I always get these odd bits of left-over time before leaving for something I don't want to be late for. I've already made sure I'll have plenty of time and leaving even earlier would just leave me sitting down by the station house for half an hour instead.
I've packed everything I could think of, probably too much for just two days but at least I don't think anything's been forgotten. Made way too many sandwiches, better that than coming home to stale bread on the counter.
Garbage and compost have been taken out, dishwasher run, I'm showered, shaved and dressed well and comfortably in jeans and a checkered shirt (dark blue and beige). Backpack is by the door, everything's ready and there's just nothing to do with half an hour (make that 22 minutes now).
Anyway, be well while I'm away. Dress warm and bullet proof. Feel free to do things I wouldn't if they catch your fancy.

Listening to: Audioslave - Last Remaining Light

Isn't the Internet wonderful? I just decided to go to Oslo for a couple of days and within forty minutes I have chatted to Kana and convinced her to come along (didn't take much convincing since she didn't have any plans for Easter either), checked the bus times and prices (I'm too late to get the pre-buy discount for the trip there, but not for the trip back), found a hostel and sent an e-mail to make a reservation.
We'll be taking the night bus tomorrow night and arrive on Friday morning, Friday night will be spent at the hostel and then back with the night bus on Saturday night. I normally don't like long distance busses, but the prices are good enough to make up for it.
So far the cost of the trip is: 345:- (bus to Oslo) + 280:- (bus back home) + (~)200:- (hostel) = 825:- ~= 115 US dollars. To that comes food and stuff of course, but I still think it's a pretty good price for an excursion like this.

Listening to: Counting Crows - St. Robinson in His Cadillac Dream

Got this from Déesse's LJ, and since I'm having a slow day I thought I'd give you all (all you three or four people who actually read my blog ^^) a chance to get to know me a little better. It's a fair deal to read and not very interesting, so no one will blame you for backing out now.

Basic Facts...

1. Name: Pontus... for some reason I still don't feel entirely comfortable putting my full name on the net. Not that I'm very stalk-worthy or anything.
2. Age: 23
3. Location: A basement, Uppsala, Sweden.
4. Sex: Male
5. Zodiac Sign: Cancer
6. Religion: Technically Christian, since I'm a member of the Swedish Church. But in practice I suppose you might call me agnostic. And for practical advice on how to live I consider Havamal superior to the Bible, so call me heathen if you like.
7. Occupation: Student of physics and engineering.
8. Relationship Status: Single, very.

Do You...

1. Smoke: No, smokers stink.
2. Drink: No, never wanted to either. There's a good verse in Havamal, let me find a translation to English...

Less good than they say for the sons of men
is the drinking oft of ale:
for the more they drink, the less can they think
and keep a watch o'er their wits.

3. Do Drugs: I do chocolate, the purer the better.
4. Curse: Rarely.
5. Lie: Again rarely, but when I do feel there's need I consider myself a very good liar.
6. Steal: No.
7. Cheat: In what? In school there's no point since my sole purpose there is to learn. It's happened that I've used cheat codes in computer games when I've grown bored of them, but that doesn't really count since it doesn't involve fooling anybody.
8. Want To Go To College: Been here for almost five years already.
9. Want To Get Married: Possibly, so far I haven't met anybody I'd like to marry right now. But I'm not denying the possibility that such a person exists or even that I might end up marrying someone I already know, could happen.
10. Want To Have Kids: Again something that'd require the cooperation of a second person. I think I'd want to be married or at least well on the way there before thinking of children. But when it comes down to it, yes I suppose I do.
11. Sing In Public: Yes, when I'm in a good mood I sing or whistle while biking, walking and driving.
12. Twirl/Spin/Dance Randomly: Yes, but usually not in public. It's not very uncommon that I dance around in my room when something exceptionally good has happened.
14. Go To The Movies A Lot: No. I did in Japan, but I haven't been out to see a movie since coming back.
15. Play A Sport: I play tennis almost every weekend. Usually between eight and nine on Saturday mornings.
16. Do Your Homework/Job: Yes. Though I have been putting off writing a Nuclear Physics lab report for months now. It's the only thing I haven't handed in on time during my five years in the university and I'm feeling a bit guilty about it.
17. Have a Pet: No. I had birds once when I was little and they drove me and the rest of the family crazy. Now I only have a couple of small spiders in my window, moved there to keep away the little fruit flies that like to buzz there.
18. Sleep With Stuffed Animals: I have a couple of them right next to my bed. One is the jellyfish you see in the background of my blog here and the other is a blue elephant. Sometimes they drop down into my bed if I'm tossing in my sleep.

