OaB #6: Touch These Creatures.

I can't believe it took me like two years to complete this one, from when I started, to when I finished it... Weird, but I did finally complete it this summer. Here are some pictures and a few comments for each creature.

HStP #23: Buy Something Secondhand.

Wow, it's been a while since my last post. I guess it's just easier to complete sings during summer. However, I actually completed another item now; Buy Something Secondhand. I was in Umeå visiting Valentina and other friends up there. On Monday, we went to Myrorna, a second hand shop run by the Salvation Army in Sweden. It was kind of boring and Valentina was running around looking at EVERYTHING, soI got kind of tired of it. But then I found a nice pair of Björn Borg shoes, for only 125SEK! So I bought them! And that means I have completed another thing on my list!

BYD #49 b: See a Lunar Eclipse.

Only two weeks after the Partial Solar Eclipse comes a Partial Lunar Eclipse! Nice! This one was also much easier to see, and I enjoyed it more than the solar one. Maybe because this time you could actually see the change.

It was a partial eclipse, and at the height of the eclipse 81% of the moon was covered by the earth's shadow. I tried to take pictures of it with the camera on my cell phone, but the pictures didn't turn out good at all. So I made my friend Ivar in Gothenburg go outside and take pictures of the moon with his camera (which is slightly better than the one on my phone).

I would still like to see both a total lunar and a total solar eclipse though. Maybe I shouldn't really be counting these two as completed, until I've seen total eclipses. Ah well, if I ever do, I'll promise to blog about it. :)

OaB #18: Win Something.

This is one of the coolest things ever. Yesterday, I received an email telling me I'm the winner of a competition where the prize was a guitar signed by Jason Mraz.

As some of you know, I'm a HUGE fan of Jason Mraz, so this is really the most awesome thing I could have won!

What happened was I found out that Ginza.se had a competition with a guitar signed by Mraz as the prize. Of course I had to participate, considering I'm a huge fan. I had to write why I deserved to win, so I wrote, and I wrote, and I wrote. Far longer than I usually write when entering competitions like these, but I had to. It was almost like a short essay.

I told them how I had used Pandora.com back in 2004, and that they had suggested that I listen to Jason Mraz. I did, and I loved his songs. You can read about all that in one of my older posts. Long story short - few years later, Mraz became uberpopular in Sweden, which means he actually performs in Sweden every now and then! Awesome! I'm going to a concert with him in Stockholm in September. It also means him being involved in competitions, like the one where you had a chance to meet him (which I didn't win) and this competition, which I'm so happy I won.

BYD #49 a: See a Solar Eclipse.

It wasn't as exciting as I had thought, but at least I've seen one. A partial that is. Today, at 11.40, the moon covered part of the sun here in the Stockholm area. I didn't have any coolish glasses, and no binoculars either, so I had to look directly into the sun, a big no-no of course. But otherwise I wouldn't have seen anything (because it didn't get noticeably darker), so with my left eye closed, I looked into the sun with my right eye, and I saw that the moon had covered about 40% of the sun.

It was supposed to be over 50%, but I doubt that would have been more exciting. I guess it takes a total eclipse for it to be a wow-factor. Some day I'll travel to a country where there will be a total eclipse, as I'd love to see one and as the next one in Sweden is in like 2090 or something...

The weather would have been perfect for a total eclipse. Enough clouds to use as filter, and enough cloud free moments to see just the sun.

I took some pictures with the camera on my mobile, but you can't really see anything except for the sun.

HStP #86: Bond with the Forest.

Ahh! Sitting on a tree stump in the forest, listening to the sounds of nature. Lovely. That's what me, Katarina, Rebecka and their dog Morven did while climbing Djupaåsen in Undersvik.

Credits to Rebecka for the nice picture! The cap makes
me look like a real citizen of Bollnäs. Huah!

OaB #32 g: Visit the Countryside

I was invited to visit my friend Katarina and her family in Undersvik, Hälsingland in Sweden for four days (July 25-28), and since my vacation had just started I gladly accepted. It was great! It truly was the countryside, and it was beautiful.

Me, Katarina and her sister Rebecka had a lot of fun. Instead of writing it all down I'll just post a bunch of pictures, because I'm lazy and I have loads of other things I've done to write about as well!

A horse! A horse! My blog for a horse!



The view from their home.



Of course we had to bathe in the warm water!



