the room is tiny, but trust me) Or, it could be in the moving boxes where my furniture reside. Ouch. Need to find that bastard.

I feel I manage to keep very busy without accomplishing all that much. Even whilst sick I filled my days with writing, reading and guitar. Stuff that don't leave alot of trace in the amount of accomplished work department. Maybe I can... track my progress somehow? So I feel more ok about it?

Thursday I'm heading southward for a private lesson. Going to help a guy find which guitar group he should be applying for. As I have a huge range now from beginners to really competent players.

Still missing responses from both one proffessor at KTH and from my boss at work, who has not replied to the e-mail criticizing that things get put off. Fun that.

Fighting the man.

Still ill. And I've started a possible fight with a superior at work because of bad handling and treatment. It will be interesting to watch how this evolves.

Spent the day writing and baking. Made this awesome raspberry cheesecake. Three layers. Top is raspberry sauce, with whole raspberries and sour cream. Then a layer of raspberry cheesecake with white chocolate. The lowest layer is vanilla cheesecake with yet more white chocolate. The bottom is a cocoa infused digistive layer with chunks of dark chocolate. This to be served with homemade Baileys ice-cream that I made simultaneously.

There will be epic noms.

This also reminds me that I got a photobucket acount and that I should have taken pics of all this. I blame me being ill. And that I still have no rutine for keeping the camera with me.

Finally got somewhere in my kth proffessor hunt. One proffessor seems to have been spreading the rumor that he has retired. He has not. He just dosn't like having to do administrative work. I will have to hunt the other more ferociously though. With another e-mail. From another adress. Wow.

11 out of the 12 courses I had planned to do at work this fall have started. Sadly the one I personally was most interested in doing hasn't got of the ground yet. "Scales and Improvisation". Which is weird as many students asked for this course, but only one has applied. Well, there's another 3-6 weeks until things really start so, who knows?

100th post.

This is the 100th addition to the blogg. Don't really know if it's worth celebrating somehow... ehr.

*toot*

There.

I'm ill. Once more. But hopefully it's just a small one day thing. Soon of to bed for some serious curing.

Today was spent sending e-mails, practicing guitar as far as my disoriented and fevered mind would let me, and civ 4 with Gus. Awesome. Thank you my friend. Doing something fun keeps spirits up.

Yesterday I was at the gym with Alex. And I had a blast. It's awesome when we get out toghether to do stuff. And it's also very nice when it's just us. We end up doing so much with family, or friends. It's very seldom it's just us and we get to fully experience what us is. And it's great.

I also managed to clean out my e-mail inbox for the first time in almost two years. It feels great.

Lost it.

I'm down at 86.6kg. Which means I'm right where I left of before I went south, visited Linus, and ate a whole bunch of stuff.

I don't quite get though how I promised myself to do 2 or 3 gym passes this week. I'm up to three now... and still have another on sunday. Well it's one less at least.

I'm being seriously run around by kth. I'm supposed to hand in an essay but, there seems to be no teacher handling the course? Which is just weird. Someone always has to be responsible for a course. And for the other essay I have to hand in I still havn't gotten a response from said teacher wether it's all correct or not or if there's been a change. Can't do much more then to keep e-mailing I guess.

Also have to have a serious chat with my boss. I had equipment stolen last fall for about 10k. Which was supposed to be handled by the schools insurance. Turns out they weren't covered. So they have to pay me themselves. Now almost a year later I got the money. And it's close to HALF of what I should have got. That's it. No more mister understanding nice-guy. They can buy their own damn guitars and equipment for me to use from now on. Not to mention pay the actual sum we agreed upon.

And I need to get up early tomorrow. I'll be working all day and then I have a dinner with medical scientist. I could feel a bit intimidated. But I'm awesome. And really, really, really, really, really tired. Zzzzzz.

Hard training.

Whut the heck. I keep booking myself on more and more gym times. Looks as if I'm going tuesday, wednesday and thursday. Then I'll be working as a sound technician on friday, end the day with on a medical research dinner. O.o

Also got invited by Alexs grandmother to a restaurant with the family. The Demi is charming is way everywhere.

Spinning me right round.

Lost about half a kilo (roughly one pound) during the last week. And I'm heading for the gym again tomorrow.

It's scary to say, but right now, just about everything seems to be going well and everything is cool. It's all about beating down the generalised angst.

Got woke up at 02:26 in the morning. Poor Alex had to stay at work until a little over two in the morning and had no way of figuring out what buses and such she could use to get home. And I though I had bad working hours.

Working hard on guitar studies. And trying to get some sort of semblence of a growl vocal course that I'm to teach during the fall. Need to get my shit toghether. Oh and whilst typing, I just realised that I've promised to do a couple of my songs at work. Darn. Need to notate them aswell. Or, well, clean up the old notations.

