Look together for the panwithin

Once every two months a post. Deadly Hallows in Swedish!

2007-11-21T08:53:43Z

Sorry about that, I seem to be too deep in lurkdom to actually post something myself these days.

I'm sitting here looking out at the greyest of grey November days. I'll be heading outside in a while. I seem to live forever in Goretex these days...

Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows (or Harry Potter och dödsrelikerna)was released in Swedish yesterday. The review was posted today in Dagens Nyheter and it came with instructions. RIP OUT THE EPILOGUE for your sanity's sake. Also, the reviewer expressed her sadness of it still being so much of a children's book. Seeming as the Harry Potter young readers have grown up with the books and with Harry and gang also growing up, the readership should/would be ready for more of a complex story with better charachterisations. I couldn't agree more. It read as bad fanfiction to me. I should know as I don't even try to fight my compulsion anymore. I've read much better at fanfiction net . And that is saying much.

I hope you are well as can be. Me? a bit on the mopy side. Anyway, heading out.

And now it's raining. A lot. .

Pan

Aaand then the computer died........... Grasswidow.

2007-09-22T16:38:41Z

Like I said, my computer has been acting up a lot lately. It started with the sound disappearing. After many days (weeks?)of ranting and trying to fix things by way of links to links, I did the one thing I've promised myself never to do. F10 ´I tell you. Let's just say things went steadfastly worse from there.....

Anyway, I still have no sound, Norton refuses to reinstall and my pictures and funfiles are partly gone. I haven't been able to look at the damned thing for fear of actually doing some more damage.

I have been having a quiet week all by myself in the house as husband (yes, still around and being nice about it) went to Dallas, Texas on business. He keeps calling me telling me about how cheap everything is now with the low dollar. I had requisited a trip to REI and some training gear and outdoorsy stuff. We'll see what he comes home with. I suspect it will be mostly techy stuff for himself though.

I have been shamelessly watching all of my favourite dvds for a week now. A friend of mine is something of a trekkie and he has lent me the full Startrek Voyager disc set. I used to love that series, but didn't watch it from the beginning, nor did I finish it (why, tell me why do the tv programmers keep changing the shedule at random?) So it's been Janeway and Co all over for me. I've tried to get my husband to watch it with me, but he is not a real fan.

Strangely enough he remembers Seven of Nine. Should I be surprised?

And I'm back (insert eerie echo here, please)..............

2007-05-31T13:32:31Z

Having been gone from live journal land for a year and a month (give or take), I felt it was time I went back on the horse again.

So, in short, I am alive, still married (much better now, thank you very much), still wibbling about my career, still trying to figure out what I want in life. Still obsessing over stupid things and what they actually MEAN. Plus ca change and all that.

I have been lurking live journal every now and then, mostly in the Battlestar Galactice and Harry Potter fandoms of late. I still read too much fanfiction and fantasize about arrogant, stroppy bad boys/girls. (Many of them blond, am viking after all.....)

I hope to be here more often from now on. (Not that difficult, seeing as I've been cold turkey for more than a year)
So hallo to whoever still comes by, take care and I'll be seeing you.

pan

Gone, but not for long .... flying to Iceland today

2006-04-06T07:29:25Z

A long time dream come true. I (we, yes indeed!) am going to Iceland. The geysirs, glacieres, icelandic horse-back riding and the lobster awaits. I'll be back Sunday afternoon. With stories to tell....

Thanks for all your warm thoughts and greetings of late, I'll be toasting you with Black Death vodka come this evening. :)

Take good care you... off to REALLY find my inner Viking;)!

Life, love and everything else

2006-03-26T18:13:39Z

Tell you what. Life is good again. More to come soon...:)

Take care all!

Panwithin, I presume? Hello in the snow.

2006-01-20T19:13:03Z

Not quite dead yet. Still in the jungle though. And I'm running out of metaphors now if you don't mind... Soooo, on account of my personal life being not wonderful, I've decided to not go on about it just now. Much.

