I Was Serious About That!

Yeap, I wasn't joking around, every hour of free time has been in WoW but on friday I'll ding 70 which is the max so after that it'll be a bit easier. Last weekend I was so totally into it that I completely missed a blizzard that had swept over sweden last weekend with all the snow and all the minus degrees that I've been yelling for. I don't like this cold but I like the fact that it's cold.

Here I Go Again!

The expansion to Warcraft was released today. Good bye.
(but before I go through the portal, here are the pictures from Italy)

Tons Of Fun!

Oh that was one of the best weekends of my life ! ! ! The background story : When I've played Warcraft in our old guild, "Evil Inc", we had alot of italians. One of them was called "Dago" (real name is Mario). So now that our guild is kind of splitting up me and my buddy Mats decided that we have to pay him a visit seeing as we have been playing and talking to eachother over the internet for a year now. So on friday we started our journey to Milan...

Friday : After an uneventful drive to Skavsta we checked in. Knowing Ryan Air hates luggage we decided to only have one carry on with us each and they warned us about new regulations and bla bla, "whatever, I've done this a few times"... but oh no, now there are really strict regulations regarding how volume of liquids per container and all that stuff so they confiscated my shampoo, hairspray and stuff. And after that I walked 10 meters to the tax free and bought new stuff. Doh!
Flying down there was uneventful, found the bus into Milan and taxi home to Mario at around 9 pm. Then we decided to go out for a real italian pizza, a beer and just talk. Naturually it was one of the best pizzas ever and we had no problem talking about everything. Then we got home to his place at midnight. Great time to go to bed... NOT! Mario had called some of his students from the snobby school he works at and set us up at Milan's hippest club where they had VIP passes. I don't do the club scene that much but that was pretty sweet and they were great, but unfortunately you can't talk that much. Came back at 4-4.30 something and tried getting some sleep but failed _totally_!

Saturday : After not sleeping at all it was time to get up at 11 for breakfast (and got served coffee in bed!). Then we went out to the shopping part of Milan where we found a huge, sweet cathedral and Mats went crazy with my camera 'cause he loves these things. And my own church - the Ferrari store! After some shopping it was time for lunch - best lunch ever! And after that we went out to his home town of Piacenza where we checked into the Holiday Inn and got an hour of sleep before we went to the next party! We met up with some 20 other warcraft players and some other randoms in a nice little restaurant outside of Piacenza and we sat down for a very long 4 dishes (and 4 hour!) long meal. It was so fun meeting all these people I've played with and the bizarroness of the situation, 2 clueless swedes with 20 crazy italians, half of which could barely speak english, it was just great fun. And the food was absolutely awesome! We got home at around 2.30 and this time I had no problem falling asleep.

Sunday: We got up at around 11 and got ready for another long day. We were all very very very tired so we stoped by a nice little street cafe for coffee and walked around the town for a bit, checked out the local cathedral and then we met up with some of the people from the night before for a little lunch. It was suppose to be little cause they said it was a "slice of pizza". Yeah, it was a slice of a pizza - a 2 meter pizza!! And the crust was like an 3 cm. thick and 1/2 cm thick layer of mozarella all wrapped up in ham. Massive but oh what a feeling. Somehow everything tastes better in Italy :)
After that we went out to a little midevil tourist town and walked around in there for a while looking at swords and stuff we'd never get through customs, but it was nice anyway.
Then we went back to Milan to get the bus back to the airport. After the checkin and security screening and again being robbed of my shampoo and now even hairspray we were ready to get going home. But oh no, due to fog the plane had been redirected to it's alternate airport so we had to take busses over there. That shouldn't be a problem, right? but it took around 3 hours and we lifted off at 23:59:30 as opposed to 20:35:00! The reason I know it was 30 seconds before midnight is because the captain kept yelling that the aiport shuts down at midnight since it was close to a residential area and we had to leave NOW! And we made it with 30 seconds! Landed at 3 and got home and crawled into bed at 4 am, got up at 10 and went back to work!

Oh man what a weekend that was! It totally owned everything! The food, the company, the atmosphere, everything was just awesome!!!
(pictures coming soon)

Off To Italy!

After almost two years I'm going back to Italy today! Only for the weekend, coming home on sunday night. It's a perfect example of just how social playing computer games can be - I've gotten to know a bunch of italians that I've played WoW with for about a year and now that our guild is splitting up and the WoW expansion coming on tuesday we thought "it's now or never". So now it is! So me and Mats are just about to leave now for a weekend that will be awesome!

