Johan and Tina’s Wild Weekend Adventures, Part 4

Our sleeping arrangements may not have been all that we’d bargained or hoped for, but it pretty quickly turned out that the weirdness and uncertainty regarding these were nothing compared to the weirdness and uncertainty of our Sunday.

I didn’t really get a good night’s sleep from Saturday to Sunday. For starters, we got to bed at like 5 AM, moreover I was actually cold and freezing for a change and lastly, I’m not really good at spending the night on couches in unfamiliar homes, but that’s just me. Consequently, I took ages just to get to sleep and when I did, I only enjoyed a few hours of constantly interrupted sleep as I had a weird habit of stirring awake about every five minutes.. Boo! Eventually, I heard the welcome sound of Tina stirring and starting to get up and a few minutes later, she popped her head in to see how I was doing.. And thus began a long, strange waiting game that lasted most of the day.

See, we did find ourselves in a bit of a predicament. Having had to change sleeping arrangements in the middle of the night and having borrowed Kim’s house with him and his girlfriend driving on to sleep at her place meant that, well, that we were essentially stuck in the middle of nowhere without Tina’s car and without any way of getting to it other than Kim getting up and driving home (as promised) and giving us a ride back to Tina’s car.. This had been the plan all along, but it was also a plan that was coined long before Kim got completely off of his ass drunk and started thrashing around making little to no sense.

Having had the night to sleep on and ponder this fact, we then realized that we might be running a little late on this particular day, but we had no idea how bad things were to get.. And when we got up, pretty much everything we could think about was breakfast and coffee.. And Kim of course had neither in the house! So, first things first were to call Kim not only in an effort to wake him from his sleep, but also to get directions to a nearby bakery where we could get some food – and hopefully coffee, too. To his credit, Kim did reply, not feeling too good, obviously, but he did give us directions towards the bakery, so into the cool morning air Tina and I went to get some food while, we thought, Kim got up and got ready to go pick us up.

For the record, I’ll advise anybody against getting stuck in tiny Danish villages without food on hand, it’s not that you can’t get food, it’s just that it’s hellishly expensive. We ended up taking a long, nice brisk walk to the nearest bakery and then blowing about DKK 1oo of Tina’s hard earned money on a loaf of bread, some cheese and a small canister of freeze dried coffee. Ridiculous! But we were hungry and happily returned “home” to brew up a few cups of freeze dried coffee and chomp down on a few slices of walnut bread with cheese while watching Disney’s “Cars”.. Aside from the fact that it was really rather cold without central heating, curling up on the couch with crappy coffee and overpriced breakfast was actually surprisingly nice like.

By the end of the movie, which was surprisingly good by the way, we were kinda starting to wonder where the hell Kim was at. The clock had now passed 1 PM and Tina had a football game at just past 2 PM which it was now becoming clear that she wasn’t going to make. We therefore decided to place yet another call to Kim only to discover that he had actually fallen asleep again rather than getting up.. Lovely! Tina scolded him a bit and told him to get his ass in gear while we settled down to watch yet another movie in the form of Ice Age 2 which I thought I’d seen, but apparently hadn’t. Upon having watched this movie and watched the clock progress even further, Tina and I were now starting to get downright grumpy. Not only had we both missed an appointment that day, we were also quickly running out of things to do in a rather empty house without central heating and a working TV signal. So, after placing more frantic phone calls to a still sleeping Kim, we got up and went for another walk around the village, covering all of it at least twice in the half hour or so we walked around for while trying to get Kim off his ass.

Following several failed attempts and angry phone calls, we finally managed to get him on his way at around 5 PM and returned to the house to wait for him and his girlfriend to arrive which they did without much splendor some time later. Upon seeing Kim, it was pretty obvious why things had taken some time. The poor guy looked completely beside himself, shaking, pale and absolutely not looking fit for fight and I was actually kinda surprise that he’d actually made the trip back to the house. It also became clear that he wasn’t driving us anywhere that day so while he settled down to rest his poor, beaten body, his girlfriend, Karina, got us into her car and drove us back to Tina’s uncle’s place where Tina’s car was waiting. Here we made our quick goodbyes with her and got ready to move on, but not before checking in on Lars and Pia..

Who, surprise surprise, also looked more than a little worse for wear on this bright Sunday. We hung around for a while chatting with them and sharing impressions of the night before heading on on our quest to find our way back to Kolding.. Which we did by way of Tina’s parents whom we wanted to just drop in on to say hi while we were in the neighborhood anyways. We only managed to get hold of Tina’s mother, though, since her dad was out, but we did manage a cosy little talk with her before once again jumping in the car and heading back to Kolding.

On the way, we actually managed to (not literally) bump into Tina’s dad who was in turn on his way back home, so we created a nice little road block for a few minutes while parked on a country road chatting with him through open windows.. Good times!

By the time we were nearly back to Kolding, both of us were growing extremely hungry and since we were planning a whole roast chicken for dinner which, all things being equal, takes one hell of a long time to cook. It didn’t take much convincing for either of us (even me) to stop by Mickey D’s drive through on the way and get a few cheeseburgers just to keep the hunger at bay while the chicken cooked.

We finally made it back to Tina’s at around 7 PM, I think, and sat down to devour our Mickey D’s which we managed to do in about five minutes total and I must admit (don’t tell Tina) that I actually enjoyed it for a change. While we ate, the oven preheated and once we’d finished eating I got to work on gutting and rinsing the chicken. I really wanted Tina to do that part as she has much smaller hands and would have much easier access to the cavity, but I’d kinda guessed her answer in advance and as thus refrained from asking. Once clean, I stuffed the chicken with some quartered lemons and a whole bunch of garlic and shoved in in the oven for what was to be an unidentifiable amount of time. We then sat down to watch some CSI while the chicken cooked and all was good for a while.

Neither Tina nor I had roasted a whole chicken before so the timing on the chicken, sauce and potatoes went a little askew. Or, a lot really, but we survived and managed in the end. One important lesson learned is that you should really check if a chicken is done on both sides before starting to carve it because raw chicken juices spilling all over a small kitchen equals not only a righteous mess but a bit of a biohazard to boot! So, note to self, do that next time.

Once the chicken had finished its second trip in the oven and the potatoes and sauce had been kept warm for about half an hour, we were ready to once again carve the beast.. Which, again, was something that neither of us had attempted before, so I just sorta improvised.. And I’d like to say that it all went rather well. If you disregard the fact that I accidentally tore the leg bones off, snapped a few other bones and never managed to cut through the carcass. So, really, I didn’t do very well at all, but since it was just the two of us, we settled for a mess of boneless, shredded and roughly chopped chicken pieces, served on a community plate. Oh well. The important thing was that the bird was surprisingly juice and tasty, so despite having made an ungodly mess and nearly infected the both of us with food borne illnesses, we couldn’t help but sit there, eating our 9 PM dinner and patting ourselves on the backs for a job well done. It had been a long, tiring day that didn’t go anything like planned at all, but sitting there eating roasted chicken at way too late in the evening, it didn’t all seem so bad at all.. And, of course, we both ended up eating much more than we should have, resulting in the familiar sight of both of us giving two fucks about the dishes and just collapsing into Tina’s most comfortable chairs and laying there in a food coma for a few hours.

I quite honestly didn’t have the strength to get up for what seemed like at least two hours and when I finally did, it was only to clean up a bit of the remaining mess, wrap up the carcass of the chicken, thank Tina for a wonderful weekend and give her a big hug before dragging myself and the bird down the stairs, throwing the bird in the dumpster and then dragging myself on home. It really had been a most awesome and partially spontaneous but cozy weekend and thanks to my new work schedule and job hunting ways, it has taken me more than a week to actually relate all of it.. But there you go, we appear to have come full circle!

Johan and Tina’s Wild Weekend Adventures, Part 3

As I got up Saturday morning at the crack of noon, it occurred to me that over the past couple of days, I’d developed a pretty strange sleeping pattern. I’d get the sleep I needed, on average anyways. I’d sleep five hours one night, ten the other, it’d add up to 15 hours of sleep total or 7.5 hours of sleep per night. It seemed a pretty strange way of doing things, but at least I’d feel well rested every other day.

Sleeping till noon did bear some implications on my day. I did initially have rather a lot of plans for the day, the most important of these being that Saturday was the day of Tina’s uncle celebrating his 40th birthday and I had been hired to plate and serve foods and drinks for the occasion. We weren’t leaving for the party until 4 PM’ish, but I’d hoped to get a lot of other things done before setting off.. But what with my deciding to sleep till past noon only to wake up to a fridge completely lacking something suitable to eat for breakfast, most of my plans got canceled in favor of finding food and getting ready to head out. Tina, being the sweetheart that she is, did offer that I could drop by for lunch, but that would have kept me from showering and getting ready which would also have been bad.. So I settled for staying home, running to the store and scrambling around feverishly to get food on the table before showering and getting ready and heading out – all while chatting happily with Tina on MSN, of course, as I still like to pretend I’m good in the whole multitasking department.