In other news, I have been watching a lot of TV (well, dvds mainly) lately and I have found myself crying my eyes out at the wonderful season one Spooks finale. I have decided to watch the whole Spooks series from the beginning. I LOVE it with the burning love I reserve for the kind of quality drama BBC excels at. Can you tell I am a BBC-freak? Long live public service television! Which brings me to my humble question, I have been desperately trying to acquire Spooks season Four now but the torrents are not cooperating. Is there perhaps some kind soul out there who has it? Pretty please?

My second new love is Battlestar Galactica. It's dark, heroic and with that sense of impending doom that I for some reason seem to pick up on lately ;). Add to that interesting grey characters, GOOD acting AND eyecandy. Starbuck anyone? I love the fact that it is space opera while still managing to be low tech and about people. There is that timeless feel and it feels gritty and real. The music, the UST, the Pretty. And it's on tonight. Hmm what's a girl to do? Off to find fanfic...

2006 Back in Bland Land?

2006-01-06T16:57:19Z

I'm back, obviously. Hope you've all been well, eating a ton of food and spending time with friends and tolerable family. The holidays are great, but I can't stop myself from sighing happily when they are finally over again. Sigh.

I haven't seen a computer for about a fortnight now and therefore I know very little of what you've been up to as of lately. My Christmas was fine and it was great having my parents here. Hate the lingering feeling of uncertainty though. There is still struggle in my marriage, and a lot of pain, but I'll try to work something out of it, eventually. I want good things for this new year, I want truth and I want happiness. I'll be sure to spread them around. Don't mean to sound cryptic, think of it as my resolutions.

Fannish things WILL return I'm sure.

Take care of yourselves.

God Jul !

2005-12-22T20:04:26Z

So sorry, I've been insanely busy over the last few weeks. I WILL make up for this and get back to a more regular schedule sometime after the 27th, when my dear parents will go home again. (Yes we do the big HOOPLA this year and we have my parents staying as well).

This is just to wish you all a HAPPY CHRISTMAS in case I don't make it to a computer for a couple of days.

If you find the time, head over to the_grynne 's journal and read her very beautiful Irina short fic. Thank you so much Diana; what a lovely present..:)

http://www.livejournal.com/users/the_grynne/tag/fic-alias

See you soon ...

Home on the range

2005-12-09T10:30:34Z

My, oh my have I been a busy bee lately. Live journal, hello, where are you?

We've been on the go for weeks now. Last weekend (and part of the last week) it was the summer house in Dalarna. Lovely open fires, glistening snow, ice on the lake. This weekend we're flying down to dear old Skåne to celebrate my father's birthday. I haven't seen my parents since early August, so it'll be great. I just hope he likes his present, he's hopeless to buy things for. Sadly it is a very short family themed weekend, otherwise I would've loved to meet up meko00 .

When I come back from this I will tell you more about such interesting and high-brow things as my visit to see the Dutch Masters' Exhibition (http://www.nationalmuseum.se/NMTemplates/NMSingleExhibition____3769.aspx) and about Brecht's Baal, which we saw yesterday evening.

If this is not to your liking I will also rave a bit about me, finally getting to see Firefly and Battlestar Galactica. I WILL go to see Serenity one of these days...

I may even get the time to sneek in time to finally e-mail you rivier about those so very lovely Fishes ...

Have a great third of Advent all!

Gory pursuits

2005-11-14T21:18:20Z

So what do you do when you are trying to mend things these days? Some people might go for flowers and fluffy pressies. Not us.

We went to the Stockholm Old Town to have some Indian (which was scrumptious) and then go for a Ghost and Murder walk, not knowing that we are currently commemorating the 500 year anniversary of the Bloodbath of Stockholm, when the Danish king Christian II had the greater majority of the Swedish nobility beheaded. Three days of killings, the streets of the Old Town aflowing with blood -- you get the picture.

So, we show up and apparently there has been some sort of re-enactment thing going on at the grand square (Stortorget) in Gamla Stan. The theme of the walk was changed for the day, now relying heavily on this event and the guide kept going on about Christian the Tyrant, as he is known to the Swedes. Being from the old Danish provinces, we have always called him Christian the Good. He committed an atrocious act, but it is not as though the Swedes treated the newly made-Swedish areas any better. Yep, we Scanians know how to hold a grudge all right ...

