A day late because I'm useless (and was too tired to live yesterday), but happy birthday lavvyan. I hope you had a brilliant day and that you find this year easier than the last one.

These were what I bought at the party at my friend's the other week.



Christmas Gnomes! I adore them as they make me smile whenever I look at them.

I went to Stockholm for the weekend, and amongst other things, went to the Christmas market in Gamla Stan (the Old Town). It was lovely. I bought loads of gifts, including some liquorice dynamite for my brother from the Nobel museum and some tree decorations for my mum, and generally had a wonderful time.

Last night there was a screening of Rocky Horror Picture Show in one of the squares, projected on to an ice screen. It was the Stockholm Film Festival and Susan Sarandon was receiving a life time achievment award. I stayed and watched it for a while until I got to too cold. Loads of fun.

And now I'm home and the David Hewlett episode of The Closer is on tv. Joy!

A cat totally distracting a policeman in Texas http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8366386.stm Brilliant

Snagged from forcryinoutloud , whose answers I feel I've got the exact opposite of :-)

Rules:
- Bold all of the following TV shows which you've ever seen 3 or more episodes of in your lifetime.
- Italicize a show if you're positive you've seen every episode of it.

( Under the cut )

I'm off in to Malmo at the weekend. Looking forward to a little shopping and a visit to a sushi place. I know that it's quite sad to be excited about going to visit a town that's like 20mins away in the car but I seem to have turned into a hick who only goes to town when they have to. Very weird.

Anyway the the sushi place is this one (beware the site is noisy) and it has good recommendations from the folks at work. Plus if you look at the menu (here in pdf format) it's just beatifully presented and makes me crave sushi in a big way. Can't wait.

I've also got to figure out a cookie recipe as I'm going to a party on Monday night at a work friend's house. It's a shopping party for an interior decor/home type place. Can't the the life of me remember the link but I looked at work and the stuff looks lovely. Hopefully not too expensive as you feel like you have to buy something. I did like the look look of the long legged Christmas gnome things with hats that came over their eyes. Very cute.

Fashion fail...
( behind the cut because ewwwww! )

And my knee, elbow and stomach.

I was carrying a glass of juice and a cup of coffee upstairs from the kitchen to the lounge when my stupid slipper got caught on one of the steps and I tripped. I saved most of the juice but the coffee went everywhere (the stairs are those open ones so by everywhere I mean stairs, kitchen and dining room). Of course, by trying to save the drinks, didn't land on my hands. I landed on the wooden stairs across my chest, stomach and knees. Not really sure where the elbow got scraped but it did.

So, ow! *wobbles lip*

Dad, mailed me this, this evening, about my cousin. He's at forestry management school. My cousin, not my dad.

He had an interesting experience, cutting down a tree with a chain saw yesterday and a tornado came through the wood, blew down a tree behind him, which clipped him on the shoulder and made him saw into his leg. Luckily the chain saw proof overalls actually work, and he just has a bruise! The tutor said, 'well, we've never had that happen before,' and pretty much got them to carry on.

see more Political Pictures


Of course the smile is tempered by the fact that it's appalling that people still want to protest at the side of the road against gays. Best way to get round that kind of bigotry is to make it look foolish, and this guy has done that in spades.

Hope you had/have a marvelous day with all the candy you do (or don't) want.

I baked you a cake...



...but we ate it.

The large one was a little (okay, a lot) dense due to me not being used to the oven yet and not realizing it was too cool. The cupcakes were chocolate. Both recipes from the Buttercup Bake shop cook book. The decorations were all my own work.

Also, thank you to mckays_girl for the gift, a lovely coffin. Oooo, that's an idea for a cake next year.

I just discovered a whole chapter from last year's Atlantis Christmas gift that I seem to have missed out when I assmebled it. I have no idea how I did that but I thought I'd post it up here. Sorry folks who got a hard copy that this was missing. No idea how it happened. I hope that you can enjoy it here and if you want print out this section to add to the copy.

( Behind the cut )

 

Happy Birthday to the lovely zinfic

I hope the translation above is correct. 

So, I posted a comment over here The John Sheppard That Thing We Don't talk or Hug About

What with one thing and another, I've barely had time to read stuff online let alone interact. So hello everyone. I shall try to update later in the week.

I did manage to spend today writing though. It was glorious. The first time I've had a chance to do anything at all in an age and it was very productive. I've written the text for my Christmas presents, so please leave me your address as a screened comment if you would like an SGA themed gift this year. It isn't what I had planned due to time constraints but I'm still pleased with it.

I work with Android, Google's mobile phone platform. The releases are named after cakes or desserts. So we've had cupcake, then donut and we'll get eclair at some point in the future. And then today I found out the name of the release after that.

It's Flan!

I had to fight to not laugh out loud because no one else would get why it's amusing.

For most of the evenings last week I was building furniture. One piece of furniture! I bought a dresser from Jysk (shop here in Sweden) that turned out to be more kit than flat pack. Basically it was a box of wood and fixings that if you're lucky, and have good spatial reasoning, you might be able to make a dresser from. Now, I'm good at flat pack stuff, even if I say so myself, but this one was a nightmare. The holes weren't all drilled in the right places and the instructions were drawn by monkeys. Still, it looks good now.



Excuse the mess on the table.

I also moved my living room round so that now I've got an office space at one end, separated from the sofas by some low shelves, and the previously dead-ish space now has the sofas in. The living room is long and narrow so it's tough to get right but this feels much better than it did before and I hope that getting the office bit sorted out might encourage me to write more. We'll see.

I had my sidekick from work and his wife and kids over today. We picked apples and pears in the orchard as they kids had never seen apples on trees before and we had some pear tart that I'd made just before they arrived. The cat is traumatised now, after being bothered byt the kids. To be fair to the kids, Moxie's crap at dealing with people.

They timed it well as they were here in the only break in the rain the entire weekend. It's been sluicing down and we've got high winds. They've had water coming into their apartment from the upstairs balcony the rain has been so bad. Mind you, they live in a part of Limham which is more or less an island sticking out into the Oresund where the wind never stops even on a good day.

Oh, if you haven't watched (or don't normally watch) the latest episode Numb3rs then I recommend it. Not for the plot, which is so so, but for the last bit where ( spoilers )

Right, I think I need to go to bed, although I've found Special Victims Unit on the tv so I might wait until that finishes.

see more dog and puppy pictures

So, on mckays_girl's suggestion I've opened up the post for donations for girly_curl_3's brother to all as we've spoken to her and she knows we're doing a collection now. So, please re-tweet, as it were, on your journals and we'll see if we can get some more. We're adopting a star from this place as it funds the search for Earth-like planets. The rest we'll donate to the American Cancer Society in Steve's name. The donation post is here.

On other fronts, I'm getting flu I think and I have a friend coming for the weekend. What awesome timing? Course the flu hasn't really come out yet I just feel crap, with a headache, watery eyes, tickling in my lungs and an slightly shiverish fever feeling. Very annoying. Still, I'll soldier on.

On the plus side I have a chocolate fudge brownie to eat before I can't taste anything. I had one a week or so back and man, they are good.