What’s so weird about Christmas is how much I, and alot of other people, hate the build-up but totally enjoy it from 24th to 31st! The build-up is ofc, having to go through all your family tree checking who wants what, then doing the actual shopping and try to squezze your way through the stores and everything, and all the christmas decorations and stuff and ofc all the preperations at work planning the holidays and making sure all lawyers have remote accessibility… it’s all a big hassle! But from 24th I just shut everything out, go home to my folks and enjoy a few days of calm and just relax all the way to the new year! I took out 4 days of vacation and managed to get 12 days off from work which means alot of time with my family and catching up on stuff.
Hope you have a very merry Christmas!!
Check this picture. Then, check this one. Notice the small changes… I’ve never felt so vain in my life, photoshopping a picture of myself. But if I can, why not? I trust you’ve all seen this awesome movie-clip?
And oh, I back-tracked why this girl thought I was after a more serious relationship than she was – I told her why the previous reltionship didn’t work, because we had only seen eachother 5 times in 2 months which was a bit less than I wanted. But that didn’t mean I was talking about living together, did it? Oh well, I guess I’d better practice saying what I really mean rather than say half the story and let people fill in the blanks… I dunno why I do that, I shouldn’t be assuming people get my jokes just because my best friends get me and my humor. Like the title of this update, how many are so retro they know Carly Simon’s lyrics?
I have a little hard time getting over this latest break-up. Her reason for breaking up, and she did take the initiative as always, was that she wasn’t at the moment after as a serious relationship as I was. I totally disagree with her on that point ’cause I wasn’t after a serious relationship that’d mean we’d see eachother every day or live together. But that’s not what’s bugging me…
What’s bugging me is my reasons for breaking it up. Even though it only was 6 years difference between us, it felt like it was more sometimes. She was on the wild and crazy side, spontaneous, partying, have to try everything, restless, “damn the consequences”-kind of person… And I’m not. The problem is, and this is a killer to realise… I used to be all those things and somewhere along the line I lost those qualities! When I was 25 those things would have described me so well! And this is why I liked her in the first place – she had so many qualities that made me go “I so get her!”. But somewhere along the line, probably as a result of my world tour or maybe it was me turning 30, but I grew up and lost those qualities. How tha hell do I get them back!!! I loved those things about me! All of a sudden I feel so very old and boring! Give it back!
It’s 5 days before Christmas. Every intelligent person knows the story, they’ve been here before. So I gotta ask this question this year again … how tha hell can the arrival of snow cause delays for the trains? I mean who did NOT consider the possibility of snow today? How can they be caught off guard – again? I get pissed everytime it happens. 20 minute delays because of some snow is just rediculous. Fortunately I wasn’t in a hurry to get home…
Speaking of being in a hurry – I bought a new electric toothbrush last week. It has a cool function – every 30 seconds it stops and starts again. This is to indicate it’s time to change side since you’re only suppose to brush 30 seconds on each side totally 2 minutes. Nice feature. And I’ve never been so stressed brushing my teeth ever as I am now.
So yesterday I decided to indulge. I had after all been dumped (however amicably) and felt like feeling sorry for myself and decided to go to Heron City and enjoy a movie or two, Pizza Hut and all that crap that blows my sugerlevel sky high. And it was good. It was very long since I’d done that.
I saw two movies – “Casino Royale” and “Superman Returns”. “Casino Royale” was pretty ok, not alot of action for being James Bond. But the story was pretty good even though it felt a bit too… “common” for Bond to play Texas Hold’em. And Craig as Bond was pretty damn good, I’d only seen him in “The Jacket” playing a psycho but in this he was probably the coldest Bond of them all.
“Superman Returns” was also pretty good. Superman has always been my favorite superhero for some reason and this movie really delivered. I particularly liked that they still had Marlon Brando as his father rather than trying someone else. But Lois Lane as a mother didn’t quite feel right. And it reminds me of a classic Kevin Smith dialogue from “Mallrats” regarding her fallopian tubes… everyone who’s seen it knows what I mean 🙂
Both movies were ok but nothing that’ll go down in movie history as “best ever!” I think. Pretty succesfull sunday.
Last weekend I had alot of issues on my mind, enough to make me depressed. Alot of small things (like my dead car battery, christmas shopping, suit that needed cleaning, photo session and so on) and two major things – WoW guild disbanded and my new potential girlfriend. Well all those small issues are now resolved thanks to friends and my ever supportive sister AC. And WoW guild dying isn’t as bad as I thought, I mean it’s just a game right and I get all my spare time back now in time for Christmas and the holidays. And there’s always the option of joining another guild and I may even end up playing more (!) than before. We’ll see, but it’s not important really…
Which just left that potential girlfriend. I’d met her during a party and we were pretty similar in alot of ways and at first it was “I totally get her!”. But after almost three weeks of dating and her going to Paris to get some perspective we met up again on saturday, talked for an hour then kinda agreed that it wasn’t working out. And a friendly goodbye hug and “I’ll see you around” and one more relationship that didn’t survive the 3 week mark (this was 6 hours short), I’m becoming the expert at that. But since we never got that serious and I saw it coming a mile away it’s not getting me down that much. But it did feel good while it lasted, never knew I could be so happy with a women fully dressed.