Needless to say, things got hectic in the end. My understanding was that Tina would be picking me up at around 4:15 PM and as such I didn’t even consider showering or starting to get ready till some point past 3 PM. I also somehow forgot to consider that I’ve been growing my hair long for three years now and that long hair takes longer to wash, dry and tame.. I don’t know how I keep doing that.. Either way, I ended up eventually doing pretty good time until Tina shot me a message asking if I’d have time to stop by her place and help her pick out shoes to match her outfit.. Which I’d of course love to do, but it also meant that I’d have to be ready and out the door about five minutes after receiving said request. A task I of course managed because I’m simply that damn good.

So, a little before 4 PM I was out the door and on my way down to Tina’s as fast as my legs could carry me and my new shoes and fancy clothes permitted. I’m not one to usually dress very fancy like, so dodging my way down dusty paths, zig-zagging between mopeds, happily newly wed couples and random drunken strangers while trying not to get my new clothes sweaty and dirty was an experience to say the least. But I managed. Barely. Almost. Which is to say that by the time I tumbled in through Tina’s front door, she remarked “Oh, you look good.. But there’s a huge smudge on you right there!” – Well, I try.. And the smudge wasn’t something that Tina’s expert advice and a barely damp paper towel couldn’t fix. Tina, as could be expected, looked smashing and picking out shoes turned out to be only a matter of my confirming that the ones she had already picked out looked great on her.. Which wasn’t much of a problem for me as they were red stilettos, so, umm, yeah.. Duh!

Having thus taken care of smudges and confirmed that Tina did in fact look very pretty, we set off towards the small neighbor town of Vejen where the party was to be held, chatting happily and listening to a bit of metal on the way – as we usually do. Tina eventually dropped me off by her uncle’s place before heading on herself to pick up her grandmother and finish a few things before returning later to take part in the festivities. As she drove off, I got acquainted with her uncle, aunt and their dog Whiskey and set out to explore the perimeter.

I should point out that I have next to no experience in the field of catering and serving at parties, I just somehow once in the past got tricked into doing it by Tina’s parents and apparently her entire family took such a liking to me and my efforts that they’re now regularly requesting my help for such chores. I’m not entirely sure why, but I’m not complaining as the money is pretty good and I do enjoy me a challenge and meeting new people. My lack of experience should prove an interesting facet this very night, though. I don’t know why, but I’d somehow guessed that they were hiring more people than just me for the job so during the tour of the house, the garden, the tent where the party was being held and the various caches of beverages and food, I was sorta starting to wonder when the others would show up but eventually deducted that they weren’t going to show..

As Tina’s uncle, Lars, at this point was on his second beer and aunt Pia seemed a little stressed out to a point where she was uncertain about the contents and stage of the menu she’d ordered and whether or not it would actually be delivered, this realization meant that I suddenly had to start taking additional mental notes and start actually planning things in my head. It also led me to conclude that I’d probably just have to go with the flow throughout the evening and improvise at times.. All in all, I didn’t have time to worry, though, because by the time they were done showing me around and reminding me not to hit my head on the low door frame that I kept bumping into, guests started arriving and the first calls of “where the hell is the food?” were heard.

Luckily, the caterer arrived with the food at around the same time that the last guests made their arrival. So I quickly paid off the man and started carrying the obscene amounts of food into the kitchen while guests mingled and had drinks. I’m not entirely sure how many people Uncle Lars and Aunt Pia had ordered for, but they certainly got their money’s worth. Some of the food arrived on serving platters, some had just been dropped into aluminum trays. Some had been carved, some needed carving. It was interesting.. But by way of an electric knife, whatever serving dishes I managed to pull from various cupboards, and despite of Tina’s dad who had snuck into the kitchen partially to make my life hell and partially to steal food, I managed to get food on the table while guests busied themselves having drinks and getting seated.

The food was being kept and prepared in the kitchen while the party took place across the yard in a large tent situated on the lawn, so I got a fair bit of exercise running back and forth which was all good. When guests were seated and had started to dig into both food, wine, beers and what have you, I was reasonably sure that the worst was over.. Which, of course, was entirely not the case, because now began the grueling task of keeping the serving platters full, the beer supply stocked, all while trying not to drop things, keep myself from crashing into guests who’d snuck outside for smoking and also answering various questions and performing various chores.. All while keeping an eye on the clock and the natural progression of the whole master plan – which had been related to me once, in a hurry. It was interesting, but for the most part worked out, even when people started fighting over whose song or which piece of entertainment were to come on next..

In short, it was quite a mouthful, but also quite fun, even if I didn’t know what I was doing half of the time but still had to pretend that I had everything under control when people dropped into the kitchen to say hi, chill, hang out and talk – which a surprising number of people actually did. Many of whom I’d never seen or spoken to before, but also familiar faces such as Tina’s parents, Tina herself with brother and brother’s girlfriend in tow and of course the dear hosts who most certainly seemed to be enjoying the whole ordeal.. Good times!

I eventually got to sit down and have some food myself at around 10 PM and was also joined by Tina, brother, etc for a beer in the kitchen before I was officially relieved of my duties and told by aunt Pia to go relax, sit down and have a few beers.. See, that was the best part of the whole ordeal: Since I was depending on Tina for transportation and what not and she, given the fact that there was an open bar all night, certainly wasn’t driving anywhere that evening, the plan was that once the food and everything was out of the way, I’d simply join the party, have a few beers and attempt not to make too much of a fool of myself in front of Tina’s family. So essentially, I got paid for the ordeal, got my fill of free food and eventually a party as well. Not an entirely bad way to spend a Saturday evening!

I joined the party at around 11 PM which was about five hours after everybody else and I pretty quickly felt that.. Let’s just say that mostly everybody else but me were in pretty high spirits and there was some catching up to do.. On the other hand, I’d been at it pretty hard the weekend before, so I wasn’t really in the mood to catch up too much. As a result, I kicked back in a safe little corner with the few people that I knew, popped open a beer.. Which eventually turned into a few beers.. and watched the mayhem ensue.. And as far as mayhem goes, I’ll have to hand it to Tina’s family!

Her uncle, the birthday boy, was pretty well liquored up by this time, as was his dear wife and in many ways they seemed to act as the catalysts for the party because everybody else just seemed to follow their lead, resulting in a lot of really drunk, really happy and fucking funny people. I’d barely managed to sit down before I witnessed Uncle Lars receiving the wedgie to end all wedgies at the hand of one of his friends who managed to literally nearly pull Lars’ boxers up over his head, effectively destroying the boxers in the process. Which Tina’s brother, Kim, may or may not have taken as an invitation to break more garment.. At any rate, it wasn’t long before he walked up to me, took one look at my new button up shirt, nodded and declared that I needed to show more skin before grabbing me by the collar with both hands and pulling in each direction, effectively ripping my shirt open, popping two buttons and baring my chest. I suppose it was his subtle way of saying “I’m drunk, welcome to the party!” – and what a party it was! I’m not generally very comfortable about showing skin, but I suppose after Kim’s makeover, I’d have to. Which also meant that I’d have to get some more beers in order to become more comfortable with the whole situation. Luckily, there were no shortage of people willing to drink them with me and no shortage of odd and weird sights and sounds: To name but a few, I saw a moped on the dance floor, a one armed man getting told off for beating people over the head with a small scale flag pole, I saw Tina getting dropped on her back from two meters in the air (poor thing).. And three generations headbanging to AC/DC. Now, I come from a family where parties can get pretty wild, but this was an absolute riot and good times were had by all until way into the wee hours when Tina decided that we were apparently heading out to take a look at the town..

And so we did. Or, well, made it all the way downtown just to discover that absolutely nothing was going on down there, so after a long and grueling walk, we just gave in and called it a night. Kim’s girlfriend’s dad had been nice enough to offer to come pick us up at any hour, so at around 3:30 we gave him a call and being the cool father that he was, he set out on a long drive to pick us up.. While we set out to get some pizza and figure out sleeping arrangements for the night..

Which were an interesting story of their own. Tina and I were too far away from home to sleep in our own beds and  had originally thought that we’d be spending the night at Tina’s parents. Tina’s parents, however, not only left the party early, they’d also forgotten about the arrangements and owing to this and various personal issues, sleeping there was not and option. So Tina had spent the night exploring various alternative sleeping arrangements. It was eventually decided that we’d spend the night at her brother’s house which was all fine and good, though apparently Kim and his girlfriend weren’t spending the night there, too, but were rather going to be staying at his girlfriend’s place. I’m not entirely sure of the reasoning applied here but the result was that we waited for our ride to show up, drove by Tina’s uncle’s house to pick up some stuff, then by Kim’s house where Tina and I were dropped off and let in as the rest of the crew traveled on to new destinations.

Regardless of the reasoning, I was pretty tired at this point and was happy to just have somewhere to sleep, so while Tina got ready and settled into her brother’s bed, I got out a sleeping bag I’d borrowed from her and got settled on the couch. Which proved a little difficult in the pitch darkness of a strange house, but after some bumping into stuff, I eventually managed to find the couch and the sleeping bag and curl up for a few hours of sleep.. The clock had now past 5 AM, but it was still to be a good two hours before I got any sleep at all which I found kinda strange considering it had been such a long tiring day..

