I can’t believe it’s 10 years since we first saw the new millennium!
10 years ago I was 16, living with my dad and step-mum in a teeny tiny village deep in the woods and in the middle of nowhere. I was in 1st year of Gymnasiet and dad had just got us our first computer. With dial-up internet and Windows 95
The big 2000 was celebrated with my then best friend Minna in her father’s house. We made a fancy dinner for everyone in the village (not as much work as it sounds like, the whole village = 8 people. That might give you an idea of what I mean when I say “tiny”) with a silver wax cloth on the table, silver confetti and silver candles. Minna’s sister even had a silver lipstick that we all put on
It may sound like a poor New Year’s party, but it was seriously awesome!
What did you all do on New Years Eve 2000?

A decade in the rearview mirror

2000

• My 17th birthday.
• 1st year of Gymnasiet ends.
• Meet my first boyfriend Johan in May. Or whatever you’d like to call it. More like kids at play than an actual relationship. He’s really cute though, but I can’t believe I fell for a blonde!?
• Oh well, never mind. We break up in August.
• Start 2nd year of Gymnasiet.
• Meet second boyfriend Björn in October.

2001

• Move back to my mother after 2 years of living with my dad.
• Most of my friends drop out of school and/or move so I pretty much end up alone. And I’m to grumpy and unsocial to get new friends
• 2nd year ends and 3d year starts. I get to study sign language which is pretty much the only subject I actually enjoy.
• Beginning to grasp how to draw stuff in Ms Paint.
• Gets my first cell phone.

2002

• 3d year in school sucks giant donkey balls. I’m sick and tired of school and spend every day regretting my choice of orientation. In hindsight I really should have chose art over social science…
• … but in May I finally graduate! FREEDOM!!
• Moves in with Björn. He lives in a town by the sea so I finally get away from my dead end village
• Start my first “real” website Sagi-tazi. On Geocities
• Get to ride a motorcycle for the first (and only) time.
• After a lazy summer I get a trainee job at a local advertising agency.

2003

• My trainee job turns into a real job. I get to make signs, printed matters, car decorations etc. It’s a really fun job and I love it there!
• Me and Björn breaks up after almost 3 years together. Good riddance, it really was for the best. But I’m still an emotional wreck and he’s still a bastard
• Moves in to a small apartment smack down in the centre of town.

2004

• Gathers some courage and joins The Quilting Bee.
• I meet Jesse. Once again I got myself a blonde, but at least this one has long hair. And a small zoo in his apartment: snakes, tortoises, fire salamanders… A regular Steve Irwin rip-off.
• Iva offers to host me on her domain Shortly after I start my first fanlisting.
• Buys my first own pet, the fabulous Flamma
• Work is getting fucked up. They fire me due to lack of work and then hire me again when the work load increases. Rinse and repeat 10000 times in the span of 1 year. Blah.
• Moves in with Jesse. And all his 7 billion pets.

2005

• My dog Zaphod is born on March 22 and I take him home on May 16
• Goes to Sweden Rock Festival for the first time
• Buys my first car, a white Audi 100 Avant from -85
• Get to see Black Sabbath, with Ozzy Osbourne, live in Stockholm!
• Buys my first own domain! I create a blog in Swedish and an art/pixel site in English.
• I’ve finally had it with work. Jesse wants us to move to Skellefteå, his home town a bit further south, and I agrees to do so.
• New apartment, new town, new life *deep breath*

2006

• Applies for neat education: Design for interactive media. 2 years long, in town.
• Becomes a member of the Pixel Team at the Qbee.
• Get accepted for the education! Meet lots of new cool people! Like Alexandra, Linda, Markus etc.
• Buys new car, this time a white Opel Omega (aka “the white trash car”) from -89

2007

• I break up with Jesse. One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Very sad.
• In lack of place to live I move in with Alexandra in her apartment. Zaphod have to live with other friend Andrea, Flamma stays with Jesse for now. Life seriously messy
• Manages to get a place of my own. Can take my stuff from Jesse’s apartment and best of all: I can get my pets back!
• Buys Rockwitch.net to cheer myself up Moves blog + art/pixels here and keep CyanSunrise.com as a fanlisting collective.
• Strong and strangely amorous feelings towards my friend Markus. WTF?
• Sweden Rock Festival again.
• Ok, friend or not Markus is amazing. And he likes me too! (But seriously, what’s with the blondes!? All my life I’ve stated that I prefer brunettes and yet 3 of my 4 boyfriends have been blonde. That’s what you get for living in pale ass Scandinavia I guess…)

2008

• Gets an apartment with Markus.
• Buys Vittra.org and moves my Swedish blog there. Keep Rockwitch.net as an art site.
• Sees Alice Cooper in concert for the first time!
• Graduate design school. Wee bit sad, it’s been so much fun. But hey, graduation party in our new apartment! Whoo!
• Is job-hopping all summer. Switchboard operator, salesperson, janitor…
• Markus gets a car from his parents as a gift (OMG!). A dark green Renault Laguna. My old shitty Opel is kicked out immediately.
• Markus start doing freelance work for Gem, a local advertising agency. Shortly after I start doing work for them too

2009

• Sweden Rock again. Crappy weather but otherwise great.
• Converts Rockwitch.net to Wordpress to make it a proper blog as well as an art gallery. Ditches the Swedish blog in the process.
• Summer job as a janitor again.
• 9th grade school reunion.
• Decides to close CyanSunrise and buys Heart of Snow to use as my fanlisting collective instead.

