The Good, Bad and the Ugly...

I'll start with the good. Which is, that I may just have found myself the best guy on the planet. Nicklas turned up at school this morning with a beautiful rose for me. His reason was to apologize for being a grumpy sod, which he had been... But I would have been perfeclty happy for him to just stop being grumpy. Not that I'm complaining! I love getting flowers. Don't think that'll ever get boring. :)
Isn't it pretty? Yay! :)

Also on the good side, is that I think my cold is finally giving up! I'm starting to feel myself again. Took long enough!

Now to the bad and the ugly. Just had a call from the mechnic who is servicing my car today. A few weeks ago, we noticed that the hood on the car wouldn't close properly - or open for that matter. This can't be fixed other than, as I understand it, rebending the metal of the entire front of the car. This would be the bad.

The ugly would be the bastard who must have hit us while we were parked. We are quite sure that we are entirely innocent on this part. I have the nasty feeling that the insurance company aren't going to be all too fothcoming either. But it's worth a try. Don't even want to know how much this is going to cost! :(

Never mind... concentrate on the good for now :)

Flu season is here...

I am now on day seven of my cold. Yesterday I was all happy about feeling better... and then this morning my throat had once again swollen up like a balloon. Turns out half of our class is now in the same boat. Sorry!

And poor Pasco is still wearing the cone. Went to the vet to have the stitches taken out on Friday, but due to his chewing incident, the cone has to stay on for another six to ten days. Seeing as how I'm getting royally fed up with it, I can only imagine how he feels! Poor bastard.

Due to my illness very little has been happening I'm afraid. My internship starts on Monday. Woohoo! Scarry, but so looking forward to it. I really feel like I want to start working now... Being a student is great in some ways, but I find myself actually missing working life. Bet I'll regret saying that in, oh, a year's time or so. But for now - up, up and away!

Friday

Good day. Tired after severe lack of sleep, but otherwise good. Odd when you just can't sleep for no good reason. My poor Nicklas is home in bed with serious achy throat and stuffy head. Think I may have something of it in my system, but as usual it refuses to break out.

After the last few weeks' severe lack of stuff to do in school, we were delegated a little project for today and Monday. Terese and I have managed to finish it off very effectively and are now done for the week. Really quite proud of our result too.

Somewhat worried about the weather... Tomorrow I'm off with my dad for a day of sailing Briggen Tre Kronor. A huge rebuild of an old ship that's been doing the Tall Ship Race all Summer. Weather forecast says very strong winds and quite possibly rain. Not my favourite kind of weather, but at least there will be enough to keep us occupied.

So now I'm off home to try and find my cold and wet weather gear before picking my dad up to go to my brother's for the evening. Tomorrow is my nephew's birthday party, which we can't attend, so we thought we'd pop in for a pre-party visit. Happy, happy weekend :)

My Dog and His Cone

This weekend I sent my sweet little mutt to have his spurs removed. These are leftover toes used for nothing, hanging on by just a little skin and remnants of a former useful body part I'm sure. Removal, was done purely out of concern on my part. You see, I figure that it is better that they are cut off in a sterile enovironment, rather than that they were to get stuck in something and ripped off by accident. Ouch! Exactly.

So, the past few days have been fine. He is in no pain and happy as usual. He has however refused to wear his cone, and persist in taking it off as soon as it is put on. This lead to resignation on our part, and we let him lead his cone free life. However, this morning he took advantage. Just when he had arrived at day care, he was left unsupervised for a few minutes (no blame, mind you!). It did not take him long to realise his chance, and he chewed off the bandage on one foot, and persisted in also ripping out the three stitches. This left a nice open wound.

So instead of going to class today, I had to take Pasco back to the vet and pay once again to have them put another stich in him.

Now he is stuck with the darn cone, which gets stuck around every corner and in every bush, for another two weeks. All I can do really is give one big, heavy sigh, and put his picture out here. He does looks somewhat pathetic huh?

I Finally Know What's Wrong With Me!

