Hello journal! 🙂

It’s Saturday morning and I was up ultra early, and then I realised that I have neglected to keep you updated on the goings-on in my life, so let’s start with Thursday.

Thursday
So after a shitty Wednesday, and a marginally better Thursday at work, it was time to go out into the archipelago. Caroline organised the night out and it included her main squeeze Rob, my friend Tomas, as well as friends Kevin, Annika, and Terease. Tomas and I caused us to be a bit late, but it was all good, because everyone was in good spirits and just wanted to have a good time.

So I brought “nibbles” (appetisers, for those of us who are not from the UK) and salad and bread. I was supposed to bring this for 10 people, but only seven ended up coming, so as you can imagine, there were lots of nibbles and salad and bread. I had brought so many nibbles, but that it could have qualified as a meal. But everyone dug in, and then we were BBQing, and singing music (Rob brought his guitar) and having a few drinks.

However, the highlight of the experience was when Caroline and Rob attached the inflatable raft behind the speedboat. Out on the archipelago, Kevin went first and did pretty well. Tomas went second and was amazing…we could not get him to wipe out at all. In the end, he wiped out due to exhaustion. Rob went third and gave it an admirable attempt. I went fourth and didn’t do too badly, although apparently the video tells another story. And then Caroline went, and after seeing her perform, I was convinced that she should be in the third Charlie’s Angels movie! 🙂

So we got back from eating, drinking, being out on the water (and I took a quick nap out in the archipelago) around 01.30. It was such a great time. I enjoyed it so much. It was such a nice break from work.

Friday
I was supposed to be in Oslo on Friday, but when I woke up at 05.30 to take my flight, the world felt like it was rocking back and forth and my stomach was queezy. So I decided against going to Oslo, since I wasn’t sure if I was actually sick with something, or if it was just the after-effects of me being on the boat. I tried to work from home, but my main internet is still out and the phone connection was shot, so I had to go into the office. What a wasted day that was. The one meeting I went into the office for was cancelled, and the call I could have taken from home (with our European division lead) so so stupid and pointless that it was better not to be on the call at all. So after some serious “positive contention”, I went home from the office with Caroline, who was also in. We decided on the way home to get some drinks at a local bar, and Rob decided to join us. We had some drinks and decided that going out on the boat again would be a great idea 🙂 After talking to Tomas, we selected Sunday as the day to go. We also asked Tomas to invite Mountain Boy along, so that should be interesting if he decides to come.

I was supposed to go picnicing and clubbing last night, but I was still feeling kinda woozy, and those caparinahs and white wines weren’t helping. So after McDinner with Rob and Caroline, I decided to go home and go to sleep. So at 10pm, it was quite an early night.

Well, I wrote an awful lot, but anyway, hope everyone is well.

Hej då everyone and love you journal 🙂

Well, today should go a bit better, I think. I am still pretty pissed off from yesterday, but some rest did me some good. On the good side, I got my hair cut this morning at Toni & Guy, which is my favourite place ever to get my haircut. They did a good job. But I did some early-morning work before going to get the stylist, so hopefully that was all not in vane.

Decided against traveling to Norway this week, and will instead go next week. This will give me some time to work on the mountain of issues I have to handle for work here in Sweden.

To be the Scandinavian vacation period, I have never been so busy! Maybe I’ll post later. Hope everyone is doing OK!

Today was just such a bad day at work, that it sapped my energy to be at the beach. I gave my bottles of wine away and just ran home at top speed. I just came back to the apartment (I don’t even have the mental state to clean it, and it’s kinda messy). And I just set the CD player to random and then it went to the Sarah McLachlan “Surfacing” CD. And that just kinda pushed me right over the edge. So if you wanna know how I feel, here are the lyrics:

Full of Grace

If all of the strength
and all of the courage
come and lift me from this place
I know I could love you much better than this
full of grace
full of grace
my love.

It’s been an afternoon where I could do nothing right, despite my best efforts. It’s emotional exhaustion. Hopefully it passes soon.

