OMG

I fell in through the door after more than nine hours of hard labor today. This is the catalog season and Ellos hit us hard today with huge piles of 1.1 kg heavy catalogs. It was rough, not only due to all the heavy lifts and worn down fingers, but also mentally. After falling on the hall rug I rolled into the kitchen and curled up into a small ball. In this position I stayed almost thirty minutes before I was able to shed my clothes and take a long hot shower. Naked and clean I tumbled into bed and slept like a baby for a couple of hours. It was truly wonderful. Now there is rest. No work. But it is still there, in my mind, the heavy piles that waits in the darkness, waits to be delivered on Friday. And I also know that on top of that, another big load is on its way in. It is tough. The days off are not as sweet as they ought to be.

Temporary loss

I can not really explain it, but I lost my eye a while back. My photographic eye that is. I read in a book a couple of years back that a good photographer sees images everywhere, and even if that has never been true for me I have often been close. I have been able to push myself, to force my mind into the camera so that I see the world around me as possible shots. Sometimes I also think up projects that I can ponder for weeks before I try to realize them. But for some time now it has been hard. In part I think it is due to that I have become to critical of my own work. I can not produce images good enough for my own critical mind, and because of this it is not all that fun to pick up the camera. I hope that this is a temporary thing, that my standards change so that I can at least appreciate some of the work I produce.

No Cash

On the bus from the country side we were told that they accepted no cash. And since we did not have enough money on the card we were a bit stumped. 'After new year we will not accept any cash on the bus at all' he told us. But you don't accept cash now either I thought. In the end, we got a very cheap ride down to Gothenburg.

Then I was surprised. I was caught off guard you might say. The sun was shining with full force and I was not accustomed to that. Hence I looked into this strange bright light for far to long which of course led to partial loss of my vision for more than two hours. Luckily the vision was restored, unluckily it was replaced by a strong head ache.

It starts good

This trip starts on a good note. Going to my parents for the holiday and was rather satisfied with the rail road ticket, few and short exchanges, and it was rather cheap as well. But of course the first train is late, which means that the short exchange time in Arboga ain't enough and the entire trip changes. Now we are back home to wait for another train that will run on time (knock on wood). Well, at least this means that I can bring my headphones that I forgot... Travel is fun.

Catastrophic breakdown

One of the key components in my water squirt bottle, that I use to mist up my orchids, suffered an unexplainable catastrophic breakdown the other day. The spring that returns the pumping mechanism to the starting state broke. And not just once but in two places simultaneously.

How is that possible? The spring was never under any extreme conditions, there was no corrosion attack, it just gave up. The only theory I have right now is that the spring was made to do this - It is made to break after X number of squirts so that they can sell another bottle. The bottle has a built in maximal lifetime. I do give them credits for their sails tactics, but my orchids are not very impressed.

Bad ### day

You all know of the concept 'bad hair day' right? I hardly have them anymore, I do have the occasional bad beard day, but mostly my facial hairs behave. I did however have a different kind of bad day today. A bad underwear day. No matter what I did they returned to the most uncomfortable position within a matter of seconds. It is a bit strange, I mean, there was nothing odd with the underwear as such, they were of a kind that I clearly rank as A (if I would have been down to a C ranking pair I would not have been surprised), but today they just did not work.

Smoke or air-refresher smell

If I would have to choose between a stairway that smells of cigarettes or one that smells heavily of that bathroom air-refresher thing I really know which I would take. I have one of the latter on my Torshälla round and I hate it. (They have lots of signs forbidding smoking, hence the choice between cigarette smoke and the other thing). I get nauseous after one breath in there. Maybe the smell is OK in a toilet, maybe, but in a stairway where I have to go to perform my job it is really not. I am contemplating about leaving a note saying that if they want their mail they have to loose the refreshers.

Sick of being sick

After a couple of days with a cold when every waken hour was spent in front of the [insert downputting synonym for TV here], it was a nice change yesterday when we got the energy to do something else. So after the slalom/x-country/biathlon/x-country sprint was over we went out to buy some stuff to make Christmas candy.
Now we have Mozart kugeln and chocolate toffee that will last us a lifetime (or wait, no, My candystrike is over (I managed to keep my promise to myself not to eat any candy for two entire weeks (except for a snickers on one of my tough rounds, but I consider that one an energy bar)) so maybe it will last until Christmas is upon us), and tonight we will make Messmörskola and knäck. This year is the first time since I do not know when that I actually feel Christmasy!

Soup #32

It is back, the part of this blog that you have all been waiting for, the Soups!!! Found a pumpkin in the store, and thought 'why not', so today we did a Pumpkin and apple soup. Our expectations were not all that high, but it turned out that we were wrong. It was a really nice winter soup, one that will be done again.

Christmas presents

I know what I want for Christmas!!!
I was in the sofa, watching 'the big bang' and eating crackers with butter and cheese, and then it came to me. So here it is. Stilton. I want a huge Stilton. A big piece of Parmigiano Reggiano would be nice to.
Another thing I want is the game Fallout 3 (for PC).

This in addition to my original wish list.

Embarrassing

It is rather embarrassing to say it, but I feel that I have to. The most pathetic thing in existence is a man with a cold. Or if anyone takes offense at my dragging a comb over all men I am happy to rephrase that, 'the most pathetic thing in existence is me with a cold'.

tired

tired
oh so tired

Nice neighbor

Neighbors can be very helpful and caring at times, like this one who does not want anyone to get hurt:


(approx: Please do not step out on the balconies this weekend. They hang in the air right now and it is unclear how well they are anchored to the wall. Want to avoid accidents if possible. Have a nice weekend!)

I also tried to be a good neighbor. Knowing just how fucking useless UPS are, I accepted when they asked me to receive a package for the guy next door (he was not home, few people are in the middle of the afternoon) this Monday. I thought I was doing him a favor. Now the problem is that the guy moved and probably never got the note the ups schmucks left in his mailbox, and hence he has no idea that I have his package. Hopefully it is not lifesaving meds...

Followup

Yea, regarding the Non YKK zipper procedure. I hope you understand that the jury under no circumstances would approve the use of such a thing. Never ever. (Just as a sidenote, the zipper in my jacket fell totally apart today, when I was driving my moped, in the rain)

He did not want me to go

Met a cat today, one that I see from time to time, and I sat down to pet it a bit. Then he did everything in his power to stop me from leaving. Which basically means that he zigzagged in front of me as I tried to walk down the stairs and heroically/stupidly tried put his body between me and the ground I was trying to walk on. I was slowed down, but a mailman is not stopped that easily.

Speaking of words with z in them. If a designer of uniforms for some strange reason decides to put a Non YKK zipper in the clothes, he or she should be forced to motivate this choice in a three page paper that has to be scrutinized by a hard, ten men jury. This in addition to the previously mentioned demand that the designer has to use the clothes that he designs...

I like

I am weak. And probably rather stupid. I know the value of money, and I try to spend the hard earned few kr as wisely as I can. I can avoid buying a jar of jam cause it costs 30kr, but put me in front of the candy shelf and all my built in blocks hide away. To buy sweets for 50kr, sweets that I will devour in a day or so, is no problem. The jam would be great and would last a long time, but still I hesitate... Why is it like this?