The Old Town is a complete medieval city core and usually a haunt for the various goth and live playing set and we had seen an inordinate amount of black during the afternoon, but this was just ridiculous. They had all taken part in the re-enactment of course. Anyway, it was a nice warm (10 degrees Celcius)night and the Old Town is very different at night, in the side streets, away from the somewhat gaudy touristy shops. We don't regularly do this kind of thing here in our home town, but I almost always attend one of the various city walks when visiting other places. All in all a Saturday evening well spent.

This is who we are?

2005-11-10T21:28:42Z

Well, back into the frying pan, that is. I don't want to jinx this in any way, but things are a little bit better between us. A lot of ranting and raving, harrowing days and nights, limbo -- you name it. So for now things are, well, they ARE, WE ARE. I'm leaving it at that.

That being said, it's not like I have been up to much of anything lately, apart from my own personal little drama. I have kept up my exercising, though. It has been a life saver, all those anti-stress relaxation techniques have kept me sane, even though I have been close to tears a couple of times in class (I doubt that is what is expected when the leader says "let go of your anxieties and worries"...).

What scares me is how some (few, but important) people react when they hear you have "problems", it's like you're having the plague and it's contagious. Everything should be kept light and upbeat and, by god, let's never analyze anything -- this just makes me angry and sad. Well, I'm a bit oversensitive at the moment, as you well can hear.

Fannish life has been on hold of late, but I'm getting there again. I taped the rerun of Spooks (Season One) this last weekend and it was excellent. Now, if only I could find some fast torrents of "Hustle"...

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. How very nietschean!

2005-10-31T13:18:17Z

Well, I'm sitting here with a steaming cup of tea trying to cope with recent events and what feels like the sore throat to end all colds. I am so tired right now. I just want to thank you all who commented on my last post, it felt good hearing from someone on the "outside" as it were. We're in a tangled web, for sure.

I wish all you celebraters a Happy Halloween, we don't really "do" Halloween here, but it's coming along, as all things American eventually seem to. We Swedes do celebrate the All Saints Day by lighting candles at the graves of our relatives and spend time with close family, though. This takes place on the first designated (we are very organised in this country, as meko00 could tell you) Sunday after All Hallows Eve. As a child I would spend this weekend trawling behind my parents, visiting one creepy Scanian grave yard after another. Going to see old relatives, that kind of thing. Still, it was a very cozy holiday. Lots of good food and crisp autumnal skies. This coming weekend we'll not go visiting the inlaws, that's for sure. My husband still hasn't told them anything. I keep on disagreeing and he, well he's just shaking his head. We're just not on the same page anymore.

They say it is going to get worse before it gets better and frankly I don't want it to be worse so here goes... I want to be cheered up (failing that distracted) so anyone, feel free to recommend me something to occupy myself with, be it small or insignificant. And do you think I should go visit my parents in Scania for the coming weekend, or so?

Take care all!

ETA: I just went to pick up the post and there was a dead mouse three meters from my door. The neighbours' cat must love me.

Gestur! My leg of many colours...

2005-10-10T15:34:38Z

Hello there, where have I been? Still here, just not on live journal. So, I didn't catch a cold after all, even though I spent Monday feeling nauseous and shaky. And then I was fine. Just like that.

The week just melted away and we hit the weekend again. We were invited over to my husbands' brother Saturday evening and decided to quickly put away some garden furniture before we left. And I fell through the stair boards on our wooden patio, twisted my ankle and got stuck at the knee. It hurt like HELL, as I was hanging suspended with nothing to rest my foot on.

I screamed like a banshee and my husband who was in the attic, ready to take the chairs I was supposed to hand him, didn't hear me at first. So I screamed some more and finally he came down and saw me. He bolted for the hammer, trying to break away the boards and it only hurt more. He then ran (and I mean ran) to the garage for the saw. It seemed like hours at the time, as I didn't have anything to hold on to, so my weight was on my stuck knee and now pulsating thigh.