So all in all – one week later and everything sorted. Now bring on Christmas and the New Year!
Most problems I had last weekend seems to be solved now. Going out christmas shopping today with my sister. Better late than never.
Some news from work ; Our lawfirm used to be run by the partners of the firm, and even if they knew the law very well and made a ton of money they didn’t really know how to run a company of Vinge’s size. So about a year ago they hired a guy to run things. That guy is like the personification of alpha male, really cool guy. One of his way of running things is to make sure the administrative staff is happy. Not only the lawyers but the others too, the janitors and the IT department. One of his ways of doing that has been to make sure we’ve been included in for example the trip to the Czech republuc- And now he’s doing it again but giving the administrative staff a $1 400 (10 000 SEK christmas bonus!! How sweet is that! Unfortunately half of that is going to tax, but still…
Unfortunately it’s not all good. Another of his projects is making sure everybody is included on the new website with a staff directory, even the IT department. So we had to go get our pictures taken by this professional photographer that came by. He was really weird, ordered us to smile, slowly, in small stages from neutral to right out laugh. Unfortunately I suck at that, I either look neutral or laugh. But the result looked like this. Not too bad if I may say so!! And no, I don’t wear a suit at work, that was just a coincidence!!
So I’m chatting on MSN with my niece in scotland. She really enjoys talking on MSN and it’s a nice pause from work. The only trouble is she uses some weird sign language that I don’t get. Like when I asked why she wasn’t in school yet, and she said she doesn’t start until 9. Well it’s 9:25 here so?… and she sent this back:
And things are going better now, eliminating one problem at a time. But women are still impossible and unpredictable. I don’t know what, if anything, I may have done wrong with this one but she’s not talking to me for whatever reasons.
I like to think I have a pretty strong psyche. And I have a pretty good ability to take a step back and analyze things. Which is why it’s so funny knowing and pinpointing the small little things that are making me somewhat depressed right now. Unfortunately it doesn’t really solve any of the current problems and there isn’t really anything I can do about them except wait them out and hope it blows over. Which it always does. But it’s still a pretty funny thing to do and it’s a good sign that I’m not _that_ depressed. And that possible girlfriend I had going isn’t returning my calls. Guess I shouldn’t have said anything…
But one small bit of good news is that I’ve finally added a page with a day-by-day description of me and my sister’s latest trip to Scotland. So, it’s not all bad.
This must be the fall/winter-depression coming on a bit late but now I’m depressed. I saw “Clerks 2” the other day and since then I’ve been in a “who am I why am I here and where am I going?”-state which is all kinds of depressive things. And just like that our WoW guild is splitting up (which is seing something I worked hard for 18 months go down the drain) and if that’s not enough – when I have the perfect opportunity to show a little bit of romance with a prospective girlfriend my car dies on me and ruins the entire thing. God damnit!!!
But yeah, atleast I have a prospective girlfriend, that cheers me up a bit (and thank you Mats for letting that cat out of the bag). But then my ever cheerful sis cheers me up with “you’re doing good, have a job, don’t live with your parents, you got your health and so does both your parents, what are you whining about?”….
True that, what am I whining about? And will that help?…
How can I be so depressed over a little thing like our WoW guild splitting up? Well I joined the guild back in august 2005 and in march this year me and my buddy Mats took over and pretty much ran it from there. I’ve pretty much dedicated most of my free time to it, even some time at work. I’ve never had a problem prioritizing real life over my WoW life (atleast I don’t think so), but in the deeper analysis I guess I could say that I have a limited real life thanks to WoW taking so much of my time. And now all that hard work is gone. I wouldn’t say wasted since I’ve had alot, ALOT of good times with them. Another thing is all of a sudden I end up in this “what to do now?”-mode? It’s probably for the best that it went like this since even if I do go on it won’t be on this level and I’ll have alot more time on my hands to deal with real life and all that stuff. But it’s all too depressing. It’s not that I’m against changes, I like changes, changes are good but in this case… I want it back the way it was.
There was a time when I updated this place almost every day and didn’t care about what I wrote or who read it, but alot of things have happened in the past 4 weeks that doesn’t really belong here. But things are going on, some of it really, really good and some of it pretty bad. I’ll be happy if we can land on “ok” in time for Christmas 🙂
So you know I’m a member of a really, really old gaming guild in sweden called “Soul Crushers”? We’ve been active since the quake days, going through other games, new members, old members disappearing but the “Soul Crusher” motto of always having fun still lives on! One of them is an “underground” bar in the center of stockholm that we’ve hung out at. And tonigh is the last night there ’cause after that they’re closing the doors. So bittersweet when that happens… But any excuse for a party 🙂
For the past 2 weeks all the papers in sweden has been all about the environmental problems we’re having. As if it’s something new. Hasn’t that always been an issue for the past 30 years or so? All I can say is that I’m happy I haven’t put a child to this world. I’d have to apologize the him/her for screwing up the planet. But then again, I think I’ve done my part. I commute to work by train, my apartment is always cold (ask my friends) and dark and I voted for the treehuggers. And I’m donating money to Greenpeace. But still they make us feel guilty. I miss being a kid when you didn’t have to feel bad for things like this.
