So did I get to take my bath and turn the world off for awhile? You're all wondering now, I know.
The answer is of course no.
Why? Dad called me from the airport, having forgotten his ticket and could I drive out with it? So off I went in a hurry, dragging myself and this big lump of metal halfway down to Stockholm to deliver this little piece of paper. Strange world. I got there in time (barely) after breaking the speed limits slightly but consistently, saw dad off and headed home again. And the weather decided to have some fun. In the middle of a cold, sunny winter day we got a kind of thin misty rain that naturally froze as soon as it hit something. The most noticeable something from my point of view was the windshield. Wouldn't have been much of a problem if the windshield fluid hadn't started running out. As it was I managed to keep at least part of the view clear, but still had to drive slowly to feel reasonably safe.

Listening to: T. Rex - Planet Queen

Seems we'll get to keep the nice winter weather for a few more days. It was said that it'd be warm this weekend, but yesterday the meteorologists changed their minds and now it's going to be decently cold. So the snow and (since it's been cold and warm in off and on for awhile) ice will stay. This morning it was about -14 C. Not terribly cold, but enough that I like to take a few extra minutes biking to my morning lecture to spare my throat.
I like to keep my room fairly cool, I sleep better that way. But I need my warm shower in the morning to come out of hibernation properly and start moving at normal speed (I may be part reptile, that'd explain it). This morning I didn't have time, but instead had to go out and get even colder. Naturally I didn't get much from the first hour of the lecture.
Now I'm done with lectures for the week though and I think I'm going to go up and soak in the tub with an old paperback for an hour or two.

Oh, the quote of the week is: "You look fifteen years younger!" my little brother's girlfriends reaction to my haircut. This is kind of worrying at 23. Did I look 38 before or do I look like an eight year old now? Speaking of which, I heard this in a commercial for some skin care product: "Now you can look as young as you feel." To which I thought that I'd hate to look that old at this age.

Trees - Snail's Lament

Those who know me know that I'm not very fond of shopping, it's actually more of a dislike. Grocery shopping is ok, it can even be fun sometimes. But shopping for clothes can be such a pain that I tend to avoid it most of the time (which is then of course reflected in a not very interesting wardrobe). Today however, by pure chance, I happened upon a shoe sale. I wouldn't normally have gone in, thinking my old shoes were good enough, but mom was with me (we were out grocery shopping this afternoon) and pointed out that it wouldn't hurt to look... to make a not so long story shorter, I found a pair of very nice brown leather boots that could have been made for my feet and were put down from 1300 SEK to 300 (it's seven something to the US dollar I think, you do the math). The fact that they fit so well on my feet might be why they couldn't sell them at a higher price, since that would kind of mean that they'd hardly fit on anybody elses ;). In any case, I'm very glad to have found them.

On a completely different topic, it's funny how bits of music float around. I just heard that famous portion from Borodin's Polovtsian Dances, you know the one they use so much in Rah Xephon, in a Ventures guitar medley. And I thought The Ventures only played covers of popular sixties songs, now I'm wondering if that little piece of melody was picked up into some 60s pop song and in that case which.

Oh, and here's finally a picture of me and my hair. Not a very good picture, unshaven (me, not the picture) and glasses askew, but you wouldn't recoginse me otherwise.

Listening to: The Ventures - Surf on Guitar Medley (Let's Go mix)

Still no pictures of my hair (I haven't quite gotten to the point where I'm taking pictures of myself in the mirror just to show off my new hair style ;). But I thought I'd post some stuff I made recently, since somebody asked.
I finished something I hadn't worked on for almost two months after I got Photoshop today. Alot of it was made in Blender and the thing on the banner in the background was drawn in Pixia, but it's all put together and most of the painting was done in PS.
This and this were both painted with with enamel paints on paper while I was bored and didn't have Photoshop. They're both 3.5"x2.5" (standard card size) which is why the detail level is kind of low, but it doesn't excuse the rather crappy shape of both the heads. The unicorn took quite long since it's layered, but didn't come out as I had hoped.

Sure sure, I'll post a picture of my hair once I have one. As for art (though I use that term loosely here) I can only post my digital work at the moment since I'm without scanner. And since I don't like to post old stuff it'll have to wait until I have something new. Maybe by next weekend if I get PS tomorrow.
Now what I wanted to mention today was that I read in todays paper that we swedes drink in average (!!) two liters of soda (or whatever you like to call a sugar rich carbonated drink) per week and person. Now this might not sound too worrying until you start thinking about how much sugar that really is. Half a liter of soda typically contains 65 grams of sugar. This is roughly the same as the amount a growing boy of 15 to 18 years should at most consume in a day, so that'd be the maximum sugar intake for four of the week's seven days just from the soda. Also I'd like to point out that the average swede is definitely not a boy between 15 and 18 (a girl of the same age shouldn't eat more than about 50-55 g of sugar per day), so for the average person it's probably more like five or six days' sugar intake. On top of that I'm prepared to wager that a person with weak enough character not to limit his intake of soda will also not stop and think about other sources of sugar like candy, cookies, marmelade, ice cream, juice... This is really the first time that the warnings about bad eating habits that have come so frequently the last few years have registered with me. I suppose I'm enough of a geek that I have to see it in numbers to get it. Soon, it seems, the average person will be both fat and suffer from diabetes.

For the first time in four years or so I had my hair cut short yesterday. Not so much for the sake of appearance (I now resemble Dr. Evil more than Chewie, though I was never all that close to either) as for convenience. It is sad that I no longer have any use for the nice hair brush I got for Christmas, but I think I'll get over it... ok, I'm over it.
On a completely unrelated topic, jeans are about five to ten times more expensive in Sweden than in the US. This means that if I ask nicely, dad buys my jeans when he's over there on business and even if some pairs don't fit I still save alot of money (and with a bit of work they can usually be adjusted). Mentioning this since I got three new pairs earlier this week and that was about the most interesting thing that happened. Dull week.
I should get Photoshop again sometime early next week, which is good. In its absence I've turned my creative energies to doing miniature paintings with enamel paints and since it's too cold outside to have the windows open my bedroom stinks of various organic solvents that are no doubt dissolving my brain as I write this (not a very well built sentence that). With Photoshop back I'll be happy to stop using those paints until summer.
Summer seems awfully far off today since we've had over a decimeter of snow since morning. I've promised to go out and clear the driveway and sidewalk tonight, which'll be my only reason to actually get dressed today.

Listening to: Supergrass - Some Girls are Bigger than Others

I just rewatched it. It's been a few years since last and I must say I liked it much better this time. I don't know if it is because I'm not quite as overawed by the animation anymore (knowing a bit about it helps both to understand how much work goes into something like this and to make it seem a little bit less like magic), but I liked the story much better than I remembered especially the ending. It fits together nicely and makes a self contained kind of sense. Still think they could have written something better when they were going to put all that effort into animating it.
Looking forward now to Advent Children, the movie continuing the story line from FF7, that should come out sometime this year. I've got four trailers for it sitting on my drive and it looks like it's going to be sweet.

Listening to: Inoue Azumi - Tonari no Totoro