When he finally managed to free me, I was crying with pain and could hardly stand. I then spent a good hour holding an ice-block to my thigh. My leg wasn't broken, nor was my ankle badly twisted but you should see my bruises. And my leg is so swollen around the knee that I can hardly dress myself, let alone wash my feet. I then went into massive chock and couldn't stop crying. What if I had been alone in the house? How long would I have spent stuck like that?

One good thing, summer is gone, because if anyone were to see my right leg now...

Edited, because evidently I can't handle my negatives...

Indian summer laziness

2005-10-02T20:04:40Z

This is the place where I would tell you something interesting about my weekend, which was spent in the laziest way possible. We slept in, had long leisurely breakfasts reading the papers, bought a new dining room table (finally) and went for a long walk along lake Mälaren, culminating in a massive gorge on coffee and cake at an old lake-side-inn-made-cafe. Spent some time preparing the garden for autumn and winter. Started downloading Veronica Mars, I guess I have to find out what all the fuss is about. All in all a totally peaceful and very quiet weekend.

Now my cheeks are reddish and I feel warm. I have a massive headache and there's a ghost of pain in my throat. Please tell me I'm not starting to get ill. *off to find cure for headache...*

No, I am Inga, from Sweden!

2005-09-28T18:26:42Z

"No, I am Inga, from Sweden."
"Sweden? But you're wearing lederhosen...?"
"Jaa, for sure, from Sweden!" (Trading Places,1983)

Well, for some reason TV4 have decided to continue Alias and have now started Season Four. Apparently they got it lumped up with the Lost package, as we're heading for its Season Two any day now.

Anyway, we just watched the tape and lo and behold, Sydney Bristow is doing Inga from Sweden. Complete with the phoniest of sickly phony Swedish accents. Matched with a baby doll outfit and blonde wig. Lovely. Really. It's not like Swedish people don't speak foreign languages, after all. Oversexed bimbo blondie on train, I hate stereotypes. I suppose it's supposed to be funny. I know Alias isn't supposed to be reality, but this was just bad and speculative. Well, I am not amused.

Getting off my high horse and back to TV-land and Lost, which is getting weirder by the minute.

And damn the consequences!

2005-09-27T22:27:27Z

So after hours of agonizing navel searching, I finally made up my mind and decided. Took charge. And it feels so good. At least I made a decision, which is ground breaking for me. It's out of my hands now, anyway. I've been playing possum about this far too long.

Avoiding the issue has given me plenty of time to read again and my tastes have again turned to non-fiction and history. I've read Rubicon, by Tom Holland. Centered on Julius Caesar, it deals with the death of the Roman Republic and the birth of the Roman Empire. It was interesting and brought new light on the facts of that turning point in history. This was the first book of his I've read, but I fully intend to read more of his stuff. He manages to be very intellectual and still makes history come alive.

I also fell for the allure and watched Troy recently. I didn't much like it, too many looong fighting scenes for my taste. I fast forwarded most of the mass fighting scenes. Too bad they didn't spend more money on the interaction between the characters. Sure, Brad Pitt looked fine in a skirt and Sean Bean is as always Mr. Man (Orlando Bloom leaves my cold, he's too much of a boy for my taste) but eye candy alone maketh not a film. I did like the angry Achilles scenes though.. But, the film did make me take a look at David Trail's book Schliemann of Troy : Treasure and Deceit. Not too bad, although Schliemann has been smeared before. But the story of his lies/optimism is still fascinating.

Then I went and read Mariam Keyes' Angels, which was funny, light hearted with a dark core. And lots of Irish taking the piss. And that concludes my ramblings for now.

Inertia or someone kick me, please!

2005-09-21T20:40:18Z

I don't know about you, but autumn has always been a starting point in my life. I've started school, jobs and new projects this time of year. This is my new year, if you will. I like trying new things, l consider myself a curious person. But this year I can't seem to get myself worked up about anything anymore. Is this what complacency feels like?

I have some important decisions ahead of me and I just can't make up my mind. I'm a procrastinator at heart and I keep "forgetting" about important things. Basically I know what to do, I just can't seem to do it.