It only took six years to get there, but I finally have it. My diagnosis. I know what's wrong with me! And for better or worse it's not IBS. Turns out what I have is Micorscopic Colitis. May heal or not, but now I'm on meds, which I'm hoping will be my magical cure. Otherwise I go on to a rather uncomfortable dose of cortisone. Watch me blow up! So, let's just hope that doesn't happen. Most extreme they chop out my insides, but I'm thinking that won't happen. It's not like I haven't survived with it for the past quarter of my life...

Doggy Daycare and Party Preparations

I had forgotten how much work it is to throw a party. Especially when you're not 100% moved in yet. But now at least we have enough boose and chips to feed an army (and potentially get it pretty drunk too). First things first, right?! Glad we've had the past week "off" to get everything done. And yet, there are still two boxes that need to get thrown out/go inot storage, and cleaning of course... again! I just cleanened. Well, maybe not just, since it's probably been about a week. Ugh. I HATE cleaning! Especially when you know that you're gonna have to do it all over again after the party is over.

Pasco has some pretty exciting news too. He is now a big boy and has started going to doggy daycare. It seems he likes his days better now... he gets all kinds of excited in the morning when we're off. Thankfully he's just about as excited when we come pick him up. :) See his new home away from home - pretty cute I think!
Kära Tassar

Three weeks of unaldulterated fun

So, we are now back home, complete with dog and several extra pounds... Eating out in the US every day for three weeks does nothing for your figure, I'll tell you that much! Other than that, I have had an absolute blast. I'm also glad to say that Pasco seems to share the sentiment, even if he was left at home. Reports have it that he has been doing a lot of chasing cows and running away from my parents...

Three weeks of constant doing stuff is hard to recap in something that won't take hours to read, so I'll focus on the best bits.

We started our trip off in San Francisco. Just as cool as we had hoped. We managed to get through most of the big stuff, like taking the cable car, seeing a baseball game, crossing the golden gate and taking a proper tour of Alcatraz. We started off by taking a full day wine tour of Napa Valley. Drinking started around 11am... some really nice wines, and some that were less so. Most hilarious part was probably the two ladies 50-something that seemed to have made it their goal to get trashed. Buying a bottle for the bus at every stop (there were four of them) and having another one for lunch, one of the two actually passed out on the last strech of the ride taking us to the ferry back to SF. Great start to the trip though!

Next stop Seattle. Here we took it pretty easy, walked around the city and had a nice long dinner in the revolving Space Needle restaurant. Great food, and an absolutedly breath-taking view.

After two days, we went on to take the bus North to Vancouver. Here we met up with our paddling gang. Great with friends in stressful jobs requiring constant travelling giving them lots of points at nice hotels. Especially when they use these to put their friends up in great rooms :) Hehe. After a nice chat with a glass of wine on the hotel patio, we all headed off to bed.

Next morning we started our journey to Vancouver Island... turned out it was a national holiday and long week end, so we had to wait for two ferries, before we finally got on the third to take us across. Ended up on Quadra Island, where our Kayaking adventure was to start, around 11 pm. By then we had missed the welcome meeting and apparently som pretty great partying at the only bar on the island...

The following day we met up with the rest of our group. Some pretty great people, making for a good and bumpy 3-hour ride in a water taxi out to our remote cliff-side camp. Felt pretty good, seeing as how we managed to get our first Orca siting on the way!

During the next few days we paddled, saw more Orca, hump-backs, dolphins, river otters, huge star fish and more. We had four beautiful days hanging out with some of our best friends, that we rarely see, and some new great people, who turned out to be an absolute blast.

When four days were up, it was back to Vancouver. Here we ended up in the construction zone preparing the city for the winter Oplympics 2010. Somewhat tired after several nights in a tent, we took it easy, walked around lots, and managed to catch another super duper highlight of the trip. We got tickets to Nickelback's concert. Woohoo! Pretty darn cool I say!

The last two days in San Francisco we were beat. Managed to catch our first hour at a pool all vacation, and prepared for the gruelling trip home. After our red-eye from SF to Philadelphia we had an eleven hour lay-over before our next flight home. Already exhausted, we made our way into the city to see the Liberty Bell and take a bus tour of the city.

We've now been home for going on five days, and we're still jet lagged! Insane! Never had it this bad before... but we're getting there. We've kept busy trying to put the finishing touches on the apartment in view of our flat warming next week. Woohoo! Really looking forward to seeing everyone again. :)