Thank God It's Friday!

That's what it stands for and everyone in the world knows that, except some Swedes or at least most people up in Skaraborg, who think it's one of the gymnastics or sports clubs in Tidaholm. " Öka takta sista kvarta, Tiahölm Tiahölm Tiahölm" Clever stuff, from clever guys ;-)

Yes, tonight it's extra good that it is Friday, so after getting inside the house I just kicked my shoes & socks off and went to the bottles cupboard and had a few glasses of red wine. Not my normal routine, but since it's been an extra tough week, it's needed.

Cheers Mates!!!!

Yes indeed, I also like the food there, but I think the closest TGIF's restaurant at the moment is in Stockholm. A strawberry Margeritha would be nice now. Cheers again!!!

Yippie!! The first real snowfall of the season came tonight. Very nice big snow flakes came down in an almost movie-style fashion. Fantastic fresh feeling and it lights up the otherwise very dark nights. Nellie has already been out to build her first snowman ever. Jim looked super cool in his fluffy polar bear dress, when the snow came down on him.

I went for a late 10 km run in the soft fresh snow. The snow layer was untouched before I made my footprints along the track. Great sound from the crushed snow under my feet.

Hopefully, it stays for a while, but probably it melts away very soon, like we are used to here in the Gothenburg area. Soon (Dec 4-7) we are going up to the winterhouse in Dalarna for a long weekend, so that will most likely be the first skiing of the season.

I talked to Kwangho in Seoul this morning and it was actually snowing there too. Very early for being Korea. Last winter when we were there, we had some wet snow for a day or two only, plus some frosty days.

I look forward to a cold and white winter with lots of outdoor activities.

Today was a strange day at work, due to the announcement yesterday that 350 employees will be made redundant and even more external consultants will lose their assignments. Our customers are cutting their budgets dramatically due to the global financial crisis and business downturn, so we just have to adapt to that situation. That's not illogical, but it hits lots of people very hard. Lots of talking and speculations about what will happen, all over the office today, but in general it felt like the information from the management had been perceived in an acceptable way. The most important thing right now is to make sure that we can endure this phase with positive enthusiam and come out stronger when the crisis is over. The situation is not unique for our company, so I'm patient and optimistic. Time to focus on spirit more than ever before.

When the going gets tough, the tough gets going!

My right heel problem started during my preparations for Ironman New Zealand in February 2006, when I had a month off from work, just for training down under. I tried to run every day together with either a bike  or a swim session. That was probably a bit much for my heel and it has never really recovered since then. I have taken breaks from running now and then, but probably not long enough. I get a bit restless and depressed if I can't get out and do it. Another thing is that there were a few marathons around in Asia (14 of them actually) that I wanted to capture when I was stationed there, so I pushed my luck a bit by running with poor preparations and some pain, plus eating antiinflammatoric medicin. Not very clever you might say, but I got some other pleasure or satisfaction out of it. Nice memories at least.

This weekend I read the latest Runners World magazine, where Claes Runheim (f.d. Åkesson, Viasat Sport) had written about exactly the same problem in his chronical article. Exactly the same diagnosis as me and he also have the same philosophy about it as me. Instead of having some dodgy surgery done, he's enduring some pain, using ice bandages, antiinflammatoric drugs and continues to run in the same stubborn manner. He might consider trying chinese acupuncture. That 's something I haven't tried either. Instead I had ultrasound treatment for a couple of weeks in Malaysia and a special stretching program made by a physiotherapist. Claes has also cut a hole in the back of his shoe to ease the pressure, to avoid pain.

Currently I also believe that instead of resting, it might be better to increase the amount of training. Run more regulary, like 5-6 days a week, instead of 2-3. I actually feel rather OK today after running 13 km's 2 days in a row, so hmmmm... Let's see how I managed to fit in more training in my calendar and life. That's the challenge at the moment.

Claes Runheim is a very dedicated runner. I met him, dressed for running, in the reception of Gothia Towers, not so long ago and gave him some inspiring comments about running.

I didn't want to be an IT guy anyway. I wanted to be... a lumberjack!

Leaping from tree to tree as they float down the mighty rivers of British Columbia! The Fir! The Larch! The Redwood! The mighty Scots Pine! The plucky little Aspen! The great limping rude tree of Nigeria!

The smell of fresh-cut timber! The crash of mighty trees!

Oh, I'm a lumberjack, and I'm okay!
I sleep all night and I work all day. 

Sure indeed, but I wouldn't picture myself with the transvetite part of the Monty Python sketch.

