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Just wanted to do a quick update to say I purchased the computer game Portal the other day on steam. And loved it. Played it again and loved it even more. Downloaded the song “Still Alive” and loved it.
I also love it when I change my mind about something ’cause it came out 2-3 years ago and I did pay any attention to it. My bad.
Buy it.
Oh, and 3 more days 🙂
Although it’s 16 days until I go on my parental leave, only 12 of those are days I have to spend at work. And believe me, I am counting every hour now! Still not sure how it’s gonna go with me and my son when Helena goes back to work on august 1st…
And stockholm is back to it’s normal self now after a few weeks of crazyness with this royal wedding and all. I’m not a huge fan of monarchy but I ended up watching it on television anyway. And it was cute and all but a bitter taste that most of it was paid by us the taxpayers and no matter how hard I try or how much money I spend on my wedding… what are the ods I can close down stockholm like that when I get married!?
So now I’m 35 years old. I dunno why but that most definitely feels like a limit where you can blame “immaturity” anymore without sounding silly 🙁
But as far as my life goes, it’s certainly picked up in the past 2 years going from “sitting home alone (but far from lonely) playing my computer games and watching my movies” to “sitting on the terrace of our lovely house with my lovely fiancé listning to our lovely boy not wanting to sleep”.
Life is pretty good to me at the moment. Unfortunately it’s not as good for everyone 🙁
So who’s the most wrong in that conflict down there in Israel? Because no matter how you look at it there isn’t a single right anywhere!
It certainly isn’t right to seize ships in international waters and use deadly force. Then again Hamas are terrorists. But then again the palestinian people did vote for them in a democratic election. But they only did that because Israel has been pushing them that far. And the shitty history goes on and on. And on the sideline is the supposedly number 1 freedom fighting nation in the world and not doing anything. So it’ll probably continue until someone changes their minds 🙁
In 37 days I’m going on a 7 month parental leave. Add one more month of vacation and I’m gonna be home for a long long time!
I know I shouldn’t amp up my expecations since I’m bound to disappointed but.. 8 months with my little boy. Learning him to eat solid(ish) food, learning him to walk and maybe even talk a little bit. It’s gonna be great! I just hope we don’t suffer too much economically because of it.
We got our permit to put the roof up over 1/3 of the terrace so I’m busy doing that. And Helena is busy taking care of the rest of the house, our son and planting all the flowers and trees and stuff we bought yesterday for approximately 10.000 swedish crowns!
Man it’s gonna look good and smell awesome when we’re sitting under the roof on the terrace with the BBQ on and the rain is falling down again!
I’ve also updated som photo albums:
The terrace-build, although not 100% up to date after I’ve started with the roof.
Our new carpark with the bricks that the Irish guys put down for us.
Our latest family get-together for my father’s birthday.
And as always added some photos of our wonderful son Sam.
The terrace is done!… almost. I’m waiting for the council to give us a permit to put the roof up. It seems that since we can use it as a storage if we put a roof on it we need permit. Isn’t that typical sweden, you can’t get any luxury without paying the government their piece of the pie!
Anyway, we’ve had a BBQ with our neighbours across the street and Helenas has spend some days just slacking in the comfy soffas we bought. We’re also waiting on Mio to deliver the outdoor dining table and chairs so we can have more guests!
On top of that (!) we’ve had bricks put on our driveway. Cost us 80.000 swedish crowns but it’ll be worth it. We hope. Won’t know for another few years since it may get completely screwed up when the ground settles a bit.
We’re doing so much on the house now which is kinad rediculous considering I’ll be off from work from july to the end of the year and have plenty of time then. But I want that time to just enjoy our nice home and play with our son!
What a weekend! I’m totally exhausted! We’ve been putting up the floor on our terrace and my knees are pretty much gone and my back is… not well! We would have been done with floor had it not been for 1) me being called into work because of an overheating alarm from our datacenter 2) Formula 1 weekend 3) friendly neighbours interrupting and 4) Sam having a very bad sunday and screaming his lungs out! Fortunately Helena is the handy type so when one of us was busy with Sam the other kept building. But we’re so very close now I can taste it 🙂
Check the image gallery 🙂
Now I just wanna go to sleep, but we’re off to a small BBQ with our neighbours. Meat and beer, great way to end this weekend!