Favorites...

1. Movie: Um... no single movie sticks out enough to call it a favorite.
2. Cartoon: Maybe Cowboy Bebop or Trigun.
3. Actress: I'm bad with names, can't come up with any right now.
4. Actor: Same for this one.
5. Person: Possibly my little brother. I know, little brothers are supposed to be annoying, but I rather like mine.
6. Song: I have roughly seven thousand mp3s (most of them aren't even downloaded) on my computer right now, some I like better than others but none stands out above all others.
7. Band: I'd have to say Das Bandt. Not because I like their music more than that of all other bands, but because I like the band members themselves. My little brother and two friends of his.
8. Color: I like browns and greens, but any colour that isn't too bright and saturated is ok.
9. Article of Clothing: I have a pair of boots that I'm fond of.
10. Thing to Write With (Pen, pencil, marker, etc.): For ink I like to use my red Sheaffer calligraphy pen. Mostly I write with mechanical pencils though, .5mm 2B lead please.
11. Word: Do many people actually have a favorite word? I'll have to think on this one a bit. Should be a word that both fits well in the mouth, sounds pleasant and has a good meaning with many positive associations... pie, library, smooth, svalka (Swedish word), I'm sure I could go on for a good long time and list words I like.
12. Class: My favorite class in high school was actually my English drama class, not that I was particularly good at it, but it was a class I took for the pleasure of it so there was no pressure. The group was small and the teacher great. I didn't like the teacher of my other English classes at all though, so I can't say I liked English in general or Swedish either. My best subjects were always Physics and Math, so of course I like them.
13. Day of the Week: Maybe Thursday. When I'm on holiday all days are alike so I can't say any weekday is inherently better than any other, but I like Thursdays.
14. Month: All times of year have their charm. In my opinion August and September are the best for backpacking though.
15. Animal: tortoises are cool.

Opinion On...

1. Abortion: Sure, just think it through first.
2. Gay Marriage: This is one of those questions that have gotten a lot of room in media that I just don't care about at all. If a church doesn't want to marry two people of equal sex, then that's up to the church. I don't see why the law should make a difference though. But really, it's not a question I'll get upset over.
3. Homo/bi-sexuality: Again, whatever works. Not my cup of tea though (my cup of tea is often mint or camomille by the way)
4. Pornography: I enjoy the occasional erotic scene in a good movie ^^, but making an entire movie with nothing else seems excessive. Would rather see a movie with just car chases or explosion effects, or how about a couple of hours of non-stop fight scenes.
5. Women's Suffrage (Right to Vote): If we're going to have a democracy nothing else makes sense.
6. Traditional Families (Father as head of the family, etc.): I have a hard time seeing myself as the head of a family, I'd be more like the stomach of the family ^^. In my family it seems my father is usually the driving force behind things while mom is the voice of taste and reason, works well enough.
7. Other Religions: As long as they keep it among themselves I don't care much.
8. Interracial Marriage: Huh? Is this even an issue for some people?
9. Spelling/Grammar Errors: I'll be careful not to say anything about this since I haven't checked my spelling or grammar in my other answers.
10. Love: People need people. Another verse:

The pine tree wastes which is perched on the hill,
nor bark nor needles shelter it;
such is the man whom none doth love;
for what should he longer live?

There, I've bored you enough.

Listening to: Crash Test Dummies - God Shuffled His Feet

Going in a few minutes to meet a guy about doing simulations of Jupiter's atmosphere for my diploma project thingy (I don't know what the English word should be, in Swedish it's 'examensarbete' and it should take one semester of full time studies). I'm pretty excited as this sounds like much more fun than studying non-linear waves in plasmas (it does to me at least).
I shall now go shave in order to make a good first impression.

