In which she's clearly incapable of handling stress

Because I'm a friggin' idiot like that, and in the stressing of leaving in time to catch the bus an hour ago managed to forget my student's ID, and that's why they wouldn't let me in at VG's and I had to go back home to get it and now have fifteen minutes to spare to write this before the next goddamn bus leaves because I can't find the way on the bike.
Seriously. I hate my psyche. And my non existant sense of direction.

Great pre-party, though. I even managed to do two push-ups in a row.

Eta that holiday bus traffic, as Heather would put it, 'sux sweaty goat balls'. Which is why I am here at home and not at VG's.

Rawr

I am such a crabby bitch today. This time of the month just sucks out loud. I'm gonna go listen to some Metallica and get some agressions out.

What a waste

This whole new healthier lifestyle I've decided to take on is actually working, so far. I've started taking a 45 minute walk before breakfast every day except for the two days when my classes start early, eating a bit less, more varied and more often, no unnecessary sweet stuff or snacks, more biking... And it seems like I'm sticking to it, too. It's really not that hard once you get into the routine. I'm so gonna fit into my pretty dress at the wedding in three weeks.


As for the aforementioned waste... Naming an episode 'Folsom Prison Blues' and then, no Johnny Cash? That just ain't right. And that earns it this icon.
(Heh, yeah, I just really wanted an excuse to use it. The concept belongs to Refur, who was kind enough to let me snag it. *squishes*)

But...

- You think you're funny.
- I think I'm adorable.

- Don't worry, Sam, promise I won't trade you for smokes.

- Poor Tiny, man, poor...giant Tiny.

... plus forearms and a really creepyass ghost made up for it. Sort of. And who knew orange could be so flattering?

Springtime's good for picnics and cycling

According to tonight's weather rapport, it's going to get colder over the weekend and Valborg will be enjoyed in ten to fifteen degrees. Terrific. It's been summery all week, and now the weather's gonna decide we've had enough warmth for a while? When we're planning a Stadsparks-picnic? Bugger that. We demand sun. At least during the day.

I took my new bike (yes, new and so wonderfully easy to ride on) and went for a ride today - ended up going almost all the way to Sandby and back, 9 or so miles. Took me an hour and boy was I warm when I got home... I didn't realise I had fair wind on my way out, so going back was a bit more strenous. Not to mention that I ended up behind a truck on a narrow gravelpath and breathed in way too much dust for it to be healthy. Nice. Still, except for that it was a nice little trip.

Awesomeness

I was looking at Adobe's website the other day, thinking of getting PhotoShop, when I realised... 10 000 sek? Jesus friggin' Christ! I want it, I really, really do, but not that bad. No thank you, I'm doing just fine with AppleWorks.
Well, I'm not, really, but it gets the work done. Kind of. A little bit of it. I've figured out how to make mood icons with text on them, anyway! Go me!

And hee, I got the coolest body detergent from Ida today - Extra Abrasive Bitch. It eliminates mean streaks and even contains PMS neutralizer. And let's not forget the mudcake, which was yum!



So, awesomeness for the both of us.

Memories false and true

Okay, so Hollywood Babylon definitely deserves a *gigglesnort*. Filler and pretty much serving as a break before we head into the finale angst (of which there is bound to be a large amount, judging from the previous season), but yet kinda awesome. And the continuity fairy paid a visit! Always a plus.
And now I have another line I need to work into a conversation at some point - "Bite your tongue, heathen!" Man, that list is getting long.


I finally dragged the last bunch of photos from Bcn last summer into iPhoto (yes, I know, I know, it's been almost a year) and it sure brought back some memories from our last day there.
Heh, don't I look cool in my cap 'n all?








Here, they had the best paella ever. Seriously. I have never eaten anything so good. They better still be open this year when we get there. --->

*wibble*

YouTube is letting me down. Sniff.
It's driving me fucking crazy that I don't have access to the US iTunes store. I want those iTunes cards, damn it! I should've remembered to beg Genna to pick some up for me.

I felt like taking some pictures in town yesterday - the weather was boring and the light wasn't good, but anyway, here are a few.


Heroes is back on Monday. That deserves a little squeeage.

I'm so much older than I can take

Seriously, there is something wrong with eating a ham & cheese sandwhich when the bread is the same type of bread you use for hot dogs and hamburger buns, complete with sesame seeds. It's so sickly sweet. Just my luck that the one time I'm being too lazy to bring my own sandwiches that's all the cafeteria has. And still I did resist the comfort of mudcake and had an apple instead. *proud*

Some more awesome songs: Turn The Page, Metallica; Jailbreak, Thin Lizzy; and Pour Some Sugar On Me, Def Leppard.
What bugs me and makes me kinda sad is when you adore the lyrics to a song, and you still can't bring yourself to actually enjoy the song itself. The Killers' Bling (Confessions of a King) is one of those. It's got beautiful lyrics (and almost made 'The Supernatural Hits I' based on them, for the mood at the end of Croatoan), but despite them it just drags.

Supernatural is back tomorrow night. *tries hard not to squee and fails* Final five episodes of the season, and from the little stuff I've reluctantly - and sometimes stupidly - picked up, it seems it's gonna be one hell of a last stretch. As soon as we get this week's somewhat 'silly' episode out of the way. (And damn it! I just looked at the promotional photos for 2.20! Why am I so weak? And why can't I learn that I regret it afterwards? Also, wow.)
Huh. Once this show's over for the summer I'm gonna have to actually get a life.
That's going to be a challenge.

A pragmatic birthday

Yawn. Christ, I'm tired. I've got my semantics & pragmatics brick of a book lying next to the laptop and should be reading it to prepare for tomorrow's lecture, but I just cant bring myself to open it.

Pre-summer has arrived, complete with outdoor ficking and Italian ice cream from Glasskulturen to be eaten on Stortorget, and so I have suffered summer's first sunburn. Not as bad as it could have been, but it's there. At least it's fairly flattering shade of red... Yeah, right.

Oh, oh! Happy birthday, Ida! For you to enjoy on this special day:


(Psst - sadly, I don't own either the photo, from Ten Inch Hero, or Priestly. Or Mr. Ackles himself, for that matter. Oh boy, do I wish.)

Doesn't it tickle you to know he's wearing a kilt in that photo?



Had an awesome time last night, with great food, some excellent music - damn right REO! - and good company. Ida has cool friends. *approves* Although I totally blame those boys for my humming I Can't Fight This Feeling all day. I managed to refrain from singing it all while making the CD, and now it's stuck. Great. And all I can think is, "He sings it from the hair."

Right. Semantics. I'm off.

"Fika"

Fika: fee-kah - verb, fika, fikade, fikat. Practised by a large part of the population, though especially by young people and particularly students. Commonly practised at cafés, but can also take place in a kitchen/living room, or on a blanket. Includes drinking (coffee is often involved, but can easily be replaced by tea, orange juice, soda, smoothie, hot chocolate, or even water), sometimes eating (baguettes are common, as are croissants, muffins, scones, and various cakes), but most importantly, chatting. The occurrence of drink and food may vary, but the chatting remains consistent - a person skilled at fika may be able to pass around three or four hours of time in one spell. Sometimes, cigarettes may also play a part, but after the banning of smoking inside this is mainly during summer when the outdoor cafés are open and picnics are possible.

Seriously, the English language needs a word for "fika". Unbelieveable that such an important phenomenon doesn't have its own word - my dictionary defines it as "having coffee", but coffee really doesn't need to be involved.
Logan, invent one!

Quitters, all of us

So, Lugi lost. No more handball for my boys this season, no semi-finals, no final, no nothing. And, you know, I could live with that. I could live with that if we'd gone out fighting, fighting hard and just not making it. But losing by 21 to 31 against Skövde of all teams, after a game so fucking horrible and sloppy I couldn't even watch the last ten minutes, that is not okay. Damn, guys. What the hell happened? What happened to the team that hasn't been beaten at home in Lund all season? You chose this match to let them break that suite?

I'm giving up on Neurolinguistics, two weeks into the course. A part of me doesn't want to. I feel like a quitter, and I mean, it's interesting, I know that, theoretically. I want to think it's interesting, but I just don't feel that it's interesting. It's too much science for me. If I never hear the words 'neuron' or 'features' again, I'll be happy. And it sucks, because I really wanted to take this course, and I wanted to enjoy it.

Semantics and pragmatics, on the other hand, that is interesting. Today we got the question, "What is 'meaning'?" (in the linguistic sense of the word, first and foremost). And you try explaining - or just discussing - the word 'meaning' without using the word 'means'! (A problem which is apparantly called 'circularity'.) It was totally confusing and awesome.
I think we did come to a conclusion of sorts in the end... I at least got fond of the term 'learnt association'.
This is the kind of stuff I want to focus on.
And now I really want to study the phonesthemes in onomatopoetic words. I've never really thought of them - morphemes have always been the smallest meaningful units in the language to me, but she's right, the phonesthemes do mean something.

Don't mess with Metallicar

So, Easter's over and there has to be about four pounds of candy in the house, the majority of which is my mum's, but still. Heh, she has nothing on Nicole, though - girl had a bag full of Easter egg candy that had to weigh almost seven pounds. And she shared it, too. Can't believe it's been so long since I saw her, she's gotten so big. And I remember holding her when she was christened, this tiny little baby who fell asleep the minute I took her.

I got into a car discussion yesterday with my dad, uncle and my little cousin, who knows a good deal about cars (and who's really not very little any longer, I tend to forget that). They actually wouldn't believe me when I said that Metallicar was an Impala. My own father claimed that she was a Ford Mustang, the others (who haven't actually seen the car) said that no one would think a Chevy Impala was a pretty car, but that it was big and ostentatious. And then they all said that the Impala was a typical 'raggaråk'.
Ostentatious?
Raggaråk?!
First thing I did this morning was getting picture proof, but it turned out that my father had done a bit of browsing himself last night and admitted that he was wrong.
That's right. You do not mess with the -67 Chevy Impala around me. I'll admit that the other years' models aren't as good looking, but oh, the -67... That's car porn at its finest.
And don't you forget it.

I sprained my ankle again. Wearing friggin' sneakers, just walking and minding my own business just about to go into Mondos. Maybe it's time to go and get it checked out, see if there's something to be done about it. There was talk of surgery on it a few years ago, but they decided against it in the end. But seriously, four or five sprains (I've actually lost count) since December... Something's gotta get done.

Payoff

All the work I put into that damn Theoretical Grammar exam paid off. I screamed so loud when I got the email my mum thought I saw a mouse and then I started bouncing so much my amulet fell of its cord. Oh well, I was going to buy a new cord anyway.

And can I just say how much I love my mum? No one makes me laugh like she does, and she doesn't even mean to. Just yesterday we were talking about old ice creams, and my dad and I remembered the smiling clown who had a chewing gum for his nose. My dear mother looks at us, rolls her eyes, and says, "No, no, you're both wrong, the gum was his belly button."
Our reactions:
...

Turns out that the ice cream she'd been eating was, according to her, a naked clown with a pea sized gum for a belly button; which led to a discussion about my mother having ice cream kinks, what kind of twisted kiosk would sell an ice cream like that, and finally how it could have been called 'Magnum Navel' and been part of that campaign based on the mortal sins. And because my father and I have the same sense of humour - that is to say, we are both twelve - it ended with us imagining a girl licking a naked clown while a sexy voiceover whispers 'lust' and laughing so hard we cried. Just a regular Thursday night at the Pernryds'.
I guess you had to be there.

Ida and I were talking the other day about how annoyed we used to get when someone used too much English words when talking (in Swedish, for all nitpickers who know who they are :P)... I mean, shouting 'offside!' when watching football was all right, but otherwise English expressions were just plain annoying. And now, I'm totally overusing stuff like 'dude', 'son of a bitch' and 'awkward' - gee, I wonder why that could be? - and one of my main goals is to work "I'm lovin' you like a two dollar whore" into a conversation.
How things change.
(You rode in an Impala. Without me. You bitch.)

Happy Easter, everyone!

Damn you, Eve, it's all your fault.

You know, for ten or so days every month, I really, really hate being a woman.

...

- Are you okay?
- Am I okay?
- Yeah.
- I just helped you steal some dead guy's confidential psych file. *beat* I'm awesome!

Yes, Ava is indeed awesome.

So, the current song I can't stop playing is Blue Oyster Cult's Fire of Unknown Origin. You gotta hear it. The one on the album with the same title, though, not the one on Agents Of Fortune. That version's just not as good. Animals' House of the Rising Sun has had its fair share of plays lately, as well as AC/DC's If You Want Blood (You've Got It).
And whenever Carry On My Wayward Son comes on I still just want to sit back, close my eyes and enjoy it. Same with Renegade. Oh, and The Hollies' He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother is also gorgeous.

God, I'm glad I'm not deaf.

Pass it on.

"The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand had come out and taken yours."

I finally sat down and took the time to watch The History Boys today, and if the above quote (or gobbet, if you want, though Hector would have at me) doesn't tell you, it was just wonderful. Differed from the play quite a bit in places; most of the monologues are naturally gone, and parts of the dialogue, which admittedly made me a little sad - a few bits I really love were cut, like Scripps coming to the conclusion that God is "this massive case of unrequited love", that he should get real and that we don't owe him anything. But, either way, the essence was there, I laughed a lot and it hit all the right points. And I may or may not have shed a tear or two at the end, with Mrs. Lintott and the boys and the future laid out. Lockwood's fate especially came as a bit of a shock, even though afterwards I remembered Charlie having mentioned it.

The scene where the boys, Hector and Irwin discuss whether or not you can - or should, even - teach the Holocaust will definitely have a place on my 'Best scenes' list from now on. And I decided it needs to be shared with you. Mr. Bennett, Mr. Hytner, I mean no harm in reproducing this text.
Yes, I know, it's long, but read!

Akthar: It has origins, it has consequences. It's a subject like any other.
Scripps: Not like any other, surely. Not like any other at all.
Akthar: No, but it's a topic.
Hector: They go on school trips there nowadays, don't they? Auschwitz. Dachau. What's always concerned me, is where do they have their sandwiches, drink their coke?
Crowther: The visitors' centre. It's like anywhere else.
Hector: Yeah, but do they take pictures of each other there? Are they smiling? Do they hold hands? Nothing is appropriate.

*snip*

Hector: Why can't we simply just condemn the camps outright as an unprecedented horror?
Lockwood: There's no point, sir! Everybody will do that! "The camps an event unlike any other." "The evil unprecedented." Et cetera, et cetera.
Hector: No! Can't you see that even to say "et cetera" is...monstrous? "Et cetera" is what the Nazis would have said. The dead reduced to mere verbal abbreviation.
Lockwood: All right, not et cetera. But given that the death camps are generally thought of as unique, wouldn't another approach be to show what precedents there were? Put them, well, in proportion?
Scripps: Proportion?!

Dakin: Well, no, not proportion, then, but putting them in context.
Posner: But putting something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained. And if it can be explained, it can be explained away.
Rudge: "Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner."
Irwin: That's good, Posner.
Posner: It isn't good. I mean it, sir!
Dakin: But when we talk about putting them in context, it's only the same as the dissolution of the monasteries. After all, monasteries had been dissolved before Henry VIII, dozens of them.
Posner: Yes, but the difference is, I didn't lose any relatives in the dissolution of the monasteries!
Irwin: Good point.
Scripps: You keep saying, 'good point'. Not 'good point', sir, true! To you, the Holocaust is just another topic on which we may or may not get a question!
Irwin: No! No. But this is history. Distance yourselves. Our perspective on the past alters. And looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground - we don't see it. And because we don't see it, this means there is no period so remote as the recent past. And one of the historian's jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be.

I love those boys. They seem know the characters so well. Samuel Barnett is everything I imagined and hoped Posner would be.

"I'm a Jew, I'm small, I'm homosexual, and I live in Sheffied. I'm fucked."

:heart:

Oh, and by the way, Logan - I also got a DVD box with no less than five Almodóvar films. Hable Con Ella, Todo Sobre Mi Madre, Mala Educación, Carne Trémula and Átame. Yay!

Our Lord Of The Rings (extended versions) marathon was great. Although I really do hope we didn't burn out the DVD player...
And I want a kitty of my own.