I was fooled

I don't know why, but for some strange reason I actually thought that this year the winter would stay once it had arrived. But, no. The snow lasted only a week and now the grass is once again brown and gloomy, the roads are now ice and slush free but covered in slippery gravel and the smiles that only a winter landscape can put on peoples faces are gone. But I'm optimistic, the snow will come back, and when it does it will last until late in March.

Getting home early

Since the work load is low this week I have been coming home early, soon after lunch, every day. This means that I have had the great opportunity to catch Highlander on channel six. I gather I liked it when it originally aired cause of the martial arts scenes, I mean, who does not enjoy a good sword fight? I also gather my mom liked it cause of the sexy mr MacLeod. Unfortunately the series has not aged with style. A series that I would like to see instead is KungFu starring mr Chinaman himself, David Carradine. It was supposed to be Bruce Lee, but they gave the role to David for some odd reason. (I actually downloaded a couple of episodes of the show some time ago and tried to watch, but it was quite hard, the tempo is so low that you fall asleep even if you are well rested. But I would still like to see it on air.)

Baby steps

I have, since I left Uppsala, thought almost nothing about science. One day a month or so ago I skimmed through a couple of papers, that is the entire extent of it. Now I have, just for the fun of it, picked down a book from the shelf. And I feel a bit inspired. Not over the top inspired, but just interested. A little eager to learn. Now, why in hell did it have to be Goldstein that I picked down? Could it not have been something a little less fucking difficult? I'm just asking.

Nine

A stairway that you do not have to go into since you don't have any mail there (= en gratisport) is what we look forward to in this job. When you deliver to villas it is not uncommon that you just drive past mailboxes, so an entire road that you can skip (= en gratisväg) is the best thing that can happen. Today there was no such luxury. Nine, a total of nine, mailboxes was all I could skip altogether. It was a hard day at the office, that's all that I can say. The cm of snow that came the last 20 minutes did brighten up the place though, and it was rather fun to skid around with the moped in!

Designers

My firm belief is that designers, who design clothes that are part of a uniform, should be forced to use the clothes that they have designed while doing the job that they going to be used for. Due to the wonderful weather today I used our new (we have changed color and are now green) raincoat. And I used the zipper quite a lot since it is nice to have it closed while outdoors and opened while indoors. This zipper is one of the worst I have ever experienced, or rather, the zipper in combination with the cloth that gets stuck in the zipper is one of the worst I have ever experienced. I think that I have to take out the sewing machine tonight and get a little creative.

Memory

You would think that after my double hard drive crash, where both my computers lost their primary drives, I would do backups all the time in order not to lose any files again. But my memory is short, very very short. Anyhow, this is a shout-out to all of you guys. BACKUP your important files TODAY!!!

my mama

I love it that people still find there way here after searching for 'please don't help my mama bomb a osama obama llama diorama'. It even beats 'alexander skarsgaard nude'.

Ok, that was all I could come up with today. Or wait, I've got something else! I really love that I can feel safe when I deliver mail to Torshälla (see previous posts). I saw at least eight pit-bulls today. One came out when I opened a door, but I did not have to be scared the owner said. 'It is ok, it is a murder-dog, but he wont bite you'. After those words I felt much safer.

Rested

Even if the last dream I had this morning was about me returning to fotomol to finish up my licentiate, and all the anxiety that that incorporates, I was well rested after the weekend. My legs were quick and responsive, my brain reasonably fast and my temper can be classified as calm. Over all a pretty good Monday, except for the dream that is. There are a lot of feelings that is buried there, feelings that I rather leave buried, and of course my brain thinks it is funny to throw them at me in a dream... When I am awake I can do something, but in my sleep I am defenseless.

Talking about dreams, I do wonder what the dream when I clean out my parents old refrigerator (and find a year old birthday cake) means.

Smile

Made a little excursion to the great city yesterday. The first stop was at Scandinavian Photo where a new lens was purchased and two cups of quite good coffee was gulped down. Left the store more speeded than Bevis or Butthead ever was. Then we walked a couple of blocks over to Govindas restaurant. If there is one kind of food that we really miss here in this sorry excuse of a town it is the Indian cusine so we always try to get it whenever we can.
Later we tried to catch a movie, we had our eyes on 'burn after reading', but everyone else tried the same thing and was apparently better at it than us. There was some tickets left for the singalong viewing of 'Mamma mia', but we descided to take the next train back home instead...

Diskvårdstimme

K tycker inte att jag var så jätterolig i morse när jag undrade om man inte kunde ha en diskvårdstimme istället för en friskvårdstimme. Jag skrattar så jag gråter!

Jorå

Jorå, så att, det är ju bra med lite spänning på jobbet. Porten i fråga ingår i min nya runda i Torshälla. Trevligt.

I can't speak

I am not, nor have I ever been, a big speaker. Probably it's cause I don't have all that much to say. But lately I can not even make myself understood when talking to a group of people. At work today I tried to explain why we do a specific thing the way we do, simply to avoid mistakes. Since people didn't know this they did not do the specific thing correctly and hence mistakes were made. It was a simple fucking thing to explain, but all the words came out jumbled and incomprehensible. Not a great feeling.

Almost

I am close, so close, to buying a new lens, a sigma 50mm 1,4 ex... which I finally settled on. Do I Need it? -no. Do I want it? -yes. Can I afford it? -Hmm, well I do have enough money if that was the question. In fact, I was just about to buy it when I realized that they did not have any filters in stock, and hence the order would be delayed until they received them.. So, I got stuck and now I don't know what to do. Either I wait, or I buy it at another store where the the filter is slightly more expensive, or pay for two separate packages. To many options -> hence I am stuck.

So, when I have bought the lens, what is left on my list? (=what I want for christmas!!!)
-1 tripod. Probably a Manfrotto 055xprob.
-1 geared head for said tripod. Manfrotto junior geared head 410.
-1 Canon 5D mark II.
-Subscriptions to magazines, eg. Åka skidor, Foto, Ute magasinet, (I am to cheap to get them for myself).
-1 Allpaid skitrip to Canada.

Expensive taste? Me? nooo.

Isn't it funny

Isn't it funny how some days even a small crappy thing can get blown up beyond all proportion and take over your entire being. Or wait, no, it ain't that funny. It kind of sucks.

And now for something completely different. Made a little trip over to Arboga yesterday and here are some nice photos: Hmm, yea, here they would be If I had remembered to put in the memory card in the camera. Or if I had learned from precious mistakes and put the extra 1Gb card into the camera bag. But I am a really slow learner. You are not missing out on much. Maybe a collage of all the pizza/kebab places there, and perhaps a couple of pictures of an old church or two. They did have a pretty good thai place, so my recomendation is that, if you suddenly find yourself lost in Arboga, you take a walk around the old city center and then have some thai before you take the first train away from there.

af

Kanske är det för att jag är trött, men jag tycker att detta är otroligt roligt (taget från en artikel i aftonbladet):
"I september i år föddes 26 bebisar av samhällets invånare, i september 2007 föddes 18. En ökning motsvarande 44 procent enligt CNN."

html

I have thought about creating my own photo page for a long time now. There are plenty of sites out there where you can share your photos, and I am a member of several of them. Most notably Usefilm.com and picassa. The first one is really good and the second one I kind of hate. Anyhow, there are plenty of reasons why I want my own page, a page I can design exactly to my liking. There have been many hangups, but mostly I have not had the energy for it.