And today I did something I've never done before - I passed the annual "let's see if your car is road-worthy". They have pretty high standards, MTV actually had a problem finding a car for "pimp my ride" since all cars were in such good condition due to this. And I've always failed on the first one, but that's good cause you get a list of things that' wrong and you go to the shop and say "fix it!". But today it passed with flying colours!!

Weird Dream That Got Me Thinking

Had a weird dream last night. I don't dream alot, or as far as I know anyway. For some reason I remembered alot of dreams when I was out travelling, but normally I don't. But last night I had a really interesting dream that got me thinking. It was basically me waking up on my 14th birthday and changed some of the things in my youth and making my teens better. Some specific things in there but nothing I'm gonna go into. But it made me really think and consider if I could do things over and change stuff... would I, and would the outcome still be good? How many things in my life that are some of the most awesome things would never have happened. I wouldn't have applied to college in Växjö if I'd known then what I know now. But if I didn't do that, I might not have gotten the job at MinDator. And had I not worked there I wouldn't have ended up at Pulsen and getting the job to travel the world. And I wouldn't be here at the lawfirm either...

I don't like dreams...

Things Coming Out a Bit Wrong

Sometimes when I write things here I don't really think about exactly how other people will interpret it or feel about it. And as I was chatting with one of the girls I had dated last year I kinda realised how terribly special she must've felt about me saying "went through 3 girlfriends". Didn't really sound that good did it? And I don't wanna be too nasty against the other two, but the only one that really had any affect on me was the last one, for alot of reasons. The other two didn't work out and it didn't really affect me that much and I don't regret breaking it off. But I do regret not fighting more for the last one...

Anyway, been spending 2 days adding my diary entries for 2001-2004 now so you can all ready what pissed off back then. As always interesting flashback reading from when I was out travelling the world!

The Weather

This weather situation is reallt gotten me worried man. I mean over the past 10 years the freezing cold & snow has arrived later and later every year but atleast it's gotten freezing cold and we've had snow. So far this season I've yet to see the temperature go below zero and except for the blizzard in november and the 10 minutes of snow 2 days before christmas I haven't really seen any snow at all. And it's the 5th of january! I mean all of these "global warming alerts" have said we're in trouble in like 50 years or something, but the way it's now it's gonna be in 5 years.

Weird Family Trait

Every family has there odd little thing, habir or trait and ours became embarassingly obvious during the New Years Eve that I spent with my parents and sister. We were mostly just sitting around and enjoying the company and relaxed mood. And watching Vh1/Vh1 Classic and singing along to all songs, good or bad, old and new. Unfortunately there's really no logical reason why I can sing-along to "I'm a Believer" but I can. And there's really no reason why I know the videos so well that it took me one second to recognize the video for Lionel Ritchie's "Dancing on the Cieling" but I did. One of these days I'll stuff something usefull into that part of my brain...

Goodbye 2006

That's 2006 done with. Let's do a little positive overview : I went through 3 girlfriends, had a blast at work, took myself out of the country twice, got my finances in order, lost a bit of weight and haven't been to the hospital once (not counting my blood donations). A negative overview : I went through 3 girlfriends, only got out of the country twice, still don't have a savings account, I'm still at 100 kg and I ended the year in a sad "where is my life going?" kinda way.

But overall 2006 was a good year that will mostly be remembered as the year of Warcraft for me. I would never say I wasted my time on it since it was so much fun and I made so many friends. I'm actually going down to Italy to party with a few of them. But it does feel like 2006 went by way too quickly and I could've, should've, done more with that year than playing a computer game that much.

So what does 2007 have in store for me?

Christmas is funny

What's so weird about Christmas is how much I, and alot of other people, hate the build-up but totally enjoy it from 24th to 31st! The build-up is ofc, having to go through all your family tree checking who wants what, then doing the actual shopping and try to squezze your way through the stores and everything, and all the christmas decorations and stuff and ofc all the preperations at work planning the holidays and making sure all lawyers have remote accessibility... it's all a big hassle! But from 24th I just shut everything out, go home to my folks and enjoy a few days of calm and just relax all the way to the new year! I took out 4 days of vacation and managed to get 12 days off from work which means alot of time with my family and catching up on stuff.

Hope you have a very merry Christmas!!

