Home sweet home

I arrived back in Sweden last Saturday. The jetlag wasn't too bad, I was back on track in two days. Went back to work on Wednesday, where several people told me I looked really calm. One colleague wanted to rub up against me twice a day to absorb some of it. Sort of like rubbing the belly of a Buddha for luck.

My hope is that this zen-like trance will last at least a week. On Wednesday it felt like I was a spectator, watching from outside as others ran around like headless chickens in the office. A smile on my face all day long.

Something which didn't put a smile on my face was my grandfather passing away on October 1st. Olov Larsson, the rock of my family, was finally eroded by the river of life to a point where he fell apart. Everything points to him going quietly, just going to sleep, which is a relief. He was 98 years old, had spent the last few months in a care facility and refused to eat for the past few weeks, so no one is surprised he passed. Still, I'll probably cry like a baby at the funeral. 'tis what I do. I'm thinking about buying a pipe to leave instead of flowers. I think he would have liked that.

The history of man is a series of conspiracies to win from nature some advantage without paying for it

Today I spent a few hours at Waitangi, the grounds where the Declaration of Independence of New Zealand was signed, as well as the Treaty of Waitangi, the treaty between the English and the Maori tribes. For the Maori, this is basically sacred ground, and it is the birthplace of the New Zealand nation as we know it.

Waitangi is situated by the Bay of Islands, four hours north of Auckland, on the North Island, next to Paihia, where I'm staying. All the little towns along the bay are ridiculously focused on tourism, and I have never seen so many hotels, resorts and bed n breakfast places in one place as there are in Paihia. Five, six, seven in a row on some streets. There is basically no other industry here except tourism.

To my eyes, Allegra House takes the cake. Along with a few other places its on the top of a massive hill overlooking the bay, and the rooms are excellent. Better than most of the hotels I've stayed in over the years, except for the insulation which, like the rest of New Zealand, is really bad. If you ever go here you could definitely do worse than staying here.

Allegra House on the right

I took a tour at Waitangi, which basically consisted of listening to a Maori guide speaking about the history of his people and the details of the treaty. We were seated in Te Whare Runanga, which is the only meeting house in New Zealand dedicated to all the Maori tribes. Usually they belong to one tribe or even one chief. Te Whare Runanga was finished on February 6th, 1940, exactly 100 years after the treaty was signed.

Lawrence's face paint session at McDonalds had gone horribly wrong

He also spoke of the history of the Maori, who arrived in New Zealand or Aotearoa (the land of the long white cloud) around 1000 years ago in large, ocean-going catamaran canoes. They had left their Polynesian islands with the express purpose of finding new land that could sustain enough people to found a new culture. Once they found Aotearoa they started calling themselves Maori and brought over more of their kinsmen. The south island was deemed too cold, and all the tribes except one chose the north island to settle on. The guide said "We tried convincing them it was too cold, but it didn't work".

I poked around the area a bit more, had kick-ass French toast for lunch and then walked back to Paihia, which was a fairly long walk along the beach and then up the hill where Allegra House sits. Now I'm looking forward to a quiet night in, with my laptop and my book and the TV. Tomorrow, depending on the weather, might be more of the same or another walk.

The worst day at the beach is better than the best day at work

Today I got on a bus in Auckland for the four hour journey up north to Paihia, to stay at a BnB run by relatives, look out over the ocean and read.

It was sort of unclear how we're related, until we sat down with some charts of our various families that they had compiled and had filled in by my parents when they visited a few months ago, and figured it out. The common denominator is two generations back from my grandfather, with the Dybecks. Back in the 1800s our common forefather Richard Dybeck wrote the Swedish national anthem, our family's only claim to fame.

The trip up here was cool. Winding roads up and down steep heavily forested hills, interspersed with vast green fields with sheep happily munching away. Like something out of Lord of the Rings. Oh, wait...

I wonder what this country looked like before the Maori (though they weren't Maori then, only becoming so after coming to NZ) and Cook came here, when it was all covered by bush. Dotted throughout the forest landscape along the road were ferns, some over 6 meters in height. Like something out of Jurassic Park. This must all have been very wild and untamed wilderness back then, seeing as how a lot of the country still is.

So now I'm at Allegra House bed and breakfast, a very modern building on a hill overlooking Paihia and the Bay of Islands. The view is spectacular. Too bad its pouring down. With a bit of sunshine it would be breath-taking.

