I just 2 hours today putting together expenses reports totally 45.000 Swedish Kronor (over US$6000). And I would be happy, except I have some remaining expense accounts which will equal about the same amount for the last remaining weeks.

I normally wouldn’t worry, except that I have done a bad job of paying my corporate credit card bill, so all of this has been charged to my personal cards. of course the points have been terrific that I will have gained, but I still should be doing a better job of tracking the expenses (I already do a good job of managing them down).

Sigh….

I have had a good weekend. Probably the best weekend in a long time.

I spent the weekend in Copenhagen. And during the weekend I hung out with Thomas and had an amazing time. I took off from work early on Friday to go to Tivoli (a garden and amusement park in Copenhagen), but the weather was crap. So we walked around the city and took a coffee and went out to dinner and a movie with friends and that was really nice to meet his friends. They are a cool group. On Saturday we went out shopping for CDs and DVDs, and I found a bunch of great things to which I added to my collection since Thomas knew where all of the second-hand stores were and I got great CDs cheap. I also purchased most of the 2005 Hed Kandi CDs. We then went to a concert that had some famous Danish bank and it was good, but I hadn’t brought a jacket and I was freezing! So after the concert, I went to the hotel to take a hot shower and met the guys out at Oscars. They were so exhausted from the concert that they were falling asleep when I had arrived. We went to Pan and it was boring so after 30 minutes we left and went home. Sunday was spent in bed and with Thomas being gracious enough to take me to airport. I decided that I would buy him lunch as a way of saying thanks for taking me to airport. So after some lunch and a pleasant flight, I am now back in Stockholm. I will stay here for a few days before traveling back to Copenhagen to continue to work on this customer project I am currently involved in.

Update more later, but wanted to give a brief re-cap 🙂

You know, I have tried to keep reasonable and calm when it comes to what we are seeing in Luoisanna and Missippi. But it really fucking pisses me off when the Director of FEMA announces on Thursday evening that he just became aware of reports that people were stranded in the convention center in New Orleans when it has been on CNN, BBC, and other news channels and websites since Tuesday. I understand that he is busy, but to be unaware is fucking ridiculous!

I also think we some education on the people that “chose not to leave”. I am not going to judge anything. In some cases, there will have been some people who chose to stay and not evacuate the city. But I will also contend that for the majority of people left, they very likely didn’t have anywhere to evacuate to. Where would the sick and the elderly have been evacuated to? Wasn’t this part of the evacation plan that should have already been in place and executed in advance of the hurricane? For the people who didn’t have the means to leave the city of the state, where were the comprehensive pre-disaster plans to evacuate the city? It seems like the “mandatory evacuation” had an silent addition “at your own expense”. What is people didn’t have the economy to get out or other places to do? It seems natural that they would try to ride out the storm.

But I come back to FEMA, who were unaware that people were in the convention center, even though officials had been saying for days for everyone to meet there.

The taxi from Oslo Central Station to the IBM office smelled like cherry air freshener, I got a new job as a Compliance Advisor (maybe a demotion from compliance manager, but whatever, I focus on development, skill coaching, and special projects), and I am making great progress on entering a month’s worth of credit card charges into Quicen for reconciling (which means I can run reports necessary to me for expense account submission)

*does that fat guy middle management dance of joy* (like the kind of joy Pavorotti must feel when there is a free 13th donut in the box)

EVERYTIME I pass through customs in Norway, I get stopped. Every single time. No exceptions. And I don’t play the race card game, but come on, being stopped 6 of 7 times (the one I was not stopped they had stopped an Asian woman at the height of the avian bird flu scare) is NOT coincidence. That is called targeting. But when I ask for anexplanation, none of the customs staff can provide one. Well with treatment like this at customs, I have no plans to in be Norway again anytime soon.

Well it was good to see Markus again. He’s nice to talk to and to hang out with.

Weekend In Review