I’m happy it’s vacay time!

This morning was a depressing wake-up, yes the coffee was made and the aroma was fantastic, then I looked outside. Grey, and rain, and cold, thus a good thing that vacay is coming up so I can get some heat…and rain according to the weather prognosis.

If one should focus on the positives instead, I finally got to wear my mustard colored rain jacket. I absolutely LOVE the color mustard and the jacket, I was longing for it all last year but thought it was too expensive and then came Christmas sales; half price, whoop! whoop! It has just been too cold to wear it until now.

It was Colonel Mustard

An interesting afternoon…

…or maybe not. I’m also suspecting that my phone has gotten allergic to food pictures as I am sure I took a picture of both my lunch (straight from the freezer looking sooper yum) and my amazing dinner (frozen taco pie, though reheated in the microwave). Neither is anywhere to be seen.

Well, after work yesterday I went for a date with my optician, last time I was there got a good scolding for ignoring their summons for way too long. Thus, when the text arrived on my phone last week, telling me it was time for a check-up, I promptly made an appointment so that he could tell me that I gotten even blinder yet again. This time, it has changed to so little that there’s no point of fixing new lenses and I love my frames so aint changing.

Then it was vacay prep time, the poor buggers that are my friends on Facebook are getting the countdown (now 2 sleeps to vacay) and I’m guessing pretty tired of it. Still when visiting people with children bring chocolate and those children will love you long, long time!

If that wasn’t enough, after my Wednesday glass of wine (no picture evidence available, so can’t hold me to partaking alcohol on a weeknight) I had to put my thinking cap on to help the younger generation with a school project…mmm, that went fab, I mean the difference between the analysis and the discussion?!?!? Anyone?

Now I know some more…

Receiving my voting card for the EU election prompted med to find out some more about what is going on, so now I feel like I know a little bit more.

I know that this time around Sweden get 21 seats rather than the 20 we had before. Nine large (the classic Swedish ones that are around every election) parties have signed up 331 candidates to fight it out as well as an additional 76 small parties (that no one ever heard of).

A party needs to get a minimum of 4% of the Swedish votes to get access to their seat, and all the parties are a part of a grouping within the EU Parliament.

I think to make sense out of what happens when I vote for a party; it’s more relevant to see what the grouping they belong to wants rather than what election lines they are feeding me here in Sweden.

Below is a list of the 9 larger parties, my translation within brackets and the EU Parliament grouping in bold.

• Vänstern (The left) GUE/NGL
• Feministiskt Intiativ (the feminists) S&D
• Socialdemokraterna (social democrats) S&D
• Miljöpartiet (The environmentalist party) Gröna/EFA
• Centern (The center) Alde
• Liberalerna (The liberals) Alde
• Moderaterna (More right than the liberals, not as right as the Swedish democrats) EPP
• Kristdemokratern (The Christians) EPP
• Sverige Demokraterna (The Swedish democrats that might have to check the word democracy in the dictionary) ECR

Next step: figure out what each grouping mean. If I have the patience (and if I can figure it out) I’ll share my findings with you guys…

That came back quickly

I bragged yesterday about how good I’ve gotten at programming my coffee machine so I could wake up to the smell of coffee…guess who forgot last night! And guess who overslept this morning. I think we can see a pattern, big reminder to me to sort that out tonight as the instant stuff isn’t the same. As promised I still took the time for a cupper even though I was late.

Austria vs Australia

In other news I got my voting card for the coming European Union election. I have heard about it, I know it would happen, I will just have to admit that I have no clue on what’s going on and that is not good.

Since we are living in a world where the rightwing winds are strong, people are becoming more hateful and want to move back from open borders to closed ones with countries only containing the “right people”, this is more important than ever. I do not want a Sweden with closed borders containing only Swedish hateful people that think they are on top of the world with the right to look through their noses on everyone else.

So what do I know this far?