Tomorrow a slow day, reading, writing, just kickin' back. Maybe a walk down to Paihia and look around. My brother is coming up on Friday, and we'll probably do some kind of tour on Saturday. On Sunday I'm leaving for Kuala Lumpur, and a completely different cultural experience.

Because first impressions...last

Day one in New Zealand, because yesterday didn't really count.

My initial thought was "its like the US". This was mostly based on the sidewalks, which are made of the same sort of concrete slabs here as there. I think this was the jetlag infecting my brain, yesterday.

Her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.
William Gibson, Pattern Recognition

Parts of my soul luggage has arrived today, though frayed and disorganised. Some pants missing. Or maybe someone else's pants mixed in with mine.

Those similarities I saw were only surface, attributes that are the only ones visible if you go by in a car, quickly. Or walk around jetlagged. Today I noticed differences instead.

Door locks turn the other way to lock the door. Away from the lock mechanism. Weird. People seem generally friendly, unlike the US where its mostly a frontand unlike Sweden where everybody hides behind walls of quiet politeness. Beer and wine is sold at the supermarket. Beer is about as expensive as in Sweden, which was a surprise. The tap water tastes of chlorine to me, so I have to buy the bottled stuff. And supposedely the water in the sink and the toilet twirls the wrong way, as Bart Simpson once found out. Haven't really checked that out yet.

Tonight was spent at Munday Mussel Madness at a local restaurant, where you get a kilo of mussels for 10 dollars, roughly equal to 50 Swedish kronor. A good deal. I had never had mussels before, so it was interesting. Not an awesome culinary experience by any means, but good food. Could have used more garlic.

The madness is a bit more evident than the mussels.

Tomorrow, exploring Auckland's downtown area, and going to the museum to see a haka. I'm planning on doing some reading and writing at a café or two. Vacationing at its best.

Oh. My brother and his girl recently got engaged. Apparently my mother screamed out loud when she heard the news. But no pressure on me, no no.

Fatigue is the best pillow

New things on the agenda. I knew we were going down to Wellington on Thursday, where we're going to a museum and renting a car to drive around the coast a bit. What I didn't know was that my brother had made more plans.

We're going to see All Blacks vs Wallabies. That is, New Zealand vs Australia, rugby. Black-clad tattooed men doing a wardance. Thousands of screaming fans. I'm not much of a sports person, other than NFL games, but large spectacles are always fun. Plus, you know, black-clad men doing a wardance.

We're also going to Weta Cave, special effects company Weta's store/mini museum. Very cool. Hopefully Muppets and Hellboy stuff in the gift shop. I might have to give my wallet to my brother to avoid spending too much.

Yesterday was all about staying awake. Tick tock, tick tock. I was moving between exhaustion and some kind of focused state that unfortunately didn't extend to motor skills. I managed to stay awake until nine o'clock, and then fell asleep about ten seconds after I put my head down. Woke up at 0120, looked at the time on my phone, and remember thinking that I wouldn't be able to go back to sleep. Then woke up at 0445, phone still in hand.

Managed to get another two hours of sleep, and now I'm on the couch, laptop and book and tv remote within easy reach. Trying to level out, just relax and enjoy the fact that I have three weeks vacation left. Tomorrow I will explose Auckland's city centre, and Wednesday we're cave tubing. Beardonaut in a wetsuit. Horror of horrors.

Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest

Today is my brother's 32nd birthday. He's on the other side of the world since October, and won't be back until the end of this year, though I will get to see him in September on my trip. Happy happy joy joy.

So congrats, bro. One year closer to a mid-life crisis.

Like peas in a pod. Or is that carrots?
I know, I know, hard to tell who's who.

Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad

I got an email from an acquaintance today, saying that this was the best post I had written. I remember a few posts over the course of this blog vividly, but this, strangely enough was not one of them. So I read it, smiled at the beginning and then almost started crying when I read through it.

I'm still upset about the fact that my grandfather is not getting the dignified passing I always envisioned for him, and this is unlikely to change anytime soon.

Of course, Mah Girl was able to turn me around with a few simple words. “Remember good things about him, and not this. And rejoice in the fact that he will always be remembered, through your words.”

So I did. And I do. And I will. And I will remember him through the mechanical calendar, that my father set aside for me as he and other members of our extended family cleaned out The Old Man's apartment. In Swedish The Old Man is Den Gamle, abbreviated DG. He has gone by this name since before I was born. He will continue to go by this name after he is gone, and we'll all remember him with smiles on our faces.

And by all, I do mean all. One of my cousins has calculated that there are over 40 people descended from DG. Five generations. My grandfather's daughter, my father's sister, has a daughter who has a daughter who has a daughter. We are legion, for we are many.

