Lifecruiser

We’re going to upgrade Wordpress to the latest version for this blog any moment now, so if there should be some problems during or afterwards - be patient please.

If you have the chance to set up your own domain at a webhost like Blue Host, you should definitely consider to use wordpress as your free blogging software. Be sure to choose a webhost that gives you Fantastico which offers you easy installation and upgrades of WP through your webhosts controlpanel. If you don’t want the webhost solution, you can have a free account at wordpress.com. Personally I don’t like the free account there so much, but that’s probably because I have had the own webhosted variant already…. I’m spoiled :-)

NOTE: If you decide to get an own domain name, don’t forget to make sure that you get the privacy protection service. It’s not sure it’s for free, but if you don’t, your address details is available for anyone who does a whois look up in the internet!

The wordpress.org have very good information about all the stuff regarding WP, one of the best. I always read a lot there - especially now before doing the upgrade. To make sure not to do anything clumsy.

There is a lot of information to get about wordpress in Technorati tags too.

NOTE: We need to upgrade this blog several WP-versions in steps, so keep this post in your mind for a while.

“You can find some one to Love in the towns center, because many women live there. They don’t feel like they want to go around and watch pigs”.

[ Sören, 8 year ]

I do… Despite the fact that I’m living in Stockholm. I just LOVE pigs…. their snout and oink sound.

Pigs are so cool….

As a matter of fact, they are not able to sweat, so they must have mud to cool down - and even use it for sun protection.

Just think about it, to have a valid excuse for jumping into the mud pool.

Any one care for a mud war….?

Sorry guys, I did NOT say women mud wrestling. You heard wrong ;-)

“Swedes take the whole summer off work. They have five weeks paid leave which they usually take in July. Once a Swede was told that he only had 5 weeks to live. I’ll hope it’s in July, he said”.

“Sweden The Secret Files” by Colin Moon

So now I’ve ordered our ferry tickets to our beloved island Fårö, Gotland, outside Swedens east coast, for the summer vacation. The islands is so popular that you have to order it months in advance to get tickets.

When? In July of course!

We’ve now uploaded photos from earlier summers:

Lifecruisers Fårö Summer 2004
Lifecruisers Fårö Summer 2005

The embryo for this post started at the dinner table the other day. Suddenly in the middle of a bite, I asked Mr Lifecruiser what we should have for night meal. He just shaked his head and said: “An outsider would have thought that you were a maniac.. start to talk about that in the middle of the dinner! You should be full and not thinking of food already again”. Well, an outsider won’t know that I always have to have something before I go to bed, otherwise I will be too hungry in the middle of the night and can’t sleep.

Then I remembered that it was a lot of eggs in our dinner and said: “You know, it’s a lot of eggs in this food, so there will be a lot of serious farting this evening.” That didn’t convince him about me being normal either, but hey, he should be used to it by now, after all he is married to me. At least I didn’t fart or pick my or his nose at the dinner table….

We are generally rather outspoken about everything here in Sweden, but maybe not so far as to this point of disgusting things for most of the people. And certainly not at the dinner table. Normally I don’t speak like this when we’re with other people - except Miss Ass. Lifecruiser who is as crazy as we are.

Anyway, that started a little wondering. Why does it smell like rotten eggs when farting after eating fresh eggs? If you eat other things, it doesn’t smell that way even if you do get gases from it. What is it in eggs that makes it smell so bad when it comes out? We started to joke about it, saying that “Oh, it must be because the eggs have passed two butts, the hens and ours…” and stuff like that.

But seriously, why does it smell, what is that smell?

I began to search for the answer and found out that Hydrogen Sulphide is what makes the smell of rotten eggs and it’s even produced by the bacteria in our stomach when we’ve eaten fresh eggs.

Flammable facts about flatulence:

The average human releases 0.5 to 1.5 litres (1 to 3 U.S. pints) of flatus in 12 to 25 episodes throughout the day. The primary constituents of flatulence are the non-odorous gases, in descending order of concentration, nitrogen (ingested), oxygen (ingested), methane (produced by anaerobic microbes), carbon dioxide (produced by aerobic microbes or ingested), and hydrogen (produced by some microbes and consumed by others). Odors result from trace amounts of other components (often sulphur containing, see below).

Nitrogen is the primary gas released. Methane and hydrogen, lesser components, are flammable, and so flatulence is susceptible to catching fire. Gas released mostly has a foul odor which mainly results from low molecular weight fatty acids such as butyric acid (rancid butter smell) and reduced sulfur compounds such as hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg smell) and carbonyl sulfide that are the result of protein breakdown.