• It’s on the 26th of May, so I will be back from my vacation.
• We elect who to represent us in the EU Parliment for the next 5 years.
• You need to be EU citizen to be allowed to vote.
• I vote for the (Swedish) party I think should represent us.
• I can vote for a specific person.
• The party need to have at least 4% of the votes in order to have a seat at the Parliment.

Wow, now all that is left is to figure out who to vote for. I’m not sure I recovered from the Swedish election we had last fall, so this is going to be a though one. I can take the easy way out and just vote for the same party this time around…or not.

To be continued…

The calendar addiction

I am one of those that have to admit to being addicted to her calendar, the benefit of that is that when something ends up there it usually happens (except for when too tired like yesterday). At the moment I have two monthly dates booked, one is fairly new, the other one though is hitting its three year anniversary right about now.

The date is with the amazing person that took over my job at the previous company I worked at. I had the pleasure of spending a month handing my tasks over and we kind of hit it off, so now, three years later we still meet each other for lunch pretty much once a month.

Of course sometimes it gets rescheduled , so it has been the case that there’s only a couple of weeks between dates and there have been the months, especially during vacation times, that it was cancelled completely, still, we are going strong.

So why am I telling you all this? Well, because today was date day of course! Thus come lunch time I jumped up on my bike and with the wind in my back I flew to an absolutely fantastic Syrian restaurant. If you ever pass through Malmö I can definitely recommend Ayam Dimashq, and it will totally get another visit from me!

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A few moments of peace

With the new job came a new tradition. As some of you might know, I’m not a morning person and when you are unhappy getting out of bed is one of the hardest things to do. With this new job I have managed to change my sleeping pattern so I go to bed a bit earlier (11pm) and the alarm goes of at 7:35am. Might not be early for most, for me it’s a big win! I have also gotten better at sorting out morning coffee by programming my coffee maker rather than stoping by 7/11.

Early for me

So at 7:20 the coffee starts brewing, at 7:35 the alarm goes of and I wake up and smell the coffee. This is not super new, I think that there are several posts about that coffee maker to be found here on the blog. The new part is that I don’t pour all the coffee in the to-go mug, instead some go into a normal mug.

No matter the question

This is so that I can take a few minutes and sit on my balcony, enjoying the peace and quiet (with the random screaming child running by), just chillin before the day starts for real. I do this pretty much no matter how late or early I am, my morning meditiation session.

My view

I did get a bit distracted this morning though when I relaized that my to-go muggs are all getting old and worn, so it had me thinking where I can get new fantastic ones, if you have any good recomendations on to-go mugs, let me know. I prefer the ones that you can chuck in your purse without them spilling!

A looooong day

I’ve been visiting Gotham this weekend, and since spending a Sunday eve on a train only to come home to an empty appartment is kind of depressing, I prefer the Monday morning train. Except for when the alarm goes of at 05:30 am…and today I didn’t manage to fall back to sleep when I sat down. So, after breakfast I started up the work PC and got at it.

Sometimes there is brekkie

Almost in chock when the train arrived in Malmö on time I headed over to work and did work stuff, you know those things you do at work; drink coffee, go for lunch, chat with those you work with, and oh! I think I saw an Excelsheet. And since I came from Gotham I couldn’t bring lunch, thus I had to go buy some…

After work I had plans to attend a seminar held by a person that I really want to hear what they have to say. I just suck at planning since getting up at 5:30am, train and work doesn’t bode well for 5:30pm plans, so I flagged it.

Then I realized that one of the reason why I like staying at my mums place is because she doesn’t have problems with the heating. Last night, I left the balcony door open for a few minutes while enjoying the fresh air, here I sit with my winter slippers on as well as a blankie because it’s freezing…!!!

Yup, it’s cold..

What better way to end a day like this than with frozen pizza on the couch in front of the telly watching crappy TV? None, my friends! See you all again tomorrow…right?!?

Total quality!!