Johan and Tina’s Wild Weekend Adventures, Part 2

For the record, getting only five hours of sleep is not the best way of starting a day dedicated to cheering up a loved one. While years of sleep deprivation has taught me not to let my mood be affected by lack of sleep and rest, lack of sleep does make the execution of basic tasks such as well laid out, spontaneously generated, fool proof plans for the cheering up of tiny Tinas.. So it was with a bit of starting difficulties that I got up on Friday morning at 10 AM and started on my plan to spoil Tina silly.

The first part of my plan involved going to the store for four remaining ingredients needed for meals and drinks throughout the day. This pretty basic task was made exceedingly complicated by the fact that when I’d gotten up, gotten ready and all, I was entirely incapable of finding my house key.. Anywhere.. I literally spent about a half hour searching through my relatively modest living quarters only to eventually find it laying around under a stack of papers.. Go figure!

Having finally retrieved my key, I set off to the store, thinking that I didn’t need to bring my shopping list, coz well, how was I to screw up when I only had four items on it.. Ahem, well, as it turns out, when I arrived back some twenty minutes later, I did manage to screw up.. Or, well, I did make it back with four items.. Only, they somehow weren’t the items on my list.. Which seemed a bit confusing to me, but then I was really tired and so a second trip was quickly planned and executed.

It all was a bit of a mess, but luckily it ended up somehow fitting into my grand plan because I had Tina on text throughout my entire confuddled attempt to execute the most basic step of my plan and my blatantly screwing up always seems to bring a grin to her face, so in that aspect my grand plan was already working.. Tina was smiling and laughing.. On my behalf, granted, but hey, I’ve gotten used to that. Having finally gotten everything needed for the day, I made coffee, ate breakfast, showered, packed everything up and prepared to head down to Tina.. At which point another major problem occurred: In my grand effort to make everything perfect, considerate, personal and thoughtful, I’d ended up picking out and packing so many damn things that I’d filled up not only my backpack, but also two large plastic bags with groceries, drinks, frozen meals and what have you. Add to that the fact that the weather was actually nice and hot for a change and I had quite the long, tiring haul ahead of me.

Now, I think it’s fair to say that Tina has probably by now gotten used to a bit of slight exaggeration on my behalf in an effort to make everything right. But that’s not to say that she didn’t produce quite a bewildered look and an amused giggle when I crashed through her door, panting and cursing and dropping all my goods on her floor. Giggles turned to laughs and smiles when I started explaining the reasoning and considerations behind my apparent mad actions and I dare say she felt quite appreciated and spoiled once she got over the initial shock. At any rate, she didn’t seem very upset or unhappy during the day, but rather chatty, happy and smiling.. But then again, we apparently have that effect on each other.

After the few initial mishaps, things actually went rather smoothly. Tina worked on her presentation, I whiled away time surfing the web, I cooked her lunch of whole grain pasta with tomato/cream sauce which was immensely enjoyed by all (yes, all two of us) and consumed in portions more resembling dinner servings than lunch, but let’s not tell anybody, eh? Following lunch, we went on a long cosy walk around sunny ol’ Kolding, chatting and part-taking in our favorite activities which include bickering about everything and nothing in particular, disagreeing with each other for the sake of disagreeing, cracking jokes and commenting on the size of Tina’s ass.. Wait, that last part probably sounded wrong, so scratch that.. We also did laundry, a rather simple activity which, like so many other things we engage in together, ended in a feverish shouting battle when Tina dropped some stuff and my gentleman instinct told me to bend down and pick it up, not actually realizing that I was reaching for her.. umm.. delicates.. The resulting discussion was too weird to recall here, but leave it to us to turn something as simple as laundry into a huge argument.

After this first real martial crisis of the day, we decided to go grocery shopping since Tina was pretty much fresh out and even tiny people need to eat now and then, so we got into Tina’s car, drove to the store and went for one of the more entertaining grocery runs I’ve ever been on. Needless to say, it involved more arguing, some pouting, some ordering each other around and, again, a bit of shouting. It also involved a lot of turned heads from random passersbys and a few strange looks.. And why do people think we’re dating again?! Things got really out of control when I started bossing Tina around, telling her to act her age, behave, get out of people’s way and what not. This practice inadvertently got us talking to a chatty elderly gentleman who apparently thought we made a nice, healthy looking, young couple and that Tina couldn’t be blamed (as I was trying to do) for being in his way as he was the one sporting a large gut. I, being the utter asshole friend that I am at times, made some (entirely untrue) comment about it not being entirely his fault as Tina, too, was getting a little chubby. This, of course, made Tina pout and mutter “he’s always teasing me” in her littelest voice, while it sent our new-found friend on a long rant about how we couldn’t all be as slim as me and how he’d just recently quit smoking, gained a lot of weight as a result and was now working out feverishly to get buff and fit.. Which was probably all true, but still a bit of a weird stream of information to reveal to random strangers.

We eventually escaped our new chatty friend and continued on our happy bickering way. We eventually ended up getting a whole bunch of stuff. Needed and un-needed groceries alike.. We even got a chicken! Yes, a chicken! Well, a dead roasting chicken, mind you, but still. I’m not entirely sure how it happened, but we found a whole bunch of fresh roasting chickens on sale and somehow decided that since we were spending the entire Friday AND Saturday together, we might as well complete the happily married couple illusion and buy a chicken that we could prepare together for Sunday dinner. And so we did.. Before realizing that we had probably spent enough money by now and should leave the store.

Safely back at Tina’s, we probably did some more laundry and probably hung out and had a few laughs before I really made her day by presenting her with a homemade Mojito which she happily and beamingly consumed  in what looked like about three gulps while I got started on the Pad Thai dinner, I’d promised her for so long. I must admit I was rather scared by the prospect of cooking Pad Thai for dinner, not so much because I think I make a poor Pad Thai but more because Tina has actually been to Thailand and tried the real thing.. And nothing you can do in a miniature kitchen in Denmark can possibly in any way measure up to the experience of eating Thai street food in the proper settings.

As it turns out, I really had nothing much to be scared about, though. The preparations went more smoothly than I’d expected, Tina did a pretty good job at setting the table and pouring the wine while I stir fried everything to something closely resembling perfection and pretty quickly had a large serving of Pad Thai on the table which was approved by all, including the 50 odd percent of the dinner party that had actually been to Thailand and had had the real thing. The wine, too, was well received and both of us ate till we were about ready to burst. I’ve completely forgotten how filling a dish Pad Thai is.

After dinner, and some moaning and groaning, we cleared the worst of the mess out of the way and sat down to watch a few episodes of The Big Bang Theory before heading out to do the 28th load of laundry that day.. Give or take.. On our way to the laundromat, Tina did what she does best and looked at me with her pretty blue eyes and her sweet little smile and asked if maybe, perhaps, quite possibly, there would be enough ingredients left for another Mojito. There may even have been some batting of the eye lashes, I don’t remember, we all know I have a hard time saying no to cute she already had me pretty well twisted around her little finger.. And, besides, another Mojito? Well, duh!

So, we finished up quickly in the whole laundry department and hurried on back to Tina’s apartment where she got cracking on cleaning up after our Pad Thai dinner while I got cracking on making two more Mojitos. This is the kinda distribution of labor that I can get behind.. And, as it turns out, the amount time it takes to wash off the dirty pans and dishes from a Pad Thai dinner is about exactly the same amount of time it takes to make two perfect home-made Mojitos.. Well, there you go. This second batch of Mojitos were savored over the last few remaining episodes of Season Two of The Big Bang Theory, a perfect combination if I dare say so.

By the time we’d worn out Season Two of The Big Bang Theory, the clock had passed midnight and I was starting to really feel the lack of sleep, so it wasn’t too long after this that I excused myself and we thanked each other for a wonderful day before I headed out the door and home to get some much deserved sleep..

Ten hours of much deserved sleep, it turned out..

Johan and Tina’s Wild Weekend Adventures, Part 1

I’ve been home for 15 hours now. This is the longest I’ve spent in my apartment since, well, Wednesday, I think. Plans for the weekend were initially pretty simple: dinner with Tina Friday, Serving at a birthday party in Tina’s family on Saturday, nothingness on Sunday.. But sometime Thursday, things started getting a little more complicated than that..

I really don’t know how it all started other than I spent most of Thursday having this weird feeling that I’d better not make any plans for the day Friday. My feelings were confirmed on Thursday evening shortly after arriving at work when a text message arrived from Tina asking me what my plans were for Friday other than dinner with her. I told her I had nothing planned and she in turn said that she had some preparations for her presentation of her thesis to do but really wouldn’t mind some company throughout the day. I really don’t know what it is with Tina and I and the bond that we share, but we’re scarily good at picking up on how the other is feeling.. To a point where it sometimes borders on mutual precognitive abilities.. Like this time around where I’d sensed something was up before Tina even took the time to tell me that she wasn’t feeling entirely happy and wouldn’t mind some company.

