iki and her dreams

The past week has been busy and so will this one be. I brought juggling balls in case life here would be boring, but I've only used them once.

However, although I've mainly been busy at work, last week included lots of nice things outside work as well. I happen to work together with so many nice people :) Phil is a lot into film and has been our local organiser for whatever people wanted to see at the film festival, so Monday last week we went to watch Until The Light Takes Us, a documentary on Norwegian black metal. It was interesting - not particularly good I have to say, but worth watching. I couldn't really figure out what the aim of the documentary was or what crowd they were aiming at, maybe that's why I didn't quite like it. But I still enjoyed the interview with Immortal, always (pretending to) take themselves very seriously.

I still had two movies left since Alex and I rented some Sunday night, but I didn't get around to watch them until Friday night, and it almost didn't happen. We went out for another beer after beer hour at work, and ended up at a pub playing 80s music so we danced for hours, I had so much fun! (och jag måste sluta skicka fyllesms, varför lär jag mig aldrig?) We met some funny characters that night, including an aggressive French woman who forced-kissed everyone and her less drunk, less aggressive girlfriend, and a George Clooney-lookalike - at least he thought so himself... When we finally were to tired to dance any more we went for burgers at Grubby's. I went there for the first time earlier this week with Marcel and it will probably become a favourite, the burgers are not quite as good as at Red Veg but this place is open really late and on my way home from town. Mm, fyllemat :)
Ted, one of my few friends who isn't a colleague, joined me home to watch one of the movies. We decided on The Piano Teacher which we knew would be depressing and likely boring, and maybe not the appropriate choice for a late Friday night, but I really wanted to see it. And since Ted fell asleep within five minutes, his opinion didn't really matter anyway :) He slept like a child throughout the movie, which was fairly depressing, however I didn't think it was a waste of time to see it. But in summary, it was about people who hurt other people, or themselves - far from a feelgood movie. It was absolutely impossible to wake Ted up so he slept with his clothes and glasses on until the next morning, when he woke up and remembered he had to catch a flight to Manchester to go to a pyjama party there. So we parted, and I went to have a haircut. Wee! I needed a change and I was bored of my long hair. Now it is properly short in the neck again, and slightly assymetrical in the front.
I've just got home from Stephi's Sinterklaas Party Saturday night. Marcel and AnnSofie dressed up as St Nikolaus and Zwarte Pete, read the kid's names and whether they've been good or not, in a thick book that closely resembled a Dutch dictionary.. but the kids had been nice and got candy and roasted peanuts, the traditional treat.

I should definitively try to take some time off to compensate for all my late nights at work. This weekend I'm going to Weston-super-Mare to visit friends of my Mum's, and Monday I'll go to Oxford to visit the group there. I'm looking forward to both trips! But although it first seemed like a good idea to have some time off work, it is now mainly a mysterium how to organise this logistically. I have to prepare and bring food for our Christmas party on Friday, and my train to Weston is at 5 in the morning on Saturday so I won't have time to go home to pick up the food I'll need to bring there, but I will have to bring that with me to work and for the party afterwards. And then I'll get home late Sunday night, and Monday morning I'm presenting at our group meeting and then I'll leave for Oxford, but I need to bring food there as well for their Christmas party so I'll probably need to prepare that on Thursday. Since we have a horribly long lab planned for tomorrow (16 hours! but simone will start it, and I'll come in later and take the second part, i'm sooooo glad he likes to work mornings). I went shopping today to find everything I need, I've decided to make a cheesecake for our Christmas party but I can't find half of the ingredients I need, and after buying loads of stuff for the weekend in two different I went home and realised that I'd forgotten to buy soy cream. I'm not sure where to find that. There's quite a few things that you can find in more or less any larger supermarket in Stockholm that is completely impossible to find here. But then again, I guess they think they compensate by selling alcohol in all supermarkets...

I've been so glad to read and hear updates from Sweden on the pig campaign. And it was a shame not being able to help out with and attend the Christmas Veggie Fayre in Stockholm last Saturday. But on Sunday Marcel and I went to the Christmas Without Cruelty Fayre in London, that was great! Loads of food stalls, information tables, and interesting lectures. And it was great to see the Sea Shepherd people, although I missed one person there. I hope to be able to meet up with her soon. Marcel and I ate a lot of cakes :) the best one was a chocolate fudge cake... mm. (och han är miljövegetarian och på många sätt mer aktivist än jag, men bara genom att fråga om han skulle med har jag fått nån slags aktiviststämpel på mig på jobbet) And we had a really nice walk afterwards, and went exploring a beautiful gothic-like church.

Cupcake! :)