The Parish of Undersvik.



Me and Katarina as Sea Monsters! Arghh!!



Uhm, a picture of a train...



Rebecka, me and Katarina had to wait in Bollnäs for their mom to pick us up!



A beautiful sunset in the river Ljusnan.



Two of the creatures to touch - a mice or rat, and a butterfly or moth.



We also had time to visit the fishingvillage Skärså.
Here we went to a restaurant called Albertina where I had a delicious salmon dish!

HStP #88: Unshaven and Without Make-Up.

The mission was not to wear make-up or shave for a week. Surprisingly, I don't wear make-up, but I do shave. However, as my facial hair doesn't grow very fast, I actually let it grow for 2-3 weeks before I counted this one as completed.

I don't know if I need to say much more - but here is a picture.

It was very tough not shaving, just look at the reds in my eyes!

HStP #79: Hug a Tree.

After I had been to Liverpool for three days, me and my uncle went to Riga, Latvia, for two days, July 8-9. The 9th was my birthday, and it was the first time I didn't wake up in Sweden on my birthday!

Anyway, while in Riga, I decided to complete another thing from one of the books, and the easiest one was number 79 in the HStP book, to hug a tree.

And of course I did it in Riga just to get to tell you I was in Riga, haha!

OaB #32 f: Visit an Aquarium.

This Monday, I went to Liverpool for three days with my uncle and my brother. We had a lot of fun, doing things we normally don't do: Go to museums. I'm actually kind of surprised visiting a museum is not on the list. One of the museums we visited on Tuesday, July 1, was World Museum Liverpool, a museum with everything from insects, iron ore and ancient board games to meteors, gems and a Holocaust spectacle collection.

And they also had an aquarium. Although it was quite small, it was still quite fun and interesting to see weird fish and anemones, and it gave me a reason to pick up the book when we got back to the hotel!

As usual, here are some pictures:

HStP #20: Get an Environmentally Friendly Haircut.

HStP? What on earth is this?

At the Midsummer's Eve Celebration, Mirre, one of the attendees, gave me an early birthday gift. She gave me a book called "Uppdraget Rädda Världen" which means something like "Mission Save the World". It's a fun book with 105 things to do, pretty much like these two books, just that every thing in the book is something that (supposedly) helps save the planet!

One of the things in Old and Boring happens to be just that - OaB #26: Help Save the Planet! So I decided that I have to complete the lovely planet saving book to cross off number 26. Another good thing is that many things in the planet book are things also in the OaB book, so I can cross off two at once. Yey!

The first item I completed was number 20, get an environmentally friendly haircut. I usually have a lot of hair wax in my hair, so last Saturday, I gave myself an e-friendly haircut by shaving off my hair at my friend Malin's birthday party!

Here are some pictures:

In a few days I'll add a list with all the 105 things to the left column, under the current two lists.

OaB #73: Have a Sleepover.

I rarely have people over at my place, and I've pretty much never had a sleepover. That's why it might seem weird that I, as early as in January, decided to invite people to a Midsummer's Eve celebration at my house. Of course I've had people over before, like last New Year's Eve, but now I decided to let people stay over the night.

Even though it wasn't even close to the 40-50ish people I had invited, 15 brave souls still attended the celebration, and out of those 15 friends, 8 of them stayed the night, allowing me to cross off yet another item in my book - have a sleepover! Nice, huh?

It wasn't a very traditional celebration as we had planned (I guess because people couldn't bother creating a maypole and dancing around it), but it was still a very nice evening. The attendees were, apart from me; Erica, Per, Caroline, Lisa, Sara, Mirre, Björn, Henrik, who all stayed the night, and Malin, Sabina, Isabelle, Sandra, Ronny, Maria and Jonas who left as darkness approached (and the last commuter rail departed).

To honor them all, I decided to upload some pictures from the day!

OaB #72: See Your Music Idol Perform Live.

This is one of the coolest things that I've completed. I've been a fan of Jason Mraz ever since I heard his song You and I Both for the first time. This was about four years ago, and I had just found out about Pandora, which together with the iPod I bought has been the best thing ever for my "relationship" with music. Too bad Pandora no longer works for non-Americans.

So anyway. I put in artists I liked, and it found artists that had a similar style. And there it was. You and I Both, by Jason Mraz. It quickly became one of my favorite songs, a song I played all the time, again and again. Then I downloaded some more of his songs. I loved them. So I bought his CDs as well.

