Remember that I once wrote you a song? I recently got it recorded. It was all done really quickly on a friend's 8 track digital recorder, I sing a bit off pitch and there is a skip in it, but at least you can hear how it sounds. I hope you like it.

This is the first song I have recorded in - I don't even know how long it has been. I have to admit that I realised that I miss working with music when I did it, and I also realised that I am in a bad shape music wise. My voice isn't used to singing anymore, and I can't really play steadliy either. Perhaps I should start practicing again, but how to find the time.

KidArctica - Gone

Another early morning. Last night I was really tired and so I went to bed around five just to take a nap to see how I felt at six. Well, I didn't wake up until it was around three in the morning, and so I got up then instead. After some website work I headed for the gym at half past six.

I've been doing this for a week now, but my body is still pretty sore from the training. Yesterday I had this appointment with a training councellor (or whatever I should call it). I didn't get that much sleep so I was pretty tired when I got there, but the session we had was really nice. The councellor guy - whose name is Colin - is an Englishman who turned out to be both nice and knowledgeable, and he gave me a short weight program that will strengthen the muscles around my joints.

As I started doing karate again on Monday, I didn't do the program until today. Karate training was really hard though. I had to go look for my gis as I haven't used them since March last year. Just before going I was really uncertain about whether I should go or not. My body was heavy still after the cycling, and even walking to the dojo was hard. Still, it was nice being back. Although I am really out of shape, I have missed karate, and I think I'll start up again now if I can only find the time. What I haven't missed though, is the enormous black mark on my arm after a lot of blocks...

So, back to the weight program. I really don't know the names of the exercises I'm doing, but I have five different ones that I do, one for the front of my legs, one for the back, one for the back of my upper body, one for the front and then one for my belly. Some of the exercises were quite easy, but the arm ones were really tough. In the end, I had to push myself a lot to get the last ones done.

After I was done, I was really exhausted again, but it still felt good that I managed to do it. So I went to the store and picked up some cereal and had a nice breakfast while watching an episode of CSI. Then I did an interview with a Romanian guy who had some questions I didn't understand, and it is not even eleven yet.

Gahh, what am I to do all awake this early!

It is 09:05 AM and I am really exhausted. I am not tired, but my body aches like mad, my muscles are all stiff and moving hurts.

Training is so painful when you haven't done it for a long time.

Before Christmas I got this email from work reminding me of a deal the company has with a gym chain. While I don't really believe in gyms - I have always done organised training as I find gym training incredibly boring - I realise that with my current job and my current gaming schedule it will be so to speak impossible to be able to train regularly in between work, website work, shoutcasting and clan wars. So on Wednesday, I suddenly decided to just get my two free trial weeks at the gym and see how it is.

The great thing about the gym chain is that they have a gym just five minutes away from where I live. And even better, they open at 06:30 in the morning on weekdays. So instead of going to bed, I've been heading off for the gym these past three days. Obviously, after a year of minimal training, I need to take things slow and steady.

So I cycle. These three days I've done two rounds of 24 minute cycling with a light resistance, though enough to make me sweat and to get my legs really, really tired. The first day I basically cycled at my own pace, a little slower than what I was supposed to. Yesterday, I did one round at a slow pace and then one at the regular pace and added some weight training after. Today, I did two rounds at the regular pace.

Ok, so I woke up with seriously stiff muscles after the second day, but after I finished the last round today my legs felt like spaghetti. I could hardly walk the few metres to get the water spray and some paper to clean the cycle. It was really difficult to walk stairs, and it took me a good ten minutes to walk home because my legs were totally out of energy. Then again, it was really hard to keep going during that last round of cycling. I kept pushing myself and pushing myself and I was thinking "perhaps I should go down to twelve minute rounds", but still I kept going.

Right now, I am actually glad weekend is coming up, because that means work and I won't have time for much training. So now I will let my body get some rest until Monday, when I'm planning to go back there for my next session. Interestingly enough, I like going there right now. I think it helps that I go there really early, so there aren't many people around. If the gym had been really crowded, I would definitely have felt out of place.

In the end, if I manage to keep this up, I am quite confident that I will get a "subscription" once my two trial weeks run out. It will cost me around $60 a month, but if I go there an average of four times a week, It is really not that expensive. Besides, my physical condition right now is really bad, and I've been so tired lately, perhaps because I just don't have any extra energy. Hopefully, this will help a bit.

If I find the money, I might start training karate again as well. I haven't gone for almost a year now, and I kind of miss the training and the competitions. This is the Nationals season as well, so if I start again now, I might just sign up for Nationals in spite of being out of practice. Last year I went to three trainings before nats and ended up with one silver medal, and though I don't expect anything like that after being away for a year, I can always hope to get an easy bracket. And the cycling will help me get in a better physical condition without straining my knees too much, so who knows.

