I’m rather obsessed by Billie Holiday all of a sudden. I just adore her voice, and even more so when it’s coupled with Louis Armstrong’s. I used to love Louis and Ella the best, but her voice is a bit too happy go lucky, really. So Billie it is. All Billie, all the time.

My dad would be so proud.

Today I have, in addition to the crafty things, done the following:

- Got a hair cut. It’s shorter than ever! If “ever” is code for “eleven years”. This marks my first use of Photobooth on my shiny Macbook, and I’m not even going to tell you how many attempts it took to make me look almost presentable. When my sister saw this pic she said “but don’t you know that you need to take the pic from above and give the camera the emo look?” Sadly I can’t bring myself to flirt with the camera. I tried. I only end up looking like I’m possessed. I’m not even kidding.

- Watched two football games, none which involved RVP, pictured above. He’s just my favourite boy crush. And no, I’m not ashamed. What I did watch was Mexico-South Africa and France-Uruguay. In the former Vela did three ALMOST assists and was pulled off the pitch in the eighty-something-th minute without ever finishing anything up. Game ended 1-1, and I missed Mexico’s goal because I strangely enough got sucked into a hiphop playlist I’m composing… France game ended 0-0 and was immensely boring, but both Gallas and Sagna got hacked down. I think we can safely say that Gallas is just old and squeaky and would snap in half if anyone looked at him for too long, and that Sagna was lucky that he didn’t break his leg. They’re all gonna come back broken. Damn World Cup.

- Been told to hashtag all my football tweets so people can filter them out.

-Did I mention the hiphop playlist? I know. It’s so not my kind of music, but I got this idea that working out will be awesome with music with a nice beat to it. First thing I did was fall in love with Janelle Monáe, who is, um, not hiphop. But she’s brilliant, and I’ve been listening to this song ALL DAY. In short, she’s beautiful, an amazing dancer, her hair defies gravity and in this video everyone – and I mean EVERYONE – wears suits with bowties and cute little black-and-white shoes. It’s quite refreshing, and I can’t watch her dance enough. And I never care about those things. (I found some proper hiphop too, don’t worry.)

- Realised that, yes, my cats sneaks out the window and sits all rolled up on the window sill OUTSIDE my third story window, all calm. The day she sees a bird, however, we’re in trouble. Must be better about closing it all the way.

- Finished reading Valiant, from Holly Black’s Modern Faerie Tale trilogy. I thought it was the second book, but now I’m not so sure, because the first and second had totally different POVs and the main character in the first was only in one scene of the second. I might’ve read the third, or she neatly brings the two of them together in the third book, tying all loose ends up.

There was more, but now I can’t remember. Am so very tired.

I’m glad to report that it took me one week to catch up after the trip, not three like last time. Very exciting. I also learned by one of my dear followers that yes, you do get super hungry after being glutened. This was really good to know because I felt like SUCH A FREAK sitting down to eat tons of cereal at 4 am last weekend, when everyone else just passed out. I’m never that hungry after getting drunk. Sleep usually wins, so it was bemusing.

And also, taught me not to eat fast food restaurant fries. No, not even if it’s just two of them.

I have lots of other exciting news, the first which is book related. That’s the Middle Grade (I think) book from FableCroft Publishing, which I snuck into under Tansy’s skirts. We wrote a short story together even though she was the one invited to submit a piece and I am extremely excited to be one of the “and more” authors featured in this one.

Apart from the story I got published at 15 in one of those we-publish-anyone-no-really-we-do magazines, and the knitting pattern from ages ago this is my first one. It will be fun to see it in print, and it even has a picture! (I think all of the stories do.)

My family has asked me to get them the book, even though they read English very badly or not at all, and I’m really not sure if they’ll “get” a story that is all spec fic.

Second, Tansy got me the best birthday present ever! I will blog it tomorrow, because I want her to blog the process of making said present so I can link to it. But it’s the prettiest quilt ever, with lots of edible stuff on it. Cakes, cupcakes, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, cherries…

Ooh, and when I looked at it just now I found peas. And lots of polkadots and flowers.

It’s awesome. More about it (and the other presents) tomorrow.

Now I have to return to my short story turned novelette. I think. It’s currently 7500 words of alcohol, drugs, dancing and, um, lesbian fairy sex. I estimate it will end around 10k, but we shall see. I have no idea how it will end. None.

PS. Do listen to The Guild League. It’s Tali from The Lucksmiths new project, and they’re gooooood. Thank you Music Fairy, for sending me some of them.

Not really in the mood for writing tonight, but I do want to save these three YouTube-clips somewhere, so I suppose blogging them is as good of a way as any.

…

“Hir” by Alysia Harris och Aysha El Shamayleh
This one is old, I know, but I don’t care. It’s an amazing poem, all poetry slam style, about being transgendered. I can’t say that I know what it’s like but this piece gives me chills every single time I read it. I think my favourite bit is the ending:

James falls back into Melissa’s skin,
And the two comfort each other in a syncapated heartbeats,
Waiting for the day when Melissa can finally scrub off this made up genetic make up,
When the teacher asks for James and he can say “I’m here.”

…

A Night at the Emirates
Excuse my geeky football fan girling for a moment. If you’re not an Arsenal fan, this one is likely to make you roll your eyes, but if you are? Goddamn, it’s amazing, and it makes me want to actually see a game in person some time. Preferably before Barca steals Cesc from us. He’s got Barcelona-DNA, you know!