Then came today. It was the first day that I delivered mail in Torshälla, and I had a total of 64 letters/magazines to deliver. Hence my day was not that tough. Hence I had some energy over when I came home. (sidenote: the commersials for Bring are really good, all but the one for Bring:citymail which is rather boring)

So, here it is. There are no new photos yet, but give me some time and they will come.

Deductive reasoning

Two nights ago I used my incredible capability of deductive reasoning to find out where I had put my camera remote (that I had lost). I figured it out just before falling asleep and decided to look for it the next day. Happy with the probable find I closed my eyes and drifted away. The next day I had forgotten all about the incredible work that my brain had performed. But today it came back to me, and sure enough, it was where I had deduced it would be: in the top pocket of my hiking backpack.

The danger of beeing a postman

In a previous post I mentioned the stuff people hang on their doors, but I did not mention the dangers that are connected to said stuff. Today I experienced one of them when I completely innocently tried to shove a couple of letters down a box. I hit my head on a nail and blood came gushing out. I was lucky that the scar will be hidden beneath my full head of hair and not completely visible in my forehead.

Darn it

I have, or rather had, a remote for my camera. It is not something that I use on a regular basis, neither is it a very expensive gadget, but it is on occasion very nice to have. And now I can not find it. Even after I cleaned my desk that was in dire need of a good cleaning, searched all surfaces in the apartment where it has been known to hang around, looked through the camera bag three times and felt through all possible pockets I still do not know where it is. These type of losses are so fucking annoying.

Pet peeve

One of my biggest pet peeves: When they pan over a photograph on TV. 'Wow! Isn't it fantastic how we can use all this new technology so that this still image moves!!!' No. It is not fantastic. It is stupid.

Autumn

Sunday picnic at Sundbyholm. Sigurdsristningen = the coolest rune carving I have ever seen.

Last day

Today was the last day that I delivered mail on one of my rounds. We will start to deliver to Torshälla in a week or so, and I will have a route there. It was my heaviest day that I lost and for that I feel sad. The thing is however, that now I have all this information in my head, I almost know where all the people live, I know all the codes, I know the shortcuts. I have all this (now) useless information in my head and don't know what do do with it, or how to get rid of it for that matter.

A rather amusing thing happened today. I was sitting on my bike waiting for my successor whom I am trying to relay all the mentioned information to when a car stops a little behind me. It starts to back up, rather fast, and I notice that it is a Posten car. It reverses for more than a hundred meters at quite high speed, and a lorry has to stop so that they do not collide. Then it turns in at a house and almost hits another car in the process. When the lorry finally can drive on I see that it comes from Svensk Direktreklam. The density of mailmen was high at Lohegatan today.

Out of my hands

The decision was taken out of my hands by a lucky seller. 'Do you have tele2 as your service provider?' he said. And since I was lost in the swamp, I grabbed on to his rescue line and held on. A little while later I was signed up and now I am waiting for my new phone. I also got my PUK code, so now my current phone ain't locked anymore. I do not care if I could have gotten a better deal somewhere else. I do not care that I broke my own rule of avoiding annoying sellers on the street. All I care about is that the decision was taken out my hands.

The search

The search for a new phone has slowed down to a crawl. It seems that I have to high demands, I just can not find a phone that I want and can afford. So now I am well into the tenth day without a phone (need the puk code to get it working again). It was a bit interesting to find out that the alarm still worked when the phone is locked, hence I now have a alarm ummm something. It is not a clock since I can't use it to tell time. And I can not change the time for the alarm. It is just an alarm. Luckilly it is set at 6:15 which is the time that I try for the first time to get up in the morning. And it only goes of on weekdays, that is good to.

I am in the swamp

I am back in the swamp again. I need a new phone. The one I inherited from my sister shuts of when I have it in my pocket. This led to the resent state of the phone, it is locked and I need the PUK code (which I of course can't find). So, I am down in, and lost in, the phone buying swamp. I want an Iphone but it is just to expensive. Leaving the thoughts of an Iphone behind, this is what I want:

• Small
• Robust
• Nice to the touch
• mp3 player (3mm jack)
• Great interface
• Possibility to read my gmail mail
  

Have been thinking of a Nokia 5310, is there anyone out there who has that model? Or is there anyone out there who has a phone that fits to the list?

Next blog

Have spent a good part of both today and yesterday pressing the 'next blog' link here on blogspot. I don't really know why, but a good part of the blogs are in Spanish. I do not speak any Spanish. Another good part of the blogs are about kids. It seems that new parents acquire a need of sharing thousands of photos of the newborn. A lot of the blogs from Asia contains lots and lots of photos of smiling Asian girls out on town. This apparently needs to be documented and shared with the world. Creative people are, not very surprisingly, overrepresented in the blog community. (oh, by the way, what the hell is going on here??? I just get an icky feeling... )
Anyway... The lesson learned from these days is that it takes a lot of clicking to find an interesting blog. This one was nice, two people in love leaving the US to go and live in Calgary. Here is some nice photos from Japan, would have liked to be the one to take them. That's about it, two days of clicking boils down to a couple of new bookmarks in the blog folder.

A beautiful day

It was cold. I was tired. There was a lot of mail. The tension in the office was palpable. The roads was wet and slippery. The moped (almost) ran out of gas. But my oh my was it a beautiful day!!! Clear blue sky with a wonderful sun.

Wooden screws

Don't know why, but for some reason people in this town use long wooden screws to fix their broken mailboxes. Not to screw it to a post/wall or anything like that. No, they use them to fasten the metal lid to the rest of the box, as a hinge. For me, that is just so strangely wrong.

Ok, that was probably not one of my top blog posts, but I have been thinking about this for so long, thinking that I must share this with all of you, that I just had to get it of my mind. Now it is gone and I will never blog about it again. I promise.

Upptäckt

Vi upptäckte just att det finns en plats i Stockholm som heter Pungpinan. Stor humor.

Dagens I-lands problem

Could not fit the food in the freezer if we did not take out the ice cream first.

It's not so bad

The fact that I don't have any money tied up in any stocks or mutual fund's right now ain't so bad. Maybe I should invest the few thousands that I have saved up since I got myself a job, and got on the green side again, into some glass-ware, before the banks go bankrupt and my hard earned cash disappears. I am choosing between a Sigma and a Canon. Bought in Sweden they cost about the same, which means that the Sigma gives quite good value for the money. But it is big and heavy... I think I will have to go to Stockholm and try them out and then go on the feeling.

Soup #31

Mmmmmmm
Jams soup. The main ingredient is, hmm, Jams. And then there are onion, potatoes, celery, carrots, white vine, chicken broth, salt, white pepper and nutmeg. Served with crunchy bacon on top. And it was very good, really good.

Oh!

After the race I actually got my lazy ass out of the couch and took a walk. (Not straight after, first I made some coffee...). I brought my camera and tried to find some inspiration. It was hard to come by, but a couple of objects did capture my interest, like this detail from some old stairs:
During my walk I also managed to find a Jams, so today there will be soup.