We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls

In September I will be flying to New Zeeland to visit my brother, who's spending twelve months there, thanks to an exchange program his company has. The most exotic traveling I've done through my job was when I went to Vilnius to educate a bunch of tech geeks who could barely speak English about the inner workings of SMSCs and MMSCs. Oh, unless you count the trip to Istanbul. But that was all pleasure, no business.

So two weeks in New Zeeland. I'm really looking forward to it. Not only because I haven't seen my brother since October of last year, but also since NZ is supposedly a spectacular country, and we'll be doing some spectacular things, like this:


It's called cave tubing, or black water rafting. This is where you get into the water, hold on to an inflated tube and then float through caves to look at rock formations and glowworms. Yes, pictures of me in a wetsuit may be taken. Prepare to gouge your eyes out.

On the way home I will stop in Kuala Lumpur for six days. My plan is to look at some building and go on a massive shopping spree. That city seems to be adapted to my shopping needs. Massive malls, with hundreds and hundreds of stores. One dedicated entirely to electronics and home entertainment. One with seven streetwear stores within spitting distance of each other.

The main objective is a laptop, to reply my current LG which is getting old and tired. I will also look for some sort of portable video device, something with a meatier screen than my iPod classic, to view TV shows on, on the train. Clothes will also be a focus. I will bring my favorite shirt with me and have a tailor make copies, as well as Mah Girl's favorite pants, and will try to find some other stuff as well.

I may also buy some toys. As in “actual toys”. To crowd our bookshelves further. You must please your inner child as often as you can. Otherwise he withers and dies. And you don't want to be a child killer, now do you?

Children should be seen and not heard

Today, in line at the grocery store, we were assaulted by what sounded like an air-raid siren. It was, in fact, a child. Face painted, most likely from a visit to McD's, screaming her lungs out like the horrible little banshee she was, howling at her parents, banging at walls, pillars, shopping carts, whatever. Such parental bliss. Such harmony. And the parents reacted soooo well, I think. I felt an urge to step up and start yelling as well. But I didn't. I thought of my happy place. Happy, happy, happy!

Two conclusions were drawn from this. One of them has been aired here before, but it needs to be said again.

Before I go any further I have to say I don't know jack about parenting. I don't want to know. I haven't really discussed the intricacies of actually forming a person out of the little bundle of joy and excruciating pain that's the sum of the genetic material of you and your significant other. Sure, the subject has come up, but I have nothing to add, and truth be told, since I don't plan on having children, ever, I don't really care. This might sound harsh, but it's true. Why discuss births and pregnancies and diapers and all that when it will never apply to you?

At the same time I am filled with nothing but pride over the friends and family members who actually manage the act of parenting. Who will, no doubt, make this a better world by filling it with complete, happy, stable people. You know who you are.

So. The conclusions.

There should be some sort of license required to spawn children. Or at least some sort of test after child one, to see if you actually do a good job and get to have another. I'm not a believer in any kind of genetic supremacy theories, but I do believe some people really shouldn't be parents. I applaud those that come to this conclusion themselves, and I loathe those that I see screaming at their children. Or worse, hitting them. Some time ago, I berated a woman on the subway that slapped her son when he wouldn't stop talking. Again, some people shouldn't have children.

The second conclusion is that my father was a parenting genius. When my brother and I got a little frisky, he would tell us to play carrots. Because carrots are silent and still. And we did.

I'm the one on the far right. Pre-beard.
My brother is second from the left.

We played carrots. To this day I can't believe it worked. He must have used some sort of hypnosis. Or maybe we were just very well-adjusted children. This is where Mah Girl says “or stupid”. I prefer well-adjusted.

No one is so old that he does not think he could live another year

I have vivid memories of my grandparents’ place. A big old house, some unnamed shade of green bleached by the sun, sitting at the end of a short gravel road, the massive yard dropping down behind it, rolling hills and all. I remember running around on those vast expanses of grass, with my brother and cousins and one in a long line of dogs my grandfather had.

I only really remember one of those dogs, Manne, a golden retriever that my brother called his cow. This was never questioned nor explained, it was simply one of those things that children say and that adults take for granted.

To me it seemed that the yard and the basement was the domain of my grandfather, while my grandmother ruled the house proper. She ran a very tight ship, though this is mostly a feeling and not the result of a series of hard facts that I can point to. Most of all I remember her cooking. The soft chocolate cake, the fish dish now named “Grandma fish”, and the peas. There were always too many peas. And my brother always ate them all. For those that know my brother, this should come as no great surprise.