I'm so vain, I bet I think this page is about me

Check this picture. Then, check this one. Notice the small changes... I've never felt so vain in my life, photoshopping a picture of myself. But if I can, why not? I trust you've all seen this awesome movie-clip?

And oh, I back-tracked why this girl thought I was after a more serious relationship than she was - I told her why the previous reltionship didn't work, because we had only seen eachother 5 times in 2 months which was a bit less than I wanted. But that didn't mean I was talking about living together, did it? Oh well, I guess I'd better practice saying what I really mean rather than say half the story and let people fill in the blanks... I dunno why I do that, I shouldn't be assuming people get my jokes just because my best friends get me and my humor. Like the title of this update, how many are so retro they know Carly Simon's lyrics?

The break-up

I have a little hard time getting over this latest break-up. Her reason for breaking up, and she did take the initiative as always, was that she wasn't at the moment after as a serious relationship as I was. I totally disagree with her on that point 'cause I wasn't after a serious relationship that'd mean we'd see eachother every day or live together. But that's not what's bugging me...

What's bugging me is my reasons for breaking it up. Even though it only was 6 years difference between us, it felt like it was more sometimes. She was on the wild and crazy side, spontaneous, partying, have to try everything, restless, "damn the consequences"-kind of person... And I'm not. The problem is, and this is a killer to realise... I used to be all those things and somewhere along the line I lost those qualities! When I was 25 those things would have described me so well! And this is why I liked her in the first place - she had so many qualities that made me go "I so get her!". But somewhere along the line, probably as a result of my world tour or maybe it was me turning 30, but I grew up and lost those qualities. How tha hell do I get them back!!! I loved those things about me! All of a sudden I feel so very old and boring! Give it back!

Same procedure as last year

It's 5 days before Christmas. Every intelligent person knows the story, they've been here before. So I gotta ask this question this year again ... how tha hell can the arrival of snow cause delays for the trains? I mean who did NOT consider the possibility of snow today? How can they be caught off guard - again? I get pissed everytime it happens. 20 minute delays because of some snow is just rediculous. Fortunately I wasn't in a hurry to get home...

Speaking of being in a hurry - I bought a new electric toothbrush last week. It has a cool function - every 30 seconds it stops and starts again. This is to indicate it's time to change side since you're only suppose to brush 30 seconds on each side totally 2 minutes. Nice feature. And I've never been so stressed brushing my teeth ever as I am now.

Indulging

So yesterday I decided to indulge. I had after all been dumped (however amicably) and felt like feeling sorry for myself and decided to go to Heron City and enjoy a movie or two, Pizza Hut and all that crap that blows my sugerlevel sky high. And it was good. It was very long since I'd done that.

I saw two movies - "Casino Royale" and "Superman Returns". "Casino Royale" was pretty ok, not alot of action for being James Bond. But the story was pretty good even though it felt a bit too... "common" for Bond to play Texas Hold'em. And Craig as Bond was pretty damn good, I'd only seen him in "The Jacket" playing a psycho but in this he was probably the coldest Bond of them all.

"Superman Returns" was also pretty good. Superman has always been my favorite superhero for some reason and this movie really delivered. I particularly liked that they still had Marlon Brando as his father rather than trying someone else. But Lois Lane as a mother didn't quite feel right. And it reminds me of a classic Kevin Smith dialogue from "Mallrats" regarding her fallopian tubes... everyone who's seen it knows what I mean :)

Both movies were ok but nothing that'll go down in movie history as "best ever!" I think. Pretty succesfull sunday.

Tying up loose ends

Last weekend I had alot of issues on my mind, enough to make me depressed. Alot of small things (like my dead car battery, christmas shopping, suit that needed cleaning, photo session and so on) and two major things - WoW guild disbanded and my new potential girlfriend. Well all those small issues are now resolved thanks to friends and my ever supportive sister AC. And WoW guild dying isn't as bad as I thought, I mean it's just a game right and I get all my spare time back now in time for Christmas and the holidays. And there's always the option of joining another guild and I may even end up playing more (!) than before. We'll see, but it's not important really...

Which just left that potential girlfriend. I'd met her during a party and we were pretty similar in alot of ways and at first it was "I totally get her!". But after almost three weeks of dating and her going to Paris to get some perspective we met up again on saturday, talked for an hour then kinda agreed that it wasn't working out. And a friendly goodbye hug and "I'll see you around" and one more relationship that didn't survive the 3 week mark (this was 6 hours short), I'm becoming the expert at that. But since we never got that serious and I saw it coming a mile away it's not getting me down that much. But it did feel good while it lasted, never knew I could be so happy with a women fully dressed.