A couple of days in the life of...

The days sneak away from you if you're not careful. That is especially true when blogging.

I found out I have a couple extra weeks before work starts. I'm trying to fill it with guitar, training, studying and company as best as I can. Not to mention I have some extra time prepping for work. I've got around ten notation jobs done now. It's probably already more then I need.

Last weekend was a massive icecream party at Alexs. The earlier mentioned icecream machine had to be supplemented by one borrowed from Ewa. Otherwise all the icecream ideas would just have run off and been forgotten. Polkadot, Elderberry, Coconut-banana, Figs-in-brandy, Licorice, etc. I wonder where all the normal icecreams went... like... chocolate or vanilla?

Even though I've been off to a good start I keep dragging my feet about actually getting my two essays off the ground. I need to send to important emails so that I can actually start reading and writing. But it's so easy to put off. Which makes me angry with myself.

Worked out two days in a row. Aerobics yesterday (which was crap in a knapsack) and Spinning today (can we just call it an exercise-bike? Seriously? It's what it is!). Both were plagued by the really bad instructors. (I have a very low threshold with this since I'm a teacher myself) But I could actually get something out of the spinning. Might have overdone it slightly though as my legs are just... so much jelly.

I've been really itching to record. But the emotion feels wasted. My gear is packed up. I don't have what I need to get this computer recording ready until I've moved to the new appartment (Come on other people in the que, can't you all just fuck off for a few weeks?) Or... can I?

Hmm.

Vindaloo.

Just finished making a vegitarian Vindaloo. Awesome stuff. Spicy with just the right hotness, got some beans and colliflour in there for some protein and stuff to chew on.

Been working on notation so I have stuff ready for when my work starts. The amount of guitar notation I go through really adds up. I've got over two filled folders with some 300+ songs now. And still I need to add more to stay fresh.

Almost gotten rid of the cough. Managed to go and train yesterday and it went well. Sadly the instructor wasn't quite up to par. Choosing overly complex moves that people could barely follow and then having a demeaning attitude as if everyone in the room were three years old.

But I have to say. Guys, if you are lonely and looking for a place to meet women, go to FoS. 5 Men. 70 Women. And that is a persistant quota, except in the gym section where it's closer to 50/50%.

Also practicing on how to play some songs. I'm happy that I've been able to practice a bit every day, it's so easy to just not do it.

Tomorrow I have a studyplan meeting. Need to get up early to be prepared. It's mainly a formality and I need help contacting a few teachers but I can't help feeling nervous. It's going back to KTH and I feel my body just not liking me going there. I'm trying to replace all the angsty imagery with positive but it's not all that easy. But I shall persist.

Fler ismaskiner and the punishing rain.

I'll be keeping it short, since I'm really manky from yesterday and have places to go.

On friday we had a much delayed birthday celebration for Alex. Barbeque spits, blueberry juice and the gift of a icecream machine. Rounded of with trying to conquer the world in Civ4.

Yesterday was Sonisphere 2010. And OMG WTFBBQ!!! The rain. The Rain. THE RAIN! I have never been so wet in my life.

I managed to see Anthrax. Who were really boring on stage. I only got to hear Hammerfall, which caused alot of giggling, especially from my dear mother who was with me. They are cute, they are fun, but they're not metal. Then we actually got good spots for Slayer, whilst waiting for the others to show up. Slayer were even more boring on stage. Holy crap that was uninspirerd. And the old saying is true. "You like Slayer riffs. You do not like Slayer." And I can't belive that after 30 years in the bizz they still havn't learned to play their instruments. That's just... sad.

Finally we met up with Alex and her sister, got some food and spots for Alice Cooper near the front. Alice was fun, made an effort and could still pull it all off. Sure it's over the top theatricals, but it's awesome and silly, but we got to dance, despite the rain. There was no chance in trying to get to Motley Crue, so we stayed put. Then the rain actually stopped for a bit. Iron Maiden went on. It was great. 55000 people were there. Awesomeness happened. Then it ended, everyone started going home. Then the muterfakkingrainstormfromhellwithlightingandshitontop happened. Holy crap! The whole grassfield had been turned to shit-slurry. And then the heavens opened up on everyone. People tore down picket fences to get out of there. We rode the wave and made it to Alex's appartment which is only 15 minutes (in good weather mind you) away from the festival area.

Lobsang tea was had. Clothing was emptied of water (I can't say dried) as best as possible before we all went on, trying to get home. We took a detour around town to get away from the crowd and made good time. Then everyone fell over.

Back.

More in a metaphorical sense.

I am back in Stockholm. Beating down the last of the disease I contracted at Freak Guitar Camp. I'm still not well but as close to as I'm going to get for a while.

I feel a bit more decided, about, things and life in general.

Greak Cuitar Famp.

Creak Fuitar Gamp?