The basement was a land of wonder and mystery to us. This was where we watched 8 mm films that my grandfather had shot with a handheld. This was where he had built a model railroad, landscaped with trees and buildings and tiny people. This was where the big boiler that kept the house warm lived, a massive monstrosity that smelled of grease and burning wood.

Watching films down there was like traveling in time. We would all walk down the stairs and then stare in awe as the pictures flickered to life. The color was off, everything was tinted red and the people captured there bore only a slight resemblance to my father and his brothers and sisters, as they gallivanted around on the shore of some lake, sunned themselves on the cliffs and boogie-boarded behind a boat. That’s all I remember from those films, though I’m sure we watched others as well.

The model railroad was a rare attraction, something we only got to see on a few occasions, and always displayed to us with a note of pride in my grandfather’s voice. It was a complex construction, twists and turns around a large room, and activated by an old-fashioned switching box, which brought the whole thing to life. That box seemed truly magical to me. Looking back, I think I might have expanded the size of the railroad construction in my imagination, and made it into something it was not, a fairytale land where tiny people came alive at the flick of a switch and trains always ran on time.

The boiler also took on aspects of the fantastic, of magic and the unexplained. My grandfather purchased a valve or controller or some other kind of thingamajig, a tiny little box that would somehow enhance the performance of the boiler, and told us that a small Japanese was working down there. In my mind this meant that a small man was actually working inside the boiler, throwing switches and splicing cables and shoveling wood chips. It wasn’t until years later that I understood what he had actually meant.

There was one other place in the house that truly belonged to my grandfather. His chair, in the corner of the living room right in front of the TV. He would sit there, stuff his pipe with tobacco and smoke. Always that smoke.

My grandmother passed away in 1984. It was sudden, and by all accounts very peaceful. By then they had moved out of the house and to an apartment. I have fragmented memories of the night the call came, and remember nothing of going to a funeral. Perhaps my brother and I were deemed to young to attend.

It’s been over twenty years and my grandfather is still around, just a few years shy of a hundred. There’s a theory that men rarely last long after their wives have passed away. Whoever coined that theory hasn’t met my grandfather. The river of life has simply parted around his blocky frame, and only started eroding him in recent years. And he still smokes.

In many ways the smell of pipe smoke is more a part of my memories than any visual input from that house. It permeated everything, and followed my grandfather wherever he went, like an extension of his body and soul. Movies, model trains, the dogs, the yard, everything is secondary to that smell. It has come to represent a feeling of contentment and happiness, the essence of family and summers, and the youthful innocence that is only a memory now.


This text was written a few years back for my creative writing class. I unearthed it from the depths of my hard drive today, like hidden treasure, and polished it a bit. I'm posting it today, since my grandfather Olof, now 98 years old, is in the hospital, and is in a bad way. He's lost 20 pounds in two weeks, and is deteriorating. Knowing him, he's probably furious at the thought.

He is the last of that generation left in my family, on either side. I love him dearly, and writing this now, I feel like crying. I hope he goes in peace.

Time is the fire in which we burn

I used to not do emotion, really. I'm a very analytical person, which has gotten me into trouble, mental health-wise, at least twice. Analysis is good, but it's not the end all be all of existence. The brain can't always rule over heart and groin.

Before I had a tendency to repress emotion, to not even let it impact me. There have been periods in my life when, I think, I have felt nothing. Zero. Flatline. Walking through life an emotional zombie. Numb. Not anymore, though. I've learned to see the signs, and to break down the walls that were there. They're not all gone, but I'm doing my best to turn them into rubble.

Why did this come up today? I watched an episode of a fantastic TV show, where one of the main characters goes back home and visits her father, who's suffering from dementia. It was powerful stuff, and invisible fingers plucked at my emotional strings.

“I'm losing time”, one of the characters said. I was reminded of a visit this summer to my grandfather's. He's turning 100 in a few years. One hundred years old. The mind boggles. He still lives alone in his apartment, though with regular visits from Hemtjänsten. I have several very graphic memories spread throughout my childhood centered on my grandfather. One of them is his calendar, which is the wrong word but not really, a red plastic box with buttons on top that you push each day to move it forward a day, a month, a year. This summer that box stood on a shelf in the kitchen, covered in dust, the numerals stuck between two dates. Broken. It made me sad.

Time grinds down pretty much anything to dust.

