Despite the fact that I only sleep 3-4 hours a night:

See what Care Bear you are.

Greetings from Oslo, Norway! My flight, which I arrived at just in time for final call (I have to learn to be earlier), was uneventful. The work that I came out here to do turned out to be very good. And although it was raining here in Olso, the sun now seems to be trying to come out and say hello to everyone. So I am happy at the moment.

Even though I am here in Norway by myself, and Scandinavians don’t seem to go out by themselves, I am determined to make a positive night out of it. I have my map of Norway, the clubs and bars I still kinda remember, and an adventurous spirit. I will be in Norway for tonight only, so I will make the most of it. Then I am back in Stockholm.

In other news, my tickets to Milan are all sorted, as are my tickets to Amsterdam. It will be a busy August. And the weekend after I get back from Amsterdam, I am going to a crayfish party, which are popular in Sweden (memories of Mardi Gras in 2002 with Steph and Rich 🙂

Anyway, it is 16.00 on a Friday. What the fuck am I still doing in the office? 🙂

Ciao everyone. Update you all later! 🙂

So I decided that I wanted to go to Amsterdam instead of going home to the US. There are many reasons, the most important one being that Amsterdam is closer than Boston, and my ticket was only SEK 1,500 (about $200), whereas the cheapest flight home was $600. And for the first time, I am using my Marriott points. And that is a good thing too, because I have 400,000 of them left to spend (even after a weekend at the hotel in August).

So I need to go and pack now. I have to be in Oslo tomorrow morning, and my flight leaves at 07.30am, so I need to be up and ready to go at 06.00, and I really don’t feel like not making these meetings again (although last week I felt sick and terrible, so it wasn’t my fault).

Anyway, off to the shower, then to pack, and then some good quality sleep. Have a good night everyone! 🙂

My questions from swedishchef79

1. What is your biggest weakness?
My biggest weakness is that I am impatient when I feel that progress is not being made at a rate appropriate to the task assigned.

2. Describe your favorite sound.
My favourite sound is the sound of a heart beating.

3. If money were no object, describe the perfect date, start to finish.
I would keep it simple. Just dinner at a really nice restaurant and movie, followed by coffee. Now, dinner would be in Paris, the movie would be in Holywood, and the coffee would be Italy, followed by some yatching off of a carribean coast, but it would be simple 🙂

4. You are down to your last $20 in life, with no way to get any more. How will you spend it?
Well, this is a difficult question, because I am making the assumption that despite this $20, I will be able to eat, have clothes, and somewhere to sleep. So assuming all of that is true, I would spend me last $20 probably buying paint and cheap canvas, so that I could create something that would last for ever.

5. Leather or upholstry (for a vehicle) — which is better?
Leather is better for a vehicle, as long as those automatic seat warmers are installed!

THE RULES!
1 — Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
2 — I will respond; I’ll ask you five questions.
3 — You’ll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
4 — You’ll include this explanation.
5 — You’ll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed

I was so productive today. I even impressed myself. Time to hit the sack. But first a little techno to get in the right frame of mind to get some sleep!

So now that I have established the internet connection back at my flat, I also went ahead and got a wireless router and a wireless card for my laptop. For no real reason other than I wanted not be chained at the desk when I am working. It doesn’t make a huge amount of difference, but it is cool that I can now be sat in the living room or in the kitchen or out on my little balcony and can type away.

Haven’t been doing a whole lot during the last couple of days. Basically just working and taking it easy. I went out for dinner with Scott and Caroline last night, and that was good fun, even though I was a bit tired. We were supposed to go to Gondolen, which has a really really nice view of the city, but then the rain meant that we rescheduled it for another day. So we went to Lokal (a nice bar) for a drink and then we went to Primo (an Italian restaurant) for dinner. Quite nice overall.