>Usually when I really put effort in something I’ll do it so very detailed it’s scary – covering every little thing. And this terrace-build was a huge project and I was thinking of every thing that could go wrong, covering every angle. I even had extra bits for my screwdrivers! And it was particularly important that weekend because saturday was a national holiday in Sweden so couldn’t easily get new stuff.
But there was one not so minor detail I miscalculated – when I rented the drill I rented a drill that drilled 20 cm wide and 80 cm deep holes. The slabs I was putting in was 18 cm wide and 70 cm deep. Should’ve worked right?… wrong! The slabs where 18 cm but square, not round, so the holes needed to be 23 cm! And it only drilled 55-60 cm so not nearly deep enough! So we spent the better part of Saturday on our knees digging out the 27 holes wide and deep enough. But once that was done, the frame and beams went up like a beauty! At 9 pm on Sunday evening I waved off my workforce and this morning I put in 4 beams for the floor and it looks good!
Check out the gallery.
And thank you dad for doing so much of the work! Thank you AC for doing so much of the digging! Thank you mother for taking care of Sam, too bad he had a bad day on Saturday! Thank you Ricki for your help! And thank you Helena for keeping up morale and serving drinks and buying hotdogs and making sure everyone was happy!
I have very good family & friends!!
As a homeowner you have to have projects to improve the house in some way. And the first project that have been on my mind since we moved in is the terrace!
We plan to have a huge terrace – 4 by 16 meters – that’s 64 square meters addition to the house! It’s gonna be awesome! 5 meters will be under roof, a cozy area if you will on those rainy august days.
My family will come out in force on saturday and help with everything from building to babysitting so we can hopefully get most of the building done before end of the weekend and I’ll spend weeks putting in the floor. Then it’s time to put up the roof on the sucker, fortunately Helenas big brother will help out with that!
You can follow the build in this photo gallery.
When I get off work on wednesday july 7th I’ll be starting my almost 7 month long parental leave and I’ll get to spend as much time with my son as I possibly can. Ofcourse I have no ambitions that I will have time or energy to have time to do anything else but spend time with my son, I do ofcourse hope that I’ll have some time between naps to do some things that I want, like catching up on the latest season of “24” or something.
But I can’t imagine what it’ll be like. Not only have I no clue what it’ll be like being with my son, but I have never been home for that long – ever! I had a 4 week vacation once but that’s as far as I’ve gone without working since I was like 14. But now I’m gonna be home 7 months. Yikes!!!
Let the countdown begin!
Ever used “Dropbox“? It’s a damn good little program you install on your computer(s) that points to a folder and everything you put in that folder is uploaded and stored in their server, backed up and safe, and then synchronized to all your computers running the program so the folder looks identical! And they even have a an iPhone App so I can access and view the files when I’m out and about. And you can also share files with the publuc if you want.
I use it for two of the features – getting my important files (like all my photos) safe and backed up elsewhere “just in case” and I use it to transfer files from home to work and vice versa. It’s awesome, try it! And please use this link so I’ll get some credit 🙂
As you may have noticed the past week have been terrible for this site! It’s been slow and unresponsive and I didn’t really bother to look into it until this weekend when it got really bad. I finally found the culprit – as you may remember over the years I have posted links to mp3s of good or funny songs or “what I like right now”. And somehow for the past week this place have been bombarded with downloads of those mp3s, I’m talking thousands of downloads per day! I don’t know who or why but they are gone now so it should run more smoothly now!
My new life as a homeowner and father is progressing pretty well. My son is growing well over the curve and our house is still standing!
The biggest effect has actually been my abstinence when it comes to buying new toys! A year or two ago I wouldn’t have hesitated to buy a new toy like a new graphics card or camera. But for the past months I’ve given it a second, third or forth thought and decided that my money was better spent elsewhere.