The only thing that remains to see is how long I last. If I sign up for the gym deal, I will have to sign up for a year though, so I guess paying for one year may motivate me to go...

Some time ago I wrote about books. I finished The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown some time ago, and while the first part was brilliant, the further I got into the story, the more uninteresting the book became. The end was just really bad, in my opinion, there were too many obvious solutions. Disappointing, considering this book is a bestseller. I have read though that several people agree that the end sucks.

I also read The Stone Monkey by Jeffery Deaver, which was much better. I really like Deaver, and while this was far from my favourite, I still liked it. A few obvious turns, but nonetheless interesting and with a lot of twists and turns - just the way Deaver normally does it.

As I got some books for Christmas, I still have some to read. While I traded some in as I had read them before, I got one from my sister - Rødstrupe (Robin Readbreast) by Jo Nesbø. I generally don't read Norwegian books as I tend not to like them (yes, I am really picky), but I have heard a lot of good things about Nesbø's books, so I figured I'd keep it. In addition, I got The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini from my mom, I don't really think it is my style, but I guess I'll read it anyway. She bought one copy for me and one for my sister, so I guess she must have really liked it.

Right now, my mind is on another book though. When I went to trade in the books I'd read before, I found a book by Val McDermid that I hadn't read before - The Last Temptation. McDermid is one of my favourite authors right now, and she wrote one of my all-time favourites, The Mermaids Singing. That book was just fantastic. Let me digress: The reason why I picked up that book back then was that I read a review of the Norwegian translation, written by a colleague of mine. She had actually given it a medium rating because she thought it was too detailed.

Guess who ran straight to the bookstore to pick it up! The more details, the better, in my opinion. In addition, the serial killer in the book (I tend to prefer crime fiction about serial killers) used old torture instruments to kill his victims, and well, it so happens that I have read up a lot about old torture instruments because it fascinates me how people actually made that stuff in order to inflict maximum pain to other people. So I knew all the torture instruments she described in the book, which made it a lot more interesting for me.

End of digression, and back to The Last Temptation. The book is actually about the same psychological profiler as my favourite, and it is about a serial killer (what else is new!) I am not really that far into the book, but the killer seems to be a captain on a boat, travelling the rivers of Europe. He targets psychologists, and of course he kills them in a quite special way - I am not going to say how though, in order not to destroy anything for those who might want to read the book. I just hope this one is good, if not, I will be disappointed again.

Hm, it is 10:05 AM and I am actually getting a little tired. Perhaps I should get some hours of sleep, after all I need to get up at a normal time tomorrow to go to work.

It is almost nine and I am listening to music and wondering whether I should go to bed again or whether I should start working. Yesterday I interviewed some young wrestlers, and I need to type out the story and submit a double page before I leave tomorrow. When I do, I will have two weeks of vacation. It will be nice, I think.

I think.

Things are a bit messy right now. Yesterday, I fell asleep on my bed again, on top of the blanket, fully clothed, beside Purraj. It had been a long day. I had been to work, then there was WC3 Masters #19 and it got really late. So I just wanted to read a comic before doing my work, and all of a sudden I was asleep on my bed with the cat beside me. I woke up way too late and had just a little more than an hour to finish my articles.

I managed to get things done, as usual, but it is a bit worrying that I keep pushing the limit so often. Maybe a vacation will do me good. Or maybe it won't help at all, who knows. I have this feeling that I am getting stressed out. Most of the time, I am tired and lack energy to do other things than what I am supposed to. Often, I just fall asleep on my bed with my clothes on, like last night. I find some glimpses of happiness in playing with friends, but often I don't have time for that either.

There are other things right now, too. I am really poor. When I was in Copenhagen, I had to pay for some transport and for the hotel one night. When I came back, I had so to speak no money at all. I haven't been able to go shopping for food at all, other than with my roomie when he is paying. This morning I had nothing to drink at all since we can't drink the tap water at the moment due to the silly paracyte. So I went all day without drinking before my roomie and I went shopping in the evening and I picked up four bottles of sparkling mineral water.

Also, it is sad to see how the former team manager is handling himself. A few days ago he gave an interview to a French website. The interview was full of lies and incorrect information. I don't know whether he seriously thinks that what he said is right or whether he is saying it to make himself feel better for not being manager anymore. Even though I somehow want to clear up all the incorrections, I can't be bothered right now. I try to ignore it instead. People spreading that many lies don't deserve attention. I still like him, I wish he would get over this and realise how things really are. But as long as he can't I can do without his antics.

