zappo

The music goes very well with my wallpaper, which is... a lot of stars.

Not so outside my window. Once again I'm glad I have work clothes here at the office, so my civilian clothes can dry out. Sheesh what a lot of rain! Sudden downpours turning into up-splashes.

Now the old "Sherlock Holmes" TV series is finished, and I've turned back to "Green Wing". Haha, so funny! But the Special I watched last night was quite sad at the end, and even less connected to reality than the rest of the show. What should I watch next, then? "Hyperdrive"? The rest of "Nicholas Nickleby" (the old stage production from 1980)? Or something really good, "Secret Army"? These are just a few of the shows I've got waiting by my DVD player!

Or I could read a book.

Or possibly go back to Orust and pet cats.

Phantom Limb!

While my parents are currently acting out a Norén play, I keep watching "Edge of Darkness" at home. When I first saw it in the 80s I thought it was brilliant and totally scary. Back then everything nuclear was super-frightening to me, but these days of course we have become inured to the terrors of fallout and mushroom clouds. Still, after half the show it's still pretty good.

But I always thought it had a different theme tune, a vaguely celtic song about a cold sea and a dark dark fisherman -- I must have got it mixed up with some other show around that time, or with a similar theme. Wonder what it was though. Does anyone else remember a theme tune with a line about a cold hand reaching out over the icy sea? From the mid-to-late 80s? Possibly about eco-crime?

And whatever happened to Joe Don Baker?

On Tuesday and Wednesday I was in the woods north of Motala (not Mjölby), looking at rock cuts along the railroad. Nice weather, birdsong, flowers and trees in bloom -- a riot of lilac blossoms in all the gardens. Wonderful!

But being away from the office means there's so much more to do when I get back, stuff that I neglected to do when being out in the forest. Yes I know, it's all work, so how could it be negligence? But that's how it feels when I have to pick up the slack again.

Yesterday one little job I've been dreading a lot for about a week turned out to be a dud. Deploying pre-reinforcement in a rock excavation-to-be, with a very demanding and annoying-sounding builder (think P G Gyllenhammer), for Hogia in Stenungsund; I've worked for them before and they're all pretty annoying. Turns out in person they're quite allright! That's usually the case, isn't it? Face to face communication is so much better. Also, the excavation is simple and requires no pre-reinforcement. I left again after 20min.

Today has been pretty insane with deadline-today CAD work. To top it all, late in the afternoon, when I had finally remade all the drawings for the umpteenth time, we learn that the architects have made last-minute changes to how they want the tunnel to be built. Arrrrrgh!

So now I'm all wonky in the head from doing computer work for ten hours. And what do I do? Turn on the computer! to watch DVDs, at least. Hooray for old detective shows. What I'm watching now is the Waters/Petherbridge version of Harritet Vane/Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, from 1987 *). The disc is lagging frightfully so I let it cool off a bit writing this, and filling up my glass of wine. I feel completely entitled to a bit of alcohol today, especially since I missed the CC pub night on Tuesday.

Anyway, I've had a soft spot for Edward Petherbridge ever since SVT showed "Nicholas Nickleby" in 1982, and I really liked these Dorothy Sayers mysteries when they showed them. Still pretty good! And if that is not enough, on TV there is now and then the old "Poirot" series with David Suchet, which I also loved when it was on in the early 90s. The architecture! The design! The Suchet acting! It still holds up. But not the new version, I'm talking about the original stories.

When I run out of all that, there is always "The Professionals" to fall back on, or "Bergerac" series 5 which I somehow have missed to purchase. I have s1-4 and s6 but not s5 O_o



*) "Have His Carcase" guest-stars Michael Troughton, Patrick's other actor son

/me braves TV4 and Martin Timell in a show about Swedish history

Oh, Vikings. Apparently it's all about Birka.

TV4, how you are predictable!

/me switches to Doctor Who, at least that is mostly un-annoying

All the snow at Söbben is here translated into thick sheets of ice on the streets. Ew. It's still pretty cold (well below freezing) and clear skies, which promises well for the evening's celebrations. Big fireworks at 1700 (yes I know...) and then -- party time!

Yes, I'm going to a New Year's party again, same place as last year. Amazing! Seems I have acquired a social life after all.

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I'm about to tune my brand new ukulele, so I can play on it. Whee.

***

I happened to watch a show about a small Swedish community this morning, "Plötsligt i Vinslöv". Absolutely fascinating, I couldn't stop watching. It's like real-life Varan-TV and "Änglagård" and all those small-town Sweden fictions that seem completely unrealistic... but turn out to be almost documentary. Wow. I mean, mini-golf enthusiasts, budgie zealots, and general weirdos...