the lunch/coffee room at work is not a very cosy room. some of us have been discussing how we could cosify it a bit, and yesterday two ladies came to have a look at the room (i overheard them talking about green walls and a wallpaper with twigs).

the r hadn't noticed the uncosiness of the room, but as soon as he understood it was a problem he was ready to act and said he'd bring sculls of dead elks and stuffed animals. apparently the biggest problem with that room is that it only has one scull on the wall :)

i'm afraid i have to hope the r loses this one. he is good at many things, but i think that even green walls with twigs would be slightly more cosy than a room full of dead animals...

this morning i got up really really early to shovel the slope before the angry neighbour. he usually gets up at night to do it, so that he can yell at us for never helping out. but i think that he actually gets more angry when we do... he's a cool old man :)  ¶ 12:53 PM

  this morning i had the three men and the big black poodle walking behind me! when i drive to work i always meet them at the new red bridge just before 8 am. they are one of the reasons i take that way to work. i like things that are regular, and you can always count on the three men and the big black poodle.

since i now walk to work (as i've wrecked the audi) i've started to take the shorter way through the city instead. this morning the pup told me whe had a dog behind us, and when i looked back i saw the three men and the big black poodle. it felt a bit surreal seeing them "live" (i've only seen them from the car before). almost like seeing michael jackson walking in the street.  ¶ 12:58 PM

  poor me!

i'm out of chocolate, the coffee machine is too far away, i'm alone in my office, i can't think of anything fun to do, it's hours and hours left before i can go home, my stomach hurts, noone sends fun emails to me, and it's only monday. :(  ¶ 1:56 PM

  i admit i was a bit worried driving to the sighthound walk today. it would have been the third consecutive weekend in the ditch (there's still time, of course). i think it would have been much better to try driving off the road when i was 19 and still immortal. i'm too old for these kinds of experiences now.

and i guess driving cars is a bit like riding horses: when you fall off it's important to get back up at once. i didn't. as the audi was not a very good looking car after last weekend i've been walking to work this week. and even though neither of my off-the-road-experiences have been very scary when they happened, apparently they've matured into a drive-o-phobia since then. driving to work in the lazy ford yesterday was much scarier than driving off the road with the alert audi the other week.

the sighthound walk was nice as always, and ended with coffee and home made buns in the friend's cosy kitchen, as always :) the å and the poodle came with us. he's the cooles poodle i know.

  ¶ 2:22 PM

  sometimes i'm so smart it's scary :)

the pup was bored and restless and i had tons of photoshoping to do (and was slightly bored too), so the atmosphere in our office was not a very relaxed and harmonic one.

the pup's solution: tear my colleague's plastic bags into very small little pieces and spread them all over the room.

my solution: fill an empty bottle of coca cola with doggy sweets.

and i won! the pup played soccer witht the bottle until all the sweets had fallen out, and now he's in bed making sounds of comfort.  ¶ 1:09 PM

  wooohoooo!!! guess what i just found in my drawer, when i was looking for head ache pills? a daim! unopened! two pieces!! life is GREAT!!

(in another drawer i have 50 pig's ears (or rather 40 by now). i hope the cleaning lady doesn't open my drawers. otherwise she might think i'm a bit weird...)  ¶ 2:14 PM

  at the å's request: here's the bear tree

  ¶ 8:52 AM

  i forgot to tell you about my near bear experience this weekend. ok, i'm not sure it was very near. or that it was a bear. but still.

i was lost in the woods together with the pup, my newest friend and the sloughi girls when we found a tree with marks as if a gigantic cat had sharpened its claws on it. according to my newest friend the marks were fresh. my first thought was: BEAR! but then we talked about it and decided the logical explanation must be an elk or a squirrel.

a few days later i sent a photo of the tree to the r, who is the best hunter in the world and who knows everything about everything. at least when it comes to woods and wildlife and things you can shoot. he said the marks probably came from a bear sharpening his claws. pretty cool. it was right in the woods behind our house too...  ¶ 7:54 PM

  to keep on pestering you with the car off the road theme: my father emailed today to tell me i had it from him.

in november 45 years ago this news was on the radio:

"Vid en trafikolycka vid länsgränsen klarade sig Sven-Erik Lokander utan synliga skador. Lokander kom från Gävle och hade enligt andra trafikanter kört om en bil på bron och därefter fått sladd på bilen när han skulle in tillbaka på vänster väghalva. Kurvan är trafikfarlig och flera allvarliga trafikolyckor har inträffat där. Varningstecken har uppsatts men inte respekterats"

apparently he has realised the impracticality of driving beside the road since then. so maybe i will to. but until i'm sure i will keep on walking...  ¶ 9:36 PM

  i have to quote the m. she was complaining about her fantastic little volvo, and i told her to take care of it because my volvo of (almost) the same kind was the bestest car i've ever had.

the m's answer:

"Aaawwwh. Jag vet. Den är söt. Och billig på alla positiva sätt.

