If I comment and post like crazy it's only beacuse I'm home with ZOMG teh internets! Tomorrow I'm off to Skåne to spend a week in peace and quiet before coming back to Sthlm again for Europride, so I have to use my internet time well :P

Setting out from SF. Here's the Golden Gate Bridge, in all it's glory. We we're lucky, the weather was really clear!

( More SF and Sausalito )

( Monterey Bay Aquarium )


( Carmel-By-The-sea )

Last night I couldn’t sleep (surprise!) so after lying in bed for far to long I watched the reruns of two episodes of Morgan Spurlocks 30 days that I missed the first time they aired over here - one on Muslims and one on alcohol and college students.

There are few things in this world that can make me as pissed off as alcohol. Don’t get me wrong – I enjoy a glass of wine or a nice drink as much as the other person, and if people want to get drunk and enjoy it, hell, not much I can do or say about that.

However, the idea that once you ARE drunk you’re sort of free from responsibility? That idea is fucked up. It’s wrong. How many times have I heard “she did this awful thing… but she was drunk!”, “oh man, I was such an idiot last night. But I was drunk!” or “what a git… but he was drunk, so…”

FUCK THAT. Honestly. Every person is responsible for his or her own actions. There are a few situations in which a person is not responsible for his/her actions:

1. The person is in a mental state (not induced by drugs) where he/she is not thinking clearly. Due to stress, fear, mental problems, etc.
2. The person is inebriated due to someone else. Ie. Someone else slipped him/her a drug/got him/her drunk, etc.

If you (general you) choose to get drunk, however, that’s your responsibility. You may not be accountable for your own actions while drunk, you might not know what you’re doing, but you’re still responsible for getting drunk, and thus, through that, responsible for what you do while drunk.

Okay, so I’m aware that sometimes someone will have a bit more than they mean to and get a bit more off their face than they mean to, but most of the time people are damn well aware that they are getting drunk. And that’s fine. Enjoying being drunk is fine too. Pretending that being drunk leaves you with no responsibility for your own actions, however, is stupid. Doing that is to legitimize ever murder, assault, rape and robbery carried out by someone who was drunk. I know I’m preaching a bit, now, but, hey, we all have the right too preach occasionally!

I’m not saying my friendslist is full of people who don’t take responsibility for their own actions. I don’t think it is, so don’t feel targeted by this text just because you get drunk sometimes. It’s directed at the general public and at the kids I hung out with in my early teens. I don’t like that perfectly good people think it’s all right to deliberately get drunk and then behave as assholes, maybe even get drunk just to be able to behave like assholes, without any consequences. To my knowledge, that’s not something that goes on my friendslist a lot, so. It’s also a post directed at my friends to tell you that no, it’s not okay for people to be idiots towards you just because they are drunk.

And, before anyone thinks so, I’m not saying that someone who is raped or assaulted while they’re drunk are responsible for it. The person responsible for an act of violence or somesuch is always the person performing the act, of course. Even if that person is drunk.

When we got to SF in the evening three weeks ago I went to bed, slept some and was (sort of) on American time. Sure, I was a bit tired the first few days, but my sleeping patterns where normal.

Not so this time.

I get back to Sweden at 9 am and home at 10. Once home, I check my e-mail and crawl into bed - just going to rest for a bit - get up at 4 pm to have coffee. FAIL. Go to bed at 12 pm, even though I'm not that tired. Do fall asleep! ZOMG!

...wake up at 1 am. Can't sleep. Spend the night unpacking my bags (and now I've lost two tubes of skin cream, one of which was almost completely new, ugh. They MUST be somewhere in the house. DO NOT UNPACK IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, peeps!). Go to bed at 5 am. Fall asleep. Wake up at 10:30 am when Hanna calls me to tell me she'll be here in twenty minutes...

Am awake all day! V. good. Go to bed at 12 pm. Sleep. Sleep. SLEEP. Wake up at 1 pm the next day. WHAT. I never. Ever. EVER sleep for that long. Hopefully I'm back on track now, though.

Tonight I'm having dinner with my parents, which means I get to pick up the last of my packing and, hopefully, get all my photos! I promise a post on the actual trip once I have the photos, because I just couldn't do some things justice without them.

I have always had a problem with good memories. I want my best time to be now, or at least my now to be as good as most other times. That "the best of all the years” may “have gone by" is the scariest thought I can think of.

I'm not one of those people who will not accept any regrets - I think every life comes with a certain amount of things that one can regret. This thing about memories is not about regretting life decisions. That IS also a horrible though, when the decisions are big, but decisions are still decisions, choices, they can be made carefully, they can be retracted or changed. Life, in general, can't.

Great things that happen can’t be regretted. People can't be regretted either, really, and thus have nothing to do with regret. Mental health, moods, feelings, can’t be regretted. And why would one want to regret good things, you ask? Well, because of the bad people (not that I know any right now), of course, because of bad moods, feelings etc.

Doesn’t that scare you? Looking back at a great trip, or a great day, or a great year and going “wow, that was awesome” is not, in itself, scary, it’s great. It’s the moment right after that that is tricky, the moment which decides if your reaction is “wow, that was awesome, must do it again!”, “wow, that was awesome but not as good as this!” or “wow, that was awesome… and… look at where I am now. Bah.”

See, I’ve had a period when I really, really looked back at the previous year and went “life was good then” and it was the most miserable time of my life. And then things picked up again and it’s been uphill since then. But! Things going uphill means constantly, CONSTANTLY having to fend of the worry that I’m approaching a descent, it means not thinking to much of last year, the summer before that, or that day in Manchester for fear of discovering that life has taken a down turn and that I’m now in a slope, having lost my grip on what was great.