Long story short, issues regarding insecurity about the future and the shape of things to come has apparently gotten to others than just me and I was only more than happy to rip a day out of the calendar to do what I do best which is make Tina smile when she’s feeling down. And I decided to do so in the best possible way that I know of: by spoiling he silly and treating her to a day all about her, good food, good wine, fun and games. In essence, I spent the next few hours at work trying to cheer her up best as I could from afar and assuring her that I had a perfect plan for making her feel better which involved getting up early the next day, trotting down to her, keeping her company, keeping her well-fed for all meals of the day and generally spreading good vibes.

This, of course, was a truth with modifications. I didn’t really have any plan at all, or any clues what to do. I do, however, have the powers of improvisation and a knack for knowing what pleases Tina and makes her happy. My little white lie worked, though, and tiny Tina eventually went to bed at around 1:30 AM, a little more at ease (hopefully) and looking forward to the day to come. I on the other hand, spent the next few hours at work and the trip home thinking about just what the hell to do about the next day.

Dinner was easy: I had for the longest time promised to cook Pad Thai for the two of us and Friday was supposed to be the day I’d live up to my promise. Pad Thai, prior to final assembly is probably one of the most disgusting looking and smelling dishes in the world, so I had most of the preparations out of the way already. I’d also matched a white wine to go with the dish that I’d already let Tina sample a sip of so I knew she’d approve. So dinner was pretty safe.. But what about everything else?

Well, there’d have to be snacks! No matter how well I feed my dear friend she will without exceptions always get the munchies within a couple of hours after dinner once the movies (or series) start rolling and we start chilling and laughing. Thing is, I’m an idiot when it comes to snacks, so I settled for just popping by the 24 hour store on the way home and buying a bag of a certain brand of potato chips I know she enjoys and that we have a history of maybe sharing one too many bags of. Cheap and easy trick, but hey it works and I made sure to get one featuring various geometric shapes of chips because I know my adorably retarded little friend gets a kick out of sorting the shapes and deciding who gets to have which.

Good, snacks out of the way.. But what are snacks without drinks? Simply put (in my perfect little world anyways): Nothing! Luckily, Tina is super easy to please when it comes to drinks. There’s really ever only one option: Mojito! Or, more specifically, my homemade Mojito. I don’t mean to brag, but it’s really the only thing I’ve seen that can create a true Pavlovian response in her. You mention the word Mojito to her or even just show her one of the ingredients and she knows what’s coming, her eyes light up, she beams at you and starts smiling uncontrollably. It is at the same time both beyond funny and beyond cute and needless to say a perfect reason why I’d include homemade Mojitos as part of my plan to put a smile on her face.

At this time in the planning process, the hour had reached 3:15 AM Friday morning and I’d just made it home and in the door. As I’d decided to get up at about 10:30 AM, the reasonable choice would have been to go to bed and get some sleep. I, however, am not a very reasonable person and still had work to do. First things first, I got a single serving of lasagna out of the freezer. Partially because I’d promised her some lasagna ages ago, partially because I knew her financial situation wasn’t too good and I wanted her to at least have something to eat, and also partially because I’d had a little of badly timed fun on her behalf Thursday.. And, well, in an inside joke that only her and I will understand, homemade lasagna means I’m sorry (really, don’t ask, it’s a long, complicated story).

The retrieval of the “I’m so sorry lasagna” left only one blank step in my plan to spoil Tina silly. A suitable lunch to serve for her upon my arrival the next day. Again, most people would have gone to bed and worried about that the next day. But then again, I am not most people, so my solution to this final obstacle was to put on the newest episode of Ghost Hunters, grab a beer from the fridge and rummage through my pantry and fridge for things to turn into lunch for the next day. I pretty quickly ended up finding some onions, some garlic and some organic whole wheat spaghetti. I also found a whole bunch of really ripe tomatoes and shortly before 4 AM, an idea dawned to me: Spaghetti with tomato cream sauce with fresh basil and roasted garlic. So on went the stove, the oven and the fan and while most of the rest of the world was sleeping, Johan cooked tomato sauce, roasted garlic, sipped a beer and whiled away time.

I’m not sure your taste buds are really up to par at 5 AM in the morning, but I must admit that the end result was pretty good in my eyes and probably would taste even better with the addition of cream and basil in the morning.. It would appear I now had a fully functional plan for the cheering up of one Tina, involving me turning up in high spirits (and obviously tired), finishing the lunch for her, keeping her company throughout her struggle with the presentation, cooking her Pad Thai for dinner and pouring wine on her, feeding her drinks and snacks and doing whatever she wanted.. All I needed now was to write a shopping list for the last remaining ingredients I needed to purchase in the morning and then getting a few hours of sleep before executing the plan..

This couldn’t possibly fail.. Right?

This is it, then?

Handing in a MA thesis has probably been one of the weirdest experiences of my life. Not to mention one of the more stressful. In a true Murphy’s Law kinda way, anything that could go wrong did go wrong and as a result, I only barely finished printing the damn thing at midnight on Sunday, some 9 hours before I’d planned to hand in the damn thing. Having done so, I pretty quickly made my way home and more or less passed out from exhaustion.

The next morning, I got up early, called for a cab and went down to uni to hand in my thesis. Sitting in the cab with the culmination of five years of university on my lap really was the weirdest feeling ever. You’d think I’d be relieved that it’s all over, and of course I was, but it’s hard to even grasp that it really is over, let alone feel joyful and happy about it as you’ve spent the last few weeks being stressed out and worried sick about everything.. And, well, the whole process wears you out unlike anything I’ve ever tried before, so when I did finally make it to uni and handed the thing in, I felt more zombified than I ever have in my life. It was an odd mix of happiness, relief, nervousness and sheer exhaustion. I honestly cannot remember ever having been this tired and worn out in my entire life.. Really.. And it was only 10:30 AM on a day devoted to celebrating me, Tina and Louise handing in our respective theses.

Oh well, as always the Johan soldiered on.. Having handed in my thesis and said hi to Louise and Tina who just happened to be at uni for some last minute printing or whatever, I went on with my day. Which first and foremost involved planning and shopping for dinner later that night.. Which turned out to be a pretty interesting quest considering how mentally and physically beat I was and bearing in mind that we hadn’t really had time to do any planning what with our theses needing writing and stuff. What little planning Tina and I had done involved throwing out a hell of a lot of invitations and figuring we’d just sort out the details during the day.. With the result that we now had eight people (ourselves included) coming over to Tina’s for dinner that evening and no real plans for food or anything.

We decided during our little meet-up at uni to just go with something simple involving pasta, creamy tomato sauce and chicken and to more or less just tell people to show up whenever they felt like it. This took a lot of the stress out of the planning, for everyone but a severely sleep deprived Johan who now had to do shopping and preparations for dinner for eight.. Which was fun, let me tell you. It involved a lot of walking between my place and Tina’s place, going to the store not once, or twice but three times in order to get everything I needed. And making not one, or two, but three visits to my go to wine guy. The third of which was caused by my own stupidity as I chose to drop (and break) a bottle of white wine I’d just bought on my way down to Tina’s.. Doh!

The entire process took about four hours total, cock ups and all which left me about five minutes to rest at Tina’s (having your own key does have its privileges) before moving on with my day, the next part of which was a lot more enjoyable. See, Zascha was in town for the evening’s celebrations but had decided to come early to do some shopping. Having not had the chance to properly hang out and spend some time together in ages, we decided that I should join her and we’d make a day of it. A pretty awesome day, really. It was raining pretty heavily that day so we spent most of it huddled together under Zascha’s umbrella while walking around town and picking up new clothes, accessories and boots for Zascha. I know I’m a guy and shouldn’t enjoy such activities, but there you go, we actually had a lot of fun doing it and we barely even fought, bickered, made fools of ourselves or walked into things in the process.. Ahem!

We also took time out to visit a new downtown cafe for what we hoped would be a quick, easy lunch.. Which instead turned into a bit of a waiting game as they took forever to take notice of us, get our orders and eventually put food and drinks on the table.. But they did serve me my first beer of the day, so I’ll forgive them. As far as food was concerned, we decided to share a plate of nachos which would have been a pretty good idea, had we not been terrible at sharing. It all went reasonably well until I, as any guy would, implemented the universal “if they’re stuck together, they count as one nacho” rule, a rule that ended up working out in Zascha’s favor as she was able to lift almost an entire layer of chips stuck together by molten cheese. This, naturally, pissed me off so while she was happily and joyfully munching away at parts of her loot, I ripped the other half right out of her hand, dipped it and ate it like the bastard that I am, causing Zascha to shoot me a look of surprise, anger, disappointment and just plain disbelief.. Well, I’m sorry, sweetie, it had to be done!