And what do I know for 2010?

• Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It’s a blank page so… I guess we’ll see what happens!

I would probably violate some unwritten blogging law if I don’t write one of these posts, so I better get mine done

So… Christmas.
Me and Markus went to his parents in Örnsköldsvik on the 22nd. Bus ride was crazy, the bus was totally crammed with people and outside we had a full-fledged blizzard going on But we managed to get there in one piece anyway.
But other than that, and a minor accident when a kettle boiled over and we got melted fat all over (and behind) the stove, we had a very relaxed Christmas. It was just me and Markus, his parents, his sister and her boyfriend. We had a lovely dinner, exchanged gifts, played games and just generally had a good time.

Zaphod got presents to, he even got to open them himself. I’ve been giving him cardboard boxes with treats hidden in them for years (great mental activity for dogs btw) so he knows how to open packages. He got dried pig ears and a whole box of liver treats. Win!

Christmas dinner, in case anyone’s interested, was made up of Christmas ham, raw spiced salmon (my favourite), meat balls, spare ribs, Janssons Frestelse (scalloped potato casserole with anchovies), brawn, boiled eggs, about 4 different types of pickled herring and lots of other good stuff.

Present-opening mess

Gift-wise I got a gift voucher for the movie theatre, bronze ear rings, snow flake ear rings, snake skin bracelet, a Dolce & Gabbana t-shirt (omg, I’ve never owned any designer clothes!),  a cake plate and money. Mostly money actually. Which is actually my favourite type of gift, that way I can buy myself anything I want

On Christmas Day (In Sweden we do all the celebration on Christmas Eve) we all went to see Avatar. It was amazing(!), but I’ll save the review for a later post. Good thing I got that gift voucher too

And then… we haven’t done anything really. We’re still at his parents, having a nice and calm vacation. We won’t go home until Saturday, so we’ll spend New Year’s Eve here too. Apparently we’re going to a party with some of Markus’ old school friends. It will probably be great, I love his friends and think of them as mine too

Hope everyone had a nice holiday and that you will have a Happy New Year, wherever you are See you on the other side!

OMG, an alien!

That’s Oggie, Camila’s shi-tzu.  Camila is going to Brazil in January so Oggie is going to stay with us while she’s gone. Oggie needs to get used to sleeping here and such, so yesterday we took him home with us and he stayed the night.

He’s only 7 months old, still very much a puppy, and a little heart breaker in disguise. At first everyone (including Zaphod) was all WTF? What is that!? What are we supposed to do with it? Which end is the front?
But he’s growing on all of us and I’m really looking forward taking him in He’s so social and cuddly, he follows us around the apartment and every time someone sits down he wants to come and sit in the lap. Slightly different from Zaphod who once he lays down won’t leave his bed for anything less than fires or the vacuum cleaner…

I think it will be great for Zaphod to have a dog companion and it will be fun for me “trying out” a new breed. I’m not used to dogs that small. Or that hairy *lol*
My biggest fear is that I will accidentally break him somehow o__O Or that grooming all that fur will drive me completely nuts so that I, in a burst of lunacy, end up shaving the whole dog.

Nah, I’m sure we’ll be alright. I’ll just make Markus hide the electric razor *cough*

Oggie tries to steal a kiss from Markus. And Zaphod is looking jealous in the background..

I’ve thought a lot about reindeer lately.
It started with an exciting new project at work involving said animal (I’ll show you later when it’s done). The project hasn’t officially started yet but I already have a whole herd running around in my head. Waving their antlers around and pooping in the corners and what not…

And as a result I have an increasing number of reindeer sketches piling up on my desk.

And as a result of that I had to go play in Photoshop.

Before I knew it I had a new layout and even though it’s not really December yet I couldn’t wait, as you can see I uploaded it right away!

This is the actual reindeer in the header. I just scanned it and darkened it to a silhouette.

Some of my sketches. And yes, that is actually a reindeer furry -__-;

Where I grew up there are reindeer everywhere (and I mean everywhere!) certain times of the year. And they can be quite a pain in the ass to be honest.

In Sweden all Reindeer are owned by the Sami people. The animals roam free in the woods like wild animals, but the Sami cares for them. As a result the reindeer are half-tame. They don’t approach people and will run if you try to approach them, but they’re not THAT afraid. Like… they have no problem coming into your garden to eat from the flower bed and vegetable patch And there’s no guarantee they’ll move for cars and such. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much you honk and rush the engine, they just stand there…
I got stuck for almost 40 min(!) behind a reindeer herd once. It was about 10 animals and instead of getting off the road and let me pass they decide to start trotting along the road! And not very fast either I might add… The snow was really deep so I guess they found it much more convenient staying on the ploughed road. I’ve never in my life been more tempted to kill an animal.

But on the other hand… They’re one of the most beautiful animals in Sweden if you ask me.
An adult bull in winter coat with fully grown antlers running trough the snow is a pretty sight. Not to mention the all white ones. No matter how stupid and useless I sometimes find them I can’t deny that they do make an attractive addition to the fauna. Truth is I’d probably miss them if they disappeared.

Ok, enough talk about reindeer. Can’t imagine anyone caring but me so I’ll shut up now