No soup for mattias

Decided to make a Jams soup, but when I got to the store they did not have any Jams. Pork chops, oven fried potatoes and rose pepper cream sauce is what I made instead. Will try to make the soup tomorrow.

Soup?

Since I am alone this weekend, maybe I should make a couple of non-vegetarian soups?? I do feel that the project needs to be awakened again and this is a golden opportunity (there are not lot of veggie soups left...). A report will follow.

I thought

that this week would be a nice and slow one. I was wrong.

I rolled out of bed this morning. Didn't open my eyes until an hour later (when I had been at work for thirty minutes). When I stumbled in at the office I noticed that I fell on the hard concrete floor and not on any letters. That is a bad sign. If the mail has not arrived when we are supposed to start it usually means that when it finally arrives it is going to be a lot. And it was. And when it is plenty one day it will be plenty the next day, and the day after that. So even if the week started out great, it will not end the same way.

Regarding the drool that I produced a couple of days ago.. No, I am not buying that camera. Or no, wait, I am going to buy that camera, but not yet. First I have to change my career to one that is a bit more profitable.

Names

On a regular day I read thousands of names. Most of them leave me unaffected, but a couple of them triggers some kind of response in me. There are the funny/strange once, like 'Bös' or 'Mäx' that often makes me ask my collegues how anyone can be called 'Bös' or 'Mäx'. Then there are regular names that I for some reason connect to e.g. a movie. Every time I walk by 'Dean Andersson`s' door I always think of (and say it out loud in my head (i.e. I don't say it out loud, I just imagine myself saying it out loud)) when the agent in Matrix says 'Mr Andersson'.

Dräggel

Ursäkta om jag drägglar lite.

ÖÖÖhhh, no

So, no, Apple&UPS did not manage to change the address where they would deliver the drive. Luckily though I was home when they came here for the third and final try and hence I am now in the possession of a new drive. Woohoo.

Exciting

Exciting day. Will my new drive arrive at K's work where I told Apple to tell UPS to deliver it? And will people find me even if they can not go via the referring link on my no longer existing www.anst.uu.se page?
But the day has not only been exciting, it has also been quite relaxing. Compared to last week we had almost no mail to deliver today. Hence I am home at this early hour and can spend the rest of the day slumped over in a couch or here in front of the computer. Maybe with Metallica on rather high volume on the stereo. Yea, I think I will try that (I will start with the sofa alternative and see how I like it).

That was that

Bye, and thanks for all the fish.

No, I am not going to stop blogging. It is just that Uppsala now has deleted me from their server. The old webpage is gone, I can no longer use the VPN to retrieve articles etc., and my old fotomol mailadress is no more. I hope that all the guy's who came here using the link from my old blog (still about 40% of all visits) will find their way here some other way. It is a bit sucky that this blog is not on top if you search for my name the way the old one was in the days, but what are you going to do? You could search for 'please don't help my mama bomb a osama obama llama diorama' I do get pretty high up there. Unfortunately the image is no longer awailable, but still, you will find my blog.

Oh man

Apple, in their infinite wisdom, decided to send me the replacement drive with UPS. That would have been nice, IF I did not have a job and hence would be home all day. UPS was here at noon today and left me a note saying that 'hm, you were not here. We will come again tomorrow at the same time.' A call to them proved to be pointless. They could not come later than five. They could not say when they would arrive, just that it would be some time between 9 and 17. They could not deliver to another address, if I wanted that I would have to talk to Apple and have them change the delivery address. (I did call apple, and unfortunately the guys that take care of that stuff had quit for the day. I would have to call back tomorrow (why he could not write down the alternate address and send the guys an email I don't know)). I could travel to Västerås and pick up the package there if I wanted. Thats easy when I don't have a car. And am hard at work when they are opened.
I am amazed over the fantastic delivery service that they provide. Amazed. I will use UPS for all my future package deliveries.

Setback

Two recent hard drive crashes has set me back a bit. First the primary drive in my stationary computer crashed. And yesterday the one in the laptop died. I have been able to salvage quite a bit of files from the first one, but I seem to have lost quite a bit of email's, eighteen months worth to be exact. I can not really say why, but I kind of like to save old emails. I am a gatherer, I gather things, that is my main reason I suppose.
Unfortunately though, the laptop drive is gone for good (maybe I could pay someone to try and rescue that which is rescuable, but I don't think I will put my money there).

I did find a backup of the Thesis that I had managed to rescue from the first broken drive, so that's good.

Ah well, at least apple was kind enough to send me a replacement drive even if the warranty expired a week ago.

Ok, now it is time to go to bed. We have a high workload this week and I am quite exhausted.

Nope

No. It didn't work.

Still pissed off

I am so fucking pissed off that my computer fried that I don't know what to do. I had a lot of work on there that I had backed up on my computer at Ångström, but I do not know what has happened to that computer. I don't know if it still exists. I think that I might be lacking a 95% completed licentiate thesis. That sucks so fucking bad.

A fuck this. I will go and train instead. Maybe the pain from my ankle that I hurt badly when I missteped running down a flight of stairs today will take my mind of the computer shit. Maybe.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck

What the hell! The harddrive in my macbook just fried. It is lost. Totally.
FUCK!
I hate computers.
I fucking hate computers.

I think

I think a Jedi would make an excellent mail-man. He would not bother with codes for the doors, a little bit of the force and they would open. He would have no problems opening malfunctioning mail boxes, a bit of the force, or if that does not work a swift jab with the lightsaber simplifies things. I also think that a small hovercraft would be useful when moving hundreds of kilos of mail around...

I am not cool

I am not now, nor have I ever been, cool. But yesterday I watched Bullitt and I just know that if I had these glasses
I would feel, and in fact be, so darn cool!

Today I met my clone

After the karate session today I met my clone. Did not know that they had perfected human cloning yet, but obviously they have. (Or perhaps it was my identical twin, I am not sure)

Started talking to a guy that was about my age. He had a red beard. He was almost built as me. He had lived in Gävle, Uppsala and recently he moved to Eskilstuna. He liked the outdoors. He had trained Karate (ok, kyokushin but anyway...) and was now looking for a new club in this town. He was a nice guy. He had a blue Tierra goretex jacket, my blue goretex jacket is a North Face.

It might be a practical joke. It would not be the first time I am on the receiving end of a joke, but this is to extreme is it not?

För glada tjejer

Ibland så känns jobbet helt ok. Men när man tvingas dela ut skitreklam som enligt egen utsago riktar sig till 'tjejer som tycker om att ha roligt och fnissa' så funderar man ju vad i helvete man håller på med. Dessutom så har just den reklamen ett helt jävla vacko format som fuckar till sorteringen och komplicerar delningen. Att det sen är gråmulet/regn och ganska så kallt ute gör ju inte det hela roligare.

Rest

Aaahh. A weekend of rest and relaxation. Or is it? A visit from K's parents probably means that the rest will be cut short, we will not be able to sleep until noon as usual. And I do not know if it will be possible to relax as much as we are used to. The days are filled with activities, a visit to Parken Zoo is the first thing we do tomorrow morning. I wonder if the burger joint there will surpass the wook and thai place that I really recommended in a previous post.