I spent the rest of our lunch date wondering whether Zascha was about to kill me and or kick me in the shin, but to her credit, she did neither, though she did spend most of our subsequent walk down to Tina’s complaining about my manners. We arrived at Tina’s at around 5 PM, I think, and when we did, Emelie and Louise were already there, too.. I think.. At this time, I’d reached a point where my brain had started shutting down and not even registering the most basic things. The fact that Zascha (bless her) had brought a Cuban sipping rum for us to enjoy wasn’t really helping my cognitive process either and I can’t for the life of me relate any details of what happened during the next few hours. I know that Tine and Christian eventually arrived and that a lot of talks and laughs were had.. As for my part.. I was merely just there, trying to take part in the conversation, trying to get dinner on the table and trying to be somewhat coherent.. And I failed pretty miserably at most of those tasks. Judging by the reactions of the others, I made some pretty weird, out of place comments and had some pretty strange answers to pretty simple questions.. But I did get food on the table.. Eventually. And after forgetting pretty basic things such as adding cream to a creamy tomato sauce. The others assured me the food was still good, though, I wouldn’t know, I’m not sure I registered how it tasted, but I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t say so if it wasn’t. And I guess that goes to prove than even when tired to the point of exhaustion, slightly drunk and barely aware where I am, I can still cook a mean pasta dinner.. Yay me!

We spent a lot of time eating, talking, sipping good wine and having a general good time. Getting some food (and wine) in my stomach helped me wake up a little and start registering what was going on around me which made me realize that I obviously wasn’t the only worn out, tired and incoherent person in the room. Actually, I think that most everybody, save perhaps Karsten, Louise’s boyfriend, who arrived near the end of our dinner were in a totally different place mentally which quickly became evident as we went for a Trivial Pursuit after dinner which had to be abandoned after a few hours on account of no one being smart enough gain an advantage, let alone win.

Sadly, Christian and Emelie had to leave the party rather early and once they did at around 10 PM, fatigue quickly set in for others. Karsten and Louise were next to leave on account of Louise being exceedingly wrecked and Tine, too, took her leave at around 10:30 PM. Leaving just Tina, Zascha and I to sit around, enjoy ourselves, sip some of the remaining wine and actually managing to finish a quick round of Trivial Pursuit.. Amazing! We even made it through a surprisingly long and heated game of LUDO which literally lasted for hours.

We eventually admitted defeat at around 1:30 AM when we were all basically too tired to stand, or even sit up for that matter so as the girls started getting ready for bed, I made my goodbyes and started on the long, hard walk home which I honestly don’t even remember taking, but I must have done so as I woke up the next morning in my own bed feeling utterly discombobulated and not knowing what to do with an entire day off..

Being done is such a weird feeling, I hope I’ll get around to enjoying it one of these days..

Ain’t nothin’ but a B-thing.

It’s been a strange up and down kinda day today. As far as ups are concerned, well I started out by getting up early for a major downer which included five hours of thesis work and a resulting major headache. I’m not sure, but when you get a headache from trying to read and understand the things that you yourself have written.. That’s probably not a good thing? So, lots of major re-vamping today and clearing up of some rather unclear paragraphs.. Good times.. Well, not really.. But lotsa work done none the less.

Things improved considerably at around 5-ish when Zascha dropped by to say hello, chat a little and show me pictures of killer whales.. In no particular order. Always a pleasure to see her if only for too short. But, well, she had dinner plans and I had dinner plans. Hers revolved around getting home before the family started to worry and mine revolved around cooking dinner for Tina and I before we got around to a night of working on our theses.. Which, if anybody asks, is what I’m doing right now..

Dinner plans started out rather simple but, as so oft times before warped into something rather intricate. It started, as oft times before, with Tina stabbing at me with complaints. Apparently the poor, mistreated and never-spoiled-silly little thing was upset and jealous because I made a status update on Facebook about eating filet of beef out of the freezer to save money on food (Hey, it was there and paid off a long time ago). I countered with something along the lines of “it’s not like I ever spoil you with good meals and it’s not like I didn’t save the beef tenderloin to share with you.” which softened her up considerably especially once I told her that I’d only share if she helped make the Sauce Bearnaise to go along.. Which in turn made her overly excited and made her declare that “this is what we’re having Thursday night when you’re coming over!”

Well, we all know I can’t say no to a pretty blue. eyed blonde.. Thus, through the magic of Facebook status updates and comments, the pact was apparently sealed, and this apparently was what we were having on an ordinary Thursday working night.. The fact that the Sauce Bearnaise required rather unusual ingredients, hard work, research and is a dish generally feared by most common people was, of course, completely ignored.. That’s just how we roll. To be honest, I was mainly excited because most recipes call for a splash of wine to be added, so I saw it as a great excuse for sharing a bottle of wine after we were done with our work. The other harsh fact, that most people would have run screaming from the thought of having to prepare complicated reductions, clarify butter and make water bath emulsifications of eggs and said clarified butter in a tiny tea kitchen.. I once again plainly ignored.. After all, how hard could it be? And if all else failed, there’d still be beef tenderloin and wine, right? As it turns out, things weren’t half as complicated as they were hyped up to be. Carrying all the silly, fancy ingredients down to Tina turns out to be about the hardest part of the endeavor, a grueling task I set out on once Zascha had left.

Tina’s on this insane, stupid and crazy work out schedule at the moment, so she was out when I arrived.. So I locked myself in and got all the preparations out of the way before Tina arrived home tired and hungry to the smell of potatoes and bacon wrapped green beans in the oven.. Which, come to think of it, probably didn’t help. I wanted to cheer her up with a glass of wine, but we were working, so meh.. Instead she sat down and got some work done while I got to the business of clarifying butter, frying steaks, making a mess of things and whisking my left arm off.

I’d figured making Bearnaise would be a lot like making mayonnaise only using melted butter instead of oil and having the additional worry in shape of the heat factor to worry about.. Which was pretty much the case, except it was surprisingly straight forward. Heat shallot and tarragon reduction in water bath, add egg yolks, whisk in clarified butter, curse some, add tarragon leaves, curse some more, whisk again and then rest your arm.. The hardest part, really, was keeping up with the whisking and the cursing. I’m not really the person to go around whisking things a lot, so by  the end both my wrist, and and shoulder was sore like fuck all. Tina, bless her, did offer to help with the whisking, but I figured that since I had once in the past scolded her quite badly for touching one of my sauces, that’d just be wrong, so I suckered it up and eventually came up with something that looked a lot like Bearnaise, smelled a lot like Bearnaise.. And tasted nothing like the Bearnaise you know from the supermarket.. In a really good kinda way!

This lot of apparent Bearnaise sauce was swiftly transfered to the table and served along with the tenderloin steaks, the roast fingerling potatoes (my Nemesis) and bacon wrapped green beans to quite loud and favorable reviews.. Again I found myself wishing we’d had some wine to go along which, technically we did, but again there was the whole damn work factor thing.. Blah! But still, it was quite good.. And I say that judging by the fact that the entire 1800 calories batch of Bearnaise was gone in record time, that I myself ate about as much sauce as I usually do in a year and that Tina actually matched me in terms of size of portions consumed.. All of which are surprising and scaring factors in their own way. But then, I guess sometimes you just have to indulge a little.

After eating and a bit of food coma-ing and some complaints of tummy aches, I volunteered to do the dishes on account of still having a damn headache and being too full to concentrate anyways. Tina instead got back to complaining about writing on her thesis. Something she’s actually still doing now two hours later while I’m still trying to get started.. Mayhaps, I should just call it a day and go convince the little one to have a glass of wine with me.. Yes, I do believe that sounds like a plan!

I has a wine cooler!

It’s been a pretty quiet weekend in Johan-land.  Actually, most of it has been dedicated to working on my thesis (90 pages down, baby, ten to go!), but some epic stuff has happened such as my mom and Klaus dropping by somewhat unexpected with a birthday present.

When I say somewhat unexpected I mean that my mom did warn me on Friday that they might drop by on Saturday morning, so I did get some fair warning and I did manage to get up at 8:30 on Saturday just in case.. Not that I’d heard anything further or anything, and not that I did hear anything until around 10 AM when my mom called and was like “Yeah, we’ll be by in about half an hour’s time. Cool, I said, and put down my work for a while and started waiting.. Which I did for all of an hour until my phone rang again and my mom informed me that they were running a little late which, I told her, I’d kinda figured out after they didn’t show up after that half hour. My mom then started rambling on about how I’d misunderstood what had been said while I could hear Klaus in the background trying to press along down a totally different track as far as excuses went.. I never really did figure out what had happened or why they were running late, in fact, I’m not sure they even THEY know, but it’s nice to hear that they’re already at the point where they’re starting to disagree about things and bicker on like an old married couple.

Either way, long story long, they eventually arrived at around noon-ish and called me out to meet them in the drive way on account of them having difficulty getting my present out of Klaus’ car. Which is no surprise given that Klaus drives a classic, lowered, aerodynamic sport car kinda thing and they arrived with a box large enough to fit a fully grown Tina.. And about as heavy as a fully grown Tina as well.. Which, admittedly, isn’t really all that big or all that heavy but what with Klaus being close to retirement age, my mom being female and the space being rather  tight and narrow, it was understandable that they were having a bit of trouble.. And since it was my present and all, I figured I’d better come lift it out the car and carry it inside.