Source: Wikipedia

You see, there is sience in everything!

The moose is called the King of the Forest here in Sweden, but I don’t know if agree with that…

Sweden has the highest population of moose in the world, 300 000. A third of these are killed during the annual hunt. Then on the other hand, the reproduction is the fastest on the planet and the same amount of moose stalk the forests by the following autumn. Most of them (and the biggest ones) can be found in the northern Sweden, some of them with as much as 26 tynes in their crowns.

Formerly an economic necessity, the moose hunt is now more a matter of lifestyle and keeping an old tradition alive. About 250 000 of our 9 million inhabitants now have a moosehunting license and may be able to provide friends and relations with a big, juicy moose steak.

“Things Swedish” by Mari Hemming

I have eaten moose steak, but not so often. It’s good, if you forget about adding the juniper berries and stuff that makes it taste so wild.

I’ve mostly seen them on the sides of the roads, but I’ve grow up and lived all my life around Stockholm which is a city so….

When I was a teenager and was in the stables of the nearest riding school, I got really close to one female moose once. It was in the forest just at the side of the stable and I thought it was a horse that had came loose, so I went forward to catch it. She was standing there eating some leafs from a bush, partly hidden. Then she raised her head when I came closer and I saw what it was! Need I say that I backed away quickly from there…?

We have a lot of moose warning signs at the side of the roads around Sweden, despite the fact that we even have high fences to protect the car drivers from hitting any moose with their cars. That have decreased the amount of accidents.

The only problem is that the signs have become very popular among certain tourists, so they suddenly disappear mysterious….

Secret whisper: There is some questionable rumours saying that moose poo in cans is sold to tourists with great success!

I’m going bald…

For a time now I’ve been loosing a lot of hair. And when I say a lot, I mean a lot! Big wads of hair is coming lose all the time, especially when I’m washing my hair. Imagine the feeling when you’re holding your whole hand FULL of hair suddenly. It’s a big lump, not separate hairs. You haven’t been dragging in the hair, it’s just there when you’re washing it. Every time you’ve been washing it for a long while. I’m not sure for how long.

I’m not exaggerating. It’s really scary.

Mr Lifecruiser has seen a very hairy back of me lately… I’m worse than a monkey, despite the fact that I don’t eat bananas, want to pick lices in Mr Lifecruisers fur and don’t feel an urge to swing in the trees. It’s hair coming lose all the time and it’s stuck on my sweater.

First I didn’t think much about it, because there are always periods in your life when you lose more hair than usual. I’m used to it, since I almost always have had a rather long hair. You always lose some hair. But this, I’ve never seen something like this, it’s like I had false hair that come lose. When I put a ribbon in my hair, the same one that I’ve always been using, there is a hole, it woun’t stay there, because there isn’t much hair left. I can say that it must be at least HALF of my hair amount that has come lose, it feels like I only have a third of it left….

So, first it was my back that went bad, then my brain shrinked and I was wondering what next? Well, I guess I have the answer on that one now: my hair is gone too!

Mr Lifecruiser and I’m very much alike and he don’t have much hair - must I always imitate him in everything…?

My hair has always been my greatest pride, so this is tough on me, but I’m sure going to try to find out why, even though I don’t have any confidence in doctors anymore. I’ve met too many bad ones so far. It can be many reasons for loosing hair, so I’m not guessing at this point, we’ll see what they say and do, what examinations they want to do. Probably nothing as my experience with them are, but you’ll never know, maybe they’ll surprise me this time?

I have the most wonderful life with Mr Lifecruiser anyway, so what if I lose ALL my hair? Who cares, as long as we’re together?

What’s HAIR comparing to LIFE? Nothing!

I will get some really cool nickname instead, anyone having some suggestions…?

This post will be about Copyscape, which I’m sure, a lot of you already know about. But I think this is such a great tool, that I want to spread it as much as I can.

I think that all bloggers are like me, we don’t like the idea of some one actually stealing our blog content, which we have been struggling so hard with - in sweat, blood and tears to create. Right?

Copyscape is so simple to use, you just enter your URL and it will search for copies of your content. It’s a free service so why not use it? They also have a paid option if you want a more automatic scan frequently, but the free service probably is enough for the average blogger.

Why use this service and not Google? Well, in Google you have to enter proper search frases and stuff to actually look for your content. With Copyscape you just put in the URL and it will do a search on a lot of your stuff at one and the same time.