Hike

Bastards. They are bastards. The stupidest thing I've done in a long time was to say 'No, it is to cold now, we do not need to bring mosquito repellent!' Those words I did not have to eat up, instead I got eaten up cause of those words.
On Saturday we had lunch at Harpsund. (Reinfeld's apples were quite tasty). Finding out which of the four 'ekor' that was the famous 'eka' was a bit tricky. I only took one photo of the one it turned out to be, and that did not come out so good. But we did see it.
I do not know why I keep shooting macros without a tripod, but I do. I am a slow learner I suppose. But sometimes it works out ok.
Morning at the stream:
34 kilometers in one and a half day. Great weather, a bit cold during the night but just right during the day. A lot of mushrooms, but the Cantharellus really glowed with their absence. Lesson learned: Never leave the safety of the house without at least three different types of mosquito repellent.

On the route

Two deer spotted on the mail route today. A mother with its calf was standing in a wheat field looking at me when I came driving past on my moped. I also said hi to a very nice dog, the dog however was not standing in a wheat field.

Going on a trek

We are going to walk from Flen to Svalboviken this weekend. If we are not heard of some time next week, please send out a rescue squad.

Grease

When you can read the newspaper through the pizza carton you know that the pizza was a greasy one.

250 orchids

There was a documentary on the tv of a man with about two hundred and fifty orchids at home. It was not me. I bought two new ones this Sunday, bringing my orchid count up to a measly eight. It would be fun to learn more, to get the ones I have to flourish and to get some more 'difficult' plants to take care of. But I do not want to become that guy, the guy whos whole life revolves around his plants.

Speaking of flowers. We took the train to Stockholm on Saturday to get some Indian food. After a visit to 'Japanska torget' where I bought some bowls and Odon noodles we had some great food at Garamasala close to the library in said town. It was a long time since I was that stuffed. But that is not point. The point is that about ten percent of the people walking by as we were eating was carrying bouquets of long flowers. Maybe there was a sale somewhere close, I don't know, but it just felt strange. Maybe someone was playing a strange and subtle prank on me.

Once again speaking of flowers, it took the entire summer and a couple of weeks into the fall, but finally someone has been messing with my flowers on the French balcony. They have been left alone, to my huge astonishment, but now one of the cacti is missing. I do hope that the culprit got stung in the process of stealing it. I also hope that he finds the note I put up (begging for the safe return of the cactus) funny and then plays along and returns it. It is also very possible that he goes the other way and takes another flower. That would also be funny. To return the cactus and take another flower would probably be the most humourous alternative.

Soups

Soups are being made. Today we did a mushroom soup with green curry and coconut cream. It was however not in the book, so no report will follow.

Walk in the woods

During a break in the downpour we took a little walk in the woods. When we came home we had enough porcini (karljohan) to make a fantastic omelet.

I've got nothing

I am sorry to say that I have no ideas of what to blog about. Or strike that, I have some ideas, but when I sit down and start hacking away at the keys it all just disappear into the sand. It just don't come out funny/witty/interesting or well written. Then what is the point of writing about earwig's (tvestjärtar) in mailboxes, garbage cans that infallibly blocks the way to said earwig filled mailboxes, cars/lorries that seems to be out for me when they pass me with less than a meter so spair when I ride the moped even if they have an entire second lane to use if they want to, statistics, deerspotting, feeding habits of specific males when their significant other is away on holliday or lack of activity in the inbox? Yea, I don't know.

Search words

People searching for 'alexander skarsgard nude' has reached my humble blog. Strange.

WTF

Once again a speedway driver has been seriously injured in a race. It is an extremely dangerous sport. And all that the media does is to report the fact. Where are the critical voices? Where are the governmental groups that demanded a stop to martial arts competitions? I mean seriously. I have a long background, both as a competitor and a judge in Karate. And Yes, there are injuries. Bloody noses and sprained fingers. When that matter was treated it got so much attention from so many people that had no insight what so ever in the matter. Competitions where full contact is not used, (where contact to the head is prohibited, and contact to the body is limited), now has to apply for special permission. There is something rotten in the state of Sweden. And a speedway driver broke his back this weekend.

What happned?

I am taking a trip this weekend, down to the inner parts of Småland, and since the train leaves at two I was a bit nervous if I would make it or not. Especially since I have been so slow ever since I came back from my 'comatose' holiday last week. But today my brain, eyes and legs worked perfectly again, and on top of that, there was not all that much mail, so I came away from work a little after noon. I did not know what to do with this extra time I got, so I biked home, turned on the computer and here I am. I would like to rest, but I know that if my head touches a pillow I won't wake up before six tonight. Instead I predict that in the near future I will have a big cup of hot black stuff before me. (Yes, I am aware that my tiredness is clearly reflected in what I am currently writing (I now have a great answer to the question 'why do you blog?' -'To stay awake!')). Anyhow, now there are forty minutes left, my prediction came through, and I have no idea what to do with the rest of the extra time that I got. Maybe an episode of MASH. Yea, thats it, one episode (s4 e20) and then I will head for the train station.

A week away

After a week spent doing nothing, or at least nothing where muscles was involved in any way shape or form, it is hard to be back at work. Sorting goes at an alarmingly slow speed, and the delivery is horrible. But I will come back. I hope.

# of deer seen during the trainride home from Uddevalla sunday afternoon: 5
(which is aslo the number of cranes seen on the same journey).

# of stunning water lilly photos I managed to take last weekend: 2 (one is seen below)

Inspiration is low

I'm in first class, sipping free tea, trying to get rid of the pieces of free apple that is stuck in my teeth, listening to B.B. King using the complementary (i.e. crappy) earplugs since I left my real once at work. Wondering what's up with SJ and their ticket-system (Just wondering, am not going to blog about it). Wondering what movie that the guy a few seats up is watching. Oh, it wasn't a movie, it was an episode of the series flight of the concords. Missed it when it was on the tube, should perhaps check it out. For a reason I can not explain we watched Macken yesterday. The series that is. And it is just brilliant. Now this part of the trip, the one with internet, free tea (yea, the coffeecan was empty), free fruit and huge seats, is about to end. And the wilderness will take over. I'll be back though. On monday I will deliver mail once again, and if you have any luck I will experince something blog-worthy on my round. Until then. Have a great weekend.
M

Stress

Me running up a stairway, sweaty as hell. Old man with a cat in a leash: 'Do you have to stress the way you do? (Måste du stressa så?)' Me a bit confused: 'ööh'. Old man with a cat in a leash: 'It is not good for you'. Me, walking slowly up a stairway behind an old man with a cat in a leash, sweaty as hell: 'But it is my exersize, and exersize is good for me!'. Then I asked if the old man was the recipient of the magasine that was about to deliver to the highest floor, and he was, so I did not have to run the remaining stairs.

Gött är livet

Aaaahhh! Efter en visserligen inte speciellt lång, men ändå väldigt svettig dag på kontoret så satt ett bad på vägen hem inte fel. Inte på något sätt.

A lost generation??