I bought her flowers today. Lilies. And a chocolate muffin. She smiled. That made me smile. No analysis. Just a spur of the moment thing, because it's the third today. So it was a good day.

Winter then in its early and clear stages, was a purifying engine that ran unhindered over city and country

We took a walk the other day. Walked through the little town, though even town is probably too big a word, where Mah Girl grew up. Houses, a lake, an iron works, and not much else.

Crossed an old wooden bridge over the railroad, where trains pass but never stop. Down to the lake, and stood looking out over the water. Clouds reflected in the water. Cold biting at my cheeks. It was peaceful. Tranquil.


I should go on more walks.

A man's idea in a game of cards is war, cruel, devastating, and pitiless. A lady's idea of it is a combination of larceny, embezzlement and burglary

The card game in my family (as in not only my immediate family, but all them peoples that be related to me), or at least on my father's side of the family, is Philadelphia. It's kind of sort of a version of Gin Rummy and is named Philadelphia because my aunt learned it in, you guessed it, Philadelphia.

Philadelphia is played with two decks of cards and four Jokers. The object of the game is to get sets or runs of cards, where a set is three or more of the same rank and a run is four or more in sequence of the same suit. You start with six cards each, where the goal is to have two sets, and then work your way up to sixteen, where the goal is four runs.

After the cards have been dealt, an additional card is turned face up on the table, and the rest of the deck is split in two piles, placed at right angles next to each other. The person to the left of the dealer begins, by either picking up the open, face up card, or the top card from the first pile. He must then put down one of his cards, either the one he picked up or another one, on top of the card laying face up. The next person repeats the same, and so on.

Anyone can pick up the card laying face up, unless it's been covered by another card at some point, but if it's not your turn you have to pick up a penalty card from the second pile of cards as well.

Once you have the required cards (two sets for six cards, a set and a run for seven, two runs for eight, etc) you can put them down on the table, but only in your own turn and only after picking up your required card.

There are other rules to the game as well:
- The Joker, or Viblom, can be used as any card in either a run or a set (why is it called Viblom? Because the Joker card in my grandfather's original deck of cards kind of looked like Olof Palme, and my grandfather's neighbor Viblom also kind of looked like Olof Palme. That's the kind of joke I like).
- If you have a Viblom down on the table, anyone else can buy it by replacing it with the card you've replaced with the Viblom. For example, in a set of eights you have two eights and a Viblom, that Viblom can be bought for an eight. Or in a run of four, five, six of hearts and then a Viblom, that Viblom can be bought for the seven of hearts. However, they can only buy it in their own turn and only if they put their cards down on the table that same turn.
- An ace can be used as both a 1 and 13.
- In the eleventh round of the game, when sixteen cards are dealt to each player, you can only put yoour cards down on the table if you can get rid of all your cards at once.
- After someone gets rid of all their cards, the others tally up their cards and a score is kept. Two through seven are each worth five points, eight through king are worth ten, an ace is 25 and a Joker is 50. The winner is the player with the fewest points after all eleven rounds have been played.

Easy peasy, right? Now go play.

And every family has a card game. What's yours?

It's alive, it's alive, it's alive! It's ALIVE!

Yes. The laptop is finally alive and kickin'. No channeling of thunderstorms or bodyparts from corpses needed. Instead, the undescribable voodoo that is a fresh OS from a CD.

I however, am only barely alive today. Last night began with a formal shindig, where we (as in The Company I Work For) gave out awards to the best sales people from the various companies we employ to sell our stuff. I wore a tuxedo. Yes, it's true. Pictures were taken. After food and some free beer and wine there, it was off to my brother's place for his going away party. He's spending a year in New Zeeland, starting Thursday. I'm not envious at all...

Various beverages where consumed. A good time was had. A shelf was destroyed. By me. I have Godzilla aspirations, and thought I would start off small-scale.

Today will consist of: fatty foods and couch potatoing (it's what I do best). Writing. If I can summon up some energy I might get around to installing some stuff on the laptop, but right now that looks very unlikely.

To a good approximation, all species are insects

I went to a museum on Saturday, with the Girl, my parental units, my soon-to-be-in-New-Zeeland brother and his girl. It was a pretty interesting place, though we failed to bring a proper camera.

In the gift shop, they had all kinds of nerd toys, and I couldn't resist.

Yes, it looks like a mechanical insect. Yes, I am a geek. Yes, I like clockwork mechanisms. Yes, that is my hand.

It (the toy, not the hand) skitters around on any flat surface if you wind it up. Pointless. But a lot of fun. And my geek score just went up. Yay!

