Yarrkarping!

In terms of Christmas cooking, that’s what I’ve helped out with today. 183 tiny meatballs, it’ll be a pleasure eating them. Mum and dad are cooking like their lives depended on it and the whole house smells so good! Although the fire alarm did go off earlier from all the smoke that was produced by the rib glazing. All was well tho, nothing was on fire and the ribs now look great.

Slight change of plans though, we’re not going to my aunties for dinner later in the evening tomorrow. Her and her husband have got the flu, so they won’t be hosting anything. A bit sad, that we can’t go there, but it’s also going to be quite nice to have a quite Christmas at home with just the family for once. I don’t think we’ve ever done that. We’re starting the eating tonight though, my brother is coming home and his girl friend is coming over and all the food will be ready. Nom nom nom!

And then we’re having more food tomorrow and then a big, massive turkey on boxing day. We’re having some people over then, so I suppose that will have to make up for the lack of people on Christmas eve. ^^

I don’t even know where to begin. I’m in Sweden now, but getting here was quite the ordeal. I guess I should do it chronologically. It all started on Friday afternoon when I looked for trains to Kev’s. I was gonna spend the weekend there before I went to Sweden. And I realise that since it’s been raining so hard the tracks between Greenock and Glasgow are flooded and there’s no trains running. I was quite at loss of what to do when my team leader offered to take me into Paisley, from where I would be able to get the train to Glasgow and then onwards. I thankfully accept and by 4pm we are on the road. So far so good, but not for long. When we get into Greenock town we realise that everything is at a standstill, a horrible, fuming, honking standstill of angry and tired drivers. We are stuck in this mess for about half an hour, leaving out total travel time so far at two hours, before we decided to try and get a different route. Only problem is getting to this route. Every street is filled with cars and everyone is too tired and frustrated to be polite, so it’s a nightmare every time we need to take a turn onto a different street. Eventually we get to the roar we’re going to and see that, like a big long, lazy catepillar, it’s moving very slowly forward, up and down the hills. We hang in there and move about a mile an hour and both me and my team leader is beginning to think that maybe we should have stayed on the dual carriageway. Maybe that had cleared up now and we were stupidos for turning off. At about quarter to 6 I call Kevin and tell him I’m going to be late. About 10 minutes later he calls me up and ask which road we’re on, since the dual carriageway is completely closed off due to flooding.

Whew, relief! It seems the road we’re on is clear, it’s just the sheer amount of cars and rain that’s making it go slowly, but it’s moving forward. We’re crawling though the outskirts of Greenock, slowly but surely, and true enough, eventually it clears up. A journey that normally takes me an hour and a half took me closer to five hours. I was exhausted when I finally sat down at the dinner table and had some long awaited food. In fact I almost fell asleep while eating. I was so glad the whole ordeal was over. For a while there I was really worried and almost certain we wouldn’t actually get out of Greenock until after the trains had stopped running.

But the rest of the weekend was really nice. On Saturday evening we had some fizzy wine and cake and then I had the best surprise ever. Kev’s mum snuck up the stairs and I didn’t think much of it, but then she came down with a whole pile of presents! I was so surprised and moved and I had just not expected that at all. 2 of them was from His parents and 2 of them were from Kev. I wes baffled, I didn’t know what to say at all and it was just so nice. <3 The fact that I was completely taken by surprise was probably the best thing about it.

So that was really lovely, and I almost didn’t want to leave on the Sunday. But we got up at 9am, which is so much earlier than we usually get up during the weekend, so it was a bit of a struggle, but we managed. Got a taxi down to the bus station and then we didn’t find the stop my bus would arrive at, so we just stood at a random one and waited. It was running a bit late, so we got a bit worried, but eventually it turned up and I got on. I was almost falling asleep the whole way to the airport, but since I didn’t know exactly which stop was mine, I didn’t want to risk it. Somehow I managed to stay asleep, get through the security, eat my sandwiches and queue for ages to finally get on the palne. As usual with Ryanair it was cramped and a bit cold, but I fell asleep pretty instantly and dreamt about weird things, none of which I remember now.

It was great to see mum and dad again. It’s nice to be home and Christmas is finally starting to feel like it might be on Wednesday.

On Sunday I’m going back home to Sweden for Christmas and I really can’t wait. I will miss Kev, but it will be so nice to come home to friends and family and familliar things even if it means I’ll have to sleep on an uncomfortable fiend of a sofa bed. I’m only there for a week and there is so much I want to get done. When I think about it a week seems far to little time, but it’s all I could get off from work.

