I don’t know if you know this but during the summer I did alot of gardening stuff. The biggest thing I did was dig up some 30 square meters of grass and replanting alot of roses and bushes. And if you know me well enough you know that when I decide to do it I go full throttle with it. And then in August I started getting aches in my right foot when I woke up and went to take a shower. After that it was ok so I didn’t think much of it. Then it got more and more frequent and now it’s aching pretty much the entire day. So I finally called the doctor for an appointment and yesterday I went to see him and he kinda chuckled and said “you have a classic plantar fasciit” (or “hälsporre” if you’re swedish). Come again?
Apparently it’s an infection in my heal which comes from straining the sole of your foot either during a long period of time or short impacts. Say like digging up grass and thumping down the shovel with the sole of you foot over and over again while wearing completely inappropriate shoes? (yeah, 3 years as a homeowner and I still don’t have proper “get dirty and gritty”-shoes!).
“Ok, that sounds bad, what do we do?” … “Nothing! This is the kinda thing that usually heals itself in … oh I don’t know, say 6 months. So buy some comfortable walking shoes that don’t ache much and bu February next year call me if it still bothers you, ok!”
And ofcourse like any normal person on this planet I Google the shit out of that and read horror stories from people who have had aching feet for 2 even 3 years! And there’s even surgery for it! But I’m kinda happy noone said “it could become a chronic thing” meaning it will pass, just a matter of riding it out. He also recommended painkillers but I’m already limping a bit so I don’t wanna be that much like House. And I hate taking pills. ‘Cause if we’re talking 4-5 months and I’m taking painkillers that long I’m afraid they’ll just stop working. Like Clarityn, doesn’t do shit for me anymore, I’ve had to step that up to prescription pills!
And all these things that are wrong with me (like allergies and restless legs) are stuff that are helped by distracting your brain enough. Say playing computer games! Seriously, I’ve never felt like scratching the skin of my face while playing World of Warcraft. And I didn’t feel my heel aching at all when playing XCOM for 3 hours last nigh.
It’s Friday again. And Friday before payday which means spending as little money as possible. Which means using and abusing friends and families hospitality. Ok, that was an exaggeration..
But today I will actually be doing that! I’ll get off work early, 2:30, go home as fast as public transportation enables me to, pack the car, pick up the little guy at kindergarten and then drive 100 kilometers south to Södertälje, straight through Stockholm just as the weekend rush hour starts up! “Why would you ever do such a mad thing!?” you may be wondering? Well, first it’s because I love my wife and owe her so much that I’ll let her have a Friday evening with her friends at home with no worries. No Sam needing attention and being fed and helping him go to sleep, no husband in the way, nothing, just her, her friends, good food, wine and just talk girl-stuff all night. And for that I’m taking the son to Södertälje for reason # 2 – visiting my brother at his new place. I’ve seen it ever so quickly before but now I’m actually gonna have dinner and stay the night, barring any Sam-related incident. So actually looking forward to that.
I’m just not looking forward to spending time in traffic ’cause Friday rush hour in Stockholm can be a real bitch and with my son in the backseat I won’t just be able to relax and sing “don’t you worry be happy now”.
When I was a teen it sucked. It sucked really bad. No news there because it does for a lot of people. Had it not been for Knut Fischer I don’t know if I’d be here to talk about it. And when I saw the movie “Pump Up The Volume” it was dead on – it sucked being a teenager, it sucked being different and your parents or any other real adult didn’t understand you. Unfortunately it seems it’s still that bad – if not worse thanks to social media!
Check this YouTube:
It’s about a girl, Amanda Todd, who flashed some random guy through a web cam and it destroyed her life. And no matter where she went that thing followed her and after enough people screwed her over she comitted suicide, but not after posting that “somebody help me… anybody?”-video. That’s fucked up in so many ways. It’s fucked up it still happens and nothing is getting better. It’s fucked up that Facebook pulled the plug on an app designed to show how being bullied on Facebook feels. It’s fucked up that the first thought in my head was “is this real or fake” and had it not been for so many newssites picking it up and the police giving interviews about it I may have written it off as fake. But it’s not. It’s still a reality – that beeing a teenager still sucks.
I just hope I’m somewhat prepared to handle it with Sam in 10 years.
