the trip has started

went to the embassy yesterday, they helped me with an emergency passport, as i applied for a normal passport at the same time. took no more than 20 minutes. the emergency passport is, apparently first of all to help people get out of a country and home. but most countries accept that you travel with it for a limited time. and i'm just going to travel within schengen, so it shouldn't be that bad. *crossing fingers*

stressed to the busstation, to take the first bus. as it came to my turn in the queue, they had 1 seat left for the bus leaving in that exact moment. so i took it, sat on the bus for 7 hours(!) and met up with ante vante at the station. we had dinner, wine, bear and started planning our trip. it's going to be awesome! we leave tomorrow at 8.55 am. the flight is about 1h30min, so we have all day tomorrow getting acquainted with the town, settle in and plan the trip more in detail.

now, i'm going into town, have a sandwich in the sun, lunch with ante vante, meet up with elli-man, see if i can get into my old working place and say hi ho's.

worst day ever

yesterday was a bad day. a very bad day. woke up, almost late. caught the bus in the last minute, very nice driver. got to work, felt like a looser. checked my phone, simcard not active. why? i asked. called my old operator, couldn't help. called my new operator. they blamed the old one. no phone, no life. tried to buy presents to my family for the dinner tonight (we're having dinner with giftwraps), but my idea was shattered when i went to the mall and the store i was going to wasn't there. so now i have to stress (literally!) before dinner to get the presents done. well, yeah, and there wasn't any other ideas in mind, for a small sum of money (no stores, they were remaking the f*cking mall! and while stressing around in the mall, finding a cool gift (or 4), i got soaking wet (and grumpy) in the sweater (now i understand that name!), which, in turn, i felt obliged to have since my t-shirt was to small. finally, i came to my friends' (glenn & dolly) place, emptyhanded (well, i bought a t-shirt for myself @ h&m's), took a shower and freshened up. drank a whole bottle of wine (almost) and was given food and good company.

on the way home, the bus was late, so i missed the train. i was about to take a cab, when the bus to my subway came. the subway was 20 minutes away and so i decided to take a cab instead. the cabdriver was really nice and lifted my spirits in the end of a bad day. sl on the other hand, they're paying for my cab.

locked out

my dear friend from skåne, is living stockholm and making this an even more tragic blur of a city, than it already is. he's changing scenery to malmö, since he's gotten a job in a musical there. so tonight was the last time i would see him for a long long while. and so we met, had a drink, dinner and afternoon beer.

he's leaving tomorrow for gothenburg, to empty the room he's renting, but whilst drinking his afternoon beer, he remembered that there wouldn't be any keys to the apartment in town. a slight fear dawned upon his face as he was trying to calculate chances and solutions of the given situation. me, myself, had a hard time at first to understand how one can totally forget such an important part as keys and how to obtain them when you get there.
little should i be talking. as i walked home, it dawned on me that my keys had not left the office. and i froze then, thinking what should do and so forth. in bewilderment, i called my friend from skåne to see if i could crash at his place (this was 11.20 pm, him living about half an hour from where i was), when he asked the question if someone else might have a spare set of keys. which there are, my parents. a bit nervous i called my parents, late monday night to ask them to drive by with the keys so i could get in. gratefully, dad was awake and could jump in the car and race over. now, i have a third pair in my bag, if i would forget the other ones again. and my thoughtless thought remain thoughtless.

bbq party @ nancy drew's remains

had been invited to a friend's girlfriend's parent's place for a bbq yesterday, in älvsjö, outside of stockholm. it's a new couple, whereas the boyfriend has become a friend of mine that i met through his former girlfriend. and if we are all on the same page, i might as well announce that, as a bbq fest is related to alcohol, i still managed to drink only one beer. i instead drank coke (and i still weigh 85 kg!).

there were many that came to the bbq. some that i'd met before, most not. it felt uncomfortable to be the only one not drinking at first, but as people got more drunk and i took that beer, it all got nice. we ate, talked and even danced (i think it qualifies as that)! a friend of mine came with a date later in the evening. and boy oh boy did the other guys try to get her. shockingly without shame as my friend sat next to her as they hit on her.
he was also kind enough to give me a lift home when everyone else continued in town.

funny enough though, about 5 minutes walk from the train station, you get to this wooden house with a big, nice garden, sloping trees and just all suburbia for you. it turns out that they sold it for over 5 million sek. and that to a company that wants to tear it down and make condows on the land instead. that's real estate prices for you in stockholm.

