Excuses

Christmas is hell, what can I say? I have been busy.

Let's see, on friday: I beat Martti 2-1 in a set of pretty good games. When I got home around 10.30pm, Minna was just getting ready to go party with a friend of her, Anu. As warmup, she had already finished a bottle of wine which we started on earlier (well, I had a small glass only, as I was going to go play squash) during supper. As Anu was running late, she had time to consume 3 warm gloggs laced with 80% vodka. She seemed ok when she left. But things took a bad turn for her when she and Anu + a few others were walking to their club/pub of choice ('System') - and Anu produced a bottle of sparkling wine out of her purse. The girls proceeded to engulf the contents inside a very brief walk of only a few minutes. Minna managed to get into the club, and ordered a cider, and that's just about where the memories start to blur for her.

I was woken up by Minna's call at around 3am (I had work that saturday, my wakup at 6.20.) Luckily the girls had stumbled onto my friend Osku, and he had eventually escorted Minna to a bus homewards.. The problem was, Minna didn't know which bus she was on, or where it was going. And I was trying to figure it out, and she wasn't making any sense, being very much off her chops, seeing her visuals in triple (I'm not joking, it has happened once before) and so forth... Anyway, I kept talking to her as she was getting closer to our place -upon her insistance, mind you- when suddenly I hear a noise as if the phone was dropped, followed by some drunken woman noise (screams, you could call them). I knew she was only a few hundred meters away, so out of bed I went, cursing like a mad sailor, put on my clothes and started on a dashing jog of rescue. I found her almost immediately. The girl was zig-zagging her way as if it was ww2 and she had a few enemy fighter planes behind her. The thing about the screams and all was related to her losing balance and keeling over onto the pavement :P

After this latenight episode I didn't sleep much. I'm lucky if I got even 3 hours in that night.
Woke up at 6.20, had a quick breakfast and went to work. Once there I pulled my shift, and agreed to come work on sunday as well. Got home, ate a little something, and then me and the now sorry hangover-queen of the day proceeded to go pay a visit to my parents. We got home from there 2-3 hours later. I went to bed almost immediately, tired as used up old bastard.

Sunday: woke-up, went to work, got home. Then a little bit of tidying up the place, going to the local shop to buy some foodstuffs, shower and -> ultimately entertaining guests. I had 4 classmates (Carina, Tara, Leena & Ville) + my upstairs neigbour, Connor (he studies at the same school, in industrial management) come over for a nice little get-together. We had a great evening - the atmosphere was warm and pleasant. We had a laugh! Carina has roots in Lebanon, while Tara & Connor are Irish, the rest of us were barefoot finns - lots to talk about..
Party ended around midnight, as some of the participants had work on monday.

Monday: Shopping hell. Minna's work shift got canceled, so we had the whole day for.... you guessed it... christmas shopping! Yayer! We only got to downtown around 12. First thing we did was to get us librarycard's to the University of Helsinki - it's free. Minna needed to get some books for her examinations on Jan 17th.. After that, we visited a million shops and spent plenty of euros. We got together with Minna's sister & brother at Iguana (a bar) and later on spent some time with Minna's friend Hanna, ultimately coming home around 10pm. Same evening still, I started to install the videocard heatsink I purchased recently, but I couldn't get my computer to boot with it. Maybe I was too tired to make a proper effort, because when I took it off the vidcard and attached the old noisy piece-of-shit heatsink+fan combo onto it, the bastard booted as if nothing was wrong with it! I shrugged, went to smoke a much needed stress cigarette (don't you just hate those moments when after installing or putting something together into your computer, you don't hear the damned monitor get signal and make the familiar noise it does when you start the computer - that's when you know you've got trouble!), and read one of my classic late 80's Conan comics and went to bed. Later on I think the only reason it didn't work was that it must have had poor contact with the GPU. Installing the thing was a bitch, you'd need 4 arms or a proper toolbench for it.