I’ve been home sick 2 days now. I thought it made for an excellent time to watch some movies in my home theater on actual Bluray. So I decided to watch one of my old favorite movies – “Contact”. Yeah, that movie from 1997!
And .. yeah, probably the best movie ever in my opinion. The acting, the scope, the science, the ideas and thoughts behind it and the special effects, all of it is still today unmatched in my opinion. But one thing I didn’t expect is to discover a new aspect of the movie – that of a lone parent trying to raise a child. I’ve never thought much about that until now. That just goes to show how much being a parent changes your views on things, even a movie you’ve seen 10 times before!
Yeah I know I’ve been very quiet here. And that’s actually a good thing because I’ve kept myself busy! Since I’m new here at Thomas Cook I don’t have the full pot of vacation days so I could only take 3 weeks vacation. And I’ve been busy non-stop!
We went to Söderköping for our annual ice-cream binge. Like three years ago we stayed the night so we could enjoy it one more time. But unlike three years ago when we stayed at a local hotel this time we decided to rough it a bit and rented a small cabin at a local campsite. And it was indeed a small cabin, no loo, no kitchen and bunk beds. So after rearranging that so we basically slept on the floor we went for our first taste of ice cream only to be met with a queue we didn’t want to be in. So we walked around town, found a little cafe that sucked big time and then we made our way back and after two hours the queue was still way too long. But the only option was to give up for today and that wasn’t on so I got my ass in the queue and after about an hour we got a table and it was good! Sam enjoyed it too, last time we was there he was like 6 months old so that wasn’t as fun for him as this time around. Then we went back to the campsite and put him to bed and we spent the rest of the evening in bed watching a few episodes of “White Collar” on the laptop. Then we finally fell asleep and on the morning after it was cleaning up, going for a second round of ice cream (this time without the queue) and then going back home. All in all a great little trip.
Then we teamed up with Helenas friend, her husband and their 2 year old daughter for a 24 hour cruise. As I’ve stated before about these cruises it’s mostly about getting drunk or laid than to actually go someplace but this time it was actually a very kids-friendly cruise. They had converted their entire conference deck to rooms with different activities for the kids. One had a ball-pit, the other videogames etc. and Sam really enjoyed that ball-pit! The two departure times we had to chose from was either 7 am or 7 pm . If we’d gone 7 pm we’d barely be able to get onboard and get comfortable before Sam had to go to bed and that meant one of us had to stay in the cabin for the rest of the evening. So we chose 7 am and not sure that was a good choice cause we had to go up at 4:30 am and leave at 5:15 so Sam was really cranky all through the breakfast buffet but after going back to the cabin and sleep for two hours he was ready to deal with it. It was a lot of eating, some tax-free shopping and some beer. Also got to see the F1 qualifying at a bar on the boat! Overall he totally enjoyed that trip and so did we, probably gonna do it again (next year will probably be for free thanks to American Express rewards).
And fortunately thanks to my sister me and H got atleast one day for each other when she took Sam to Skansen (a zoo in Stockholm). Unfortunately he didn’t care much for the animals there but he got to “drive” the cars on rails so he was pretty happy!
Other than that we mostly spent the the vacation working on the garden and home improvements or having guests over and a day welcoming my sister with her family who flew in from Scotland last Tuesday. So yeah, it’s been busy and I haven’t take the time to update this here place but here I am 🙂
Life proceeding as normal here. Getting into how things are done at work. Trying to do house improvements. Trying to be a good husband and father. Just the normal stuff!
But yesterday we broke the routines and went all the way down to Södertälje for a night out with my brother, his girlfriend, my sister AC with her boyfriend. Although “night out” is overstating it quite a bit because we headed back home before 10 pm, but it was still fun to get out of the house and not have another night of slacking in the sofa watching some TV show you never had any interest in before!
Oh and Sam got an outbreak of chickenpox starting last Thursday but it’s already calming down and the fun thing is, he never really noticed it as far as we can tell. He didn’t spike a fever, didn’t have uncontrollable itching or anything, it was pretty smooth sailing. Or maybe that’s because Helena “vacation” started this week and she’s been home with him and he’s gotten almost anything he wants so far. Me, I’m working another week and then have a three week vacation which is fine for me! (since I’m still on an trial-employee status here I only get half the vacation days for now but once I’m made a full employee I’ll get the rest in time for Christmas!)
