So I have been drinking a bit. A bottle of white wine. Wheeee!

Today my neck hurts. A lot. I must have slept wrong and it just plain old hurts. I hate when my neck hurts. That and my Palm T3 stopped working with EasySync Pro and PocketQuicken like 2 months ago. I reinstalled everything last night and still no luck at first. Turns out that IBM Lotus Software put out a $70 upgrade which I had to purchase to fix the problem. Ugh. And then my Documents To Go would freeze, which meant a $30 upgrade to make that work. So $100 later everything is working, but I had to pay to do it. Grrr….I hate that.

On the positive side, I can check my mail, read the news, update my LJ, manage my life, and some other stuff while listening to my iPod. And when I get bored with music, my iPod plays video. And I will hang out for a bit with Sipho tonight, so that is fun. No idea what to cook though, but will be really simple. Probably just a steak, salad, and some starch of some type (whether it is mashed potatoes or rice I am not sure of yet). And for me, a glass of wine. It’s Tuesday. My neck hurts, I can submit expense claims for my business travels because the system is down, etc, etc, etc. I deserve a glass of wine. Or two.

So it is Sunday and I am at the airport in Copenhagen. I actually should be on the plane to SWtockholm, but due to EasyJet forcing me to check a bag, there was no way in hell that I was going to make a connection to SAS. In some airports it would have been possible, but not Copenhagen airport. CPH airport takes about 20 minutes to deliver bags, no matter how close or far away the gate is to their arrivals hall in Terminal 3. So I am on stand-by for the 19.50. It doesn’t look good. So I could be at the airport until 22.45 tonight. Which would not be a bad thing except that I might not make the Arlanda Express home and have to take a taxi. Which I might do anyway and save the Arlanda Express travel for another day.

But I won’t let this coming home experience ruin what was a great weekend. Worst-case scenario – I have access to the SAS Scandinavian Lounge, I have some space left in my bag for tax-free shopping for NON-ALCOHOLIC items (I already have a bottle of Dom Perignon, a bottle of Tanqueray, a bottle of bombay sapphire, and 2 bottles of Absolute Blue), and they have an A Herreford’s Beefstow stakehouse now in the airport and I have been jonsing for a well-made steak.

So this weekend was better and cheaper than I thought it was going to be. The tickets were cheap, I spent a total of €35 on transportation (most of that came from taxis to/from the clubs on Saturday), a total of €30 on food, and €180 on the hotel. Which combined with the flight and some spending cash total was about €350 for a night out. I made a comprehensive spreadsheet and pivot table about this, but I realised that only I care so I won’t post it.

On Saturday I ended up going to Berghain and Connection. Both have great music. I actually fell asleep around 22.00, but then I woke up at 02.30 and decided that I wasn’t going to waste the night inside falling asleep, so I got showered and went to Connection. Connection for me a fun little place. After some hours (read: sunlight on my face), I decided that I would follow a group of random people and go to Berghain. That was a cool experience. I gave out around 09.30 and went back to my hotel to get some sleep. It was much needed. I slept until about 11.00 and then I asked the hotel if I could check out at 13.00 but ended up needing until 13.30. Ah well, they didn’t mind. Berlin is truly a care-free city. I like to call it “Managed Chaos” — so many worlds seems to co-exist together well enough to not cause anarchy. I declare this now: I will live in Berlin at some point in my life. Before I get too old and unpretty. Some of you will say that I passed that devastating milestone somewhere between birth and when you read this, but I don’t care 🙂 Bastards 🙂

Anyhoo. It’s about time for me to go and beg for a seat on the flight. Really beg. After all, as much as I like the steak house, I’d rather be at home watching episodes of arrested development and spending a night in my own bed. Or more realistically, the cozy couches that are in my apartment.

To quote a cutie “This Be How It Be Going Down” 😉
(the partial week in review)

Oslo
Was there on Sunday for meeting on Monday. Sunday night one of my work colleagues invited us over for dinner. She made a terrific dinner and Peggy and I gave her a terrific bottle of Dom Perignon vintage 1998. It was sooooo yummy. We chatted for hours and hours until i started to get drunk and had to leave. Was supposed to meet up with other friends for a late-night drink, but at the risk of being hammered, that fell through. The meeting was very productive and went well on Monday, and that was a good thing. Flew to Copenhagen on Monday afternoon. Had a very good duty-free experience too. More booze. Like I need that. Sigh….

Copenhagen
This week in Copenhagen I actually felt quite lonely. Usually I have some personal friends to hang out it, but everyone is getting sick But I hung out with members of the team there to review our work one night. I bought them to my favourite Thai place in the city — Porn-Sac (lol). And the other nights I spent studying up for my CISSP examination next month, or just trying to get caught up with work. I had been looking forward to back to Stockholm over the weekend and getting to sample that beer collection I speak so much about, but then when I searching some low-cost carriers for another personal trip in April, I ran across an incredible offer from EasyJet which basically was that I would pay a little more than the taxes and airport fees for a flight for a weekend in Berlin. And since we all know how much I heart Berlin, guess what I did? After a bit of tax-free shopping of course (which involved no alcohol this time, but creams and potions designed to make me look younger longer – LOL!)