Fast jag har andra minnen av din fina bil med... Hahaha!
Det där med att måsta glida in i den genom rutorna då den fryst ihop, megastora oranga rattmuffen, trasiga mini-advetsljusstaken på instrumetbrädan, torka framrutan innifrån för man såg de nada genom imman i rondellerna vid OBS (det gör min med vid vissa temperaturer, HATA!), när den var ledsen och plötsligt inte ville starta när vi skulle hem från stormarkanden med så mkt hundmat och matpåsar i hela bilen att vi knappt fick plats, eller då vi baxade den mellan två p-rutor på en parkering varje dag för att du inte få p-böter.
Eller då kylaren läckte som ett såll, du hade glömt fylla på petflaskorna med vatten så vi fick panikstanna 500m efter start och traska till Bodil på Historiegränd för att fylla vatten i flaskorna så vi skulle ta oss ner till MAXI.
Eller då du ringer mig från bilbesiktningen och ber mig försöka ordna hämtning av dig för bilen hade blivit jätte-underkänd med omebedelbart körförbud för någon stötdämpare bakom framhjulet. Jag tror den exakta frasen från besikningsmannen var "-OH HERRE JÄVLAR".
Eller då den stannade efter E4:an påväg söderut i sämsta vinterslaskväder och du fick ta med alla djuren och promenera till närmsta stängda cafe (?) och sitta där och vänta på hjälp medan de söta ägarna serverade mat. När jag skriver detta skrattar jag så himla mycket!!*garv*

Men den tog oss till..Ånge va? Visst var det i din bil och inte Saras Datsun? Den där hundutställningen då vi skulle få en tvåa på Raffi och ett cert till Anton. Då var den duktig! Och varm.

Har du glömt allt detta? Det kallas denial. Jag är i det nu. HAHAHA!!

Those were the days!"

i guess the volvo would count as one of my many hillbilly cars... :)  ¶ 7:55 PM

  i've been thinking, and i guess my driving off the road twice in one week may be part of a tantification process. i tried this idea on doctor j, and she seems to agree. apparently she did the same thing last winter, and has been close to doing it a few times more since then. other signs that indicate a tantification process is that i have become fond of cookies, and doctor j confessed that she is using shoe studs. i wonder if we will start wearing pink tights and too big hairs soon?  ¶ 1:44 PM

  ooops i did it again...

  ¶ 4:35 PM

  (some of) my neighbours are the sweetest! when i came home from work the other day someone had gone up and down our slope with sand. i asked the bird-feeding neighbour about it, and she had seen the tractor neighbour do it. and i don't even know what he looks like! how sweet is that?! and what could i do to be nice in return? i wonder if he has any texts i could proofread....?

and why do i never stop coughing? i went to a health inspection yesterday (ordered by work). as i was seeing a doctor/nurse/some kind of health person i thought i'd ask about the coughing too. her answer: "oh, poor thing! i hope it will go away soon!" i guess that might mean either a)i shouldn't whine so much about coughing more than a month and not being able to sleep at nights or b)the doctor/nurse/health-lady didn't really care and i should try to see another doctor or nurse.

she didn't strike me as someone who knows much about health, so at the moment i'm leaning slightly towards b. when she was explaining the test results from some tests i did last week she didn't seem to know what the different things on the list were. and when i said my only exercise is walking the dog she started talking about her dog (born in january, not very curly hair, doesn't stop when the lady calls "stop", doesn't shut up when the lady calls "shut up", but loved anyway). and then she kept talking about the dog until i finally started yawning and she said that maybe we should call it a day. cool lady :)  ¶ 3:39 PM

  ballerino pup

  ¶ 12:24 PM

  the princess l is visiting us at work today


...and for some reason i can't get the video to work...  ¶ 1:28 PM

  better late than never? i've finally uploaded some riga-photos to flickr  ¶ 5:58 PM

  the car is back on the road, the pup is back home, i have finally managed to buy coca cola to put in the fridge and i think the my little pony filter is gone. things are getting better!  ¶ 2:42 PM

  five seconds ago (ok, maybe 30) i was told to go to www.istheshit.net, click the image five times, and the picture you landed on would be your future.