I'm in one of those moods again......

Have computer, will update! Back among the living...

2005-09-16T16:35:18Z

This is just a short shout-out to let you know I am back. The new screen was delivered yesterday by an outrageously cute young thing (well, I looked) and we now have a whole computer again. And it works beautifully, *is ecstatic*.

We're finally heading into autumn here and it is getting seriously cold at night. But I love this time of year, the crispness of it. I even made apple crumble the other night. You finally get to switch the summer clothes and I much prefer the autumn colours anyway. The dark evenings are also the perfect excuse to watch TV again. I never watch much during the summer, I just hope the new crop of shows will be good.

I watched the season finale of ALIAS season three last night and it was just BAD. I agree with everybody who ever warned me about season three. It started out OK and I didn't much mind the Lauren character, before she turned eeevilvillainTM, her character actually brought something interesting to the show. The spiral down started when she and Sark became these one-dimensional evil villain types. I didn't so much mind them pairing up though, it seemed cynical and right for them. But LOVE, well...

The season ending was so obviously set-up for making it possible to hate Lauren and love what was done to her. The following scene between Sydney and Vaughn did feel more than a little bit disgusting though. My interest is vaning, I'm just sayin'...

Well off to wine and cous-cous....

Edited, because I can't spell. Or bother with a spellchecker.

Why green is the new black. Rant, rantety, rant, rant!

2005-09-08T15:55:34Z

Is that cryptic enough for you? Well in the ever and on-going saga of our house after the lightening strikeTM we have now reached the third round. We now have all computer parts back from the good-for-nothing support centre and should be happy as the hard drive wasn't fried after all. Everything is there and with the new ram-memory we should be on our way to normality again, no? Well,

evidently not. I'm sitting here typing, looking at a green tinted, sickly shadow of a screen and I AM NOT HAPPY. Looking at digital pictures is even less fun and my Battlestar Galactica files (season I) that I finally was going to watch, with the darker evenings coming are USELESS. Everything in shade or dark is now green. Any ideas? Anyone?

Yes, we have a new drive routine, NVIDIA after the old ATI, which worked fine, but could it be that the graphics card needs to be replaced? The support people have sofar changed the fax modem (round I), the ram memory (round II) and now the computer will probably have to go back AGAIN for round III. Keep in mind that this has been going on since mid July and you could imagine my frustration.

I hope to have this resolved soon and then I'll go back to being more of a frequent live journal person again.
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And, I just realized how petty I sound with my small time concerns whatwith the news of KAtrina and other real world issues, and I'll repent, but not today.

Melancholia and Copenhagen love.

2005-08-30T13:36:02Z

Sneaking in some internet time here, our hard drive still not back from sure-we'll-fix-your-computer-no-problem-helpdesk-nitwits, so keeping it short.

This weekend we were at the summer house in Dalarna probably for the last time this season. The weather was beautiful and very warm for the season. I spent a sunny morning in town and then leisurely biked back to the summer house, the lake glittering in the sun. Mmm......

I feel somewhat melancholic and sentimental, these are the last days of summer and time is passing and all that. Must work on those "adult points" again! I absolutely hate this streak in myself, I have a tendency for mushy sentimentality I readily admit to it. Must be that my birthday is coming up soon. And I cannot come up with any ideas for gifts or events. Sometimes I just wish that people knew me well enough to think out the gifts themselves. I like surprises! And cake, oh yes.

Our holidays were all I expected them to be and our Copenhagen stay was a great success. It was a truly inspired idea to go away from my parents house and have some time as a couple in Copenhagen. We got to do the whole romantic package, strolling in the parks, sitting in cozy cafes, great dining and a lot of the really "touristy" things I 've never done in Copenhagen. We (together with a whole lot of Americans) went on a boat trip in the harbour and the canals, saw Kronborg Castle, and went to Tivoli(ok I've been there before).

