Meanderings: February 6, 2000

Sunday,
February 6, 2000

You know, trying to type while eating a peanut butter sandwich isn't easy. I mean, it's certainly doable, but you tend to smear peanut butter over the mouse. C'est la vie.

Although I think I've found a new favorite drink -- 3/4 water, 1/4 Sprite. Straight Sprite is just too damned carbonated and sweet, but if you thin it out a lot with water, it's thirst-quenching and tastes better than Gatorade. I'm a little dry right now -- I must have been up and down the basement stairs 15 times today with the laundry. I may be leaving my loved ones behind for four days, but by God they won't go without socks while I'm gone.

So, what exciting journal-worthy things did I do this weekend? Well, Lyndon and I spent most of yesterday together, which was bloody marvelous. We stopped off at the library so that I could get a 10-year-old copy of the English-language edition Swedish Rules of the Road (this is a hell of a thing -- they stopped printing the English version last spring. As of now, you can only get it in Swedish. Um, I seem to recall that Sweden is a member of the European Union right now, which means printing official documents in the five major languages of the union as well as the native language, yes?

Then again, the Vägverket is so damn antiquated it's almost Neolithic. I'm amazed someone was able to get them to produce an English version of Rules of the Road in the first place. Okay, okay, I know my VV bias is showing, but it really is intensely stupid. I took out a copy of the Swedish version (with simpler words, the library assistant assured me), so I can compare and contrast with the help of a dictionary. I wonder if there's an automatic translation program on line somewhere. . .

But no, enough of my trials and travails in getting a driver's license. Actually, I'll sum it up quickly because this entry is rapidly getting freaking boring. The theater at Hötorget was jammed and out of tickets for "The World is Not Enough," so we decided to go see "Gods and Monsters," the story of James Whale, the director of "Frankenstein," at the Grand. Lovely, funny, sad, marvelous movie -- I can see why Ian McKellan was nominated for an Oscar.

And then there's today, most of which was spent doing laundry (including waiting for the fukaktah clothes to dry -- oh, for an American washer/dryer set), cleaning the bathroom, fiddling with the toilet for an hour and a half only to find that the reason why it leaks every time we flush is because the left-side bolt holding the tank to the toilet has effectively rotted away, putting the necessary software on my laptop so that I can take piccies of London with my digital camera and add them to my journal entries, and. . .why, that's about it.

And now it's about 4:00 am, and I need to be in work on time tomorrow so that I can finish off the damn GUI pages for Materials Data before I leave. Ta, all.

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