The light at the end of the tunnel

The last post was in September last year, with a picture of me and an Alien, and I can understand that you might think that I was kidnapped by just Aliens due to the radio silence since.

The rest of the vacation was fab, just not good enough Wi-Fi to keep posting and then it was time to go home.

Already before the va-cay, I doubted my work life as I was unhappy with my job, the contents, the workload and the expectations. When I returned home from the vacation I felt fantastic, relaxed and happy – until the alarm rang the next morning and I realized I had to go back to work. The stress, the tummy ache and the wanting to pull the cover back over my head; it all came back to me.

I decided then that it was time to change my job, I missed working within the Finance & Accounting area, missed my large excel sheets full of data and if I never had to see a contract again I would’ve been the happiest on the planet. Unfortunately a new job doesn’t happen overnight and as the fall moved towards winter and darker time’s things just kept piling on.

When it was time for next vacation I felt like I had reached my breaking point and while I at this point had a new job in the pipeline, I seriously needed three weeks of relaxing vacation – unfortunately that didn’t happen. The things just kept piling on.

The new job took what felt like forever to come to realization and then on top of that, a 3 month resignation period. Even though my old boss was kind enough to let my new boss borrow me (the advantage of moving within the company) so I could get a sneak start to the new job.

With spring, the new job and a few sessions with an absolutely fantabolus shrink, I’m now finding that I feel like both my feet are properly placed on earth, that I’m happy and laughing again (of course not constantly), got my appetite back and that I reached that light in the end of the tunnel.

With the smiles come the energy, I have managed to get so much done in the apartment, I feel like going running again, applied for online courses and, the best of all…I feel like blogging again!!!

So, eight months down the line, I need to check out the changes to WordPress, see if I can find a new fresh layout to the blog and then just get back into it…starting with a trip to the US coming up this weekend!!!!

 

Leaving Vegas

A couple of days in Vegas is more than enough, so after trying a local Diner for breakfast we started walking towards the car rental place.

We managed to score a car around noon rather than at 3pm that was the original plan. We just need to get out, and we did it in style…this tiny little car;

We also didn’t realize that Area 51 was on our way from Vegas to Beatty, where we had a motel booked for the flight. So I now have a nice little Facebook check-in there, how cool isn’t that?

I want to remember taking pictures where we stopped for coffee, but can’t find them on my phone…hmmm!

Beatty turned out to be an interesting place as well, we already knew that our Motel had an Alien outside, it also had a nice place with cold beer and a Swedish lady that spent the past 25 years or so in the US. That got us introduced to the locals, you know: the gun carrying kind…

It

was a wet eve that landed me in bed early, too tired to fool Mr Grumpy II into digging a hole in the ground.

Finally the helicopter

Wow, the blog have been too busy being on vacation that it was supposed to update. Lets see what can be done today. I left with the promise of the highlight of the trip, the planned helicopter tour.

Starting the day with brekkie of course, one of the things I miss about living in Sweden…this time we hit Denny’s rather than IHop.

Then we hit the pool, can’t stay in a hotel with two pools and not try both of them.

You can tell that some parts of my booty haven’t seen that much sun lately though, as I missed a spot with the sunblock.

After a basic taco lunch it was finally time, and I have to say, Helicopter over the Grand Canyon must be one of the coolest things I’ve done. And to all of those that worried about Mr Grumpy II, I wasn’t allowed to open the helicopter door during the trip so he’s still alive.

The

only thing that put a dent in the experience was not being able to rub it in daddy’s face. He would’ve been so jealous with the whole thing. And then, as we are riding back towards Boulder, one of the songs that I remember him always singing along to starts playing.

All those times we watched Good Morning Vietnam thogheter he would always start digging when What a wonderful world came on. And what can I say, sitting in the helicopter…it is a wonderful world indeed.

After returning back to our hotel, we headed up the tower attached to it in order to check out the views before a late night dinner at an Australian Steak House and a walk down the strip.