Go there and do a check up of your own blog!

Let Copyscape scan for copies of your blog

Read Global Web Rights at Copyscape
Forum post about what to do When All Else Fails

Plagiarism Today

Men tend to appreciate women, yes?

I’m thinking of a special “women appreciating show sign”, specifically: the well known whistle. It really is a appreciating sign when men whistles after a good looking woman. Then of course, all women is good looking, so there is a lot of whistles going on. But, hey, it’s good both for the mens lungs and face muscles and for the womens self-confidence.

I remember all the whistles in the past after me. Well, not all of them, of course it’s too many times *coughing* - but sort of in a fine group memory.

Then they suddenly started to decrease in some mysterious way. I can’t figure out why. I’m sure it don’t have anything at all to do with the fact that I got grey hairs, wrinkles and all “the hanging business” that’s going on every where on my body.

I just know that it’s only aged men in old garbage trucks in Italy that hangs out from the window and whistles after me nowadays. It’s true, honestly, that was last year in Milano. The last time.

It’s a sad, sad, silent world without whistles…

Maybe I have to DO something about it myself?

And for sisiggy at linguini on the ceiling and others with interest of Italy, we’ve uploaded our photos from Milano 2004 now. There is mostly architecture photos though.

OK, we have a lot of special things here in Sweden and one of them are our letters ÅÄÖ. How did we begin with these strange letters?

One official theory is that it was somehow hastily writing that caused it. From the beginning the latin script words were spelled with ae for the ä and aa for the å and oe for the ö. Then they started to write hastily a’ instead of ae and they were later evolved to the å, ä, ö.

Personally I think it all started with some one that sneezed over some scripts or maybe coughed with some nice food stuff in the mouth that landed like dots over some words and they covered it up with this story. Maybe it would have been very interesting languages all over the world if we didn’t have had typewriters or computers?

Example of some words with å, ä, ö:

Å = River, creek
Åksjuka = Motion sickness
(that’s what I always get on a boat)

Åtråvärd = Desirable
Åtfölja = Accompany
Åtlöje = Ridicule

Äcklig = Disgusting
Älskling = Darling
(Don’t confuse them with each other!)

Öl = Beer (Probably from the english Ale)
En stor stark = A big strong beer

Örfil = A smack on the ear (That’s what you get if you drink to much beer and say bad things to a swedish girl)

Öde = Deserted
Ö = Island
(Thats were you wished you were after you’ve got smacked)

Skräcködla = Translated exactly to english it says something like Horror lizard, but as an expression it’s used in Sweden to describe a really horrifying ugly woman.

If I use some bad words below, its only because I’m nice enough to give you a lesson in the swedish language, not that I use these words. I’m only doing it for you. I’m not to be hold responsible for anything I write from this point.

Our language is influenced a lot from the english and german, sometimes the exact words are used, sometimes it’s a bit changed, but still does sound or spells similar. Some examples: Man = Man, Dum = Dumb, Blond = Blond, Party = Party, Drink = Drink, Skit = Shit, Bomb = Bomb. You see, we’re a lot like you.

Then we have the english word Whore that is pronounced like the swedish word Hår, which actually means Hair. Another words that can cause some misunderstandings if they’re mixed up are the swedish word Prick which means Dot if you should translate it to english… The english word Prick translated to swedish would be Snopp.

If you hear some one talking about Bra, they’re not saying what you think they are. The swedish word Bra actually means Good. It always good with a bra anyway… Swedish people like to say things with fewer words, so we’ve shortened Bra to BH instead, BystHållare = BreastHolder.

I don’t know if I recall this story the right way, but I’ll try. An old friend of mine once were abroad and wanted to buy a new bag. She was in the store examinating the bags. They weren’t any to her satisfaction, so she wanted some help from the store staff. So she said: “This is a nice bag, but I want a lot of fack in it”. The man looked and smiled a strange smile to her and didn’t seem to understand so she repeated it. Several times. And he just smiled that disgusting smile. Then it strucked her what he must have thought that she said. F*ck. The swedish word Fack means compartment, but it sounds really bad doesn’t it…?

Did you know that The Police sometimes have “fart kontroll” here in Sweden? We have words exactly like english words, but they sometimes mean something completey different. The swedish word Fart translated to english means Speed and not Fart…

Oh, you want to know what the swedish words for fart is? No?

Well, we’re going to tell you anyway: Fis, prutt, mök, gas, rökare (which even can be smoker) and skit.

You never know when it can come in handy that you know these swedish words!