Dear diary...

It is Friday and the dark, angry-looking clouds that were earlier hiding the beautiful sunshine have now disappeared......the sun is shining on Schaffhausen again!!

Am happy as I managed to have lunch today with a good friend who's getting MARRIED soon (am soooo excited for the two of them!!). Love to hear all the planning details and am soooo looking forward to their BIG DAY!!

...just left for me to also decide on what to wear?! Gosh! Only two weeks away!

For the past few days, I've been working from home which has been great for my back!! I'm laying down with the computer in my lap, my handsfree plugged in, ready for phonecalls and teleconferences and alternating that with back-excercises and walks. Now I feel muuuuuuch better (and am completely off medication)!!! ...the feeling is like I have been released from prison (not that I actually know what that feels like......but...oh well...)!!

Opening up my e-mail inbox this morning, was despite the ridiculous number of unread e-mails (450 in 1 1/2 weeks during the holiday period??), a "peace of cake" thanks to the WONDERFUL colouring system I am using to determine wether the e-mail was:

- Sent only to me or containing the words "activity request"

(Priority 1 to open! - marked in RED)

- Sent to me with but with someone else in my team in copy or contains the word "deadline"

(priority no 2, marked in BLUE)

- Sent to a group of people with me AND someone else in the "TO" field (Normal priority, e-mail is GREEN)

- Sent to a distributionlist with me either in copy or in blind-copy and all the rest

(Just regular BLACK)

I am a little bit of a structure freak at work, so basically the total opposite from outside of work (this was just for you mom, if you are listening as I'm sure you'd be wondering who I'm talking about). I believe in the saying "Don't bring your work home"! (or maybe that's just a lazy excuse.....not sure!).

Still a lot of greens and blacks left but I have reduced the number of red's by 100% and the blue's by 75%! I think I can feel pretty good about this considering the starting-point....

A little bit of a theme in my life right now seem to be fireworks! I ♥ fireworks!!

I have the pleasure of having a "castle" (the Munot)....as my neighbour....kind of...and on Wednesday this week there were FIREWORKS up there! We were sitting on the balcony/terrace and talk about the best seat in the h o u s e !! (with the exception of having to spend 15 minutes cleaning out firework/gunpowder residuals from my hair afterwards...and not to mention the mess it left on the floor....all worth it though)!

This weekend, on Saturday, there will appearantly be another firework session at the beautiful Rheinfall and we will definately be going to this. YAY! Hoping to find something I can use as a tripod as the pictures were not so nice as I had hoped =o/

Let's see...... Will keep you posted!

Oh....this next few lines certainly do not go by the theme of fireworks.

Recieved some very disappointing news (applying THE FILTER now if you are wondering) just before the weekend, so feeling a bit down at the moment - but will surely snap out of it! It just felt.........so meant to be??! Well.... I HAVE to snap out of it.... A positive attitude and mindset is KEY to many ways of being creative and moving forward in diffrent aspects in life - keep this in mind! (I'm also reminding myself by writing this ;)).....

Need to watch wome more of 30 rock and laugh a bit!!

Have a great weekend girls & boys, ladies & gentlemen, wives & husbands, mom's & dad's and whom ever else is reading this (you should really drop me a guestbook note telling me who you are *wink wink* ;))!

xox

Linda - Still lost in Switzerland

Ps. I love my little flag counter that I installed a couple of days ago! It counts the number of unique visitors per country =))

Dear diary...

I just realised that the weekend starts tomorrow.....and I had no idea! WOW! This is what happens when you have been on sick-leave for a week (can also be the med's?!) - you really loose track of time!

Anyway, this is good news! Especially for all the people who have a week behind them of hard work.

Allthough that doesn't apply to me right now, I'm also happy that the weekend is just around the corner!

Why? Well I am thankfully not the only Swede in Schaffhausen....there are more of us!

These Swedes happen to be a GREAT and funny bunch of people, who I really really like, and this Saturday we will have a traditional Swedish "Crayfish party" (kräftskiva in Swedish) and I am soooo excited about this! (I am SOOOO hoping we will have funny hats!)

Things like this make it a little easier to be far away from home...

Now I would lie if I said I wasn't a little worried about how I'm gonna be able to pull this off in my condition, but one of the girls said that they'd come get me on a stretcher if I can't get there on my own. Probably that was not meant litteraly - but it was still a very sweet offer. Don't you agree? ;)

Anyway.... I am hopeful and I have to eat something on Saturday anyway! I can just skip the traditional snaps and focus on the food and on taking pictures.

I have been put in charge of baking the special cheese-pie called "Västerbottenostpaj", (for which I have a very specific helper in mind who's name I won't mention ;)) and arranging some games! Can not mention which games here in case any of the guests are reading my blog, but will tell you all about it later.... The good thing about being the arranger of the game this time is that I can't participate myself which suits my back just peachy!

Today has been a very warm and sunny day here in Schaffhausen and even though I can't be

outside much to enjoy it to the max - it still makes me very happy to see the sun shining!

...and by the way, the view from my window isn't half bad as you can see in this picture.

As I am a quite sentimental person, I spend a lot of time reflecting on the past and analysing things that have happened to me or my near and dear ones. This morning especially....but like a sign (or probably just being darn lucky!) I again stumbled on another quote that made me realise that I spend way too much time on dwelling on things that just can't be changed! These wise words are from Deepak Chopra:

"I release the past to open myself to the future. When I let go of the known (my past) I accelerate the process of evolution"

Time for me to dwell on that instead and think about all the opportunities I have to make a great future! I do strongly believe that we are all in charge of our own destinies...

With that said... I wish you all a very good night! Thanks so much for stopping by and I hope to see you here again soon.

xox

Linda - Lost in Switzerland AND in her own mind

Ps. To read about the swedish crayfish tradition - check this out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crayfish_party