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.

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 #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!

OaB #80: Start Your Own Secret Society.

I broke my own rule. Like, the only rule I have for these two lists; Not to count an item that I've completed BEFORE I got the books. But really, this one is too good not to count.

The thing is, when me and my friends Mary and Henriikka went to the Swedish premiere of Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man's Chest (July 12, 2006), we realized we share a passion for movies, especially fantasy movies, so we decided to form a society: The Secret Society of Fantasy; SSF.

This weekend, we had another meeting, watching Over the Hedge, The Incredibles, The Royal Tenenbaums and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Which is great, considering two of those movies (Incredibles and Tenenbaums) are on my list of films to watch (OaB #48 and BYD #57).

So I saw this item in the book, showed it to them, and we all decided I HAVE to include this one.

We even have this little homemade membership certificates that Henriikka made. They are really cool! :D

OaB #61: Join a Club.

I actually completed this item last week - the 7th/8th of July - when I was invited to join the guild (at least that's what it used to be) Nove Avatara; IX. I was had been invited to their meeting in Kotka, Finland, by one of their members, Chris "Fain" Carver. We had both been playing the game Dransik since October 14th 2000, and we both have been staying in the Dransik community for all these years, even though Dransik does not exist anymore (at least not the way we remember it!).

So, at the meet, I met a lot of players that I had met inside the virtual worlds of Dransik all those years ago. And then I was invited to join Nove Avatara. The bestest awesomest guild ever in Dransik. How cool is that?

OaB #83: Dye Your Hair.

Okey, so I appologize to all of you who voted for milk a cow. I promise I'll do that before the summer has ended. But now I decided to start July by dying my hair. Blonde.

And boy, DID it get blonde! ULTRA BLONDE!!! I was prepared for blonde, but this! :D

I don't know if I can really describe very much by words, so I'll let the pictures tell the rest of this item completion!