Jackie Chan and the OG Ralph Macchio in the same movie?! I'm actually really looking forward to this one!

Hadn't heard of Ben Wang before - who seems to play the new Kid, but it definitely seems like he can stunt. If they're not using (stunt) doubles.

Also crazy that Jackie and Ralph are almost the same age! You don't see it.

Psyched for this. Fights and bliss. Hopefully.

Of course as soon as I post about not getting any, I do.

Östersund up next then! Come Sunday I'll be back on the road again. One more free coffee to fetch on the way...

The cost of electricity reached an all-time high here yesterday.

Between 5 and 6 PM a shower would supposedly cost you 50 SEK (or ~5 USD) - in electrical cost only, water excluded. If you had a house you could factor in water heating too, as we do. And I wonder at what temperature and duration they estimated said cost, surely it'd go way higher in our household...

So I didn't shower yesterday.

We kept the lights relatively low, and avoided using unnecessarily power-hungry devices, though the computer did stay on, as did the TV, and advent stars in all windows.

Who would've thought electricity would become such a commodity in the first world though?

It's been a problem in for example South Africa a long time - shops have their own generators, and power outages are a part of daily life, but that people would schedule their electricity usage on a day-by-day basis in Europe, of all places, where they've been selling us the dream of green energy and electric vehicles for the past ten years at least?

Owning an electric car's not cheap now. And since electric cars are a big thing, neither is electricity. And since our electricity is apparently sold on the international market, shortages in the rest of Scandinavia, and Germany, affect our electricity costs as well.

So even though we have not enough to satiate our own population at a reasonable price our suppliers are selling shares to neighboring markets as well.

It's pretty messed up innit?

Companies earn more the less they're able to produce - or rather the worse they're able to meet our demand.

We pay for their lacking infrastructure. And instead of actually expanding, or trying to conserve energy, they shut down fully functional nuclear plants, and invest in green energy that won't work at all during our winter.

The government may be at fault too, but when Vattenfall's (that's the main player in energy production here - partially owned by the state) CEO has a salary of one and a half million SEK/Month (~132,328 USD) - many times more than what most people make in a year here... I fault the company.
I deplore their agenda. I blame them for not being able to uphold reasonable pricing on essential energy during this most taxing time of the year.

Anyway good buddy @Jabun released a new ambient album recently, and has more on route under his band name, have a listen! I managed to attend one of the live YT premieres, and got to see both a bird and a bug in the process - amongst many an imaginary beast. Nephology's fun.

Also here's a kickstarter I meant to post about ages ago, and this was fun. More modern fun here.

I've been waiting all week for a Freerider (a free rental car they need driven to a particular destiantion) to get to Östersund, but it seems I won't be getting there this weekend... when travel plans fail, or pan out not as intended, I'm a little disillusioned TBF. Am I not affirming enough? Has my luck run out? What am I doing wrong here on my cosmic journey through time and space to all these places adjacent, when I can't make it on a brief weekend trip/Big Bro bonding vacation?

Oh well. Hope to join up with my nephew in Skellefteå next week instead. And get to Östersund in January maybe.

Happy Saint Lucia's Day! (They're giving out free coffee at the Station Café if you happen to be in Bro today - props Floristhörnan!)

Toodles.

Your laziness is something that has to do with you, you're not connected to something deep enough, you don't feel the devil at your heels.

I can't find my penguin stickers!

I bought a hundred-sticker penguin roll cheap off of Temu or some other Chinese counterpart last year - with cute penguins in alternating positions all the way through said roll - and had planned to use said penguins for the traditional Christmas Card send-out's this years. But I can't find them.

I've gone through my desk drawers - where I expected they'd be - thoroughly.

Found a two year old pack of liquorice gum there. Four pieces left. I chewed one piece after lunch, and am chewing another two right now, and the final one I'll probably chew up tomorrow, cause it feels a bit dangerous to have an opened pack of chewing gum lying around quite that long, so I'd best consume these quick. But not too quick incase they're no longer OK.

One year past expiration may be fine, but two's pushing it...

Had barbeque for lunch. I fired up the little grill I attained earlier this year, doused some mushrooms, zucchini, paprika and salmon in three different types of marinade, of which two batches expired about a year ago.

They were all delicious.

Stomach's acting up a bit since, though I'm uncertain if it's due to the old gum, or the marinade, or the mushrooms - which are always risky regardless of freshness, or the slightly charred foodstuff overall...

Next time we do this I won't have the gum, so we can find out at least if it was the gum.

I also found a small bag of probiotics lemonade in the desk drawer, and one with a powder on kale and other mineral-rich greens.

Not sure when the probiotic expired - it was part of a bigger package. I'm pretty sure the other powder's expired too, but these are powders - which means they're dry, so it should be less of an issue. Worse when oils are involved. Or dairy, god forbid!

I found some other fun non-foodstuff-related things in the desk too, but no penguins, so I'll have to make do for hares and carrots for Christmas cards this year instead. Not very seasonal, but what can you do?

Some of the other stickers we've stocked up on are probably getting a bit old too. They don't stick...

It just dawned on me that maybe it's not so strange I have those ongoing mysterious gut/back/something issue that I have after all.

Finna barbeque a lot more this Spring I hope.

~20 old batches of marinade to go.

...missed it by a couple! I'd planned to post this as the 10,000th post.

Oh well. We're there. We're journeying onwards. We're still keeping a remarkably consistent pace of ca 500 posts per year too - though the majority of those may come late this year.

We're up at 427,000 words on pages now, and 319,000 words in comments too! And 1,988,000 in blogs - 'bout to be two million before this year is over.

Do with those statistics what you will. Maybe some day down the line I will better analyze and differentiate between the particular lapses of time with which said numbers shift and increase, and come to some sort of conclusion over the grand scheme of all things...

Until that day let us just say Hey! The post count's friggin' 10,000.

And that is cool. Hopefully they shall yet accrue and accumulate.

Here's the last milestone.