Berlin
Arrived to Berlin on Friday night. This time I decided that I would take the train. A taxi would be about €28.00. The train in contrast is only €2.10. Already a major savings over last time, since I want to keep this trip even cheaper than the last one (you will all see how I did once I am done since I am keeping track). Met up with a friend for coffee whom I hadn’t realised would be in Berlin at the same time as me. It was nice just to relax and hang out. Didn’t have too late of a night, and unlike the last time, I didn’t go out on Friday. Mostly because I wanted to actually see the city this time and get in some shopping. And I need to visit a bookstore to pick up a TimeOut guide to Berlin and to Prague. And I want to try and see what is left of Checkpoint Charlie and get in a museum. Too bad I didn’t have the forsight to bring my camera…something I usually always have in my bag. Oh well…hope the camera phone does the trick for stuff I am interested in seeing. I will go out tonight though, probably to Berghain. So far I have just sent €40 on a suitcase (I have a huge duffle bag, but it does not have a strap or wheels and when one is carrying 6 liters of alcohol that matters. A lot. And besides, I need something in between my huge you-could-fit-sipho-in-there suitcase and my louis vuitton light travel case. A good purchase indeed. At €40.00, it won’t make the year, but I get what I pay for, especially since I bought it in a shop within the former East Berlin section (meaning that in East Berlin, purchases seems to focus more on being tactical than strategic long-term purchases). But still than what I would have paid in Scandinavia.

So anyway, long post, but besides the slushy snow, the fact that I am almost out of clean underwear, and I have no party clothes (I will go out over-dressed) with me as I was not planning to be here, I am here to have fun 🙂

And next week – Prague, using SAS for tickets that I got for 800 kronor (which is 1/3 the normal price) during the European Holiday sale.

I heart everyone! Ciao!

OK, so since I have been traveling so much over the past weeks, and due to that after-party in January, most of my beer supplies had been decimated by Swedes. So today was the day that I decided to go to the Systembolaget and get some more beer. And besides the usual selections (Sopporo, Singha, Corona, and Carlsberg), I also picked up some czech beers, some indian beers, some french and german beers.

So this is what my beer shelf looked like before:

And this is what my beer shelf looked like after:

So my international beer selection is back on track. And since I leave for several other countries tomorrow afternoon, it will stay that way for at least a week.

There is a lot to write, but I just don’t really know how to put it all in words.

First, one of my friend’s partners got into a car accident. It was a lot for them to go through, especially considering they have had so much happen to them for the last 5 months. Second, I took sipho out to dinner and a movie for his birthday. We went to one of my favourite Thai restaurants in Stockholm and then we went to see Rent. It was an excellent play and also an excellent movie. I cried at several times in the movie, but I didn’t want anyone to know. Third, I just got back from Copenhagen and all I can say is that my mind is tired.

I am very down at the moment and very just blah. Just plain old blah. Dinner and the movie were the high point of the week (it’s always a fun time with Markus. There is just so much going on. And yet a lot of what is happening is out of my hands I think. I don’t know. In the past when I feel this way, I tend to go someplace else. Usually outside Stockholm. But the thing is for the last 5 months, I have done extensive traveling. So the problem — whatever it is — I am bringing around with me.

We’ll see…I can’t stay in this funk forever.

Well this weekend I decided that since I have been making my own marinara and pesto for a while, it was time to begin making my own pasta. Because it is really simple to make (flour, egg, some olive oil, and maybe a touch of water) and I wanted to be a dork.

So I started with something very eas – taglietelle. I turned out quite OK I must say. But I have also decided that I will save the effort for inviting people over to dinner. And also when I want a particular-flavoured pasta (a focus on specific herbs or spices) or I want to make raviolii (I already have what I think will be a brilliant recipie).

Well I am pleased with myself. I reached a milestone when it comes to my iTunes Music Library. Over the past 6 weeks, I have imported 2500-2700 songs into my iTunes music library, converting 251 audio CDs to the digital MP3 format. And in the process I removed songs which were burned with the wrong information or lost their formatting during the conversion previously. I also got rid of loads of duplicates imports. And for all of the duplicates I got rid of (when there duplicates, in most cases there were 2 copies for every 1 song) — I also got in a lot of new content.

So my iTunes stands at just under 7000 songs. Which is nice. I have a large selection of music all on one device 🙂 But since the search functions on the iPod are non-existent, I can’t take advantage of it the way I want to 🙁

But this is no time to rest on my ass. I have another case of CDs which need to be imported — about 80 more CDs before I can close my CD cabinet for a long long time. But not forever as some songs wouldn’t burn and I decided to skip them. But hey, you can’t have complete perfection. 🙂