I used to know Copenhagen very well as it was our favourite hang-out, party and shopping place when I still lived in Southern Sweden. This time it felt different, but in a good way. It was familiar, but still had that excilarating "BIG CITY" feel to it. Stockolm is lovely and gorgeous, but smaller and less grungy. It was also my first trip on the train across the Öresund bridge, i.e. "the Bridge" as the real locals call it. It took only about twenty minutes from Malmö to Copenhagen Central, I only wish this had been the case in my day. I miss Skåne too. We'll probably go back to Copenhagen soon.

And that would be a NO!

2005-08-20T11:21:49Z

Well I've done it, I've gone cold turkey on Internet access for about three weeks. It was not entirely by choice, though.

Last Monday was the official day of REAL LIFE after the hols, so believe me I was very expectant when our computer hard drive arrived back Monday night. It was supposedly fixed, and we would have access and our lost data back again.

So, we (husband) wired it up and in a glow of anticipation pressed "on", and it didn't work! The hard drive didn't start, which was exactly the problem they were assigned to fix. Believe me when I tell you we were slightly miffed about this. I mean, what idiots don't actually turn on a piece of equipment to actually test it after "fixing" it!!!

Scene 2, I left the room, steaming. Husband called the computer help desk. Yes, they had replaced the fax modem and checked the hard drive thoroughly, no they weren't lying about it and well, what could then be the problem? Oh sure, check that the wires are properly stuck in, still doesn't work. And on and on and on...

In a final spur of glorious effectivenes they agreed to take it back and "fix" it, this time actually plugging it in. Thursday night, the hard drive was picked up again. We still don't know in what state it will be returned.

Rest assured however, that next time we'll have backups on our data on any hard drive we might own.

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And yes, we're back in town, this time to stay put for a while.

Drive-by update.

2005-07-29T21:09:37Z

Well, when not spending time and money on damage control after the lightning wreckage, what have I've been up to lately?

We're well into our holidays and they have sofar been a little scattered. We've spent some time at the summer house in Dalarna and I was being very anti-social and finished Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince in record time and even though I had been spoiled about the ending I felt a bit lost once it was finished. More about this later, no doubt.

This week we've been in Stockholm dealing with the wreckage but we've had some time off as well. The big event was the Christo and Jean-Claude retrospective exhibition in Mariefred. They are the French couple who wrap islands, houses and bridges in cloth. Their most recent feat was the orange "gates" all over New York's Central Park. I don't know whether their art is supposed to carry meaning or not. I like it though and I can't help being impressed by the sheer scale of their projects. I find them very moving in a fun, "architectural" way. It was interesting seeing all of their realized projects but perhaps even more interesting to see the sketches for their un-realized works.

Anyway, next week we're on the move again, this time heading south. We'll be visiting some friends and staying with my parents for a few days. Hopefully I'll have some computer access there.

Then we're heading to our hotel in Copenhagen... :)

Our house was stuck by lightning, literally! Back-ups, what back-ups?

2005-07-28T20:09:38Z

Yes, we went away for a few days last week, only to be woken up by a SMS at 4.30 in the morning alerting us to a power shortage in our house. We started calling our neighbour at 7 o'clock in the morning but the line was busy. By 8 we realized their phone might have been hit too and called another neighbour.

Meanwhile, we had called our house security company and they had been out to check on our house as our intruder alarm had been set off. There were no signs of entry and nothing had been touched but apparently there had been a huge thunder storm raging all night.

Once we caught our other neighbour he told us that they had woken up by a terrible crash, their computer, land phone and refrigerator had bust. He went to check on our other neighbour who has our house keys, but she had already left for work. Eventually, we managed to track down her work phone number and she promised to go inside and have a look when she returned home.

In our house the main fuse was off and she had to reset it for us as well as the alarm. Our wireless phone was completely wrecked as was our VCR and antennae amplifier. The fridge and freezer could be restarted and no great harm was done to the contents.

Upstairs however, the printer and computer screen were completely dead, the hard drive blown to smithereens. The fan inside still works, but that's about it. We both had enormous amounts saved on the hard drive, all our digital pictures (about 2 years worth), a lot of work-related stuff, some novels and saved fanfic, music (loads), vids and some tv-series. I'm just devastated by this and I can only hope the hard drive is salvageable. I might take up on some kind offers made by you nice people about Alias.