The thing with decisions and regrets is that you can – as I said – regret them and beat yourself up about it and then do what you can to change you current situation, to make new choices, other choices. But you can’t throw away your good memories to make your current life seem better, and you can’t stove them away to not compare your current life with what has happened before. To me, I guess, to live in the now is in many ways to fend of memories, because I don’t know what I will do if I realise that the best of the years have gone by*.

Also, this is not something coming out of bad times, it's something I have with me always, and almost more vivdly when things are great... I have been meaning to write this post for years (not an exaggeration, I have drafts for it in my notebooks) but only now managed to put it down in words.


*I do realise that I’m young and that this (hopefully!) doesn’t apply to someone with so many years left to live, even if a year or two is worse than the previous, a bunch of them are bound to be better. But this is not a rational feeling, you guys, more of a memory-phobia.

Am home. The internets are full of TOO MUCH. Trip was win and awesome.

Off to buy a cartoon of Filmjök! SWEDISH FOOD KTHX.

Tomorrow I will:

- be among people who speak English. ENGLISH. I know I read and write in English every day, I know there's English on tv and all, but it's never the same as being in the midst of it. English <3
- Hopefully have time for an iced latte at Starbucks at Philladelphia airpoty (once we get to SF it'll be to late for me to have coffee, hah)
- Pass (hopefully...) home land security. I HATE IT. I have security checks in general. Not because I think there is anything wrong with having them... they just make me anxious as hell. Boo.
- Sit on a plane all day. This is pretty much the most boring thing ever. Boo.
- Sleep in SF!


In other words, leaving tomorrow, be back 11/7, might update from the states if I can. Have a really great time, ya'll!

You know that feeling when you made some coffee and it turned out just right? YEAH BABY. I think I've finally learnt how to use my Moka pot properly. Moka coffe makes for much better iced coffee than normal, brewed coffee, too, what with being stronger and all.


...yes, I just made a post about coffee, but fear not, the coffee I have is of Lidl's own brand*. I still FAIL at being a coffee nerd.




(OMG STARBUCKS COFFEE IN TWO DAYS OMG)



*This is totally embarrassing as I'm usually very careful to buy fairtrade, ecological coffee

För hur hårt ni än kan slå ska jag vara hårdare ändå.

LOL.

Tbh, though, I though Sweden would do much worse! Also, it was quite a fun game to watch. I am into Euro Football mostly to watch fun games, anyway, so.

That was quite exciting, wasn't it? I was supposedly rooting for France, but tbh, I didn't really care, it was just a fun game to watch.


I love Holland's get up, too. I normally hate orange, but they look so goddamn retro. Retro football clothes = YAY.

I just realised how crap the Star Wars movies are if you watch them in their new, supposed "order", because then you already KNOW who Darth Wader is. And Palpatine, right?

WTF.

We're here, we watch football, get used to it! :P

This is one WET game! But that's kind of interesting, I think, I'm awed at how they can still play football in this weather, even if the game isn't exactly beautiful.

Yay Switzerland! I feel a bit bad for Mehmet Aurelio, though, I don't think that warranted a yellow card.


ETA: Goddamit! But well done, Turkey.

Aww man, I totally missed out on the Portugal - Czech Republic game because I was being anxious about things that only US Customs and Border Protection could take my mind of (they did, though! Thank good for international calls) and now there's only Switzerland - Turkey left... which... Uh, tbh, who cares?

I like Portugal (Go Portugal, gogo!) , and Czech republic are relatively interesting to me, but Switzarland and Turkey? Not so much. Going to try watching anyway, sometimes games end up totally different than how you thought they would!

I'm going to root for Switzerland, I think, it could be fun for them to get somewhere in "their own" Euro, don't you think?

WIN WIN WIN WIN WIN.

Boring Greece, good Sweden, one neat goal and one fun goal... I'm satisfied! I do feel bad for Ljungbergs body, though. That crushed-between-two-greeks situation must have hurt.




Zlatan: *IS TALL*
Daniel Andersson: *IS STUPIDLY HAPPY*





But... uh, the next game is against Spain. LOL. I mean, one should never say never, but... yeah.

Go Sweden! But did you see what Charisteas did there in the begining? Pretty impressive! I like a player who goes far on his own.

I miss insanely long bouts of passing and dribbling that actually leads somewhere, though, Argentina style. Long bouts of passing the ball that do not lead anywhere do not count, sorry, Greece :P

Svenskar, det här är lite roligt:




tror ni det blir någon skillnad? Jag har inte kollat resultaten än. Ronaldo är ju klart snyggast, tycker jag, men Cannavaro (som väl föressten inte ska spela?) är attraktiv på ett annat sätt... Och jag älskar hans ögonbryn!

Egentligen borde man väl störa sig på könsuppdelningen men just här är det faktiskt lite intressant...

Från Fotbollskanalen.

I've been really bad with watching football since Euro 2008 started, but I decided that today would be the day when I get back to watching (I only ever watch international cups, btw, so every other year I have a football period during the Euro or World Cup).

So, to warm up, I sat down in front of the tv with my dinner and watched the last half of the Spain - Russia game and... I spontaniously jumped up and down and clapped my hands when Russia scored their one goal. Haha! I suppose the football spirit is back! Why I was rooting for Russia? Don't really know, possibly because of the underdog thing I tend to have for football teams. Spain being everyones favourite and all. Anyway, Russia lost, but hey, a goal! Yay!

Spain's goalie Iker Casillas, though? Pretty win! And quite gorgeous, from what I've seen.

Also, time to start hanging on Yahoo UK's Euro 2008 photo page again! I love football photos. LOVE.

Still a bit bummed that England didn't even qualify. FAIL, England, FAIL.

Oh, the Sweden - Greece game is starting! Bye!

*stupid fanpost*