This weekend, I was in London (again), and when I came back home to Sweden this Monday, I grabbed a Metro (you know, the free morning paper they have in most big cities). I turned the pages, not really reading, just browsing through, when all of a sudden I have to go back a few pages. "Was that Jason Mraz on that picture!?" I thought to myself. And there he was! The notice said "Win a date with Jason Mraz after his performance in Stockholm!"

This was a sign from above! My idol is going to perform in Sweden and I have a chance to meet him (BYD #21: Meet Your Idol). I never did win, so that sign from above wasn't a sign, just fate playing with me, I guess. Oh well. But the thing is, he was performing at Rix FM Festival, a FREE concert at Kungsträdgården in Stockholm, Sweden. I had to go!

And of course I did go. Me and my friend Mary went there this Thursday (17th of May) and we got a very good view of the stage. And it was just awesome seeing him perform. He a cover of Fly Me to the Moon, his song The Remedy (but with some Oasis theme in it, I think), some song I did not recognize and last but not least his hit song I'm Yours. We also saw Kate Ryan and Swedish singer Patrik Isaksson perform live. We had a great evening!

What's sad is that I would have loved to have met Jason and get his autograph, but for some reason, I was not meant to meet him this time. He had this live performance and CD signing yesterday (Saturday), but I had to work, so I missed that as well. But I have my whole life in front of me to meet him, and one day, I will meet my idol - Mr. A-Z.

I have a video clip of the performance, but the quality is so poor that I don't think it's worth uploading. Some pictures could be fun though! So here is Patrik Isaksson, Kate Ryan and Jason Mraz.

OaB #21: Sleep All Day.

This could be considered cheating... But then again, I make up the rules, so I decide what's cheating and what's not.

When I was in Canterbury, I got a cold. A cold from hell! I guess it was some kind of English cold that my immune system was not used to, because it really knocked me out. I had fever (even woke up in the middle of the night, crawling on the floor for water), a runny nose, a cough, and swollen tonsils, but worst of all - I had a migraine for three days. I did not feel well.

I ended up lying in bed for 40 hours. Once or twice I managed to go to the bathroom, and I also managed to join my homestay in the dining room, when she was kind enough to offer some food. But apart from that, I spent the whole day sleeping.

Me in my room, aka sickbay

But what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? And I did get to cross something of my list. :)

OaB #90: Get from A to B Using a Map.

Sorry about the lack of updates lately. As some of you know, I've been in England for almost the whole of April together with my classmates, and ever since I got home I've been in the middle of a move. But I figured I should update the blog with some of the things I've been doing.

We started our time in England by spending three days in London, which was very nice! It's the home of Richard Horne. People keep saying these books are almost my bible. If that's the case, that'd make Mr. Horne my God. A scary thought, isn't it?

London is a very big city, especially if you compare it to Stockholm. This of course means a map is necessary when you want to go somewhere. And when in London, you really want to go to as many places as possible, right? So we ended up using our map quite a lot.

We then spent three weeks in Canterbury, which is very much smaller compared to London. However, if you're a lost Swede like us, you still needed a map, even if you started finding your way after a while. My point is, there was a lot of getting from point A's to point B's using maps during our England visit!

Here we are; Victoria, Erika, Camilla and I, finding our way in London.

OaB #22: Invent a Secret Code.

I want to start this by saying my blog is over one year old! I meant to make a post about it but never got to it. It was the 7th of March that I started this blog! Yey! But now to the main reason for this post - my secret code!

The reason I chose this item, is that I recently bought a CD; Bright Eyes - Cassadaga. It was one of those digipack CDs where the cover is made out of paper. I removed the plastic wrap, and saw that the CD was completely gray. At first I thought it to be a disappointment, but then I opened the cover, and saw that it included a decipherer; a "spectral-decoder." Using the decoder, the artwork on the CD could be viewed, including hidden messages in Russian, Greek, Portuguese, French and English.

Go to Wikipedia to read more about the album! I am the one who wrote about the hidden Greek message. I saw it, searched for the translation, found out the meaning, and when I had done that, I was really inspired to make my own coded message. So one week later, on my spare Wednesday, here it is!

I wanted my secret code to be sort of tricky, to make it a challenge for anyone who decides he or she wants to break it. But first I need to explain how this works. The image below, holds a secret message/clue that you should make into a word or phrase. That word or phrase is the key for deciphering the code.