So, what all went into this giant, heavy box of doom? Well, since they hadn’t really bothered (or been capable) of wrapping the huge ass box, it was kinda easy to tell from the beginning. Yet, not really believing my own eyes, I still carried it inside and opened it to confirm that it did in fact contain a 15 bottle electronic wine cooler! Or, if you happen to be from America and think that a wine cooler is something you drink, we might also call it a wine fridge.. Either way, it’s a small cooling unit with adjustable temperature settings and enough room for fifteen bottles of wine.. and it’s f’ing awesome! In fact, I pretty quickly declared that it was the perfect gift for someone like me.. And at the same time a really bad gift for someone like me. See, given the recent string of birthdays, more or less expected dinners with Tina and what have you, I’m down to five bottles of wine in my personal collection.. Which leaves me with ten empty slots to fill and an already run amok collector’s spirit.. The fact that I now have substantially improved storage conditions for my wines also means that I can now buy substantially better and more expensive wines without necessarily having to drink them young or worry about the effects of changing temperatures in my basement.. As you can probably tell, it’s all a bit of a predicament! But even so, I think it’s an awesome present and I’m sure that the five wines that I do have are quite happy to be chilling at a cool 16 degrees rather than the pretty hot and humid comfort of our washing cellar at this time of year.

My mom and Klaus stuck around just long enough to witness my childish fascination with my gift and then raced on, excusing themselves with having a ton of stuff to take care off. I found it all a bit odd, but hey if they didn’t want to stay.. And I did have work to get back to, aside from assembling my new toy and re-stashing my wines,  so I guess it was all good.

I worked on my thesis till around 4 PM when I hit the 90 page mark and was like “fuck it, let’s celebrate!” I’d heard Dunkel was back in town so I headed down to him with a few beers and other interesting drinks, and so we pretty soon found ourselves in a pretty good mood watching some clips on Youtube and throwing down a few cold ones. We eventually got to talking about dinner and I’m not really sure how, but somehow home-made Chicken Cordon Bleu turned up.. As so oft before, when alcohol is involved, one thing let to another and before we knew it, we were on our way back from the store carrying DKK 255 worth of purchases including chicken breasts, emmentaler cheese, air cured ham, cream, a bottle of vodka and some extra strong lagers.. The last few items were mainly for inspiration as neither of us knew how to make Chicken Cordon Bleu, so we figured there’d be some discussion and planning involved.

As it turned out, when we got back, there was indeed very little planning involved as I did as I so often do and jumped gung-ho into the whole thing and started butterflying chicken breasts, thinking that was the way to do things.. It’s apparently not.. Apparently, you’re just supposed to pound them flat and then roll them around the filling, but I hadn’t bothered to do my research so I ended up with some really large, thin pieces of chicken. My main fear now was that they’d break or tear if I tried rolling them around the fillings, but luckily at this point drunken logic came to my help once again as we decided that rather than making two small Cordon Bleus and go through all sorts of worries.. Why did we not just make one GIANT Cordon Bleu, sandwiching ham and cheese between the two breasts and then not having to worry about rolling or folding anything? As an added bonus, we’d get a ridiculously large, unhealthy and in many ways revolting abomination of a Cordon Bleu in the process!! Genius!!

This all turned out to be not that bad of an idea; it certainly was easier to work with, it didn’t disintegrate during cooking (possibly because it filled the entire pan), that and there’s basically no end to the pride felt by two drunken idiots who get to make ridiculously large servings of unhealthy foods.. Especially not when they in another moment of sheer genius decide to top the masterpiece with some left over ham and cheese.. It really was beautiful. In a messed up kinda way

The whole thing was served with beerm roasted potato wedges and a sauce whipped up from roasted garlic, pan juices, chicken stock, nutmeg and cream.. Simple, filling, heart-attack inducing.. And surprisingly good for a first, drunken attempt.

Having thusly celebrated our own sheer genius, we kicked right into an extended movie night featuring.. Uhhh.. Dodgeball, Top Secret, Idle Hands and Zack & Miri Make A Porno.. I think.. I got confused.. At any rate, there was a lot of laughter, a lot of Jessica Alba, a lot of beer, some Offspring.. And I may have missed a few details along the way because at one point during Idle Hands we decided that it’d be fun to blend vodka, strawberry slush ice, brown sugar and more vodka and serve it up in tumbler style glasses.. As a result, we ended up splitting 2/3 of a bottle of vodka during half of what was essentially not that long of a movie.. Ah, good times! Which isn’t to say that a movie featuring Seth Green, Jessica Alba, music by Rob Zombie and cameo appearances by The Offspring wouldn’t have been pretty good times to begin with, I’m just saying that five shots of vodka in the process probably didn’t make it worse.

The whole beer/movie/vodka adventure lasted until about 1:30 when Dunkel had to forfeit which was probably, come to think of it, in everybody’s (all two of us) best interest. So I ended up walking home right around then, carrying the last half bottle of beer with me to finish once I got home which I of course did, coz you shouldn’t let good beer go to waste.. And I’m, come to think of it, quite happy that it all ended there because it allowed me to get up the next day, albeit late, without a hangover and actually get to enjoy my one full day off this week which was quite a nice experience, thank you very much. It’s been a long week but what little time I had off has been spent well, I guess now since we’re once again getting frighteningly close to 4 AM, I’d better get my ass to bed so I can get up at a reasonable hour tomorrow and get back to working on my thesis..

Sigh.. It’ll all be over soon.

Celebrate good times, c’mon!

As you may have heard from my ranting and ravings, yesterday was my 28th birthday and I think I may just have had the longest birthday ever what with me being awake for 22 out of those 24 hours that made up my birthday.. But how’d that come to be? Well, it’s a long story, but eh.. Here we go..

I kicked things off by celebrating my birthday at work since I was lucky enough to be working on the night of the 28th and as such spent the first hour of my 28th year sitting at my desk at GLS. Due to this fact, I’d picked up a small cake on my way to work to share with my fat fucking bastard colleagues because as far as fat fucking bastards go, they’re actually a bunch of nice fat fucking bastards.. That and they’re always offering me pieces of cake or whatever whenever they bring anything along, so while I don’t eat cake, I brought some along anyways because I’m just that good of a guy.

Of course, it all turned into a bit of a stealth mission. See, there are a lot of people at work, some of whom I’ve worked closely with, some of whom I kinda know and others I just don’t know and care about. Of course I wanted to share my pretty, little cake with Torben I work with now, but I also wanted to get a few slices down to Tom and Christian, my ex co-workers down in the terminal.. Preferably without everybody else finding out about the fact that I had cake and was sharing. So, I stashed my cake away in a small tea kitchen upstairs and at around 11:30 snuck out to cut off a few pieces, stash them on a plate which I stealthily crept down the stairs with, snuck down a few hallways, into the main terminal building and up to Tom who quickly stashed it away and/or ate it before anybody else noticed anything. I then ran back the way from whence I came, returned to my seat, plopped down and waited things out for about half an hour, waiting for various people who I knew to popping by the office at midnight to do so.. And when they did, I then snuck back out into the kitchen, retrieved the cake, cut off slices for Torben and I and wished myself a happy birthday. Torben did the same and then went and retrieved a grotesquely oversized flag and planted it behind me. I guess from then on the jig was up.. Oh well!

Having thusly celebrated the first hour of my birthday at work, I walked the long, hard way home, treating myself to a couple of hotdogs and a beer from the Shell station along the way which I consumed once I returned home while watching a few episodes of some random cooking show.. Good times! I think my previous post already details what happened then, so I’ll just skip right to my heading to bed at 3:30 AM and trying to catch a good nights sleep.. Which I, of course, failed at completely.. Mainly because of my mom deciding to call me and wish me a happy birthday! Now, let me just say that I have no problem with people calling me and wishing me a happy birthday, I do, however, have somewhat of a problem with people doing so at 5:30 AM on a night where I’ve been working.. I know she means well, though, it’s not her fault our daily rhythms are fundamentally different.

Anyways, once I’d been stirred awake, I absolutely positively just plain couldn’t get back to sleep and when other birthday wishes started pouring in from 7 AM and onwards, I thought fuck it and just spent some time laying about, doing some reading and whatever. I then slowly got up, showered, ground up some top notch coffee beans, heated some fiber rolls and sat down to have breakfast while checking the news.. I then spent the rest of the day just chilling, taking a break from the computer, doing the last bit of shopping for dinner and just kicking back getting things ready and running the dinner drill through my head. At around 2 PM, my mom dropped by to say congratulations and have a cup of tea. For my birthday, she brought me a small batch of Asbach Uralt chocolates which I found really considerate seeing as I love me some brandy, and kinda weird seeing as she knows I don’t eat sweets. She stayed for a little over an hour and we actually had a pretty good talk which is kinda surprising but nice.