Another sad aspect of it is that the one who made the interview never even thought about checking whether the info was correct or asking for my side of the story. Fine, he might not have gotten it. But he just posted the interview, no critical questions asked in spite of it being full of accusations and badly disguised bitterness.

People disappoint me. What else is new.

Tomorrow I will leave for Dallas, Texas. Change of scenery, change of environment, no Warcraft for a while other than making sure my team is ok, just Counter-Strike and Painkiller. And bunny. That will be nice. I think.

a heart that's full up like a landfill a job that slowly kills you bruises that won't heal

Another late night. It is half past five in the morning and even though I could have gone to bed a long time ago, I didn't. Instead, I've been watching Zubie play against various opponents, I've done some website work and I've played some Counter-Strike. Today I actually had a positive record, though I did indeed play on a noob server. Still, I guess that means that there are bigger noobs than me out there.

I want to do something but I just don't know what. So restless.

Got my SK Gaming t-shirts today, they were a joke. Even though they were size XL, they were smaller than the one I have from before, and that one is size S. I have no idea how they can call that XL, but at least there is no way I am wearing those at events.

Maybe I should watch an episode of CSI and go to bed after. Glah.

Maybe it is my expectations, I don't know. I don't really read many books, I have read many in the past, but now I am more picky regarding how to spend my time. Mostly, I read when travelling, because then I don't really have that much to do anyway.

My taste in books is weird. I like crime fiction, but not all kinds, mostly stories about serial killers. The more details, the better. Bizarre, maybe, but that is how it is. In addition, I have some favourite authors that I keep reading, meaning I have looked up most of their books and buy their new ones when they are published.

Unfortunately, lately I have been strangely disappointed when reading books. I want the unexpected, the shocking, the build-up to a point where I can't put the book down, but I keep reading and reading and the story twists and turns until I turn the last page and I can finally breathe.

The first book I read was Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz. I hadn't read anything by him before, but I picked up the book at the airport when I was bored and needed something to read. Apparently, it was a best-seller, and the backside of the book did its job - I bought it.

"He's Odd. Odd Thomas, to be precise. Genius fry-cook at the Pico Mundo Grill; boyfriend to the gorgeous Stormy Llewellyn - and possibly the only person with a chance of stopping one of the worst crimes in the bloody history of murder...

Something evil has come to the desert town that Odd and Stormy call home. It comes in the form of a mysterious man with a macabre appetite, a filing cabinet full of information on the world's worst killers, and strange, hyena-like shadows following him wherever he goes. Odd is worried. He knows things, sees things - about the living, the dead and soon to be dead. Things that he has to act on. Now he is terrified for Stormy, himself and Pico Mundo. Because he knows that on Wednesday August 15, a savage, blood-soaked whirlwind of violence and murder will devastate the town.

Today is August 14.
And Odd is far from sure he can stop the coming storm...

So the book starts out good and well, it is exciting and all that. But for some reason, I realise who is the perpetrator, and once you do, it's not really that exciting. The climax is less than fantastic and actually somewhat of a downer, and in the end, when I closed the book, I was not satisfied at all. Something was missing. The book had not really given me what I wanted.

After that, I found one of the books from my own shelf when I went travelling again. It was a book by one of my favourite authors that I had bought, but not had the time to read - Shock by Robin Cook.

Cook is actually a doctor, but he has a leave as he is currently spending his time (and earning a sh*tload of money) by writing so-called "medical thrillers". Some of them are absolutely fantastic. I remember while reading some of the first ones, I started reading before going to sleep but I couldn't sleep until I'd gotten through the most exciting parts. To be honest, I don't even know if I would have been able to sleep without first reading those passages.

"Students and close friends Deborah Cochrane and Joanna Meissner have spotted a newspaper ad that may solve their financial problems. An exclusive and highly profitable fertility clinic on Boston's North Shore is looking for female donors, so they reckon they can do a bit of good by helping infertile couples while earning some money for themselves. Even when dark rumours surface of a previous donor's unexplained disappearance, the two young women remain undeterred.

Everything goes smoothly until second thoughts and curiosity prompt the pair to find out more. When stymiend by a veil of secrecy, they even seek employment at the clinic in order to continue probing.

Working there under aliases, Deborah and Joanna soon discover the horrifying true nature of Dr Wingate's research - and immediately put their sanity, maybe even their lives, at risk."

Blah blah blah. The book sucked. Or, it didn't really suck that much, it just sucked enough to be really boring. Which means that if I had to roll a die on it, it would probably land at a three. That's bad. It is really bad, even worse than if it had been bad enough to get a one, because then it would probably have been entertaining simply because it would be so bad.