Was sitting on a bench on the central street the other day. I was trying to figure out if there was a computer store near by. The one I knew about was closed until two, and that was two hours into the future (yea, this was only to let you know that I work silly short days right now) and I did not want to wait that long. So, I was sitting there looking kind of strange I suppose when two teenage girls sit down on a bench facing mine. 20 cm from one of the girls is a trash bin. They have bought a burger and a drink at the big m. The burger looks really distasteful, just like a big m burger is supposed to look I suppose. The girl with the drink takes up a straw and peels of the paper wrapper and, like it is the totally natural thing to do drops the paper on the street. She then takes up a second straw and peels of the paper wrapper which she of course also drops on the street. Now, ok, this is my pet peeve, and maybe I just need to relax, but this really gets to me. Something is fucked up if people don't even consider to throw the trash in the bin that is twenty fucking cm away. I stayed there for a bit of time, contemplating if I should say anything, and when I decided not to I tried to get them to understand that I thought they were idiots by esp. They must have thought that I was some mental patient or something, but I am really just a guy that thinks trash belongs in the trash bin and not on the fucking street. Anyhow, I ended up going home, having the thought 'this town needs a centrally placed computer store that is opened on normal business hours' in my head.

Fuck

Today was the third time that I hit my head on my round. This time it was while I was running down some stairs and there was a low beam in the ceiling over the last step. So, I hit my head, fell over, knocked my glasses of so that they went flying. I finally ended up laying on my back for a couple of minutes watching the sweat run down my up-stretched arms. If you wonder if Mattias screams if there is no one there to listen to the scream, then the answer is yes.

So, yea

Life is sometimes sweet, like when there is so few letters to deliver that you are home before even half your workday is over. But when the train you have planed to take, the one that was supposed to deliver us to Mälaren in just over ten minutes, is delayed more than an hour, and it is hot as hell, and you really want to go swimming (with bowlegged women (obscure MASH quote, if you know the rest of it there might be a prize in it for you)) and you have your mind set on the big lake, that sucks. We ended up going to the beach at the camping a couple of miles away and spent the entire afternoon in the company of several pitbulls and their owners. Then we came home and was planing on watching a movie. Only to discover that the part of the harddrive that houses my operating system has fried. Now I wounder if i should buy a new disk and start over, and with what operating system in that case. But I kind of know that I am stuck with w. since I use a photomanaging program that does not work with linux, and that is a real bummer. But, the only things i do with the computer is to watch movies and work with my photos, so..

Fate

If a thing like fate existed then I think that there would be some fate involved when a letter /magazine gets stuck in a mailbox (and then has to be fiddled with until it slips in). The only reason I can imagine is that it gets stuck cause it does not belong there, that I tried to deliver it to the wrong address. But so far this has never been the case. Hence I rule out the existence of fate. QED.

Driving

Driving around in (not) my auto mobile delivering mail. That's a new experience for me. It would not have been too bad if I knew where to go, but now I had to use the gps almost all the time just to know which way turn, and on top of that have one eye on the road, one eye on the letters, one eye searching for the next mailbox, two hands on the steering wheel, one hand flipping through the letters, one hand putting the letters down into the mailbox that the eye searched out, and the brain handeling all the information that all the eyes and hands create. Concentration is of the essence.

Fy faan va mycket post

Maybe

Ok, maybe there is a point of following at least a basic recipe when baking. I kind of went crazy and used a bit more fluid than I usually do, and ended up, after using seven different bags of flour (four of which I used up) with a dough that weighed 5.3 kg. Luckily the result was quite good, it would have been a downer to do all that work and end up with six un-tasty loaves of bread.

Not OK

I have said it before, but I feel that I have to say it again. To bake cinnamon buns at or around the time that the mail-man comes around so that the entire stairway smells is NOT OK. To do it and then offer a couple of the said buns, together with a cup of steaming black coffee, to the mail-man, well, that's an entirely different story.

Another thing that is quite all right is to have a cherry tree that the mail-man walks by.

Curious

I am curious how things are going for people back at the old steam factory, but I don't have the courage to ask. I don't even have the courage to post this. What could happen? I could possibly get some mail responses, and in them questions. I suppose that it is the questions that scare me. Which is strange, cause I don't have any problems with answering them, I mean, I am rather straight forward on this blog, I am not ashamed of anything I have done. But still...

What if I put some answers here, then I might not get any questions which scare me...
-Thank you, I am fine.
-No, I'm not ready to finish the lic yet.
-I don't know if I ever will be.
-I just ran away, I know. It was self preservation.

Hmm, yea, I don't know, do I dare push publish?

Aaah

Finally a nice and slow day in a week that otherwise has been full of long, stressful days. And on top of that, I made it home just before the rain came to town. Now I will spend the afternoon watching tv shows, starting with the latest episode of weeds. Speaking of tv shows, I caught the first ep. of the new series Generation Kill last night. It is a really well written mini series that is based on what a Rolling stones reporter experienced in the beginning of the Irak invasion. Alexander Skarsgård has a lead role and manages to portray an American youth quite well. The only thing that bothered me in this first episode was the trailer trash cliché guy. (Damn, its raining cats and dogs now, I sure was lucky to get home before this.) (By the way, do anybody know the rules on how to punctuate properly when using parenthesis like I do now? I always get confused...) Anyhow, I just thought it was unnecessary to make it so fucking obvious that he was a red neck racist son of a bitch. Other than that, I really recommend the show. (An extra plus for the ladies: There is plenty of nude/semi-nude hot well-trained sweaty young hunks to rest your eyes at.)

Sign

On a door on one of my post routes there is a sign:
Here lives:
Johan,Maria and
Annna Pettersson, as well as
Piggelin Rocky
i.e. Piggelin has died and has been replaced by Rocky. I think it's so strange. Why not make a new sign? Who needs an everyday reminder of an expired animal?

Speaking of signs, I did a little recon today, updating the 'No commercials please' data. Some of the signs are just ordinary signs. Then there are the once that for some reason has put up an entire A4 that yells out the message. And then there is the 'No bills please' sign. I can't really make up my mind if I think it is funny or not.

Where does all the dirty dishes come from?
Why do they end up in our kitchen?
What is their purpose in this world?

Hate

There are several reasons why people dislike us (i.e. the company I work for). One is the big one -> Now they have to go and get the mail TWO times a day (on every third day). In connection to that one is that lots of people (living in houses) has built some contraption that indicates to them that the mail has come. Everything from a stone/golfball on the box-lid, that falls down when the box is opened, to electronic switches that reacts when the lid is opened. Now when the mail comes twize (on every third day) the systems fail. This, I gather, is a big source of irritation.

Change

Something has changed. It happened gradually over the last couple of months. Now it happens every time I take a shower. I don't know why it is the way it is, but now I always have to turn the water on again after I am finished to rinse off the lather that is left in my left armpit. Annoying.

Oh, just to clarify: The 'poem' yesterday is the lyrics to the 'MASH' song. It was a long time since life was that dark. So there is no reason to worry.