Just by getting my chainsaw out and jumping in to my lumberjack outfit makes me feel extra good somehow. Strange isn't it? Yesterday I had the pleasure to take down our 2 fruit trees in the backyard. Or I should say, I got permission to do it. Old crappy trees, that didn't produce any edible fruit anyway. Quick job for a guy luck me, who is ready to take on the mighty forests of British Colombia. I used to be all over the neighborhood here, cutting down trees in peoples gardens, with their approval, by often on my suggestion. Nowadays, lots of small house owners have their own chainsaws, electric ones bought at Jula, Hornbach or similar do-it-yourself shops. Those are for pussies. It should of course be classic petrol chainsaws, so the right lumberjack atmosphere can be felt. When I lived up in Skövde, I had lots of opportunities to develop my passion, both on my piece of land in Lerdala, but also in the aligning forest (belonging to the Skövde community) to our Skultorp property, where I often took down the biggest birch trees that I could find, claiming that the community didn't do appropriate forest maintenance. I never asked, because bureaucrats are just full of principles. Couldn't use all the firewood myself anyway, so I gave lots of it away to neighbors and when we moved in 1999, my dentist & tennis partner, PO Ek, got all that was left.

My father had the same passion for forest work, so perhaps I have inherited this from him. Probably mainly from spending lots of time out there with him during my youth, waiting in boredom for him to finish his duties.

It's a bit of a scare, when you realize that you turn more and more in to the character of your father as the years pass by.

I have promised myself to be very selective with what kind of things that I copy from his lifestyle to my own. I have noticed that Victor is doing the same with his view on me. Victor turned 25 yesterday by the way. Big Boy!

I'm convinced that he will be "a man" one day too = doing Vasaloppet and getting a kick out of chopping down big trees ;-)

OK, OK, OK, my sport challenges are just pussy stuff. No question about it when I compare with Kari Martens (from Jonsered, just around the corner from our place) who is starting in a 10-double Ironman in Mexico on Sunday. 38 km swimming, 1800 km biking and 422 km running. Maximum time to complete is 14 days and Karis target is 10 days. That's really something!!

He has done a triple Ironman in Germany earlier on this year, so he's no rookie athlete. 51 years old but started late.

I have done 3 Ironmans, so I know how tough that is. But to mentally understand what it would take to do this times 10, is a bit outside my scope of mind capacity. My friend Petri in Skövde, who has done 2 triple Ironmans, think that he could manage the Deca Ironman sometime in the future (2009?), but I believe it when it happens. He's a fighter, but this is a hell of a challenge. Where is the limit? When is it called insane? Still, I admire these guys that do it and if I could give these kind of activities more time and stay out of injuries, I would probably stretch my limits a bit more myself.

Check these sites http://karimartens.se/bloggen/ and http://multisport.com.mx/deca/index.htm

Good luck to Kari! 

PS. There is a "short" distance too, called Quintuple Ironman. Only 5 Ironmans. Sounds like peanuts suddenly ;-)

PS2. In 1998 there was a 20xIronman competition in Mexico, won by a Lithuanian guy in just over 437 hours. Now we are talking ...

I have to admit that I was heavily influenced by MAD in my young days. My next door neighbor & good friend, Johan, was a fanatic and had all the magazines, books and other published material from MAD (Swedish version). We penetrated all the stuff, to make sure that we caught all the small details and sometimes it was hard to really understand the fun part, but we didn't really wanted to admit that. For example, when they made satiric cartoon versions of some new movies, we laughed a lot without having seen the movie. Later on, when the movie finally appeared on the local cinema in our village (years later!!), we were very disappointed, since the movie was no fun at all. So MAD actually destroyed many films for us. In Kvänum, we could watch one film every Wednesday evening and a childrens matiné film every Saturday afternoon. It didn't matter what film it was, we more or less went every time. It was a nice happening during the week and always an exciting challenge to manage to get in when the age limit was 15 years. I had my contacts and was tall already then, so I was OK most of the times. I remember going to a Danish soft porno movie at the age of 12-13, which was a bit of a shock for me. I had new strange dreams that night ;-)

My Grandparents, Elvira & Arthur, were involved in the pioneer days of the cinema in Kvänum. Grandpa as a machinist, changing reels etc and Grandma taking care of the localities. Probably more news programs & state propaganda, than porno and action movies.

Back to the crazyness in MAD. The Swedish MAD magazine closed down in 2002. Probably on request from George W, who I think is a close look-a-like of Alfred E Neuman. I can't watch Bush on TV, without associating to MAD. Some other people claimed that it was a fatter copy of a young Prince Charles and also that the Prince actually was fighting to get that image taken away. Who knows?

I might put up the complete MAD story on DVD, on my Xmas wish list. Totally MAD.

I finally managed to construct stairs to Olivers house today. After 5 months of talking about it. Not the planned nice veranda and stairs combination that I had in mind originally. Instead a bit of a temporary construction made of some loading pallets that I've found. It serves its purpose for now. Looks OK so far and that's the way it will stay for a while. I will re-evaluate this next summer.

Olivers house is really nice and he likes to be there a lot. Most people (adults) that come here ask if he really sleeps there all alone. Yes, of course, what's the problem? Isn't he afraid to stay out there all by himself?  Not at all, it's good for his character build-up. He develops some kind of independence and security within himself. Important for a 12 year old. Still it's just a few meters away from the main house where we stay and we have direct internal communication links between the houses. He sometimes have friends staying overnight and it creates strong bonds between them. He will for sure enjoy it even more in the future when he's getting interested in the other sex ;-) What a luxury to have that kind of liberty.

It was a very good solution to build this little extra house. 15 m2 is rather spacious for a teenager.