So all in all - one week later and everything sorted. Now bring on Christmas and the New Year!

Things are looking up

Most problems I had last weekend seems to be solved now. Going out christmas shopping today with my sister. Better late than never.

Some news from work ; Our lawfirm used to be run by the partners of the firm, and even if they knew the law very well and made a ton of money they didn't really know how to run a company of Vinge's size. So about a year ago they hired a guy to run things. That guy is like the personification of alpha male, really cool guy. One of his way of running things is to make sure the administrative staff is happy. Not only the lawyers but the others too, the janitors and the IT department. One of his ways of doing that has been to make sure we've been included in for example the trip to the Czech republuc- And now he's doing it again but giving the administrative staff a $1 400 (10 000 SEK christmas bonus!! How sweet is that! Unfortunately half of that is going to tax, but still...
Unfortunately it's not all good. Another of his projects is making sure everybody is included on the new website with a staff directory, even the IT department. So we had to go get our pictures taken by this professional photographer that came by. He was really weird, ordered us to smile, slowly, in small stages from neutral to right out laugh. Unfortunately I suck at that, I either look neutral or laugh. But the result looked like this. Not too bad if I may say so!! And no, I don't wear a suit at work, that was just a coincidence!!

Sign Language?

So I'm chatting on MSN with my niece in scotland. She really enjoys talking on MSN and it's a nice pause from work. The only trouble is she uses some weird sign language that I don't get. Like when I asked why she wasn't in school yet, and she said she doesn't start until 9. Well it's 9:25 here so?... and she sent this back:
I actually had to decode that before I could read it. It's a good sign that that I'm a bit too old to read that stuff straight up, but also a good sign that I can decypher it...

And things are going better now, eliminating one problem at a time. But women are still impossible and unpredictable. I don't know what, if anything, I may have done wrong with this one but she's not talking to me for whatever reasons.

This Is Kinda Funny

I like to think I have a pretty strong psyche. And I have a pretty good ability to take a step back and analyze things. Which is why it's so funny knowing and pinpointing the small little things that are making me somewhat depressed right now. Unfortunately it doesn't really solve any of the current problems and there isn't really anything I can do about them except wait them out and hope it blows over. Which it always does. But it's still a pretty funny thing to do and it's a good sign that I'm not _that_ depressed. And that possible girlfriend I had going isn't returning my calls. Guess I shouldn't have said anything...

But one small bit of good news is that I've finally added a page with a day-by-day description of me and my sister's latest trip to Scotland. So, it's not all bad.

And now I'm depressed...

This must be the fall/winter-depression coming on a bit late but now I'm depressed. I saw "Clerks 2" the other day and since then I've been in a "who am I why am I here and where am I going?"-state which is all kinds of depressive things. And just like that our WoW guild is splitting up (which is seing something I worked hard for 18 months go down the drain) and if that's not enough - when I have the perfect opportunity to show a little bit of romance with a prospective girlfriend my car dies on me and ruins the entire thing. God damnit!!!

But yeah, atleast I have a prospective girlfriend, that cheers me up a bit (and thank you Mats for letting that cat out of the bag). But then my ever cheerful sis cheers me up with "you're doing good, have a job, don't live with your parents, you got your health and so does both your parents, what are you whining about?"....

True that, what am I whining about? And will that help?...

Still Depressed

How can I be so depressed over a little thing like our WoW guild splitting up? Well I joined the guild back in august 2005 and in march this year me and my buddy Mats took over and pretty much ran it from there. I've pretty much dedicated most of my free time to it, even some time at work. I've never had a problem prioritizing real life over my WoW life (atleast I don't think so), but in the deeper analysis I guess I could say that I have a limited real life thanks to WoW taking so much of my time. And now all that hard work is gone. I wouldn't say wasted since I've had alot, ALOT of good times with them. Another thing is all of a sudden I end up in this "what to do now?"-mode? It's probably for the best that it went like this since even if I do go on it won't be on this level and I'll have alot more time on my hands to deal with real life and all that stuff. But it's all too depressing. It's not that I'm against changes, I like changes, changes are good but in this case... I want it back the way it was.