midsummer - the sequel

so, now it's monday and the weekend's gone! my friends came over, we didn't go out to bbq the food. It was hot and a litle bit humid, but the sun was behind big, grey clouds that looked like they wanted to pour some water on us. we started off by playing a game of uno. dolly and glenn were new to the game, so they were kind of frustrated when it didn't go so well. anders, a friend of mine, called and asked to come over. we ate, we talked, we did weird faces and eventually we went out (except dolly and glenn, who went home). anders ditched me and patrik, and i decided to go home.

the headache the next day was unbearable. but, then again, i had no one to blame but myself. what i hate most about being hung over is that i always wake up so damn early! i always wake up between 5-8, even though i can fall asleep as late 2. but i stayed in bed and slept on and off untill 2 pm before dragging my awful self to the shower. much refreshed after that, i went to my parents where mom was making her fabolous food and where my brother was watching some interesting chef that cursed alot on tv. dad wanted to clap my head, since i was hung over and thought that i would die out of taking in 2 panodil pills for my head ache. well, we came to the conclusion that it's a privilege to die around your loved ones and also in the comfort of my parents sofa. cause it's hell of a comfortable couch! i rested alot there and got better (note: less hung over). we played games and had a nice evening. i didn't want to go back to the mayhem my apartment had become from after the party (and i hate that about parties! you always clean it to tiptop shape, and then the next day, it's all one, bigger mess than before you cleaned!)so i spent the night at my hotel ma. didn't really come home until yesterday at around 5 pm. met robert and his girlfriend kristin first. we went in to town and had ourselves some coffee and very expensive sodas and juice. of course, i cleaned the apartment somewhat when i came home, so it could look respectable.

midsummer

some friends will come in a couple of hours. we're talking about barbecuing if the weather isn't to bad (apparently it's suppose to rain). but first i have to clean up and make it nice at home, in case the weathermen might be right. but then i just have this tiny problem. for some reason, i'm not allowed to use the toilet. i don't know why, nor how long. just that when i came home the other day, the guys that did the renovation (in december!) had taped the toilet. so, i'm kinda hoping that it won't rain, so i won't have to direct my guests to the bathroom in the kindergarden in the house (you still have to go down to the basement, then out and in). weird, though, since i've been able to use the bathroom since january.

martina graduating for real!

she's not the first of my friends that's finished university, but she's the one that makes me most proud of having done it.

martina has now finished 5½ years of studying social science and psychology to become a teacher. she did it without any studentloans, with a job on the side and for the past 10 months moving and redecorating a whole apartment (and i'm telling you, she didn't just change the drapes. it was the whole shabang)! still, never did she miss, nor fail any test and most of them did she not just get grades, but good, higher, highest grades.

on top of that, has she also gotten her a job! as a teacher, mind you, not that many (except in math and natural science) get those jobs in the beginning. she did though have to exchange psychology for computer, but seriously, that class is so simple, a brain dead 2-year old could hold it. it's about word and excel. not so tuff.

anyway, she invited close friends and family over last saturday to celebrate. that included me and it was nice to meet up with her and people i hadn't met for a while. and... i think i've talked martina's mother on going on a cruise with me. hmmm...
martina had, for this day, made pies and cake covered in whipped cream and strawberries. i can only tell you how delisch everything was (which reminds me; martina, i want those recepies!) and i was almost bloated when i went home.


congratulations martina on you finishing school! not alot of people would have been able to do it the way you did. but you did it, not just mediocre, but brilliantly. many best of wishes to the girl that's become a woman! ;) i'm proud!

ahh, this weekend has been sooo good. or, maybe last week was just good. yeaterday, i, with the company of fine people such as glenn, dolly, s:t patrick and davidoff. we were suppose to have brunch, but apparently the place had stopped serving brunch two weeks ago. still, we sat outside on mosebacke and had lunch instead. and ah, the view. stockholm is a fantastic and beautiful city, especially in the sun at that height. after that, glenn and dolly had to go and get themselves a new computer, since the last one was stolen (they'd had it for 3 months!) and we, the three stooges walked around town, just taking in the fantastic weather and the fantastic day as this sunday happened to be. we had icecream and sat in berzeli parc. robbs came by later during the day.
then, the hangover and wearyness from little sleep the night before, told me to go home and rest. i fell asleep at around 19 and woke this morning at 6. a friend of mine called while i was sleeping. i took the call, still sleeping, then slowly waking up to understand that she did not want to know where the phonelines were dug... hehe... yeah... never call sleeping people, they (we?) tend to get angry. ;)

tomorrow, it's a night on the town with my parents, haha. some icelandic artists will be giving a concert, and i have two tickets. no one (wonder why) has so far said yes.