At around 4 PM, I seriously got started on dinner preparations, the idea was to get things as far ahead as possible in advance so I’d just have to get the timing part right and throw things together once the guests arrived.. Which would turn out to be complicated enough, but eh.. I’d tried to keep the menu simple with focus on seasonal ingredients: For starters, we’d have an omelette with sauteed onions, fresh tomatoes and fresh basil, served with steamed green asparagus topped with smoked, dried ham, garlic, parmesan cheese and lemon juice.. Oh, and mine and Tina’s home-made garlic bread which we now have everybody hooked on. The main course would be medium-rare beef tenderloin topped with high quality olive oil, cracked pepper and more parmesan cheese, served with a warm potato salad of fingerling potatoes, cherry tomatoes, basil, more olive oil and grilled marinated artichoke hearts.. To that a green salad of rocket leaves, pears, walnuts and even more parmesan cheese, dressed with even more olive oil and some lemon juice.. Oh, and more garlic bread!

The guests – Tina, Christian, Emelie and Zascha – arrived at around 5 PM right as I was getting ready to sear the beef tenderloin and from then on the timing just sorta worked for a change. I got them seated, had Christian help me pour an aperitif in the shape of a Belgian inspired quality ale, which was both tasty and calming and I then seriously got cracking on dinner.. Sorry, I mean WE then got seriously cracking on dinner. See, I’d tried something new for a change and actually recruited the help of Tina with various tasks and we ended up dragging Christian in as well.. So I got to feel like a head chef for once while watching pots and pans and overseeing the general process while I had Tina doing garlic bread and various prep work while Christian beat eggs, took care of the wines, plates, wiped up after me when I’d occasionally spill a liter of two of boiling water over my feet and what have you.. I gotta say that despite grim expectations on my behalf it actually worked out pretty damn well and Tina was both proud and happy to help – not to mention proud that I actually let them help.. And while I was a little stressed out with having five people in the kitchen, three of them doing the cooking and two providing entertainment, I didn’t snap or yell at anybody.. Not even once! Even if Tina thought I did once, I didn’t, I swear!

Good times, and the timing actually was pretty good on most thing so we got dinner on the table without mentionable delays and decent timing between the dishes.. And it turned out rather good, I’d dare say. I thought it was delicious anyways and that the wines to go with it were superb. Tina even claimed it was the best dinner I’d ever cooked and while I somehow doubt that, it still made me feel all warm and happy inside At any rate, it certainly wasn’t a bad meal and it seemed to be joined by all, even Emelie, our vegetarian gone carnivore who was treated to beef tenderloin as one of her first tries at beef in 15 years.. Not a bad start, I dare say!

After dinner, Christian and Tina insisted on doing the dishes at which point I insisted to help in order to speed up the process. This created some amount of friendly arguing and bickering, but it was eventually decided that I could help hang out, drink wine and put things away as I knew (more or less) where they went. Eventually we ended up all five of us in the kitchen with Christian doing dishes, Tina and I bickering about various stuff and drying things off as well as putting them away and Zascha and Emelie once again providing entertainment, good advice and starting off a small spider scare as they discovered a few of my little friends that always seem to hang about my apartment even if I go hunting for them before having people over.. It was good times!

With dinner and dishes out of the way, we sat down to chill a bit, the girls (sans Zascha who was driving) had some more wine, Christian and I had a bit of rum and a few beers and we basically just hung out, talked and had a good time for a few hours. I got a present, too, in the shape of a stainless steel wine/schnapps cooler which hugely fascinated me, not so much because of the wine cooling feature , but more particularly because it actually said schnapps cooler.. Thank you guys.. This is awesome!

Zascha was the first person to give in, which is understandable as she’d have a long, tiring day, and decided to drive home, she took Tina with her who was too tired and hurting to walk home and decided to catch a lift. Emelie and Christian stayed back for a while, waiting for the next train before leaving at around 11 PM. With an hour or so left of my birthday, I decided it’d be terrible to let the last bit of wine go to waste so I sat down and enjoyed one last glass of Roodeberg Red, checked out my insane number of b-day greetings on Facebook (like, thanks!) and listened to a bit of music, winding down completely for a few hours before crawling to bed at around 2 AM.

Another awesome birthday is in the can.. Thank you guys and girls for making it a great, special day for me! And thank you everybody else for the heart-warming birthday wishes..

“You can’t be a professional alcoholic without a bottle of wine”

That, ladies and gentlemen, was last week’s quote of the week.. And it wasn’t even said by me, but rather by tiny sidekick and favorite professional drunk, Tina.. On a Sunday evening, none the less, but more on that later.. Coz it’s been a long weekend..

After weeks and weeks of complaining that I never got to socialize anymore, I’ve actually had a very busy and extremely sociable weekend, starting out on Friday afternoon where Tina texted me up and went “Since we’re heading out to the same place tonight, how about you come down and we call it a working day?” Not usually being one to turn down a good offer, I quickly accepted and headed off to do a few important things on the way (namely purchasing cheap beer for the night ahead and expensive wine for my birthday). I then headed down to Tina’s where she greeted me and immediately scolded me for not buying cheap beer for her as well when I had the opportunity. I figured she had a point and since we were lacking a few ingredients for the dinner we made up on the fly, I excused myself and headed out again to catch some sunlight, a few beers for Tina and a few ingredients for dinner.. A trip that went reasonably well, all things considered.. I mean, I had a nice walk, I got the beers, I got some extra veggies for the Thai Curry we had agreed on for dinner.. And then things kinda got a little out of hand as I once again started worrying too much about food aesthetics and flavor profiles. Long story short, I took a rare, quick, personal decision and abandoned the thought of using the red curry paste Tina had in her fridge and instead decided to go with green curry paste to match the predominantly green veggies at hand. I also completely threw myself off track deciding that we needed a few quality beers for our dinner and stalling completely when I noticed the store had some 250 different kinds to chose between.

It should probably come as no surprise that once I returned not only with the beers and noodles I’d set out to get – but also some different beers entirely, a few spur of the moment purchases and a entirely different plan for dinner, Tina was more than a little confused. I spent some time trying to explain the complete wrongness in mixing green veggies with red curry paste and the resulting clashes in both aesthetics and flavor.. Which served only to make Tina pat me on the arm, shake her head a little, smile kindly and utter the by now familiar words “Honey, I know you think you’re explaining yourself, but you’re really not!” She did, however, love the flower I’d picked for her on the way mainly because I thought it was pretty and it’d match her being pretty, partly because I knew she hadn’t gotten flowers in a while and lastly because I got a laugh out of people’s reactions to watching a long haired guy in a Motörhead t-shirt picking flowers by the side of the road.

Having spent some time once again debating my state of mental well-being, we actually sat down and got some work done. With beers in hand, of course, as Tina pretty quickly started bugging me and begging for beer. I stood my ground for a good while despite her reasoning of “But, it’s five o’clock somewhere..” Which was, of course, correct, but we also had work to do.. So I told her she’d just have to be patient and wait till 4 PM when it was five o’clock in Cairo. Which she, to her credit, actually did without complaining I did not expect that!

After a 4 PM beer, some more work and a nice little walk to clear our heads, both of us started complaining about being hungry, so I got started on cooking dinner which was consumed to the very last mouthful, like literally. There was even some fighting going on over the last few mouthfuls, so I guess I finally got my point across on the matching of colors and flavors anyways.

After dinner, another beer and some prettying up of Tina, we grabbed or remaining beer and headed on down to Tommy who was hosting a get-together for a few friends.  He had some friends from Sealand over and had invited Jesper as well.. And Tina and I, of course, as well as a few others. It turned out to be a pretty cozy and confusing ordeal where I spent a lot of time talking to Jesper about fine food and cooking, some time trying to explain the nature of the relationship between Tina and I to one of the Sealander guys, serving only to confuse him further and ended up getting pretty confused myself when one of Tommy’s other friends, Mark, showed up and both of us were like “Haven’t we seen each other before?” After a lot of time spent just staring at each other, it turned out that yea, we had, his mom worked for my parents like twenty years ago and we used to hang out.. Like ages and ages ago.. A very weird, drunken case of “It’s a small, small world” .. From then on, things generally got weirder and weirder until the night came to an end for me at around 2:30 as the others went clubbing and I decided against joining them at the particular place they were going.

I started out Saturday sooner than I’d usually do after a night out drinking, but then again it had been an early night for me without too many beers and I also had to pick up my laptop that I’d left over at Tina’s the night before because I didn’t want to take a Macbook Pro partying with me. Even with the relatively low amount of beer, getting out of bed and down to Tina’s was a bit of a struggle. I guess I really am getting older. But either way, things quickly got better when I arrived down there and Tina asked me if I knew how to cook an omelet and if I’d care to help her. Turns out she was on the last stages of making breakfast and had prepared enough for two. What a sweetheart.. And no, I don’t know a whole lot about cooking omelets, but I helped anyways coz I do loves me some free food and I think it all turned out pretty well.