Today was a shitty day at work. I came so close to quitting and flying back to the US that I had the phone in my hand ready to call the travel agency! I suppose I can’t go into details in the public part of this, but I don’t even want to go into details in the private section of LJ either.

I was in such a good mood earlier today to…it sucks. But now I have to go and drink bottles of wine with some of my friends on the beach. It is summer after all. Maybe it is warm enough to take a nap there and just be there with my friends under the stars (and the sun that rises at 2:45am here in Sweden), relaxing and being contemplative for a while. It couldn’t hurt.

So I am little happy at the moment. I just found out that I will be in Milan, Italy during the last week of July! So I will be there to work for the week, and then I have to come back on Saturday, because I have parties that I already committed to attending and hosting on that Saturday. But that will leave all of Friday to have fun! 🙂

And maybe, just maybe, I’ll have a good night out on Friday 🙂

So, one of the things about Sweden is that everything must be communicated and all expectations must be managed, otherwise, something that you never anticipated always happens.

For example, take my internet service. Since my company set it up for me, one would assume that they were going to pay it for me as well. However, as it turns out, they only set it up for you, and then you pay it and they reimburse you for it. Which seems entirely reasonable to me. However, since they said “we’ll take care of the internet service” when I first got it up and running, one could have assumed that also meant that they were just get the bill directly and take care of it.

It’s kinda annoying, since both ways would have been right, but both sides should have made sure that the expectations were clear.

And the second annoying thing will be having my expense accounts reimbursed. The application is in Swedish. I guess I can find a secretary somewhere to submit the paperwork for me, or I can just have someone sit down with me and work through it. I am not sure what I’ll do yet.

You know, if these are my major issues of the day (so far), I think I should stop bitching. 🙂

Hej hej journal. How are you? I am doing good so far. Well, I came, I took project management, and I passed the course! Woo hoo! I was so happy to pass the class. I got 22 out of 25 questions correct, and I swear that had I not been so hung-ovre most mornings, I would have gotten those last 3 questions. When I reviewed my answers on the exam, I knew exactly which ones I got wrong. So I was pretty happy overall.

Well, after a pretty hard night partying last night, I decided that I would try and visit Steve and Scott in London. But alas, the prices were so expensive, that it didn’t make sense to go there, because I would have had to have come back to Brussels on Sunday morning in order to make my flight (my Brussels-Stockholm ticket is non-changable so I had to leave from Brussels).

So instead I went shopping, because as we all know, Rodney can make the wrong things right with only a few small purchases 🙂 So I tried to find some things to wear at Zara, but like the Gap, it just hasn’t been meeting my needs lately. I went to C&A, and got some cool clothes, walked past H&M, and realised people outside of Sweden pay waaaaaaaay too much for that crap, went to the Free Record Shop (it is not really free..that’s just the name) and picked up some music, went to a cosmetics store and got some beauty enhancers, and then went to the Sony Ericsson Store and got a USB connector so that I could backup my phone to my computer and do some other pretty useless things with it. I ended the day off (which began at like 13.00) with a trip to the supermarket, to get some juices, some yoghurt drink, and some water. So I pretty happy with the day I guess. I just wish I had been able to get some outfits. I mean, I have clothes being shipped over in time for the important August parties, but it would have been nice to get some clothes to wear immediately.

Anyway, it’s almost 19.00 now, and if I am going to go out and party tonight, then I need to take a disco nap and get some sleep. Besides, I was dancing and partying all night, and between 13.00 yesterday and 17.30 today, I hadn’t eaten anything. I was feeling kinda sick, but I feel totally better now. At least those sand-blasted diesel jeans will fit better tonight, so it is not all bad! 🙂

Ciao for now. Love you journal! 🙂

Hej då everyone! And all of you former followers of my adventures at diaryland, feel free to leave comments. I will probably be a lot more interactive here because it sends a link to my e-mail when someone responds to a post I make.

Love, Rodney