Abstinence

I have abstinence. MASH abstinence. Have been thinking about it for some time. Bits and pieces of the show pops up in my head at strange times. I am a fan. I have been a fan for a long time. Back when I was in 9'th grade, or was it my first year in 'gymnasiet (blir alltid kollrig när jag försöker översätta det till engelska, mest för att det inte går att översätta då skolsytemen är helt olika)', (or was it even earlier? I don't remember), I had a couple of tapes that I watched over and over. It was a way of killing time. Come home after school, pop in a MASH tape, slip down into the fake leather sofa and soon four hours had gone by. I had the tapes memorized. My dad did more that once comment on this, 'are you watching that again, have you not seen it a million times already???'. I don't think he saw it as the best way to spend my youth. But I liked it, and I still like it. I think I have learnt stuff from the show. I think I am a different person cause of it. The way I express myself, my sense of humour and a big part of my medical knowledge comes from that show. (I am almost half convinced that I would be able to perform an emergency tracheotomy). I have the entire series on dvd's and I have watched all of it countless of times. But right now it has been almost a year since I last caught an episode. A year I have stayed clean. But now I feel the pull. I feel the need to not just watch one episode, but to watch episodes back to back until I pass out from sheer exhaustion. Once an addict always an addict.

Or maybe all I need is a slice of the bread that just came out of the oven. With some butter and orange marmalade.

Through Early morning fog I see
Visions of the things to be
The pains that are withheld for me
I realize and I can see
That Suicide is Painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please

Rain

Delivering mail in the rain is not as fun as it sounds.

Malmköping -> Hälleforsnäs

Parts of the hike was very beautiful, the orchids were plentiful, the raspberries was so good, the cranes were loud, the guest books were filled with witty comments (I hate hate hate hate snails!), the grass was high and full of tics, the cloudberries were not yet ripe, the frogs extremely small, the Nymphaea (näckrosor) a sight for sore eyes, the blueberries blue and the bumblebees appeared a bit drunk.

Sorry

To those concerned:
I am sorry that I yelled in your stairway today, but a dog tried to eat me through a mailbox when I pushed in a couple of letters and it kind of scared me. I screamed almost as high as when I stumbled upon a Viper that was sunning on the trail when we were hiking two weekends ago, i.e. rather high.

Sorry

I am sorry. I really am. I did my best to keep the mail dry, but it was pouring down and it was clearly an impossible task. Hence, the mail got wet, and for that I am sorry. But then, it was a bit irritating that one of the advertising mailings was made from a paper that dissolved at the mere sight of water. And that this mailing was pink and then of course coloured all the other mail pink was just an extra bonus I suppose.

Why?

We visited Parken Zoo this weekend. It was kind of cool, especially the Komodo dragon. And the birds were nice. And the monkeys. And the chameleon. Then we got hungry and stopped at the "restaurant" 'Bali, wok and thai'. On there menu was: vegetarian wok, chicken wok, meatballs, hot dogs and pancakes. Yea. Hm. öööh. Only in Eskilstuna would a restaurant that has that, and only that, on the menu be called a 'wok and thai' restaurant. But now to my actual hangup. What is the deal with amusement parks? Is there a law that says that food in such parks Must be overpriced And really shitty? I mean, how hard is it to accomplish a decent fresh vegetarian wok? I really understand all the families that lugged around their own food and had picnic's on the lawn. Maybe the burger joint was better, but honestly I doubt it. Is the answer so easy that 1) People get hungry, 2) They need to eat, 3) They buy what there is to buy -> so why bother making good food? And why not charge them insane amounts too!! They can keep doing it cause there's always new people coming that makes the same mistake (getting hungry that is.) So, The ways I see of battling the crappy establishments is to tell everyone that they suck, HEY everyone, 'Bali' at Parken Zoo SUCKS, and also to tell them that they suck, which I just did in a mail. So, now I have done my part. Now everyone just have to read my blog and then avoid to eat there and the problem should be solved.

Vielleicht soll ich das hier auch in Deutch sagen. Ich glaube das die Zoo ein menge besucher aus Deutchland hat. Hier ist ein kurtz überzetzung ab das hier oben:
Die restaurant Bali in Parken Zoo in Eskilstuna saugt.... Es ist sehr sehr slecht. Ich rekomendiere Ihnen eigenes Essen zu bringen.

Och en svensk version så att ingen missar:
Undvik att äta på restaurant Bali när ni besöker Parken zoo i Eskilstuna. Den suger.

Never again

Never again I will do jam from my painstakingly picked blueberries. Never. I sweat, fight mosquitoes, sweat, get all blue, feed mosquitoes and then I make jam that I will keep in a jar and be a perfect base for mould. I don't know why, but I have never managed to consume the jam that has been so fucking hard to produce. In the future the blueberries I pick will be turned into pies which then will be eaten within a day. (Together with home made vanilla sauce of course.)
On top of that, I also got a stain on my shorts when I poured the jam into the sink. Take my word for it. Blueberry jam is just no good.

One little line

One little line sent me into a laughter on my way home:
Vindruvor - 8.95 kr/st (Grapes - 8.95 sek a piece)

Two hours

Took a hike this weekend. Started here and strolled down Sörmlandsleden to Svalboviken, spending the night at the lake Näshultasjön. Getting home again was a real treat! The buss from Svalboviken, which you had to order by phone, was in fact a lady who drove us in a car to the closest busstop. At this exciting busstop there was nothing. And we had to wait there for two hours until the buss came. (Who planned that I don't know).

So, how do you kill two hours next to a road in the middle of Sweden? Why not by giving some ants half a peanut broken down into a few pieces and then watch them carry it away???

The small pieces was gone within minutes, but the two large once proved to be more difficult. The ants gathered around them and seemed to be deliberating on how to do it. And it was a long deliberation. The pieces was rocked, climbed, rolled, maybe nibbled a bit. Then the ants went away, only to come back after a while to measure the pieces once again. Finally they got to work, painstakingly moving them towards the stack. And you would think that after all that deliberation they would have worked out which road that would be easiest to transport the boulder, but no, they had missed that part of the planning. They almost seemed to take a difficult route, maybe just so that they could brag about it to their grandchildren when they get old. 'You know, Once when I was a young ant, I moved a giant peanut a long long way on a very difficult road!' And if they contact me I have the photos to prove it.

aaaaaaah

After a hint from Ångestgrottan I started to read some on the conservapedia web page. After a brief look at the atheism article I looked around and found a page about dinosaurs. And, to quote a popular character in Friends, Oh! My! God! I actually feel nauseous. And there is nothing I can do about it. It impossible to contradict them cause they always have a fail-safe response 'according to the bible'...
-'Carbon dating proves that the fossils are 65M years old' I could be saying
-'No, carbon dating is false, cause the world was created 6000 years ago you see, the bible says so!'
You can't argue with someone who has that kind of comebacks.

Excuse me!

Excuse me sir, but your hedge is devouring you mailbox.

Excuse me sir, there are bugs living in your mailbox.

Excuse me sir, could you please remove the nettles that's growing around your mailbox.

Mail today (a response to one of my search notes.):
Hi Mattias. I have changed my last name to XXXX. The mailbox is marked Y XXXX.
Oh, thank you! But could you please tell me what your name was Before you changed it, that would be kind of good for me to know.

10km

I am a bit curious how good I would do on a 10km run now. The last weekend before I started the mail man gig I made it in just under the hour. (I had said during the interview that I could, and I wanted to see if I had lied or not). The thing is though, I'm not really in the mood for a run after a day at the office.