Listening to: Soundtrack of Our Lives - Ten Years Ahead

My parents came home from Åre and left for Nice a few days later, so I've the house to myself again. Not that I actually occupy more than the kitchen and my room in the basement. It got warm today, up around nine or ten degrees, so all the pretty snow is melting to slush. Haven't been out more than to fetch the mail (and walk two houses away with a misdelivered letter) and paper. I finished painting this:

I call it simply 'Priest'.
Also baked an apple cake, will have to make sure I don't eat it all by myself.

Listening to: Blade Runner Opening Theme

Nothing of much interest to report.
Monday I spent most of the day out in the forest, brought my little field stove and cooked a simple lunch just to see that I could still use it. A good sized piece of snowy forest makes warm food taste so much better ^^
Wednesday I was out sliding down slopes on a thick plastic mat together with Kana.

Been years since i did anything of the sort, so it was great fun.
Nothing much else worth writing down.
As several people have mentioned, it'd be nice if I could post more creative nonsense (also loosely known as artwork) here. Problem is that I don't make finished pieces very often. To make everybody happy I'll just post a few more random sketches from now on. Starting with some footwear and a painting of a broken tree. A slight update of the picture below can also be found.

Listening to: John Denver - Annie's Song (warning, this song is not for the lactose intolerant ^^)

I'm out on the other side of tired now, so I'm almost alive.
At around two am last night I realized that I should really go to bed since I was getting up at seven to play tennis. Unfortunately (if such a word can be used in this case, at the time it seemed rather fortunate) I zapped through the few channels on my TV (which I almost never use) before turning in and noticed that The Two Towers had just started... got to bed at a quarter past five, got up less than an hour and a half later. Surprisingly playing tennis went pretty well and when nobody showed up to claim the court after our booked hour was through we played for another hour. So I've played tennis for significantly longer than I slept.

Listening to: Hoodoo Gurus - Waking up Tired

I've spent alot of time in Photoshop lately. My latest eater of many hours is a painting called Planet Queen after the T. Rex song of the same name. I was listening to this song while happening to look at some Masamune Shirow paintings of girls with big guns. So after reflecting over this for a little while and then spending the already mentioned numerous hours this is what came out:

Click it for a larger one. The real one is about twice the size (lengthwise) of that larger one, but I don't think it'd fit on most people's screens.
Obviously I got lazy and skipped alot of the things in the lyrics... make that all of them... so I really don't have any reason to call it Planet Queen any more, but that's still what it's called in my mind. Background is also a bit poor, too much black space causes the shading of the girl (that shading being the one thing I'm somewhat proud of in the entire thing) to look much flatter than with the neutral grey background I used while making it. So something is learned at least: put in at least a rudimentary background before doing the painting and shading of major foreground elements.
Blah, blah, blah.

Oh, one thing concerning the last post. Nick said he thought that the mentioning of butt prints in association with sauna was almost as bad as his infamous Eels and Ass post. To this I can only say that saunas and leaving prints of various body parts in the snow go well and naturally together while on the other hand asses and eels can (or should) make most people uncomfortable if mentioned in the same breath. ^^

Listening to: The Guess Who - Proper Stranger

Ah! I suppose it could get boring after a while, but right now I'm really enjoying having nothing urgent to do. Spent a couple of days reading, taking long walks and drawing, painting, whatever :)
Hehe, taking a sauna at 2.30 am will have to go in the whatever category. Noticed a couple of minutes ago that I left a pretty obvious butt print in the snow next to my door when I was out rolling (this is at the back of the house of course, wouldn't be out rolling naked in the snow in front even in the middle of the night). Shall remember to erase that ^^.
I'm rereading Frans G Bengtson's Röde Orm. The overexaggerated viking stereotypes of his are hillarious. I'm not sure this book has been translated to English, and I'm also not sure how much fun it would be for someone who didn't grow up here. Still, I'm enjoying it immensely.

Listening to: Steamhammer - When All Your Friends Are Gone

Ok, I got my five on the exam and am happy. Then I went for a walk.
Weather's gone from bitterly cold to warm in just a day (of course the nice winter weather ends just as I have time to enjoy it), but it hasn't had time to really get muddy yet so it was a pleasant walk.

