Grown ups are quirky creatures, full of quirks and secrets

My day, in short.

Woke up. Had myself a turbo morning. Went to work. Had meetings from eight until four. Lunch during a meeting. A chicken sallad. Wrote a Change Request for our statistics system. Finished a Commercial Description for a new project. Took the train home. Finished The Terror by Dan Simmons. Excellent, excellent book. Noticed the girl had cleaned the entire apartment. Squeaky. Fucking. Clean. Smile. Ate hamburger. Watched The Others. Scary-ass movie. Cuddled in the couch. Watched Eddie Izzard's Circle. Laughed. Soon sleep. A good day.

The most important thing is the element of chance that is built into a live performance

This weekend has been all about rest and recharging my mental batteries. I've had three Saturdays in a row, and tomorrow, Monday, is Sunday. And we've gone through six movies so far, aiming for nine. Sweet!

Only two months into 2009, and already it looks like this will be a superb year when it comes to live music. Currently on the calendar, I have Wintersleep on March 7th, 36 Crazyfists and Poison the Well on the 30th, Woven Hand in May and the Arvika Festival in July, with Depeche Mode headlining, and I Are Droid, Burst, Thåström, my friend Magnus' band Engel and a shitload of other bands playing as well.

Really, the prospect of a good live show is something that can elevate my spirits almost infinitely, and I know both Woven Hand and Depeche Mode will be mindblowing. So I have decided that 2009 will be a good year, musically.

I'm trying to feel more well adjusted than I really am, which is, I guess, the human condition

A creeping sense of unease always settles on me as soon as I arrive in my old home town. It gradually increases until it becomes relentless, unbridled angst around day five, and I feel like an animal in a cage.

I walked through the center of town at four in the morning, on my way from a Super Bowl party to a piece of shit bed in a piece of shit hotel. Some things have stayed the same. Others have changed. Still others attempt to change, not understanding that a certain doom awaits them just beyond the horizon. Leaving sharpens a clarity of vision that staying can negate completely.

There's still a huge red rewind sign on the library for some reason. The Greek restaurant has been replaced by a Vietnamese place. Empty store fronts interspersed with the places that have always been there, and some new hopefuls. They'll be gone the next time. Doom, doom, doom.

It was a cold night. Or is four o'clock morning? Or some non-hour, inhabitated only by insomniacs and ghosts? Besides myself and a car from a security company, nothing moved. Stars above. Snow crunched underfoot. Sleep deprivation and the mother of all sugar rushes spiralled my mind off in unexpected directions.

I understand why people stay, and even go back after leaving, but I can't see any of those things applied to myself. It's as if the town exists completely apart from me, a tableau viewed from without even when I'm within. A ghost town. And something I can no longer connect to. It felt like walking through a set piece for some bizarrely depressing play.

There are people there, and a few places, that still resonate with the warmth of home, but home as a physical location shifted several years ago. And maybe, through that shift, the disconnect is inevitable.

There's no place like 127.0.0.1

I was considering drinks with friends today. Mah Girl is at a birthday party, and I figured I'd hang out with some people and then maybe meet up later.

But alas, I am old and tired, so instead I'm sprawled on the couch, laptop on my stomach, Bears vs Saints on TV. I might shoot some terrorists later, I might not. Sleep feels like a good idea, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon. That would mean turning off the laptop and shutting down the Internet, and too many people rely on that for fun and info that I just can't do that.

That's actually something that people at support desks (like the one I used to work at) hear regularly. “Internet is broken”. And then you have to stop yourself from saying “Your Internet connection is down, moron, not the entire Internet”. But you don't. Cause customer satisfaction is oh so important.

The plan for the weekend is to kick back, relax, and sleep a lot. I feel drained, and I really look forward to sixteen days away from the office over the holidays. We're going to my parents' place in Karlskoga, to eat mom's food, hang out with friends and relax even more.

Going home like that (cause even if this is home now, Stockholm, I still call Karlskoga home on occasion, since it's where I grew up) becomes something of an event, and that's why I can stand it. Parties are thrown, friends are visited, favorite foods are prepared.

During the almost seven years that I've been here I've come to the realization that I'm never moving back (here's where a voice inside my head says “never say never”), but I still enjoy going back. For short periods of time. After about a week, small town angst settles over my mind like a wet, cold blanket, and I have to get out.

The Bears vs Saints game is turning into a really interesting game, so I'm going to stop writing now and focus on the TV. Good night.

Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn

I like the fall. I'm not a heat person. At all. At maybe 25, 26 degrees Celsius I just shut down. Headache, fatigue, the whole thing.

So September, October spells relief for me. Especially since all the windows in our apartment are facing south, and air-conditioning is very much a no-show in Swedish apartment buildings. I bought a portable one a few years back, but it's kind of noisy and not really a proper replacement for the real thing.

Then again, I'm not a rain person either. And so not a snow person. So, yes, mistlur, I am a complainer. A whiner. Weather is rarely right for me. If I had my way, we would have late summer evening weather, all the time, 24/7, 365 days a year.

Now the leaves are turning for real. I wish I had the time and peace of mind to just go out and walk around for hours, looking. Maybe next weekend. Or maybe the one after that. Or...

The latest family member

We went to a festival a few weeks back. Came home with some great gig memories, but also some stuff. Like this, my perennial citrus tree. Awesome. The girl thinks I spoil it...