Speaking of tired, the number of times that I have had to return home since I'd forgotten my glasses in the morning is larger than two.

Speaking of training, it has been a long time since I trained any budo. This has to be rectified. I think I will make some visits to some karate clubs in town soon, to see if any appeals to me. Maybe Cobra Kai has a affiliation in the neighbourhood.

gött fredrik

If they vote yes

Are you with me in a silent protest if they vote yes tomorrow?
Stop using mail.
Stop using sms.
Stop using the internet.
Even if it is just for a day, If enough people do it, it will really be noticed.

Reciever errand

Mail today:
Regarding a search note on address xxx xx by Mattias:
1) Due to a very sloppy handwriting hardly any information on the note can be deciphered.
2) The lady yyy yyy moved in 2005 to another address. And she has also changed her name.
Hence the mail shall not be delivered at the address.

Hmm, the information that was handwritten on the note was: Mattias, the ladys name yyy yyy, and the address xxx xx. And the date... But thanks for the information...

Football

It has been some time, quite some time, since I played football. I believe it was in like ninth grade or so that I played last. But this weekend I took part in CM's huge 7-man tournament in Stockholm, and we made it all the way through the group, through the 16'th, 8'th, quarter and was only eliminated by the Danish champions in the semifinal in a 'even' 1-0 match. And it was rather fun. Then we partied like it was 1999 (i.e. I partied with people that's as old as I was in 1999). My legs are still burning and I don't know if it is from the ball play or the dancing...

I've

got

moneeeeeyyy!

(now I'm just going to pay back the money to my dad, pay for the wallpapers in my old flat, pay the back taxes, the mastercard bill, CSN and the rent. But still, right now, I've got moneeeeyyy!!!)

It's true

Two wheels, a motor, and wet asphalt. It's not the best of combinations. Luckily there were no cars/people in the way. And the road was free of gravel, so I survived with only a couple of scratches and some torn pants.

Soup #30

The opinions differ. I liked it. K not so much. Butter simmered onion and endive, a dash of wine, some broth and a lot of milk. A couple of table spoons of maizena flour and then a long simmer. Top it of with some grated parmesan. It was supposed to be served over some toasts, but the track record of bread in the soups are not so good so we had the toast on the side instead.

Hmm

Drinking wine & blogging while cooking -> the likelihood that the food will burn increases.

What, alcohol, on a weekday!?

Making a soup that requires 1/2 dl of wine entitles you to enjoy the rest of the wine while cooking. Like Lloyd used to do. Nice, even if it is the cheapest tetra in the shop.

What is the deal with ...

... cuticles? (that I really did not know that 'nagelband' was called) I mean, come on, how can such small things hurt that fucking much just cause they dry up a bit?

Anyhow, now it is soup time. Endive is the main ingredient today. Stay tuned, a report will come in a couple of hours.

Rain

I have been lucky so far, weather wise that is. But today it did rain. And it was cold. And the mail got wet.

Got un-addressed commercials in the mail today. Even if we have a note saying that we do not want any. Those darn incompetent Posten workers.

Flowers

I understand that you really want to know how the flowers are doing. Just fine thank you!

Angry person

A day can be ruined cause of many things. This day was not ruined, but did for certain take turn for the worse when I was handed the phone this morning and a woman started to complain about everything that had gone wrong since CM started to deliver mail here. The reason she was talking to me was that a letter had come to one of my addresses, one where no one with her name lived. I had then put up a note that said 'I have a letter for you, but I cant find you. Call me.' It turns out that she had moved from that address more than a year ago, and now, when CM is in town bills get lost/put in her old neighbours mailbox and cards with money in them from her friends has magically disappeared. She sounded feed up and said that she was thinking about going to the police. Nothing I said could make her any calmer. That we do not deliver personal letters, and hence cant be responsible for the magically disappeared letters with money in them. That I am not the one sending letters to the old address. That the 'adressändring' is only valid for one year. That If I get a letter to an address, what should I do with there is no one at the place with the name? Look it up on eniro.se and send it to one of the persons in the world who has that name? That If we are responsible for a bill getting to them late we will reimburse any late fees that might come from that, just call customer service and they will help you. (I did look the name up on eniro by the way. No one in Eskilstuna is registered with that name.) Anyhow, the lady was a bitch and was blaming everything that had gone wrong with her post on us, and put me in a bad mood for the next four hours. 800m climb while listening to metallica on my mp3 player did manage to erase her from my mind.

Relalalaxa

Except for the back that was out of whack this weekend was oh so relaxing. Did not do a squat, if a couple of laps in the pool is excluded.

Witnessed what I think was a steroid caused episode though. Heard the 'schreee' from a breaking car when we were sitting at MAX enjoying a burger. Looking over I saw a volvo that had stopped, and a car behind that one. The man in the volvo looked mad as hell, and was looking to get out, but he stayed in his car going forward a couple of meters. Then he stopped again. Put in reverse and backed into the other car with full intention. Then he sped on with the other car in full pursuit. A little Sunday lunch excitement in the small town of Eskilstuna.

Old

Shit, I am old. Spending a day in a horizontal position due to a head ace and a general queeziness has left my back in a terrible condition. I can not lie in bed, cant sit up, cant stand, without the feeling that my back is broken. Floating around in the pool was nice, but you cant spend the entire day in the pool can you?

please don't help my mama bomb a osama obama llama diorama

a real nugget from pearls of swine

Got it!

After stepping on a slippery stone and subsequently slipping in on some blogs on tusenapor I ended up remembering the thing I had forgotten to blog about when I read Soran's blog. And it was:

What the heck is the deal with the crappy stuff that Bamse/KalleAnka/etc. persists on sending along to all the once that subscribe to said magazines? It is some plastic toys that I predict will last for about ten seconds, end up in a pile of other crappy toys, the pile will then be transfered to a cellar/attic, then put in a box, then the box will either move along when the kid grows up or stay at the parents house taking place to no avail. Ok, that is not my problem and hence not why I write this, My problem is that the fucking toys are to big to easily slide into many of the mailboxes that, we the mailmen, has to try to put the stuff down into. (Now I start to think that, hmm, this sounds familiar, did I not write that I had forgotten to blog about this and then continued to blog about it before? Perhaps, but better safe than sorry, I will continue on as if that thought hadn't struck my head). Last week I managed to get a Kalle stuck in a door. I dropped it down thinking that, yea it will fit. Then it got stuck and I thought, hmm, it should get through if I push a little. Then I pushed a little. Then it got really really stuck. And I could not get it back up. I ended up using a golfing magazine as a tool to and putting my entire bodyweight behind that and finally succeeded to get it unstuck. It did however not survive the ordeal. I dropped a note down after it saying that I will get them another copy, which I then arranged when I got back to the office. So, anyhow, my question is, Why oh why do they send along these crappy plastic to big for the mailbox fucking toys with every new copy of all the magazines? Why not save up for a couple of months, giving the kids something to look forward to for a longer time, and then give them something real, something that will last, something that is clearly to big to fit through the mailbox and hence must be picked up at their closest store that also moonlights as a post-office?