1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d

It should come as a surprise to no one that I am a geek... Hello? Anyone? Surprised? No? Damn.

I spent (misspent?) large parts of my youth with my nose in comic books, rolling oddly shaped dice to determine whether my elf would be able to bash in the skull of an orc/troll/dragon/duck/whatever, and playing with Star Wars miniatures. My mother, the Swedish/English teacher, must have been dismayed to have one son with no interest in serious literature (me) and one with no interest in literature whatsoever (my brother). In the end, I think we turned out alright. Ish.

Nowadays I read the occasional graphic novel (comic books with more pages) and roll oddly shaped dice to...eehm...determine whether my elf will be able to bash in the skull of an orc/troll/dragon/duck/whatever. But with more story. And more pages. As for the miniatures, I don't play with them anymore (only when alone on a Friday night, really really drunk), but I still buy them. Not specifically Star Wars, but there are toys all over the place at home. Stewie. Ralph Wiggum. Pinhead. The Sarge.

Frank Kozik's The Sarge

And I spend a lot of time around other geeks. Music geeks, gaming geeks, tech geeks... I've come to the realization that you can be a geek about just about anything.

Back in the day a geek was a computer wiz with glasses with thick rims and questionable hygiene. I can safely say that I fall into none of those categories. I might be more tech savvy than the average Joe, but don't expect me to fix your PC.

By spending time with geeks, I get exposed to a lot of interesting and downright weird phenomena, special interests, sub-cultures, etc.

SETI is one of those phenomena. I have been aware of SETI through various books, movies, TV shows, articles, etc, for quite some time, but I had no idea I could contribute. Readers, meet SETI at home (Wiki, official site). Now go do your part, to help us all find our benevolent friends in the sky (I choose to ignore Alien, War of the Worlds, Predator, Independence Day, Footfall, Martians, the Inhibitors, etc. Real aliens are cuddly-wuddly).

Batman AND a ninja-ish assassin. That's almost too much...

And to continue the geek theme. I walked past a comic book store on Sunday and was unable to resist. The title above and a Lobo trade paperback now sit on my shelves. Mmmm...geeky.

Beardelicious

Saturday morning. A beardonaut with a hangover.

Me: “I took the night bus home.”
Mah Girl: “That’s cheaper than a beard. I mean a taxi.”

Yes. The beard is indeed more expensive than a bus. A whole bus. Don’t you forget it.

Hit the road, Beard

Last night we went to dinner at Bröderna Olssons Garlic & Shots, with dear friends Bergman and Malin (now Missus Bergman). Garlic was eaten. Heat was cursed. Laughs were had. We had a grand time, and were home early, which was a plus. Yes, the retirement home awaits us just around the corner.

Today was my last working day before eleven days away from the office. Happy happy joy joy! Tomorrow, a road trip to my old home town Karlskoga, to hang out with friends, barbecue and leech off two sets of parents for six days. We’ve rented a car which negates the need to pack sensibly, so we’ll have bags and bags of stuff, including four plus pounds of Polish sausagey goodness. Mmm…meat.

Other activities during the week might include: watching eight episodes of Battlestar Galactica. Playing some geek games with some geek friends (not saying I’m not a geek). Eating mom’s kickass raspberry/blueberry/coconut pie. Watching mah girl sigh over Damien Lewis in The Baker (curse you, redheaded heartbreaker – fie, foh, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman). Etcetera.

And yes. Food is a big deal to me. I like to eat.

Not sure how much blogging will be done while away from home. But I shall try.

Don't mess with the Old Man

First things first. We are on track with the locker. It was back to zero yesterday afternoon, so it was opened sometime between 0730 and 1630 yesterday. I have lined up three volunteers for the stake-out. Monday August 11th is L-Day. I don’t expect German machine gun fire, but you never know.

Today is Olof’s name day. All the men on my father’s side of the family, including my brother and I, have the middle-name Olof, after our grandfather, who is affectionately known as "Den Gamle" (the Old Man, in Swedish). He turned 97 this year, and is still quite a vital man for his age. I have nothing but respect for him, especially since he kicked a mugger’s ass seven years ago. That’s right, at age 90. I wonder what the guy told his friends about the bruises.

Anywho, since today is Olof today, I figured I would introduce another of our children. There are three of them, one perennial citrus tree, one mini Christmas Star (who is the runt of the litter, and looks like he’s been mutilated), and then there’s the palm tree.



Of course, he’s named Olof. My girl thinks that joke is pushing it. I disagree.