The cypher works like this: The key word or phrase becomes the first letters in the cypher, followed by the rest of the letters in the alphabet in alphabetical order. The first 13 letters are on line one, and the last 13 letters on line two. You then change the letter in my message into the one above/under the corresponding letter in the key/cypher.

Here's an example. If the key word is Horne, the cypher would look like this:

H

O

R

N

E

A

B

C

D

F

G

I

J

K

L

M

P

Q

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

OaB #32 h & i: Visit Another Country and Your Capital City.

Alright. Long time no writing. I was planning on getting part of BYD number 49 done yesterday by watching the Total Lunar Eclipse. Three weeks of clear night sky - shouldn't be a problem, right? So I get my brother to wake me up at FOUR in the MORNING. I go up, look outside. MASSIVE CLOUD INVASION. Great. So I saw nothing. Not a thing! I take a walk today, and the moon is laughing at me - no cloud in sight! Bah! Two years until the next one - and I don't think a total eclipse is visible from Sweden then...

So anyways. I've realized some of the objects in the book are hard to compete at one single time, as they're divided into many parts. Like, for example, visit the tallest buildings in the world. I seriously doubt I'll be completing that one in one day. And as I don't want to forget to write about things I've done, I decided to split up some of the items in my blog as well. This one is one of them!

There's not much so say about the capital city one, as I pretty much live in my capital, but to be nice, and to make it look like this post includes more than it actually does, I'll add a picture from last summer's farewell-Tea meeting!

As for visiting another country, I technically already completed this one when I went to Finland last summer, but I found this to be more "exotic," hehe... But anyways, here's the story!

January 4th, me, Vallen and Sara went to Gothenburg over a weekend to visit Ivar and party with him. We had a great time. Then, January 7th, me and Vallen flew to Madrid, Spain, to visit Mirre who currently lives there. We stayed there for a week, checking in at Pop's Hostel, and flew back January 14th...

Uhm, this is the reason you should post these things at ONCE - otherwise you forget all the important things that happened in the trip, and the order of things! Anyways, I'll do a short list of what we did, trying to remember all the important parts.

• We visited Mirre, of course!
• We also got to know some of Mirre's friends, including Laila (Love you!)
• We visited two museums, where we got to see real Rembrandt, Picasso and Dalí, amongst many others.
• I met some people at the hostel, including Nicola, Lina, Jungim and the crazy Cypriot guy!
• We went to Lefty's, a store selling leftovers and last year's clothes from Zara stores, where I bought seven t-shirts, one long sleeve shirt for, I think, about 20 euro (including two long sleeve shirts I bought at another store)! Cheeeeap!
• When we arrived, at 12 in the morning, we had to wait until 6am for McDonald's to open, then find our way to the Hostel in a city we've never ever been to, and where almost NO ONE speaks English, until we finally could get some rest at around 9-10am. Phew!
• We were out partying at different places, including an awesome Mexican bar where I tasted a divine Piña Colada and an even more divine Strawberry Dackery!
• We took a walk through the big park in Madrid where we saw people doing lots of things, like inline skating, ice skating (!!), doing bike and skateboard tricks, singing, playing different kind of percussion instruments in big ensambles, and old men playing some sort of Spanish sport... Anyone who tells me the name of that Spanish game (see photos below), shall receive a postcard from me!!

I don't actually remember much more, but I'll ask Valentina if she knows of anything that I should add to this list! Here are some pictures from Madrid:












BTW! Because of my visit to Finland and Spain, and the fact that I live in Sweden, I'll also cross off BYD #36d!

BYD #6: Throw a House Party When Your Parents Are Out

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you all had a great celebration of the new year. 2008, wow! So many great things will happen this year: The UEFA European Football Championships will take place in Austria and Switzerland; the fourth Indiana Jones movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, will be released; I'm going to London and Canterbury, England for a month as part of my teacher-training program; and of course, a new President of the United States will be elected, releasing George W. Bush from his duty in 2009!

So, to celebrate the new year, my parents were nice enough to let me have the home for myself so that I could invite people over for dinner. It was really nice and many of my friends were there, including Malin, Rille, Ivar, Janni, Sabina, Isabelle, Anna, Katarina, Susanne and even my brother. Also attending were Joel, Mick, Annika, and Anna.