sponsored by manpower

last wednesday, our department at manpower invited us for dinner and a boatride along the archipelago in stockholm. we got to chose between schrimps or tacos and along with beer or wine. there was live music on the boat and... well, you can see for yourself. :)

getting it out of your system

you know those times when you get a totally absurd thought in your mind, and no matter what you do, you can't get it out?

well, yesterday when i came home, i was pondering about in the fridge, trying to elaborate my evening feast. in my fridge, i found black pudding, just lying in the shades, on the top shelf. as i took it out of the fridge, my starving stomach roared. and then i found myself staring at it. the black pudding. to eat or not to eat, was the question at hand. or so one, might think. my question was more leaning towards if the pig whose blood i was about to digest had aids. and with that question, my mind froze.

now, how in jesus name am i going to eat black pudding, now that i, somehow, came to the conclusion had aids? i tried talking myself into that it just neede to be heated to 76°C. but it didn't work. and of course, i tried to tell myself, that i was just going mental on the poor pudding, but that, of course, definitely didn't help.
so i called a friend. tried to make him shake it off me. it didn't work. he almost convinced me to become a vegetarian, just to make sure that i didn't eat anything bloody.
what did help though was just to chat with him, letting it out so i could focus on something else. or getting it out of my system.

a dear, dear friend of mine is at the mental hospital and has been there for about a week. she has, from what i know, mentally collapsed, but is recovering and getting things that's been in her, out of her system, which is good. of course.
it makes me really ambivalent. i'm trying to stay strong, but at some points i burst. of course.

so when it comes to work, i've been a bit distracted, to say the least. and ambivalent to whether i should tell anyone at work about it. and with anyone, i'm mainly referring to my teamleader. i decided today that i was going to tell her. not an easy choice, i find, but i need to get it out of my system. expecially after today.
you see, i have a colleague who remarked on my perfomance at work today. she didn't think that i was doing good enough. and since, i have only felt an anger that's been growing. at my work, se have goals. of course. and our tl (teamleader) keeps statistics, which is open to everyone, since we all need to put in our data, our work in there. in my book, one can look, but not judge. and i work in the way that if i would use the statistics at hand, i would use them to see who is above me, so that i can work towards reaching their goals. and by that become better. but my colleague looked at the data from today that i had fed and thought that i should know that i hadn't done that many errands. which is like saying that i'm not doing my job. and that is the worst way to use statistics, between co-workers. i got so mad, that i almost cried. maybe i'm overreacting, but i feel violated. why comment such a thing? why make such a remark? why??! i don't understand it. it is not in her place to make remarks on the efforts i make at work. it is not in her place to control other co-workers results and base judgements according to them. she doesn't have a big enough picture to take a discussion on her co-workers efforts. is she calling me lazy? have bad working morale? what does she mean with making such a comment??! i got so mad about this, that i felt i couldn't even take my coffee break at the same time as the others, because i didn't want to sit and sip hot beverages close to her and her remarks.
so tomorrow. i'm getting it out of my system. which means war.

yesterday's nice meal

after having a slow day at work, i went home half an hour earlier. and dreamt of a nice meal. a nice dinner. but what was to become friday's nice meal? i gotta say, i was kinda surprised myself! but the nice meal was a nice meal. =)

and i want to share it with you. it's not that hard to make:

3-4 tomatoes
½ leek
3 carrots
½ cauliflower
spinnage leafs
3 hoki fillets
sour cream with french herbs

i started by putting the oven on 200°C. then i sliced the tomatoes and chopped the rest of the vegetables in semi-small pieces. i made a bed of the sliced tomatoes, spread the leek and the carrots. on top of that, i put the fillets and spread the spinnage on the fish. topped it of by pouring/putting/smearing the sour cream so it covered the fish and adding the cauliflower on the sides. in the oven for around 40 minutes (or until the fish was done, actually). i served it with rice, which was delicious.

easy, breezy and most of all... yummie!

and here's a tip of what to listen to while cooking: