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december 2003 Archives
I have never seen so many presents at one time before. There was tons of them and Tovah and Martine handed them out for over 2 hours. Obviously the children got the most christmas presents and today the day after christmas eve they are playing with them.
My mother in law, Siv "hits me" from time to time my guess is that it relates to what happened this summer. I mentioned to Johanna that Siv does what she does and she said casually that I only have myself to blame. It is very true but the truth doesn't hurt less. I got very sad from this and slept very badly.
In the morning Tovah woke up around 0830 and I really needed to sleep some more but Johanna sat the girls down with new plastic christmas presents just outside the bedroom door. There the calm morning evaporated and the total kaos in this house came tumbling back into my so called reality.
Since we got to Jönköping there hasn't been a single calm moment except when I try to hide away in our bedroom. Eating with Johanna's family is always an adventure combined with a race for the food and eating as fast as possible while making as much noise as possible. After each meal I feel exhausted.
I really long for tomorrow when we head back home to our small blue house again and back to tranquility. Unfortunately we will have guest immediately when we get home, Jennifer and Rolf. They are leaving town about 4 hours after we get to Luleå. But after that I hopefully will get some calm around me again. Of course I have 20 hours trainride home in front of the as well.
If have finished the first Dan Brown book, Angels and Demons and it was great. I cannot decide if it is better or not than The DaVinci Code but it is very good. I continued with his third book, Deception Point which reminds me very much of Tom Clancy. Politics around the presidency of the USA in a high tech environment.
As always I feel better after blogging but still I would rather be at home right now being able to do what I want without having to be courteous towards all the other people here.
In a moment it is time for lunch and I have to sit down at the table with all the rest of the people here.
And if it couldn't get worse I have a cold as well. My throat is burning and my nose is running. I need some solitude and rest.
We have now been a couple of days in Jönköping. Håkan and my mother visited over the weekend and that nice. It was a really full house and Martine and Tovah get each other more active than ever. They keep running around and making loud noises although this morning it is better. I guess they are getting used to each other.
Yesterday the storm came and we got a couple of cm of snow. WOW. :-) We don't have to much snow at home either but the temperature has dropped down and is approaching -30 Celsius (-22 Fahrenheit). Here in Jönköping it is only -6 Celsius (21 Fahrenheit).
They christmas ham just went into the oven and in a moment we are going to make the christmas shopping list for the christmas food on the christmas table.
It is nice to be on christmas leave and just to relax and I almost manage to forget everything about work.
I finished reading The DaVinci Code and I highly recommend it to everybody. I continued with an older Chrichton (Five Patients) but it was boring and I switched to Dan Brown's first book, Angels and Demons and after reading 1/4 it is VERY good. Almost as good as The DaVinci Code if not even better. It is about the sci fi subject of antimatter terrorism :-)
That was a quick update from Peter's world and a happy christmas to all readers!!
Today is my last work day before Christmas. Woke up around 6 and surprisingly not tired at all. Started the day with some reading (the DaVinci Code is VERY good) and then an early e-meeting at 07.45.
The snow arrived today, and it arrived in high amounts. It is still snowing but not as heavily. Nice to get some snow though. We got a few cm earlier this week but the real winter started today.
Tomorrow I am heading down south to Jönköping and a visit to the mother in law, Siv. My mother and Håkan will come up over the weekend and Jonathan plus his family will be there as well over christmas. As well as Johanna's other brother, Jakob. It is going to be a full house!
I have given up captioning all my older photos and here is one with partial captions, the division in Juan les Pines, France December 2002.
Another one, Misc October 2002.
Yet another one, Kåre Synnes' graduation ceremony November 9 2002.
And here some of my scanned photos taken during summer/autumn 1993.
And I even managed to get the December photos online!
Today we removed parts of the wall in the hall and it made a huge difference. It is always fun to work with your hands, especially when you get to destroy things :-)
We finally got some snow today. Not until mid December in northern Sweden!!! Strange!
And here are the November photos.
My October 2003 photos are now online. A lot of Tovah photos and a number from a party at Britta's fantastic place!
I just saw the two movies in the mini-series Battlestar Galactica 2003. It is a remake of the original series from 1978 done by the SciFi channel.
If you like SciFi then you are going to LOVE this one. I enjoyed it very much. It had both the action, the tech-level and it had a story.
See it!
I am way behind on my photos! I just added some from September. Here is the first of the new...
It looks like my patents are coming along nicely. We got the official papers from the patent office for the first patent today. Here is the first patent that is approved in Sweden and here is the world version that is currently being handled. Here is a summary page at the Swedish patent office.
Here is the summary page for the second patent currently being handled.
It is way too early to be up at this hour! The reason I am up is that I am heading to preschool with the family to watch Tovah's "Lucia"-show with all the other kids.
By the way, Elon-Lindvalls called yesterday and said that they are tired of it all (i.e. the dishwasher business) and told us that we can either get a 1800 refund (down to 22K for all the appliances) or we can get a new better machine. J chose the better machine and sometime around christmas or early next year they will come and exchange our dishwasher for a better one, a Miele 694, instead of the 641 we have now. They will of course pay for the extra cost of connecting a new one.
Perhaps, it isn't that early after all. I feel good and perhaps I should get up this early every morning? Nah, 07:40 is early enough :-)
Got to do some coding today. Hurray!
Went training and ended up on the threadmill running a 4 km round. Actually first I ran 300 meter and then fell of the machine :-)
Yesterday we took a walk on the ice and when we were as far we could go from land the ice started making loud cracking noises. It was a bit scary and headed back to shore as quickly as we dared :-)
Lost some money on the stock market today. I am down 2K now :-/
I dumped the plague book and started reading the DaVinci Code instead and already after a few pages I can say that it is MUCH better!!
It turns out that the dishwasher is actually NOT the same machine in Sweden as in the rest of Europe. We have today spoken with both Miele in Sweden and Germany and apparently they do this all the time. They make a special version of the same machine for the Swedish market with extra features and then they sell it as a special offer machine. The strange thing is that they keep the same model number on the machine. Strange, don't you think?
It is time for a book report. What have I been reading during the autumn?
The Teeth of the Tiger, Tom Clancy. Very good good book. The Ryan story continues, this time with about Jack Ryan Jr. If you have enjoyed the other Clancy books the you will like this one.
En annan tid, ett annat liv. Leif GW Persson. Good police story about a small murder that turns into something bigger. Not the best book I have read but entertaining.
Ondskan. Jan Guillou. The book about Guillou's childhood, or at least that is what he says. Rumours say that he has made up the whole thing though. Independently of it is true or not it was a very good book.
Häxornas försvarare. Guillou, Jan. Started reading this a while back but I stopped after a few chapters. I started reading it just after finished the fourth Arn book and it was just too much old times (at that time :-).
Tornseglarna, Kristoffer Leandoer. A childrens fantasy book about parallel worlds. I didn't know it was a childrens book when starting it but it was good anyhow :-)
Ont blod, Arne Dahl. Murder, murders, murders. Very good detective story. Read it!
Skuld, Karin Alvtegen. Now this was a good movie. Sort of a book with a nice twist. I like those. Well worth reading.
Rita Rubinstein åker tunnelbana i den bästa av världar. Anita Goldman. Boring. About how it is to be jewish in Stockholm. Only read about 1/3.
Right now I am reading The Plague, Albert Camus. I have read bout 1/5 but I am thinking about switching. To the Davincy Code perhaps?
And several more that I have forgotten about.
I just saw Equilibrium. One of the best movies I have seen in a very long time. Reminded me very much of Matrix, but a Matrix done right, a Matrix with an ending. See it!!
Why should it be so hard to buy things? Last week J bought some new stuff including a dishwasher. It turns out that the dishwasher wasn't as good as the salesperson promised. Johanna told the shop last Saturday and we have been talking with them every day since. The thing was that Johanna wanted a model with AAA classification (energy consumption) and she was originally set on a Miele 647. The sales person said that she could get the 641 for a better price and it had a lower sound level, 46dB (the 647 had 48dB). Yesterday we found out that the 641 actually has a sound level of 51dB!! As it is no longer generally available (last years model) we cannot find any technical information on it in Sweden but checking around the net we found specs for it that it actually is a 51dB machine in UK, Norway, Finland, Germany, Netherlands and USA. Nice. NOT!
I lost 600:- yesterday on the stock market, not so nice either. Got to get it back on Monday :-)
This morning we went downtown and I totally lost all energy. It took me several hours before I got it back during the afternoon. For lunch we had stuffed bell peppers followed by "maräng swiss". Yummy. But I ate toooooo much :-)
Tovah's preschool training lasted one day, and not a full day either. Only 2 hours. Yesterday was her first day alone and it worked perfectly until she saw mummy and didn't want to go home. As of next week she will start going 5 hours per day, 3 days per week. This morning I left her at the preschool and she was really happy to get there.
Yesterday I had my first real spinning session and I was really beat when I got home. 32 minutes active cycling. Nice but it does not beat my own cycling during the summer. A spinning bike doesn't behave the same as a real bike.
Today I did day trading on the Stockholm Stock Exchange for the first time in my life. I actually earned 20:- (SEK).I one "bet" 2700 but tomorrow I will bring up the stake. I have given myself 58000:- to play with and if I had staked all that today I would have earned more than 400:-. Not bad for a few minutes work. I bought the stock at 270 and sold at 272, but it actually ended at 275.
In the afternoon I got into a heated discussion regarded budget issues in a group of projects we have. The contracts have been dragging out in time (since April). That is not the thing, but that I get so agitated when discussing these issues. I make myself miserable and my environment likewise. And it makes me really sad that I get angry for no reason :-(
Went spinning today! It was the first time in my life and it was rather nice. I am going on Wednesday again. This first time was only an introduction lasting 30 minutes but I feel good.
This morning me and J took T to her first day at preschool. She is going to Udden's preschool, the "Biet" group. This first day she was only there for 1 hour playing on her own. Tomorrow she will be there for 2 hours without me or J around. I am convinced that she will do fine there!
Puh, training takes the energy out of me.
Saw the first half of Kill Bill yesterday. Cool movie. I hope the second half will be just as good :-)
