Oh, I almost forgot I have a blog

Since my last post I've had a cold, recovered, been on a one day conference at work and had friends over for an evening of games, tea and hot sandwiches.

Some people might see that in my life tea and hot sandwiches obviously goes with more than nostalgia tv shows, it also goes with friends and games. Of course, tea and sandwiches goes great with almost everything. I had a great time and went to bed without washing the dishes which I regretted this morning. Then I went to work without washing the dishes which I most likely will regret when I get home again. I think more and more about how well tea and sandwiches would go with a dish washer.

It's also Friday today, which is nice, cause it means there's some sweet weekend coming up. I'll be busy with Spex07 most of it though, since we have our last performances this and the next weekend. I look forward to it though because, despite my usual whining over the spex and the way it fills your evenings and weekends months in advance, it's nice to do stuff and meet friends and have fun. I also look forward till Tuesday evening, cause that's gonna be the start of the next spex, Spex08, for me, where I'll be in way over my head and direct. It'll be a nice challenge, for sure.

And on a different note, I went to the library and borrowed Enhet and Solen är en fet gud that my friend Jenny recommended in her blog. I finished Enhet in one evening, laying awake in bed to press the last few chapters into my head before falling asleep. It really was very good, but left me feeling sort of blue, cause it was so much about loneliness and feeling obsolete (at least to me) so when I had finished I had a hard time sleeping despite it being very late. I started on Solen är en fet gud this morning with breakfast and I like it already. It's sort of ... interestingly written in a refreshing way and I like the imagary.

Beautiful nostalgia

Yesterday I got my latest order from SF book store in Stockholm! Whoho. Inside the box were three pocket books (part 2-4 of Katherine Kerr's story about Deverry) and a DVD box. And the box was the whole reason to order in the first place.

Brace yourself!

The beauty and the Beast with Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman!

Do you remember? I used to watch it with my best friend Emelie in my room. We would drink tea and eat hot sandwiches. We would obsess and talk about the show endlessly. We were both in love with Vincent, ahem, a bit embarrassing actually. We loved and lived this show! We made up our own stories and created our own roll playing games about it. It was just the best.

Of course, I'm likely to be very disappointed with it, cause it probably sucks, or worse. And possibly I'll feel even more silly about once loving it so much, but when I saw it in the catalogue I couldn't help it, I just had to have it. And I'm gonna make a pot of tea and some hot sandwiches, possibly call Emelie and tell her about it and ask if she wants to come watch (not very likely though, cause she lives in Örnsköldsvik which is far away from here).

It'll be great! Nostalgia is one of my favorites, I think.

Same same same, always the same

Monday again and back at work. The weekend just flew by and now I can't remember actually doing anything much. I went shopping on saturday, watched a bunch of Buffy season 7, ordered chinese take away and got prawn instead of duck, played some Puzzle Pirates and sunday evening was all spex meetings and they took so long I missed aikido. So, nothing to tell potential grandchildren about in the far future.

Tonight I have no plans, as usual. My life is just so dull. Why don't I just do something unexpected and have some fun? What is fun? I have no idea. At least soon fall with be here and with it all the usual activities that fill my evenings and weekends, keeping me from thinking too much and brooding all night. I hope.

Perhaps I should keep a reading log like Jenny does. I can't seem to remember half the books I read. Prolly that's just as well, cause if they were really good I'm sure I would remember them anyways. This post is for the books I do remember reading this year, books that I really liked. Do read them and then tell me if you liked them and why.

The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon

I loved the way this book put me inside the head Lou who is an autistic in a near future. Using special techniques he have learned how to function pretty well in society. Most of the book is written from Lou's point of view and gives fascinating glints of a mind that works in a different way and still very much the same. I just loved the presence Lou has and how close and real he feels. Of course there's a dilemma he's facing and stuff he has to work out for himself, but I won't write anything much, cause I don't want to spoil too much of the plot.

However, I do recommend it, not just for those who love SF, but for those who love people and the process of thinking and how the brain works and a hero who takes things into his own hands and learns and develops.





Watership Down by Richard Adams

This is possibly my favorite book. At least it's the one I read the most cause every year, come end of summer, I really really want to read it again and I always do. I have the Penguin books paper back you can see in the picture and it's getting really worn, so probably I'll have to get another one soon.
I guess the thing I love so much about it is the closeness and the fantastic descriptions of nature and persons, although the persons in this books are rabbits. Rabbits who leave the warren of their birth and set off on a long journey to find a new home and build a life and a future for themselves.

Super Mario Bros 3 is still one of the best!

I just finished playing Super Mario Bros 3, possibly the best game ever on the NES. It was a lot easier than I remembered though but still took a lot of time to finish. I had to leave the NES on for almost a week before I'd had time to play it all, every single level of it. How did we ever manage back in the bad old days when you couldn't save?

I had forgotten all the cute costumes Mario could use but it all came back to me in a flash of nostalgia. Oh, Sky world! Pipe World! Water World! And with that last one I'm not talking about that horrible movie *ick*.

It was my brother that first got the SMB3 for Christmas and it took at least a week before he would let me play. I remember I bought the guide book in secret and read up on all the tricks without telling him. Hihi. He couldn't figure out how I could be so much better at it when I was only starting to play and he'd been at it himself for a week. It was SO worth all my allowance.

Spexguests for dinner aka cleaning is futile

The new spex is getting started. I'm gonna direct (regissera) and last night I had called the first meeting for the actors. They arrived at my place at 18 and we chattered some and cooked dinner. We had 'Grillad fläskfilé med limeyoghurt' , 'Couscous sallad' and a very good time. Oh, I forgot, I also spent all weekend on home improvements and cleaning, so it would look abnormally nice when the guests arrived. When they left there was a pile of dishes though, which goes to show that cleaning is futile cause it gets dirty again so quick.

4,5 extra hours on a train

I went on a business trip last week, to Kista over night. I and my college took the 18:20 train home and it was supposed to arrive at 19:58. However, just south of Södertälje the train stopped on the tracks due to a broken door that wouldn't lock and for safety reasons the train can't keep going then. After 10 minutes we were told about the door. 30 minutes later we were told they were trying to reboot the door computers by hand to solve the problem.

An hour later they said they would back up to Södertälje so we could change trains. Nothing happened though and a while later they said they had to turn off the cabin lights to get more power. Nothing happened. The train lurged a bit, a few times, but didn't move. People cheered and clapped there hands with sarcasm when again we were told there was a problem with a door.

I noticed, not for the first time, that the normal rule of No Talking To Stranger was set aside. After 30 minutes on a train that's not moving or during a long power outage or when caught in an elevator or when the house across the street is burning or any other really out of the ordinary things happens, then suddenly people start talking to strangers. Everyone wants to ask who's missing their connections, who had a longer power outage before or how their house burned down once.

I realised I was seated next to a very nice girl, Linda, who was going all the way to Malmö to visit her boyfriend over the weekend (later I learned that the train wouldn't arrive at Malmö until 05 next morning). We ended up in the Bistro hanging on the counter and chatting with people who came by and with the people working on the train. Linda was friends with one of them, Marina, who introduced us to her college Olof. Both of them turned out to be very nice and Olof had a great dry sense of humour which came in handy when it took four hours before the train finally started moving again and we backed up till Södertälje.

There we had to wait for another half an hour for a replacement train and finally start moving forward again. So 4,5 hours late, at 00:26, we finally arrived at Linköping C. I wasn't in bed till 01:15. However, apart from the fact that I'd rather have been at home, I had a pretty good time.