I came home and tried to install the wireless router, and it wouldn’t work. So I gave the manufacturer and call and after 5 minutes, we both figured out what was wrong. I felt kinda stupid, like I am forgetting my technical education the more I progress into the business side of things. But at least I knew what he was talking about. And I even managed to sort out the VPN connectivity questions on my own and get it all sorted. So now I switch between work and hardnening the security of the wireless router (thinking multiple WEP 256-bit encryption keys for a start anyone? 🙂 Doesn’t mean I can’t be hacked into, but I’ll protect myself as much as possible.

Anyway, time to run…have loads of work to do today, and I still can’t make complete sense of the organisational announcement that occured at work, so I need to map it out a little more before it starts to make more sense to me.

So it just finished raining (complete with thunder and lightning) in Stockholm, and I was awake to see it since I went to bed early. And then I decided that I would watch the last episode of buffy. And now all of that combined has me feeling all sad and everything. I quite like Buffy…I am sad that it is off the air. However, they left open some pretty interesting arcs to pursue. And Sarah Michelle Gellar has so little body fat and looks so trim and georgous. I’m jealous as all hell.

So today promises to be another fun day. Went back out on Rob and Caroline’s boat on Sunday with some friends and had a great time doing so. My muscles hurt on Monday, but I decided to work out anyway. But at the end, I was all for just a nice and quiet night at home, which I had. Was in bed at 10pm, woke up around 4am, and then stirred until 5am.

Today at work will be very interesting as well, because there is a big announcement coming down from on high. Of course, I know about it already and it would not be cool to speak about, but things at work will get only more interesting, not less. However, I won’t be in the office, since now that I have my internet restored, I can work from home. However, I guess I just need to be sure that my friend is not going into the office. I suppose that I could get a lot more done in the office. I will just have to wait and see how I feel in an hour. Maybe what I’ll do is that if I feel like going into the office, I will go in during the afternoon, and just work from home in the morning. I like doing that a lot. Besides, I do need to price out some wireless LAN cards anyway.

Oh well, going to log off now to forrage for breakfast. I haven’t had breakfast in so long, I am not sure what it looks like. 🙂

So I cleaned the flat today. It only took two hours, but I cleaned everything from the windows down to polishing the floor. I forgot how difficult it is to clean. But hopefully, if I start tidying up every day or every other day, I will do a better job.

So finished cleaning at 2pm, took a shower, and then Tomas called. He has a wedding to go to, but he’s back at about 3am and will be in the mood to party. I guess we can then go to a club or two for a few hours before finding an after party to hang out at. And tonight, Mariselle comes back, so we should be able to meet up with her and Linda. It should be a fun night, and it just leaves me with not much to do until about 2am or so when I can wake up and shower and get ready to go out. Or maybe I’ll get in like 4 more hours of shut eye and head out to a few clubs and meet Tomas out instead of being home waiting for his call (I ain’t no Whitney Houston Waiting-to-Exhale wannabe ;). The only bad part is that Tomas, Mountain Boy, and I will be out on the boat tomorrow with Caroline and Rob. And I am not too sure I want to be on a plastic raft, hanging on for dear life, totally destroyed. But we’ll see. 🙂

Shortly after 3pm I passed out again. I kept on phasing in and out of consciousness. This is so strange. I have never been so tired like this before. But on the other hand, all I had for breakfast this morning was a yoghurt drink, some OJ, and a banana — and it is 30 degrees (about 90ish if you need farenheight conversion) outside. So it wouldn’t surprise if my body just shut down to converse on energy.

Well, it is so nice outside, I feel like I need to go take a walk outside and get some energy for tonight. I just have to figure out what to wear. This shouldn’t be too difficult – I did laundry today as well.

I guess I need to have proper dinner first. So far, after waking up 30 minutes ago, I had crackers and pate and some apple juice. Maybe I’ll make a grilled chicken ceasar salad and have some fresh baked bread and white wine call that dinner. Quick-n-easy (20 minutes to make), and then I can walk it off so that I don’t look fat. After all, they don’t make passes at the ones with fat asses! 😉

Ciao Journal!