Until now!
After spending easter weekend with Helena’s family I got inspired to buy a new real digital camera, not a small cheap one we already have. A real one this time. We’d already decided we needed one and was gonna wait until summer but after that weekend and realizing how many photos we’d miss out on of our boy growing we decided to buy one now on credit. A Canon EOS 450D with a normal 18-55 lens and a 55-300 zoom lens. With accessories and stuff it ended at about $1300 but totally worth it!
Or what do you think?
I’m baffled at how mankind is still alive!
During the past year I’ve been surprised again and again and how much can go wrong with a pregnancy and how it all of a sudden can go bad! Ofcourse I knew it had it’s risks, I watched E.R like everyone else in the 90’s but still didn’t know it was that much that could go wrong! Not to mention the actual “giving birth” part! I’m a bit scared to even imagine how they did it a thousand year’s ago.
But now that he’s actually out there’s still a few hundred or so defects that won’t show up, like PKU (“phenylketonuria”), I’d never even heard about that before!
And to top all of that – the infant is completely helpless and at mercy of others for a solid 2-3 years atleast! Check the animal kingdom, what other animal needs to protect and feed it’s offspring for that long!? How long does it take for a foal to walk? Hours? Takes a year for a human baby!
It’s really quite amazing how we’re not extinct!!
Now we’re into day 11 of Sam’s life and me and Helena have tried to be as good new parents as we can giving him whatever he wants. It really get’s to you when your son is screaming as loud as he can and you can’t get the milk to cool down fast enough for him. And I’m getting good at changing diapers!
Fortunately for us in Sweden we’re aloud 10 days off from work after having a baby but as of monday I’m a working man again. It’s bitter sweet, I liked being with my son all the time but it’s also liberating being at work when you only have to take care of work.
But before that we’re going to my parents this weekend to unwind a bit 🙂
In case you missed it, on Monday 22nd at 12:20 CET I became a father to Sam Mikael Ström. A healthy 4.3 kilo baby meassuring 55.6 cm in heigh and excellent condition 🙂
Me and Helena are staying some nights at a hotel at the hospital to cool down after this huge event.
Here are some images. Login is “friend” and password is the company I work for.
Here we go again! One more olympic games and once again the media is doing what they can to make us think sweden has a good chance at bringing home some medals. And so far nothing has worked out and they are saying “what tha hell happened!?”. I’m saying “sure they may look good in the pre-olympic events but this is the best of the best!”.
I’d like Sweden to win medals. It’d be a good thing. But I still hate it when the media pushes up the expectations and we fall flat and are left with feelings of disappointment. But not me. Cause I don’t do that anymore 🙂
Go sweden, go, bring home those medals! And if not… well that’s ok too 🙂
And no baby yet, sorry to disappoint!
Me and Helena have gone into “counting down the days”-mode, which right now is down to 2 weeks! It’s going slower and slower now when we know our son can come out at any moment! He’s really kicking her hard in there! We’re also running around trying to predict what we’ll need and buying everything but as always you won’t know what you’ll need until it’s too late!
Meantime we’re warching tons of movies. Weirdest good one yet was the timetraveller’s Wife. Weirdest bad one yet was New York I Love You, even though it had Natalie in it. 2012 was better than I thought, then again I am a big Cusack fan!
Ok maybe it wasn’t that long ago, just over 2 years ago, back in November 2007 one of my friends got married. And they had a professional photographer called Christel there (along with an “assistant”) that was running around all day taking photos. I saw a few of them on her website Estethia.com. I thought she did an awesome job of covering the wedding, took some really nice photos and also spent alot of time fixing them up in photoshop or whatever. But it wasn’t until recently that the bride sent over the photo of me from that wedding. And I gotta say… if you’re a photographer and can make me look this good, then you’re really good!!! Check out her website cause she does really good work! When I get married and if I can afford it I know who to call 🙂
And when I showed that to Helena she said “oh you looked so good back then. Pity I didn’t know you then”. What the hell is that suppose to mean!?!?! 🙂