I had a great weekend!! It was Midsummer’s Eve on Friday in Sweden and we went to Kungsängen to check out their “old school” celebration, complete with band and everything. And somehow I ended up helping to carry and raise that big pole that’s so symbolical of swedish midsummer (and yeah, there are pictures of that coming soon). Then on the afternoon we went over to our neighbors down the street for a somewhat casual celebration of midsummer’s eve. On saturday Helena’s brother with his family came by and that made Sam go energizer bunny wanting to be everywhere and play with everyone. They have two kids and they did the best to play with him. And we ended up watching “Wrath of the Titans” which was really, really disappointing, even on a 100″ screen 🙂
And on Sunday they went home and then there was the Formula 1 race from Valencia. I had some hopes that Ferrari would do well even though the qualified poorly. And it turned out to be one of the best races I’ve ever seen since the golden era of Schumacher / Barrichello! Lots of good overtaking, some crashing, cars breaking down – and best of all, that all happened to people who threatened Alonso for the win! I thoroughly enjoyed that race! And on the podium there was no less than 3 Ferrari drivers, 3 world champions (2 of which champions driving for Ferrari) so it was all good! Only thing that could’ve made it better was Massa taking second …
Happy Birthday to myself. 37 years old now. But don’t feel older than last year. Although I have changed jobs twice in the past year and learnt alot from it!
And thanks to the best wife in the world my birthday turned out pretty good! The first, “small” present was a Diablo III t-shirt. The next present was a mini-fridge with room for one Coca Cola can, driven by the USB port. Geeky as hell, right 🙂
Then we went to the shopping mall at Kista to eat, shop and watch a movie. None of those things worked out as we’d hoped. The first problem was getting a parking space in their garage which was a very frustrating 15 minutes. Then when we got to O’Learys and eventually got a table we sat there for 20 minutes without any service at all so we left for the foodc ourt instead and that worked out alot better. And I was going to shop for new jeans. And guess what? I’m up to 38″ waists again… I’ve been at 42″ once but I was down to 34″ 🙁 Better watch that! And they were rebuilding the movie lobby but duing the rebuilding it’s completely crap because it’s just too small for the amount of people going in and out. I think the fire department would shut it down cause incase of a fire, that would be a deathtrap!
But fortunately the movie, “Prometheus” (remember?) was pretty damn good!! And then we picked up Sam at his grandmother and went home. All in all a kick ass birthday!
A week ago Blizzard finally released “Diablo 3”!! If you wind back the clock to 2001 I actually took 2 weeks off from work to play “Diablo II – Lord of Destruction” so you can imagine how much I’ve been looking forward to this game! The biggest difference though isn’t in the game itself, rather that I’m a husband, father and homeowner now. That doesn’t give me much time for playing computer games! Fortunately for me I have the best wife in the world and she’s given me a lot of time to play in the past week because she knows how much I’ve been looking forward to the game and love gaming, so although she doesn’t like it when I go into my crypt, boot up the computer and put on my headphones she still respects it.
But the game is just so addictive and the “just a little more” and “I just wanna try this as a different class” feelings are all over the place so no matter how much time my wife gives me it’s never gonna be enough for me to do all the things I want to do in the game. But I’ll survive. After all, at the end of the day it’s her that I wanna fall asleep with and wake up next to.
Oh, and the game kicks ass! .. too bad Blizzard is screwing it up so hard with all these server issues, which you kinda saw coming when they said “no offline mode”.
Oh shit it’s happening again!!
About one month before I started working for Carema there was alot of reporting about how Carema was making so much money on the expense of the little guy. I didn’t really care that much about it at the time but it kept growing in November and December and I can safely say I wasn’t bragging about working for Carema then.
Well now it’s exactly one week until I’ll start working at Thomas Cook here in Sweden. Which owns the Swedish travel agency called “Ving”. And ofcourse the media is starting to write bad things about them now as well! Already last week I saw a small little article but today they have another article and how people travelling on their dream vacation only to be disappointed and ripped off.