While my mom were probably not that happy with all the dish to wash that we left, I'm sure she's happy that it wasn't really a rough party. As the book suggests, many things can go wrong while throwing a party, but the party wasn't even close to getting out of hand, except for the one time my cat managed to run away. There were no fires, no awkward romances, no drugs, no drunken stupidity, no reckless behaviour, no breakages, no furniture ending up outside the house, no loud music, no vomiting, no gatecrashers and no Emergency Services called by me or my neighbours. Only some moderate drinking, obviously. It was New Year's Eve, after all!

Thanks to all of you who attended. Same place next year? =)

OaB #9: Play a Computer Game to the End

Ahh. The book is right. Completing a game without help is much more satisfying if you don't cheat or use walk throughs! I was in Umeå last week, visiting lots of friends who live up there, and some who visited Umeå the same week. It was great! And as I have a Nintendo DS, I bought The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass as I had seen and read some great reviews of it.

And yeah, it was awesome! I bought the game on Friday the 26th, and completed it on Sunday the 4th on my bus trip from Umeå back to Uppsala. And as horrible as the bus trip was, as great the game was! So how horrible was my bus trip? Well, I left at 8.20pm, and at first the trip was okay, although somewhat boring. But then both people in front of me decided to lean their seats back as far as possible. Not very comfortable for my knees. Then I fell asleep and woke up like 40 times! At one point I woke up with my one sock soaking wet - and I have no idea why! I arrived at Uppsala at 4.35am, and luckily I woke up, otherwise I'd have missed the stop, as I had set the alarm on the clock on 4.40 (the bus was supposed to be there at 4.45!).

Then the good part started! Katarina came to pick me up, and we walked to Susanne and had breakfast together at her place! Then we had an exam at 9am... I've never been so tired at an exam before!

Anyways, back to the game. I just noticed the title says computer game, but screw that. NDS games should count as well, don't you think? =D

Anyways, I played the game when I had time to spare in Umeå. Sometimes I even played it when I shouldn't have, like when Valentina and Sofia expected me to be social and talk to them. God, they demand so much of me!

I tried to take a picture on the bus of me having completed the game, but as you can see the picture didn't turn out very well. Oh well!

OaB #20: Stay Up All Night.

Trying to stay awake for long isn't really that hard, but writing a blog entry when all you want to do is go to bed ASAP is! I've had this home exam on American Literature and Culture from 10am yesterday to 10am today. Now I am finally free, and can go to bed!! Puh!

Timeline of what I did to stay awake:

7pm-8pm Took a break. Went to buy some food for the cats, and pizza for me and my brother. Watched the latest episode of Life.

8pm-9pm I still took a break and went to ICA to buy some chocolate, coke and ice cream!

9pm-10pm When I got home I took it easy. Mom got home, talked to her!

10pm-11pm I started working on my exam again.

11pm-12am I was very productive, working hard on my essay. No, not really, I kept chatting with Susanne on MSN about how I couldn't find outcome up with anything to write about!

12am-3am I was writing some more on my home exam. By writing, I mean worrying and doing other more important stuff, like chatting on IRC, checking my mail, updating FaceBook to see if something new had happened, etc.

3am-4am Worried some more, and then started watching an episode of a new tv series called Women's Murder Club.

4am-5am I finished watching the episode, and watched this awesome sketch! http://www.v2.fi/hauskat/258/Miksen-nae-itseani-peilista/

5am-6am Watched the latest episode of My Name Is Earl. Greeted mom who woke up.

6am-7am Greeted sister who came to pick up mom. Started working some more on the exam. Finalized exam.

7am-8am Watched the latest episode of Ugly Betty. Said bye to my brother who was off to school.

8am-9am Watched the latest episode of CSI. Talked to Susanne who got back on after having some sleep. We talked some about our exams.

9am-10am Very last edit on the exam. Exam sent in at 9.36! Yey! Then writing this blog entry.



Questions from the book:

What time do you usually go to bed?
At around 12-3am.

How many people stayed up with you?
None. Just me and my exam.

How did you find trying to stay up all night?
Easy

Did anyone have to pinch you to keep you awake?
Not really, lot's of Cola did the trick.

What time did you stay awake until?
I'm heading off to bed immediately after posting this entry, so 10am

Did you see the sun come up?
Yes, I did.

Would you do it again?
I will most definitely do it again! But now - bed. Good night!