Nostalgia

So, I've been YouTubing a bit lately... call it procratination or lazyness... after a long, hard week at work, I just haven't felt like doing much.

By accident, I came across this video of a character called Linus på Linjen - Linus on the Line (No, you are not supposed to understand what he is saying, although rifle, flower and elefante can be picked up in this one).

Linus was my grandfather's favorite cartoon. We got lucky every time he came on, since he the random 2-minute snippets were just thrown in between programs to fill space when a program ran short, and you could never find Linus in the TV Guide. Then again, we only had 2 television stations until 1992, so the options for what to watch were scarce.

In the mid 1980s, when I was 6 or 7 years old, I remember being amazed at the color yet simplicity of the animation of Linus. Eventually, Linus got to serve as a public figure in telling people to recycle cans or newspaper, which you can watch here.

I can't help but wonder what my grandfather would be saying today if he were still alive. He could have been watching television 24 hours a day, with things much more exciting than a hand drawing a simple figure. But then again, my grandfather appreciated the simple things in life. To him, Linus was perfection.

Great moments, and now they're gone

In honor of the new president, who will take office in less than two days, I am posting a link to a compilation of David Letterman's "Great Moments in Presidential Speeches" that I found on YouTube. (Please watch it to the end - you will not regret it)

Mass murderers and 'CSI'

Perhaps it's not so strange that I'm a fan of the television series "CSI." Since I was 15, I have been fascinated by psychopaths and mass murderers.

So much so, that during a school break in the fall of 1994, I took a bus for 2 hours to the town of Falun to visit he site where Mattias Flink, a sergeant in the Swedish Army, shot eight people after a night of angry binge drinking. Notebook in hand and armed with my first very own camera, I walked in his footsteps from the gate of the restricted section of the military base to the park where the six ladies from the auxiliary where maimed with his AK-5.

Newspaper clippings had mapped out exactly where the bodies were found, and I could picture the young male cyclist and the security officer being hit by bullets as well - it was like a fuzzy re-enactment you see on television, where the shadows of those who died reappear to give you an idea of exactly how things went down.

After a couple of hours of research, I had lunch, then took the first bus back home.

Although I never really knew what to do with the materials I had gathered, I organized it with my newspaper clippings in a binder and tucked it away in a drawer of my desk. I briefly considered writing to Flink in prison so he could answer a list of questions I had, but I quickly abandoned the idea, realizing only crazy people write to mass murderers.

Flink, who is serving a 24-year sentence (lifetime, in Sweden), has denied all interviews by news media. After being threatened by fellow prisoners who were disgusted with his actions, Flink got a new identity and was moved to another prison. His request for a lower sentence was denied last year, but he has been allowed to leave the prison unsupervised several times due to good behavior. The families of the victimes have repeatedely protested his parole.

The Real Redneck

On our web site at work, comments have been going back and forth for days about who is a real redneck. It's understandable, since my newspaper deals with readers from the top corner of the state - readers who are isolated from the rest of the world, at times.

It goes something like this...
"You're a redneck, because you have to go check on your chickens every hour."
"No, I'm just a farmer. You're a redneck because you don't know how to spell and your mom never taught you how to read."
"Everyone from Winsted is a redneck, including Ralph Nader."
"All you rednecks should stop posting here as you are insulting the real readers."

Tonight, I think I saw one of them - a real redneck.

A real redneck, is someone who drives an old pick-up truck of undetermined color with piles of old tires in the back covered with snow. In a drive-through at McDonald's at 2 a.m., the real redneck gets out of his car, slams the driver's side door shut from the outside, then runs around to the passenger side and climbs in, so he can slide back over to the driver's side and drive off. It's the only way his driver's side door will close, because it is really crooked on its hinges.

A real redneck doesn't think twice about this, as it happens every day in his world.

Driving through space

As I drove home from work tonight, snow was zooming directly at me from all sides - big flakes that made it difficult to focus on anything else. It felt like I was driving an intergalactic ship through outer space in slow motion, with millions of stars flying by my windows.

The most difficult thing during these times is to stay alert and remember that you are actually in a small car on a two-lane highway, not in the vast empty space with endless openness and nothing to crash into.

I made it home alright, and there was still no snow on the ground by the time I parked my car. I guess it was just happy floating around in the air, then melting again and leaving us with greyness.

Kitchen upgrades

The kitchen became yellow during my vacation (it's the same yellow as in the dining room, but my cell phone camera didn't adjust well to the color). A few days ago, Albie put up the hardware we finally decided on for the cabinets.

Below are some photos from when we first moved in, and after I painted it blue (but before we had started the cabinets) so you can see a before/after effect.

We still have to pick a backslpash, decide on a countertop and do the bottom cabinets (inside and out).

Back to work

After 12 days off, it is time to head back to work at the newspaper later today.

While it feels like I could do another 2-3 weeks off easily, I'm a bit excited to see what has happened at the paper since I've been gone. I've never been away for this long. From what I hear, we've hired a new freelancer and our publisher's daughter locked herself into her father's office and had to be rescued by the editor. Other than that, no real news has reached my neck of the woods.

During my time off, I sucessfully finished painting the kitchen walls in yellow (they were blue before, remember?), finished painting the inside of that one cabinet I had procrastinated to do and could finally put all my wine glasses back inside, organized our upstairs closet, had a manicure and pedicure (birthday present), went shopping for winter boots, attended 3 Christmas dinners, went to the gym 3 times, watched 4 movies and read 2 Harry Potter books.

Skiing and ice skating will just have to wait until I have another day off!