To top this all off, we only get about 350 SEK from the insurance company (about 50 USD). The computer was a lease job, so we'll get new or fixed hardware, but it is the hard drive content that is important. I blame myself. WHY THE HELL did we not pull the frickin' plug out of the wall before we left?

We have spent the better part of this week with the insurance company, computer lease companies and trying to find a replacement VCR, new wireless phones and, oh joy, freezer inventory. It's nice to know what to spend time and money on!

Keep your fingers crossed with me for the hard drive, please!

A little light weeding. The devil's in the details...

2005-07-15T12:01:28Z

Think small, really small. In the scheme of things...

So, in case you haven't noticed before I'm a nitpick of huge proportions, a pedant when it comes to language among other things. Imagine my horror at noticing my own slip-ups in comments and here. I'm a ten-finger typist and I don't need to look at the keyboard doing it. Sometimes I hit the wrong keys though, having moved my hands.

I'd like to think my mind is sharp and fast *oh, well insert bashful blushing here if this embarrasses you*. I do type slower than I think however and sometimes what I intended to write gets lost or mixed up in the process. I miss not being able to edit my comments, having to delete them and repost them instead. And not knowing how that shows up? Can it be done in another way?

The spellchecker that comes with live journal is atrocious and also in American English, hence not suited to my purposes. What I write in live journal is my spoken English and I've recently noticed that I sometimes mix words that sound similar, like waste and waist, typing one meaning the other. Also no spellchecker will ever catch contextual mishaps.

All this pisses me off to no end. So, what to do? I think proper typing and correct grammar is important and a courtesy to the reader. I don't want to be a culprit myself. I usually end up using no spellchecker and sometimes I'm blind to my own mistakes until I see them in the proper comment. Not hugely important in the grand scheme of things, but if you complain about the language of others...

Anyway, the proper summer hols are coming up next week and we still haven't made any REAL plans. I should spend some time reading about live journal coding and such, but I doubt I will.

I am however going to be reading more than ever this summer and I will finally devour Lynn Truss' book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. It has been in my to-read book pile since last August now. Hopefully a new and improved panwithin will be the result of this.

Let's storm the Bastille or something. Bon anniversaire, la France!

2005-07-14T20:35:58Z

So, apart from it being le quatorze juillet, vive la république, today is the day the hot weather ended. I admit, I haven't spent many moments indoors last week apart from sleeping and working, it's just too hot. We even had a so called "tropic night" the other night. What's that, you may ask, well Sweden is(wrongly)not known for its hot weather, but sometimes we get temperatures exceeding 20 degrees Celsius at night following a hot day and apparently that qualifies as "tropic". Daytime temperatures have been in excess of 30 degrees for some time now and we had 26 degrees in our bedroom a few nights ago. Add this to the early morning sun and you have a sleepless night tossing and turning. This may not sound much, but keep in mind that most Swedish homes are not equipped with airconditioning, and the fact that we're just not used to it. We even contemplated sleeping downstairs in the guest room as it is always a few degrees cooler. Alright, quit whining already, it'll be cold soon. Sorry. Mustn't grumble.

Meanwhile I've had lots of time for reading and lately I've been raiding the young reader section in the library for mystery/horror/ghost stories. On reflection isn't it odd that horror is considered a genre for kids not adults? It's a thing I learned in Japan, summertime is the time for horror stories, the idea being that they will literally "chill" you. There are some really good Japanese horror fiction and a multitude of scary films. Although he is considered a "children's writer" I like Neil Gaiman immensely and heartily recommend reading him if you like "strange and unreal" at all. Recently I found a new author that was quite good. Her name is Celia Rees and the book was called The Vanished. She also writes historical novels, Pirates being the one I've read. It's easy reading but with a literary quality. Anyway, I'm looking for recommendations of other good horror books. And it doesn't have to come from the young reader section. Pretty please?

It would seem I'm working myself up for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince now, wouldn't it?;)