this is where i landed. i suppose that means there wont be any drastic changes in my life in the future...  ¶ 10:17 PM

  guess what i just did?

i drove off the steep slope that leads to our house. very slowly, and very very stupidly. i couldn't see much (ice on both sides of the windscreen), but i figured i had driven up and down that slope so many times i could do it blindfolded. turned out i couldn't.

so, off i went and now the car is stuck. fortunately it didn't fall over. my brave sweet hero/colleague/neighbour abandoned dinner with his family to come and help me, and after a while another unknown brave sweet neighbour joined him. it didn't work though. the wreck will have to spend the night out there and think about his sins. and tomorrow the heros would call another hero with a tractor to help us.

to make things worse the pup is at a-b and the girls, as i couldn't bring him to work today. and now that i've wrecked the audi i'm too much of a chicken to go down with the ford. and the husband is not at home. so the pup will probably have to stay until tomorrow.

i will have to bake SO many cakes to make up for this!!!  ¶ 7:46 PM

  my colleagues are the sweetest :)

now i'm going home. finally weekend! and so far not as much snow as they said on tv yesterday. great!  ¶ 3:29 PM

  ihatethestupidcamerawehaveatwork!! i've been ordered to take new photos of all my colleagues (last time that happened seems to have been -82, so it's about time). BUT. the camera. i can't take "clean" pictures with it! it adds a my-little-pony-ish filter. i like the filter-effect when i take pictures of screws and nuts and bolts. even pictures of motors or vehicles in mud look sweeter. i don't like it when i try to take portrait pictures. and the r looks like a little bird-baby who has fallen out of its nest :)  ¶ 1:50 PM

  i have just been very grown up and made coffee and home made buns for the electrician.(the buns were not made by me. i just took them out of the freezer and put them in the microwave. thank you, mother-in-law.) and i talked about work. and weather. and dry summers, and heating systems and bad roads and lots of other grown up things.

it's amazing how much washing up coffee and home made buns make, though... the grown-upfulness has now completely disappeared, and i'm going to leave the washing up in the sink and hope it will have solved itself by tomorrow.  ¶ 9:07 PM

  woohoo, the new winter boots are here! and according to the weather people on tv we're going to get 5 dm of more snow. that's a lot of snow...

have to go and take care of an electrician who just came.  ¶ 7:33 PM

  i have ordered (or "clicked home" as my sister from the internet-age might have said) new winter boots. i hope they will come soon, because all my shoes are wet now.  ¶ 7:01 PM

  when i was lost in the woods today the r called and told me he was stuck in a traffic jam in stockholm. he was driving in 20 km/h, had seen two accidents and now the man in the radio told him the road he had to travel was closed to all traffic. suddenly it didn't feel that bad walking in a swamp. at least the sun was shining and the pup enjoyed running in the frosty mud.

it feels a bit worse now, though. my chest hurts when i cough, my left shoulder hurts no matter what i do (probably because i carried a quite heavy stone for quite a long time through the swamp - but it had red lichen on it, so i couldn't leave it) and i'm cold. but the good things win: it's weekend, i have an unopened bottle of coca cola in the fridge, i have half a chocolate bar on the living room table, there are three of the heavenly chocolate pralines left in the box, and i don't have anything to do tomorrow so i can sleep as long as i want.

my sweet colleagues are good for my self esteem, by the way. yesterday i was called a ray of sunshine. there might have been a tone of irony in that, but i chose not to hear it.  ¶ 5:55 PM

  short summary of today, this far:

5.00 alarm clock goes off. i want to die.
5.35 the k calls to say they're on their way. so i don't have time to go to the toilet. that's not fun.
6.45 (or something like that) we're there. coffee.
7.00 (i guess, it's all a blurr) start to work.
9.00 coffee break.
10-ish i ask for help finding a screw or something, and get the most fairytale-ish travel instructions i've ever had so far: "go past the ship, through the gate and look for the yellow river"
the rest of the day lunch, gossip, work, coffee, pavaroti-cake, work etc etc
16.10 left to go home.
17.10 home.
so far at home dinner. weird, nice icelandic film.
now i'm going to go hug the pup for a while.  ¶ 7:36 PM