There is one thing on the front of every major Swedish newspaper today and for once it's good news (and as you all know, this means that it's about sports. No other good news seem to get a prominent place in any paper.). A Swedish victory in a European track and field championship is nice and gets an article in the sports section. A double Swedish victory is unusual and would probably get a big picture on the front page of a few papers. But when the winners are not only twins, but also cute it'll be enough to make big headlines all over the place. Talking of course about Susanna and Jenny Kallur who took first and second place in 60m hurdles in Madrid yesterday. I'm not normally interested in sports, but this made even me smile. That Stefan Holm also got to be the tenth person in the world to jump over 2.40 m in the high jump (is it called that?) got a bit overshadowed.

Listening to: Deep Purple - Chasing Shadows

So tired of studying! I'm also so nervous that I feel sick. Not so much because I don't think I know the material, but because I've put too much pressure on my self. As much as I've studied for this it just has to go well tomorrow or I'll... well, I'll feel depressed and angry.
Today's been a bright sunny day and I've sat holed up in a small study room at Ångström for nine hours. Then I came home, had dinner and sat down to study again. After posting this I'll sit down and do maybe another half hour, then take a well deserved shower and go to bed early.
It's not often that I can give a so short, yet complete description of my day. I'll toss in one for yesterday too just to write something:
Got up at seven, played tennis with Kana from 7:45 to 8:15, ate breakfast, went out to Ångström and studied for about five or six hours, came home to eat and got dragged out to Björklinge to help move grandma's furniture (took about an hour), went back out to Ångström and studied a few hours more. A much more interesting day than today all things told. I said hi to my cousin for one thing, the most we've said to each other in over two years.

Listening to: Nick Drake - Day is Done

Been spending hours in front of a blackboard today. At first it was just to get a bit of practice for Monday, doing your derivations on a board is very different from doing them on paper. But it didn't take me more than a couple of hours to decide that I like blackboards better. When I write something on paper it has a feeling of permanency, so I try to do too much in my head to make sure I don't make mistakes and have to erase. On the board nothing's permanent, a swipe of hand, sleeve or forehead removes mistakes without a trace so the process of building the formulae becoms much more... alive? fun? something like that. I wonder if I can find a nice big second hand blackboard for my room somewhere, that'd be neat.
Surfboards, skateboards, snowboards, wakeboards... bah! none of them can come close to the rush of surfing the dark green expanse of a clean blackboard when you're on a roll, leaving squiggly wakes of crip white chalk. And really, which sounds cooler? snowboarder or blackboarder? See? QED.
Ok, maybe a slight exaggeration, but it is much more rewarding than working on paper and I now totally understand why none of my lecturers ever use the whiteboards.

Listening to: Caravan - Nine Feet Underground/Nigel Blows a Tune/Love's a Friend/Make It 76/Dan

... don't come as far south as Sweden. But today they would have felt right at home in Uppsala. It was -25 C this morning. Coldest weather I've been biking in for quite some time. However it's sunny and there's lots of fresh bright snow so I'm not complaining about the weather in any way. Been talking alot of the weather lately, but it's the most exciting topic I can come up with.
Most my time this week goes into preparing for the oral exam I have in plasma physics on Monday. It's alot to read and a big pile of derivations to understand, so I'm having trouble getting my lazy butt in gear and actually study hard. Sure, I sit a few hours every day, but not enough. I'll pay for it these last four days of course, which is a pain but serves me right.
After the exam I have quite a long holiday. Since it's the only exam I have this period and it's right at the start of the exam weeks, I have a couple of weeks free. To make it even better, the end of the period coincides with easter this year so after those two weeks I'll just go straight on with my easter holiday. I'm planning to finally do all those little graphics jobs I've promised my brother I'll take care of. I have an old lab report that needs writing and I'm planning to properly learn Illustrator. If the weather stays this way I also want to spend alot of time outdoors and I might go up to Åre to ski for a couple of days. All this fun to be had... once I'm done with this exam of course.

Listening to: Quicksilver Messenger Service - Fresh Air