Anywho. I'm done with all the packing. Well it wasn't a big thing. But strangely enough, I wasn't packed 3 weeks beforehand. I even considered leaving it off until tomorrow.

Mom took me for a walk to the Globe shopping area and pimped me with new shoes and sandals. Badass. After a short return home we were of to FoS for some serious training. Fun to have got her started on it. And always nice to have another person to go with.

Walking there we go through a forested area... and found nettles over two meters high. It was like, a giant wall of stinging horribleness.

Back home there was awesome taco dinner to be had and a welldeserved bath.

Now I've spent two hours reorganising my mp3 player. Awesome tunes to be had.

But yes, now it's time to hit the hay. Tomorrow, trainride and meet up with Linus. Good times to be had. And then Freak Guitar Camp of course.

86.

At the moment I'm sitting and checking through old notations. I need to prep these for printing so I can bring them with me and practice at any time. But that means I have to manually go in and retype a bunch of them. Not fun or productive at all really.

Today we had a big family dinner, celebrating grandad who's turning 86. It gets a bit stiff and awkward but we cousins at least get along.

The weather is a bit off. We've got massive rain and thunderclouds, but nothing is happening. They're just hanging there. I want a damn storm! GIEF!

Also upon waking up I found out that Alexandras laptop is giving them alot of grief over in japan so I'm researching the HP tx 2000 model. Holy hell all those lappys have alot of production errors that fail after just over a year. There's been tonnes of petitions to have a general recall because they break down so quickly.

Apparently the grafics card and the network card component of the motherboard havn't been soldered on properly in ANY of them. They also have heat dissipation problems. This means that pretty quickly the soldering loosens, the grafic card and network adapter actually come loose, and hey, compy won't work anymore.

So, HP is officially a shit company I shall never buy from. Sure, all HP products I've run into in the last... ten years have been a bit wonky, but this is just horrid.

Death and Cookies!

Ah, today was actually cooler. Only 27 degrees outside. Hence, my brain started working again.

Got some cleaning and washing done. Got the basic FGC packing in order and things have quieted down and the trip seems a-go. Yay. I really miss Linus and all the good people around Tibro. And I miss all my guitar nutcase friends around Gothemburg. And this year, I just feel epic.

I also took the day of. No running around, training or anything. Just kick-back. Nice. Ewa was on an all day trip to Gripsholms Castle, a bit west of Stockholm. Wish I could have gone, but sooner or later.

I did bake alot of cookies, we're celebrating granddads 86th birthday tomorrow and some murder cookies with 5 types of dark chocolate in them. Hot poo they were huge and rich. You can barely finish one.

Then mom came home and I convinced her to check out Dead Space. I've beat it once and I'm now trying it on 'impossible' difficulty. It really helps me, who get a bit to into it, to have someone else in the room when playing something that scary.

Now I'm digesting the cookie, having a last half-cup of tea and trying to get ready for bed.

Even more long walks.

Today mainly consisted of a three hour walk through alot of sunshine. Also went shopping for granddad.

I honestly don't remember all that much else.

And I'm dead tired from lack of sleep in the heat.

It's not extremly hot right now.

I'm going to bed.

:P

Long Walks.

Started the day with a long walk to the city, to help mom get her gym-card. We stopped by the Globen shopping center and I got some new shoes. Yay.

We got home. I made some vegitarian mushroom based gumbo. It kicked ass. And it will seriously be kicking my ass by this time tomorrow.

Then we went for another walk, to the exact same place but this time actually did a pass at the gym. And then of course another long walk home.

I am feeling seriously manky. As I also got alot of sun on me.

Hand Cramp Hero.

Today was just monstrously hot. I had some plans for stuff that needed doing but it all went up in smoke when I poured out of bed. And as I did that, Alexandra and family flew off to Tokyo. When I'm typing this, very late at night here, they will have landed.

I just don't work in this temperature.

But I had a very nice day with Ewa. We watched a couple of movies, Die Hard 4 and Shaun of the Dead which she hadn't seen before. Then we actually played Guitar Hero III. I managed to beat the game on normal without any hinderence and Ewa got into learning the basics. And had alot of fun. It's also heartwarming to see how engaging the game is for non-musicians.

That's pretty much the whole day. It won't really be remembered beyond a fussy nice feeling.

If I could have been bothered, todays soundtrack would have been Strapping Young Lads - In the Rainy Season.

Also, now the train tickets for visiting Linus and going to Freak Guitar Camp have been booked. All is well.

The Hidden Fortress.

Been off for a couple of days, out on Lidingö. (The island in the northern part of inner stockholm where alot of the upperclass people live, I can tell you some weird stories...) Ahem.

The reason of course is that Alex and family lives there. And the timing was pretty much that the second I stepped on the island, a four day heatwave began. Holy hell.