After a nice breakfast, I grabbed my stuff and headed on home to rest a bit which I managed for all of an hour or two before Dunkel started bugging me to hang out. An offer I accepted once he started talking about free dinner and possibly having a few beers.. More free food? And beer? Yes please! As luck would have it,  I actually had a quality brew in the fridge so I grabbed that on my way and headed down to Dunkel’s from where we went on to the store to pick up some food. Initially, we failed pretty miserably at finding dinner but eventually settled on some spaghetti and meat sauce variation with garlic bread on the side. We then went on to look at some beer which is, of course, where things once again went wrong. It all started when Dunkel found some weird ass Blueberry Hill Ale, brewed with (you guessed it) blueberry and made as a tribute to the classic song “Blueberry Hill”. Since we both love the song, we agreed that Dunkel should buy both of us one of them blueberry things, in return, I bought us both an Erdinger Weissbeer, in return of which Dunkel bought us a Chimay Bleu.. It escalated along those general lines for a while until we’d picked up a wide assortment of everything that seemed interesting and decided we’d probably better call it quits or run the risk of going blind later that night.. So we went to the checkout and then back to Dunkel’s where we cooked up some food, popped open a few cold ones, threw some Bill Maher (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Maher) on the tv, including his new movie Religulous and laughed at that a bit while sampling random beers and ciders.. It was all pretty good times even if the Blueberry Hill ales were sadly disappointing.. Apparently, you shouldn’t mix beer and blueberry, who’d have thunk?

It all lasted till about 3 AM when I staggered home nicely liquored up to do some geeking about before finally being able to fall asleep at around 6:30 AM. As a result, I slept in really, really late the day after.. Y’know, just for a change.. And when I did wake up, I had a killer hangover to boot.. Yay me! So I spent most of the day being completely out on the couch. It wasn’t before 5 PM or so that I actually got my shit together, got up and set out on my planned quest of the day: Preparing a batch of lasagna made from fresh pasta, home-made béchamel sauce and a few servings of the “perfect Bolognese” I made last week. It was quite a grueling task to complete, especially with a hangover to boot, but the result was well worth it.

Something I quickly remembered to text Tina about as I’d earlier promised her a few servings of leftovers. She seemed positively thrilled about this and quite jealous of my having lasagna and her not having any. I on the other hand, was a little jealous that she was thinking about popping open some wine (as if I hadn’t already had enough to drink that weekend, oh well). Well, long story short, some ten minutes after deciding that tonight was probably not a good night to hang out, I was on my way down to Tina’s with a serving of lasagna in my hands while she was busy popping open a bottle of wine for us to share. Apparently good food and good wine trumps bad moods. Oh well, I’m actually pretty glad we got each other talked into hanging out. The lasagna earned three consecutive “yums” after Tina’s first bite, which is the highest score ever on “the Tina yum-scale of deliciousness”, and the merlot was absolutely delicious as well! The words at the beginning of this post were actually spoken some time during this evening by Tina as she went to pour our second glass of wine and made in reference to her joking about dropping out and becoming a professional alcoholic rather than finishing her education.. Well, I don’t know about that, but I certainly don’t mind sharing a bottle of wine with her on a weekly basis.. Errm, or a little more often than that.. Even if that only makes us semi-pro alcoholics.

We, of course, ended up sharing the entire bottle while lounging back and enjoying a few episodes of Big Bang Theory and a few Metallica documentaries.. I eventually ended up back home at 0:30 AM which was probably stupid considering I had to get up at 8 AM for a meeting the next day.. But that’s how we roll, and times were good, so there.

I don’t really mind bossy women

As long as their orders read something along the lines of “get your ass over here so I may cook you dinner, serve you wine and give you presents!” No, really, those were almost Tina’s exact words.. And who am I to argue with Tina? Ahem, okay, silly me.. I do realize Tina and I argue a lot, so let me rephrase that.. Who am I to argue with the dear girl in this particular situation? Hmm.. No, I thought so..

Maybe I should just start from the beginning.. See, thing is, we haven’t seen each other for a while and as such have been trying to set something up, but things such as life, work and theses kept getting in the way.. I suggested this afternoon, but Tina had plans, she suggested tomorrow but apparently other things were up then as well.. It really was kinda frustrating to me.. But then suddenly out of the blue tonight she messages me at around like 7 PM going “Have you eaten?” .. Which I, at the time, strangely enough had not.. Again, I usually don’t go three hours without eating, but that’s another story.. Anyways, I tell her no and she simply goes “Well, get your ass over here!” I pretty much know not to argue at this point, but just in case I would, she quickly adds: “I’ve got food simmering for us, I’m about to open a bottle of Italian wine.. And I also have a present for you from Italy!”

Yes, ladies and gentlemen of the interwebs: that is my Tina, and that is how damn spoiled I am.. And how am I to refuse an offer like that? I mean, we all know from years of experience that I have a hard time saying no to this pretty, little, blue-eyed blonde in the first place.. And you throw in home cooked dinner, wine, good times.. And presents? (Did I mention she spoils me?).. Well, short story even shorter, I was out the door and on my way in like five minutes. I spent the brisk walk down there listening to a bit of Neil Young and answering Tina’s question of “Merlot or mystery wine?” in favor of the latter.. And I think I managed to answer a few cooking related questions as well, before I rang the buzzer, was greeted by Tina at the front door with a smile and a big hug, then dragged up to her apartment where I got a sniff of the food, was immediately pulled into the living room, handed a glass of wine, was forced to drink, then given my present in the shape of a bottle of nice Italian Extra Virgin Olive Oil DOC of the Garda region for which I barely managed to thank her before I was scolded with a playful “Now show some respect and take your fucking shoes off!” .. Right, I’m sorry, babe, next time I’ll remember to take my shoes off while you pull me around and dazzle me with sweet smiles, wine, lovely food, presents, hugs as well as chattering and kind reminders for me to remember all sorts of things.. My mistake!

Naturally, this launched me into a counter offensive as I told her (while taking off my shoes) that if she thought that only because she hadn’t seen me for a while,  she could start bossing me around and telling me what to do and start pity little arguments, she was sadly mistaking.. Which of course led to more bickering.. And to Tina acting in a very breaking all the rules (that she made up) way by starting to put on shoes of her own.. Granted ones that she got in Italy and wanted to show off, but I still call rule-breaking on that one! .. And I’m starting to think she’s getting a little too smart for me..

See, I will usually scold Tina for spending too much money on clothes or shoes.. Or sometimes just for spending money in general.. It’s all part of our not dating but still acting every bit as an old, married couple game.. But with her inviting me over for dinner first, sharing a good bottle of wine with me and giving me presents as well. You’d expect she’s trying to soften me up for the blow.. Plus I think she knows fully well that dresses and stilettos are two purchases I have a really hard time arguing against.. Because well, she shows me these really gorgeous, hot, red stilettos that she got.. And I don’t know what to say.. Goddamnit! I’m calling obvious and well-planned manipulation right there!

But I forgive her this once.. Coz, well, the shoes were really pretty (both pairs), there was good food, did I mention she was cooking me dinner.. And she got me a really well-thought out, personal and caring present (long story, but there’s been some fascination with good olive oil on our behalf).

But yea, speaking of dinner.. It was awesome! Mostly when we get together, I’m in charge of most of the cooking, so for me to just show up and get fed is a real treat, not because I don’t enjoy cooking for her, but mostly because there’s just an extra element of being pampered involved. Plus Tina is a great cook who gives herself way too little credit. I will take some for teaching her a few odd tips and ways, but she definitely deserves credit for what she does. The pasta and meat sauce thing with red wine reduction she did was great, and her balancing of chili and garlic in the dish was enviable to say the least. The cook herself (naturally) thought that the dish was lacking in the red wine flavor, but she’ll usually say that unless there’s like an entire bottle of wine in the dish.. And I do happen to prefer to drink some of the wine WITH the dish rather than in it. And besides, when paired with the wine she used in it, I thought the balance was really good. In the end my main gripe with dinner was the fact that I wasn’t hungry enough to squeeze down two full servings.. Boo!

After dinner, my brightly smiling companion looked at me, batting her lashes slightly and asking “Do you know what the best part about this is?” – “Umm.. No?” I ventured, to which she brightly informed me that “since I cooked dinner, that means you get to help with the dishes without any complaining on my behalf!” which spawned a few laughs from me as I more than happily got started on helping her with the dishes.

We then lounged back for a while, sipping some more wine and watching a few episodes of a show I’d somehow completely managed to miss called “Big Bang Theory” which actually turned out to be a great source of entertainment for someone as geeky as us and I foresee many more get-togethers centered around this show.. And hopefully dinner with wine as well. I really did enjoy the concept of a sitcom actually being funny for a change as well as the geekier aspects and references being employed.  It seemed a more intelligent form of humor to me with a nice bit of absurdity thrown in for good measure. And me, being the geek that I am, of course got a few kicks and giggles out of the more obscure references such as a “42″ cap, a caffeine molecule t-shirt, a periodic table shower curtain.. And the sheer number of obscure facts, theories and stories referenced.. Ahh, good times.. And probably a new obsession of mine.

Ah, but it had been a long day.. For one of us at least.. (Let’s just say that Tina is a wee bit better than I am at getting up in the morning) so we wisely decided to call it a day at around 11:30 after many laughs and giggles as well as some arguing and as such, I then trotted homewards, feeling happy and stuffed and spoiled.. Good times, good times!