What are the odds that AGAIN exactly when I’m supposed to start a job that company is having bad things written about them in the media!? I don’t know the truth about all the stories but I just don’t wanna be embarrassed that I work for Ving the same way as with Carema! But judging from what their PR rep is saying in the media, unlike Carema that mostly didn’t say anything about nothing, it’s not gonna be bad. Because I am really excited about starting my work there. And I’m not just saying that, I actually am!!
Today I took the car to the shop again this morning. As I expected they didn’t have a car for me to borrow during the day but instead they decided to fix it while I waited. So after an hour I got my keys back and off I went. Didn’t have to pay anything because of the earlier fuckups so happy about that. Now that I don’t have to worry about that or getting a new job I guess I’ll just have to worry about global peace.
Remember a while back when I was just hating on car mechanics in general? Well that was after some bad experience with them and after all of that shit me and my wife decided that we’d prefer to have a set monthly cost for a car no matter what happens (almost). And that is called leasing. And Volkswagen was having a drive (no pun intended) on their smaller models at the time so we signed up for that. Since then we pay a fix amount and we don’t have to care about the car making a strange noise or anything. And it’s not cheap either but we get full service from their repair shop.
So you’d think that would solve all that? … well, nope. Cause mechanics are humans and humans fucks up. Sometimes twice per day! We had a chip on the front screen and we heard a weird noise a few weeks back from a wheel so we called them, set a date for me to come in with the car, we’d get a spare car over the day while they fix it, we didn’t have to pay nothing. So on Friday I drove it to the shop and got a spare car and drove to work. After about 40 minutes they called me. I’d gotten the wrong spare car! So they sent a mechanic over with the right car and we just switched. And then they called me again. It seems that as of a few weeks they don’t fix chipped windows anymore, they are using a third party for those repairs. So there was nothing they could do about that! So I went back to change cars again and the customer service guy I talked to thought that all sounded weird so he double checked it. And yes indeed the mechanic was wrong, they are suppose to fix those cars for people like us that have this special deal. So they asked me to come back with the car this week and they would definitely fix it. We didn’t set a date or anything so I’m thinking I’m gonna take the car there and be met with “but we don’t have a spare car for you today, can you come back tomorrow?” and that’s when the only downside to having a leased car kicks in – limited mileage. We’re only allowed to drive 1500 metric miles per year with it (or rather 4500 during the 3 year lease period). And we’re up to 1250 and 4 months to go so trying to be as efficient as possible there. And all these trips to and from the shop ads up.
So yeah, even though we’re leasing a car and paying a shitton per month for something we’re not even gonna own isn’t solving all the problems that we’d hope for. ‘Cause mechanics are still fucking us over.
After having talked to my boss to be, my teamleader to be and a woman from HR I’m very hopeful that my new job at Tomas Cook will kick ass. Because it’s a job that I really enjoy doing and do well. It’s webrelated but I also get to explore the business intelligence side of Sharepoint which I haven’t really done that much earlier. I get a small salary increase, I liked the offices and I like the people. So everything felt awesome when I went there to sign the papers.
That’s when “I knew there was a catch!” kicked in. They have a strict cell phone policy. Namely … iPhones only! I can totally go onboard and support a decision to only have one type of phones to make it easier for everyone’s jobs. At the lawfirm we had Blackberrys only – for security reasons. If you bought your own phone that was OK but don’t expect to get your mail on it. At Carema we had HTC only, but if you bought your own phone you got no official support for it but you could still use it. But here it’s strictly iPhone. I felt like a sell out accepting that but I really wanted the job. And it’s not like I haven’t had an iPhone before. But now I have to pay for apps again and shit like that. And having invested in Navigon for Android you can guess how happy I am about that!
The only other downside is their location. Their office is in Stockholm, but not in the centre but a bit off (Marieberg) so I’ll be 5-10 minutes late every morning since I drop off Sam at kindergarten. And I’ll need to go like 10 minutes earlier to make it home earlier than 6:30 and considering Sam goes to bed between 7-8 that’s pretty important to me!
But still, this feels like it could be one kick ass job!
By the end of today I should have a new job signed and done. Although in sweden you have a 6 month grace period when it comes to employments and during that period the employer as well as the employee have full legal right to just say “nope, it’s not working out” and you’re off the legal hook. So as fark as “signed and done” goes there’s still no guarantee. We’ll see later today.