Today: Well, nothing much happened today. Highlight: I went to a new library in Arabia (an area of helsinki named after a somewhat famous finnish pottery company of the same name) and got a ton of goodies from there. It'll take plenty of hours to skim through all the books & comics I got from there (mind you, I don't loan Donald Ducks or anything silly like that - I mostly prefer the, ahem, adult themed comics: Milo Manara, Frank Miller, Art Spiegelman etc..) Minna managed to go see her aunt, and to go to a concert in a church with her parents, where they performed Adiemus-style music. I'm sort of glad I missed it :P

There's the update (~1000 words!) - worth the wait!

7 days and counting

So, it is one week from Christmas, and counting

creepy!

Woke up, got lost in wikipedia, and here's a nugget of information:

On this day, 101 years ago, Orville and Wilbur Wright managed to get their POS aircraft (more a kite) "Flyer 1" (more popularily known as "Kitty Hawk") off the ground.

Wilbur Wright 'Flying' - notice that there is no engine yet.

After looking into the subject, it seems they were not that revolutionary after all. For the curious, here's a list of the greatest technical breakthroughs in manned flight.

*pause, gonna make some coffee *

Anyway. What's new? Jake brought me some of my old comics back. Nothing better than to read a little Conan the Barbarian at the breakfast table! It feels like old times. Guess it's good I never sold my comics. Perhaps they will eventually pass from father to son, getting a status of their own as the scrolls of my family :P

I reserved tickets to a Judas Priest gig here in Helsinki, going to go check it out with my big brother . That should be fun. I'm not a Huuuge fan, but let's just say I own a few of their albums and be happy at that. I hope they will be playing some of their older classics, as I haven't been listening/following any of their stuff after 1990's Painkiller album.

I might be receiving the recently purchased passive-cooling apparatus today. I believe I may just have to install it on the same day it arrives, screw Christmas! :P Suppose during installation I fuck something up, and end up making my Videocard useless? That would make for some happy holidays. So I better do it now - so that if I happen to do a blunder, I have a valid excuse of purchasing a proper monster of a videocard, just in time for happy holidays *grin* :)

Later on today, at 21.00 it's time for the traditional squash game vs Martti. I need to do some stretching & warmup before, as last time it took me almost 30 minutes to start playing right..

*update 16.39*

Oh my god, check this out: Mr Methane

X-mas break - the decadence begins

Got out of bed around noon. I was surprised when I looked into the mirror. Almost had forgotten that I had dyed my hair darker yesterday (it's basicly black now)!

I then got on to browsing for some potential christmas present candidates. I think the old trusty computer needs a small upgrade: a noiseless, fanless cooling system for the videocard. The old fan broke some months ago, and I had to get a new one for it - and it turned out to be damn noisy. It creates a loud, high pitched humming noise that gets to my nerves every now and then. Anyway, here is a review of the thing.

I've yet to have breakfast, it is now 2.37pm. Guess I'll read some comics borrowed from the library nearby and sip coffee. As the chore of the day, I am going to venture out and take away the ~15 misc bottless that can't be returned to any regular grocery store. Having nothing to do is strange, after all the rush & fuss of final exams. Maybe I'll do some laundry as well, clean clothes are cool.

-- update -- 8.24pm

Minna went to a gym to do something similar to bodypump. A sort of 'forming/shaping' class. I fixed us supper, my elite version of the finnish culinary classic, Makaronilaatikko :D

I think we're gonna watch Woody Allen's 'September' this evening, as it just finished downloading. I remember it as a fairly serious, and (surprisingly) good grownup's drama about relationships. Hope it's as good as I remember it to be.

On a sidenote, tomorrow I plan go to my last class before the x-mas break really begins. Swedish. Even though it starts as late as 3.15pm, I think I'll have major motivational problems :)
After class, the plan is to meet up with Jake - an old friend of mine - for a few beers & maybe some pool. He is going to be a (planned) father soon, so it's interesting times..

First post

So I finally got around to creating a BLOG. Wow.
I'm happy with just getting these first few lines in.

I envision this as a dual-functioning service,
helping me clear my thoughts, and giving you, the
reader an insight into what's going on in my life/head.

Link of the day: an online art gallery... this site has
come in handy for Minna from time to time.
Example: works of Leonardo DaVinci



If you haven't seen this before, where have you been?