But I digress. It's after midnight and I'm still dripping so bear with me.

On friday, I went for a walk with my friend Janna. We're finally getting around to seeing eachother. We had a nice cool walk through town, probably along the only place in the city worth walking along, as you get boats, greens, and not alot of traffic or people. Ended up hanging a bit in a park, talking. Explored a small island you can wade out to near Smedsuddsbadet.

Then I got the idea that we could walk to Karolinska Insitutet, since I was picking up Alexandra there afterwards anyway. And they were having a big fika and a sendoff for some of the foreign students.

Long story short, we got there, after having picked up some interesting chocolate. (Marabous passionfruit and chili, which was surprisingly good and some Salmiakki. Which is salt liqourice toffe inside milk chocolate. Especially good for scaring non swedes at parties. >:)

It was a nice fika. I got to see Janna and Alex sort of hit it off even though they didn't really get time to talk, and I got alot of interesting chocolate reactions.

After getting Janna on the right bus me and Alex were heading for the island. That's where things get blurry, because... damn. It got hot. But among things, I made hamburgers from scratch and they PWNed. We watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Akira Kurosawas 'the Hidden Fortress' and it was good. (And, even tough I'm a huge Star Wars fan... damn, George Lucas is a sad hack who barely got lucky. Wow. Lucas stole, and stole, and stole...)

Now, I'm planning the FGC trip. Which mainly includes getting down to visit Mr. Gul again. (You know, this guy: http://linus.gyt.se/ )

Dead Space.

My shoulders ache from all the tension of playing Dead Space. Gwd Dmn that is a creepy and scary game!

But I have finished it. And I feel like a man. A big hairy man. Who kinda shat his pants. And I'm probably going to go through it once more. On impossible mode.

Now, see. I have this friend, mr. Gul, who sort of lent me his PS2 with a scary shitload of games. I've been able to play through about half of God of War. But that's all the tv-gaming I've managed. Ok, it's also kinda related to the fact that I don't live in the part of the appartment where the tv is but... dammit I need to get at that thing:



This was also a test, to see if I can figure out how to post pictures from photobucket.

Did it work?

Grey.

Today was just a day. Bun, the cat, managed to get into the livingroom during the night. By using superior ninja-cat skills. (Jumping on a small 10x15cm end of a cardboard box, vaulting over a big wooden barrier thingy.) He managed to get hair on all the fresh clothes, on the computerchair, the sofa, the carpets... Then of course he panicked as he was on the wrong side of a door from where the food bowl was. Se he mewed from like five in the morning until I finally got up and figured out what was going on.

Later a small child outside apparently, from the noise, cut his leg off and ate it. Bleeding to death, whilst being attacked by stray ants and zombies did seem to take a while. Again, this was speculation from the amount of noise this child was making.

Turned out his family was going on vacation, and he didn't want to go. So this somehow led to him screeming for over two hours, whilst trying to unpack the car the rest of the family was packing. How the hell did they deem this ok at 8 in the morning? They didn't manage to leave until 10:12. By then I was up, and fuming. Why do I not keep a shotgun for these circumstances? Nevermind the zombie uprising.

Rest of the day has been spent battling the "CrapIhavetogetshitdonethisinstant!"-emotion and the "Fuckitallitdoesn'tmatteranyway". Ok. So today was just a really crappy day from the lack of sleep, allergies and alot of training cramps. But hot poo. I just want a semi-productive middle ground.

Made some vegitarian gumbo. Stole some cookies I shouldn't. Enjoyed alot of good tea. Took some pictures, but I havn't gotten around to figure out the link-from-photobucked thing yet. Shouldn't be hard.

Enjoyed alot of QI. Played some guitar. Got through two chapters of Dead Space. Only two left. Dang. Not at all a good thing to play late in the evening. Cleaned the appartment.

But mainly, had unnecessary fighting going on in my head.

Reboot.

Alrighty.

Trying to get myself to type again. It's not all that easy. I stopped because there was just no energy left in me to do it. Now I need to find my way back into a more active life. Not that I havn't been active as hell, but, since I lived through the stress and insomnia I have now found myself carrying around a slight fear of... just doing things. Especially typing and reading has felt very uncomfortable.

But, if I'm supposed to do some actual blogging and not just sad nagging, I should do it properly. I shall see if I can't take a page (ahem, pun, argh.) from my very, very good friend Mr. Gul and get around to adding some pictures and whatnot.

So as to actually be able to make the damn thing interesting, readable and actually worth your while.

Shouldn't be hard as I bring a camera with me everywhere. I just don't use it. Or... I've stopped using it. Hmm.

Right. I am now off to have a look at, I think, photobucket. Whilst practicing some licks, sending an e-mail to the course councelor at KTH and watching some more of the gloriousness that is QI with Stephen Fry,