So after a week of hearing experts (and Greenpeace) coming up with doomsday scenarios of the global warming the meterologists here told everyone to change to winter tyres because there was a bit of bad weather headed our way. The said that during the weekend. And yesterday (wednesday) a snowstorm hit like a ton of bricks! Chaos everywhere, trains, planes, highways. And guess where I was? I was feeling terrrible and had a fever so I never even got out of bed which turned out to be the total right choice since I hear it took some people hours to get home yesterday! So not only do people forget that we get snow every year in sweden, they don’t care when the weatherman warns about it 3 days before it hits.
The last 4 weeks have been funny, weird, sad, depressing and annoying. Alot of different states of mind for one major reason. This woman at work that I considered a friend but got pissed off at me for wanting to talk about her being unhappy at work. Anyway, after her huge dissing of me she ended with “I don’t wanna talk to you anymore”. So for the past 4 weeks everytime she’s wanted computer help she’s called my collegues directly, not the helpdesk number since she knows it’s a good chance I’ll answer. And she’s kept check of when I work late so she doesn’t call at all. And she’s totally avoided this part of the building. And I’ve returned the favor by avoiding her part of the building, not taking on any cases that’s remotely close and for her last few days here I even made sure I wasn’t here by going to Gothenburg and working there for a few days. Had I been here and she’s come by handing in her laptop and to say goodbye I’m sure I’d said “sorry to see you go, good luck there and good luck with everything, have fun”, but that’d been a lie. I actually don’t… I really dislike her after all of this and if it wasn’t against my life philosophy, I might even go as far as hating her for it. But oh well, now she’s out of here and I can go back to normal work again. But atleast I managed not to talk to her for 4 weeks.
So that’s one problem eliminated. My second problem I solved with alot of overtimes and all my credit that I still had on some cards after my year of travelling and paying hotell bills for $2500 all the time, so the other day I paid $2000 to the IRS. I can’t really complain seeing as I spent over a year travelling the world on the taxpayers expense.
Last weekend I came down with the cold from hell. And it’s finally starting to go away. It was so bad I had to take prescription painkillers to make it down to Gothenburg since I was suppose to do some work down there, but when that was done I called in sick for the rest of the week. And now I’m back in Gothenburg again. Never been a big fan of this town but after beeing here a few days I guess it’s ok. The beer tastes just as good anyway. But it’s too grey for my liking!
As usual after donating a pint of blood I feel good. Not sure if it’s a mental feel good about doing something good or a physical thing, but I generally feel good afterwards. And the other day I was surprised at just how well I felt – I didn’t have an ache anywhere. No sore back, no headache, nothing. That was nice.
Unfortunately it didn’t last – yesterday I woke up and my throat felt like I’d swallowed fire. No problem with that, I just have to refrain from talking. But later in the afternoon the fever came and man what a fever. Eventually I had to resort to taking prescription painkiller to get over it and went to bed at 8! And today I feel a bit better but tomorrow morning at 5 I have to get up and go to gothenburg. Last time I felt “bad but not bad enough to go to the hospital” and had to get up early the next day to travel somewhere I ended up in an african hospital convinced I wasn’t gonna make it back.
SInce I’m working late this week I have time in the morning to do all the chores I usually don’t have time for. And today it was time for me to donate blood again. For the 9th time. Everytime I’ve donated blood (except the first ofc) they’ve always commented on the blood test from the previous one and they keep telling me what a good cell counts and stuff I have. At first I just thought they do that to be nice, kind and get you in a better mood. But now I know they are! Because this time she said that my last blood test was absolutely excellent and she had never seen that good results and I must be healthy and eat well and get plenty of exercise. Last time I donated was when I had 3 weeks vacation from work and all I did was play computer games and lie in front of the TV, drinking cola, beer and chips all day long…
The other day as I was flipping through channels I ended up on the “Actor’s Studio”. It’s one of those “let’s talk to famous people in movie bizz and see what they have to say” programs, but it’s actually usually quite good and some of them have things to say. And this time it was Michael J. Fox doing his best to try to sit there and talk about his career and Parkinsons. I particularly liked his attitude that “hey, everyone has their problems and issues, but they’ve learnt to deal with them and wouldn’t trade them for anyone elses” and how much a terrible thing like this was a “gift that kept on taking” in that it had helped him live life and appreciate everything.
And here I am with my biggest problems being a woman at work that don’t like me and owing the IRS $2000. Problem one is gonna solve itself since she’s decided to leave the company (which was what I tried talking to her about) and problem two is gonna be solved – somehow…