Nap time

Up and about early this morn, I dragged my travel companion to IHOP for some proper brekkie. Knowing his need for walking, walking and more walking, I knew I needed it.

Once brekkie was done we started our trek towards the strip. You see, we are staying in a big hotel with a view and a casino, a cheap big hotel with a casino. That mean we live in downtown Las Vegas rather than right smack in the middle and with a 30 minute (might have been more) walk to get there.

We do live next door to an Elvis chapel though.

So now I’ve seen all the important casinos.

Hells kitchen.

I’ve tried some local brews.

Accidentally had lunch at Markie Mark’s restaurant.

Then a long walk back (while Mr Grumpy II kept walking to find some Las Vegas sign) in scorching heat. Sometimes taking the time to figure out the buss or jump into a taxi might be worth it, especially if it’s 40 degrees outside. The heat in combination with lack of sleep made me a very unhappy camper. After a long cold shower it was totally nap time.

Had a couple of lovely hours sleeping this afternoon. Always good to get your energy back so you can enjoy the pool bar and gambling without passing out.

A bit before midnight, and not much broker than before the casino, it’s now time for bed. Tomorrow it’s time for the helicopter, probably what I’ve been looking forward to the most with this trip.

And off we went

A much anticipated vacation kicked of yesterday morning, European time, me and my loyal companion headed towards the airport, this time with Mr Grumpy II in tow.

It was quite a mission since I wasn’t allowed online check-in and had to be at the airport in decent time. It’s been a while since I had a paper boarding card in my hand, the process was made loads easier thanks to the magic gold card (LOVE IT) and free food in the lounge.

Since Mr Grumpy II doesn’t like sitting still I was a bit worried about the 11 and a half flight towards San Francisco, however I would say the in flight condiments helped…

For being me flying, it was quite a smooth trip, I walked straight through immigration and with no checked in luggage there was no delayed bag no 10 on this trip either.

We also had time for some local bevvie while waiting for the next flight.

Once we made it to our Las Vegas hotel, it was pretty much dinner and then bed, 9pm being like 5am in the morning and not much sleep.

We didn’t even venture of the hotel, I kicked back with a BLT at the hotel diner.

Thus I’m now awake at 6am with a Starbucks in my hand.

Should soon be time for another existing day…

Feeling mighty pleased with myself :)

Ok, so the one post a day last week didn’t work out, I was to busy with the end of the World Cup and beer…which brought me to a Monday where I kept telling myself that I’m not 25 anymore. Need to remember that more often.

I also managed only one run last week, better than none and it started the running again. I managed yet another lunch-run today. So yes, I feel mighty pleased with myself.

In addition, after what feels like forever with heat, there was rain today. While I was running, it was just drizzling a bit so not too bad running weather. It cooled me off enough for generating a want of soup lunch.

I need to improve my knowledge about my stove, that can’t be counted as new anymore since it’s been a while since the grand kitchen renovation. It has some kind of lock mechanism that I don’t always realize how it activates, and since it happens so seldom it always take me a while to figure out how to unlock the damn thing. Not great when you are on a time schedule and need to get back to work.

Well, all good that ends well. Fingers crossed that get of my butt on Thursday for another run (and that Runkeeper is kinder to me then and stop cutting out).

Slowing down…

Yesterday two of my colleagues from foreign offices came for a visit and that meant dinner after work with team, oh what a chore. I wanted them to get to try something new so I brought them to Pinchos, who can resist tiny food ordered through an app?

 

Their Sangria is pretty fab as well.

Then there was that thing we call football! Sweden isn’t in the cup anymore, that doesn’t stop me from cheering for Croatia when my English colleague is sitting next to me being sad. Horrible me. She got even by making me in to an English fan though…

It got in kind of late so thank heaven for 7/11 this morning as I couldn’t be bothered programming my coffee and stuff last night when I came home a bit after midnight.

For some reason I had a silly idea that I would go running this morning, that didn’t happen so lets see if I can make it happen tonight.