But yeah. The plot was thin, the action thinner and the solutions simple. And the end was just - blunt. I mean, the title of the book is "Shock", but where was the shock factor? Nowhere to be found, at least not for me, perhaps if you have lived without news and without ever hearing about the evil in the world.

So today, I stopped by the bookstore and picked up two new books. The first one is an old publication from one of my favourite authors, Jeffery Deaver. Some of his books have more twists and turns than any other books I have read, it is absolutely crazy. Too bad The Bone Collector, one of his worse books (as the ending was pretty lame) was made into a movie, when his other books are much better. The one I have bought now is called The Stone Monkey. I don't know more than what it says on the backside:

Only one thing is more terrifying than seeing a ghost.
Surviving.

Quadriplegic detective Lincoln Rhyme and his partner and lover Amelia Sachs face an ultimatum from the west, evil from the east and a brand new threat - from within.

In addition, I picked up The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown. I guess most people have heard about it, as it is a recent bestseller. So hopefully, I won't be disappointed next time I get a chance to read a book.

It took a few hours, then the Internet connection disappeared and I was stuck without again. My friends came and picked me up and took me out of my misery. We went to a friend's house and played some games. Then, I went down to work to get online for two hours before catching the last bus home.

When I came home, the Internet connection was up again. O joy. I went online. Then, it went down. Frustrated, I unpacked my laptop and went on dialup. A few hours later, the Internet connection was up yet again, so I went back to my desktop computer. Since then, it has worked. But I do not trust it. And it is really, really annoying that the connection can disappear just like that for no reason whatsoever.

I am not going to cancel support again. They had better come and fix it so that it is stable all the time.

I really do not understand how my mom can settle for something like that. The speed is really crappy as well, merely 100/100 kbps. Then again, it is cheaper than any of the other providers, and my mom is only going to surf anyway. And dialup would be more expensive, so I guess this is a little better than dialup. But still - I cannot wait until my new apartment is done and I can get back to my 2400/640 kbps connection.

At least I got to do a lot of work for the site. Yesterday, I spent nine hours on dialup to finish the WC3L preview. Altogether, I probably spent - who knows, close to 20 hours on that preview, much more than any of the other two who helped me out some. I feel like the song I am listening to. Sometimes I wonder what drives me.

Pride, I guess. And the satisfaction of being able to produce something that others enjoy.

Silly me.

The cable guy left perhaps half an hour ago. Since then, I have been glued to the screen of my desktop computer. No more dialup. I have been able to download all my email with the exception of 2000 spam mails, I even discovered that I had some bills that needed urgent attention - oh, the pain of being without a decent connection!

So the cable guy checked the signal and found that my mom had 1/12 of the signal she was supposed to have. He was surprised that she was able to watch TV with the weak signal. After fixing the outlet, the signal was back to normal and what do you know, the Internet connection was back up.

Now the only sad thing about this is that the connection is really, really slow. I have no idea why it is, but well, right now I guess I do not care anyway. I am online, the speed is at least higher than on dialup, and it doesn't cost an arm and a leg. It is time to go play.

I am suffering from withdrawal. Recently, I moved out of my apartment with my beloved 2,4 mbit connection. As my new apartment is not done yet, I had to move in with my mom. Problem. She does not have an Internet connection. Or rather, she does, but it does not work.

I have called the cable company and complained, and they said it would take 1-3 days before they could fix it. The problem is, they have been here some six times before, and while they did get it up twice, it went down after around 30 minutes. Right now, I can connect somehow, but I do not get an IP or DNS assigned, so I cannot do anything with the connection.

So at the moment, I am abusing the phone line and going on dialup. Surfing on dialup is a pain. Everything is so slow, I cannot play as I have to go online from my laptop which is not good enough for gaming. I cannot download any huge files, and uploading takes forever.

The only good connection I have access to, is from work. Hopefully, the cable connection will be fixed soon. If not, I am going to have to spend a lot of time at work this next month...

I updated my website today, for the first time in more than two years. It is so strange that it has been so long since I took care of it. I even started wondering when the domain and hosting expires, probably this summer. As far as I can remember, I bought the domain when I once had a spark of inspiration.

It has been ages since I did anything music related. There are songs swirling in my head, or song lines, but I don't really get them out. My playing skills have faded also, I wonder if I can even play a steady bass line or keep a steady rhythm on the guitar. Yet I have a lot of money worth of instruments.

Sometimes I tell myself I should sit down and do something about music, but normally, I end up sitting down in front of the computer and to do something Warcraft related instead. Maybe I do not want it enough. If I had, I would probably have done it. Sometimes I wish that I still had a band, though, someone to work with, have fun with, make music with.

I guess I miss music sometimes.