But Sam has really adapted quickly to life without a pacifier. It takes a bit longer for him to realize that he’s suppose to go to sleep now without it but once he does there’s no problem at all. Even at kindergarten it’s working out nicely. So all good on that front too.
It’s finally time for Formula 1 again! As usual it kicks off in Australia again. And as usual me, my sister AC and brother Jocke are picking up something that we started 10 years ago – they come over to my place on saturday evening, we eat, drink, watch movies and try to stay awake all night (with varying degrees of success) and watch the race in the morning. Ofcourse this was easier when they started the race at 2 pm local time which was like 5 am here in Sweden but for capitalistic reasons they are now started 4 pm local time which is 7 am here so we’re gonna have to stay awake even longer. Or we’ll just go to sleep at 2. I dunno. We’ll see what happens.
But it’s good to keep up with tradition 🙂
I really like George Takei. You know, that asian guy that played “Sulu” in the old Star Trek. I can’t say I either like or dislike his acting or whatever, but I am a huge fan of his facebook-page. It’s one of the big downsides to deactivating my account – I don’t get to see the funny pictures and clips and his posts that are always full of Zen-isms. And I loved his roast of William Shatner!!
And then the guy goes and does something like this…
It’s hilarious shit! I wish Hollywood had more people like that!!
Sweet – http://www.svd.se/opinion/brannpunkt/carema-foljde-de-etiska-riktlinjerna_6911371.svd
It’s basically the findings of an investigation into how Carema have handled the care of elderly and they can’t find nothing wrong that Carema isn’t fixing and they also go as far as saying that the media was in some cases totally outright lying. 🙂
Wanna hear a great business idea? Start a shady company with multiple company names and addresses, sell incredibly cumbersome items like say a couch for $2500, offer to have it delivered to your doorstep for only $100 more and say “it’ll be here in 8 weeks, we’ll call you when it’s ready for delivery”. Then 3 weeks later call the customer and say “it’s here already so you can pick it up yourself if you want, or wait 5 weeks because that’s when we’re suppose to deliver it, your choice but if you chose to pick it up yourself you won’t get any money back”.
Oh wait… Masku / Finnlandia / Läderinvest AB is already doing that 🙁
You know I’m huge on retro, right? I’m a sucker for 80’s references and “the good old days”. So this year is looking to be quite extraordinary!
First we have the blu-ray release of “Star Trek The Next Generation”. Then we have tons of video-game remakes coming this year – Leisure Suit Larry, X-Com and Syndicate, all of which I played like mad “back in the day”. So I’ll get my share of retro this year 🙂
So it seems that my worries wasn’t in vain – my son has indeed inherited my eczema. It’s not a huge surprise since it’s in the genes on my side. And on every checkup I’ve made it a point to tell them I’m concerned he’s inherited it and that the dry red hardened patch on his throat may not only be dry skin but actually eczema and everytime I’ve been told it’s normal. As late 6 weeks ago we were told it’s normal by the pediatrician. 2 1/2 weeks ago we were told it’s not normal but probably a result of the tonsillitis. And now after 10 days of penicillin it’s still bad and we saw a doctor on tuesday who said “no this is definitely eczema, I’ll send you to a specialist”. And I got the “no shit Sherlock”-feeling I hate.
And then it gets worst when I tell people it’s eczema and we’re going to see a specialist, I’ve always gotten a “well good it’s nothing bad/worse than that”! It’s like people don’t know what it means! It’s a life long suffering with itching and scratching and bleeding and creams!! I’m really happy it almost went away when I hit puberty but it’s come back in the past few years, so yeah, I still have to use prescribed creams and stuff all the time. So you bet your ass I hoped it was something else like chicken pox or something like that that would be bad for a week or two and then it’s over, or even something else that there’s a cure or treatment for, but eczema, you’re never gonna get a treatment for that (unless there is some huge advances in genetics!) so that’s a life long issue to deal with, one I hoped my son wouldn’t.
Don’t know when we’ll get an appointment to see the specialist or even when we’ll be able to test his allergies. Worst case is that he’s as allergic to fur as I was and we’ll have to get rid of the cats.