I’m packing my bag and preparing the flat for my not being there later today, or tonight I suppose, when I get home from work. After work tomorrow I’m taking the train to see Kev and then on Sunday morning I’m going straight from there to the airport. I’ll get to Sweden at noon, mum and dad are coming to pick me up at the airport. I’m looking forward to every bit of it. the house, the Christmas lights, the food. Actually, the food especially. And of course I’m looking forward to seeing my friends and my brother and my pet rat again. It’ll be all around nice times! I don’t think I’ll see any snow though. They don’t have any now and I doubt it’ll get cold enough for some to fall before I get there. So I’m hoping for snow when me and Kev are coming over in January instead. the chances are probably better then.

I had one of those horrible scares yesterday. I thought I’d lost my keys and I discovered this at five to five in the afternoon when I got home form the shop. I reached into my pocket to get my keys to unlock the door and they weren’t there. I managed to get a hold of the estate agent, only they were closing in 4 minutes and wanted me to pay £40 to get a spare set of keys from them. I was pretty convinced that my keys were on my desk at work, so I persuaded them to let me borrow their set for a day free of charge and then if I couldn’t find my own keys I’d pay. I got the spare set and a bonus workout while running to the estate agent’s office.

I was still pretty much in a state of panic when I got home, no fun at all. I logged on vent and had a ramble to Kev about how everything was working against me and nothing ever went my way. He managed to calm me down, found me the phone number to the office, I got in touch with the site security and eventually I found out that they’d found my keys and I could pick them up in the morning. Problem solved! But for a while there, I was on the verge of breakdown. If one more bad thing had happened right then, I would have cried. And that’s quite an achievement. See, I don’t cry. I cried once over my term paper and before that I can’t remember when I did it. Or well, sappy movies and sad movies and grand movies and almost all the battle scenes in LotR makes me cry, but that doesn’t count. They’re not real.

I’ve taken to listening to Swedish morning radio when I get in at work. There’s a show called Morgonpasset, which means “The Morning Shift” and just feels so homey and cozy and I don’t know, it certainly makes my mornings a lot more bearable. Today hasn’t been so bad though. I decided to sleep in for an hour when I woke up and felt like I was dying. So I set my alarm to 8am instead and fell right asleep. After what felt like about a second  the alarm woke me up again, but as it turns out, the extra hour had passed and it was time to get up if I wanted to have a shower before making my way to the bus.

The 8.40am bus here is terrible. The 7.40am one is nice and calm and there’s usually no  problem getting a seat. There’s no problem getting a seat on the 8.40 bus either, not where I get on, but  about 2 stops later about 4000 school kids comes on and they all stubbornly stand in the isle, blocking the way for anyone that wants to get in or out. Eventually the driver has to tell them to move. It seems to be the same story every morning. I mean, are they daft? Why don’t they just go sit in the empty seats, cos there are usually empty seats. And argh! They’re just loud and annoying when I’m really tired and am trying to have a bit of quiet waking up time before I get to my desk.

Anyway, in spite of feeling like I hadn’t slept at all when I woke up, and in spite of a horrible bus ride after that, I feel quite ok now. I’m more awake than I usually am in the morning, so maybe that extra hour worked, or maybe it was the daylight that had started coming on when I travelled to work. Ususlly it’s pitch dark and it’s terrible.

I think all this darkness is starting to get me down. Or well, who am I trying to kid? I know for a fact that it has been getting me down since the middle of October. Gonna go into town after work tomorrow and get an extension cord so I can put up my christmas star in my window. I was thinking about which window to put it in, and had an idea of how nice it would look in the living room window, but then I realised it wouldn’t be able to enjoy it as much there since I spend a lot more time in my bedroom. So I’m gonna hang it in the window there. It’ll probably be easier to get it up there as well. I’m gonna try and have some of those little passport style photos taken as well. I need them for a number of things, they want photos on everything here, so I might as well get it done.

And something that got done last night  was getting to level 80 in WoW! Nerd alert, nerd alert! I also got the “Ambassador” title by reaching exalted with all the Horde factions and what else? We killed 2 Alliance bosses and generally had a splendid time. It feels weird not having to level anymore, I quite liked it and wouldn’t have minded if it lasted for a bit longer. but I suppose there’s other things to do, still have 4 zones full of quests to explore and a load of dungeons to do. It won’t get boring any time soon that’s for sure anyway. This expansion is so much better than BC, really really so much more quality on all levels.

And with that, I think I’ve written enough for one morning. ^^