…

“9 Crimes” by Damien Rice
A song I am absolutely obsessed by right now. It’s about cheating. Being the one that does it, not the one that is being lied to. It’s painful, probably because I can fucking finally understand why somebody would do something like that. And let me tell you, that one wasn’t easy to admit. I suppose three years of swearing at a certain someone for doing exactly that finally paid off.

…

Oh, and do read this post by Kate Harding about travelling while fat. It’s amazing, and so very painful to read. And true. Really fucking true. I may not be too fat to fit in an airplane seat (yet), but I do have severe anxiety, which makes flying torture – no matter who sits next to me.

And I believe that’s all for today.

Things in my home with gluten in them:

Flour (three types),
Ginger snaps (one box home made – by my grandmother – and one box store bought)
Pasta (three types),
Oats (two types, likely containing gluten through cross contamination),
Chocolate,
Soy sauce (yes, seriously).

And what made me the saddest: Pepsi.

Apparently there is a small chance that the flavouring syrup of cola drinks contain gluten, and you may or may not show symptoms if you keep drinking it. I’ve meant to cut down, but damn…

I really need to make my Mum come here and take all of this away from me. Save the Pepsi and chocolate. Priorities!

In other news, found somebody on Facebook I really could’ve lived without ever looking at again, Arsenal drew their game despite or maybe thanks to heavy snow fall, I found a yoga class I want to take until the no meds thing caught up with me and did I mention my lack of meds caught up with me? It’s not supposed to happen this fast (people always give me weird looks when I say that I can feel it within a few hours), so maybe it’s just placebo. Or something.

But I do recognise my thought patterns, and they are not happy ones.

(I wrote about three paragraphs of depressive shit here, and then went back and erased it all because seriously, you don’t want to read that crap. You really don’t.)

And then I took a break from this post to read this one by Amanda Palmer. It’s about really hating to practice playing the piano, yet being a musician and getting this idea in your head about playing Tchaikovsky with a symphony orchestra and doing it YOUR way. The end result is a pretty brilliant video including pulling somebody out of the audience because their cell phone went off and making him play instead and at first everyone is embarrassed for this person, but then he starts PLAYING. Like really playing.

And meanwhile Amanda runs in circles around the stage, downing wine like nobody’s business and dressing people up while the symphony plays and it reminded me why I fucking love her and her music and now I’m going to put my headphones on and blast her music on owwww-my-ears-volume until I feel better.

And then I’m going to write up a storm.

PS. Title of this post is from the awesome song Gravity. Look it up.

So, gluten free pasta is a winner. Before, if I ate pasta for a meal I would spend most of my evening in the bathroom, and the rest of the time feeling lethargic and wanting to sleep. Yet I never thought that it was the gluten – I always blamed the dairy. So I’m cutting down on gluten, even if I may not cut it out completely. I’ve found a kind of bread I tolerate for the most part, and I think it is because it’s mostly rye flour and very little wheat, so I’m eating that instead. And I still do oats and chocolate that may or may not contain traces of wheat. Only not together, cos that would just be weird.

I try to cook new and exciting things, because I don’t want to substitute too much, and thus I try to cook more with rice, noodles and potatoes. The winner so far is this recipe of Glass Noodle Stir Fry with Tofu. Even though I totally bastardised it and the finished product hardly resembled the original. It was good though, which is all that counts.

It’s still cold as in fucking hell, with today being the warmest day since we before Christmas, and that at -7^oC. I’m told that up north it’s down to -33, which is just crazycakes. Global warming anyone?

I need to sit down and do some rewriting (I stopped calling it editing some time ago), but I have a virtual copy of Maureen Johnson’s Suite Scarlett that will expire on the 15th, so this might just be a reading and knitting day. (Btw, said e-copy is free until the 15th, so get to it!)

Fashioning a playlist for Eld, in which I try to come up with a suitable mix of old school music, new music with a beat so I can write fast enough to please the editing fairies and so far I’ve come up with Ane Brun, Belle & Sebastian, Billie Holiday, The Bird and the Bee, Cornelis Vreeswijk, Damien Rice, The Dresden Dolls, Ella Fitzgerald, Helen Sjöholm, Ingrid Michaelson, Jenny Owen Youngs, Lisa Ekdahl and The Lucksmiths. To mention a few.

Swedes should go vote in Stora Bloggpriset, I so want Heja Abbe to win! And you know, some others too, but that is one blog I can’t say enough good things about.

Everyone in the world are apparently doing “best of 00-talet” lists (er, do not know how to translate that, “the 00s”?), which is just too big for me. So I’m just doing the last year in a number of tens in alphabetic order. No ranking within each list, because that would be mean. And yes, I did this not too long ago, in the Lists of 30 sequence I did, but this is, um, different. Really.

Note: All pics are shamelessly stolen from my dear friend Google, except for a few that I took myself and the This is Arsenal one which comes from the LJ comunity GoonerGraphics and is actually my desktop picture…

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10 HIGHS
Because you should remember the good and pretend the bad never happened! Okay, maybe not, but I have no desire to list the lowest of the low of this year, so I’m just doing the awesome. (One year I re-capped what had happened each month and somebody said “whoa, you’ve got really shitty luck”, and she was right. So no re-capping. Just the best.)

	1 – All things Arsenal. It’s silly to put football down here, isn’t it? I don’t care. Since I was pulled into the Arsenal madness and started following every single game (as those of you following me on Twitter probably are painfully aware of) I’ve learned that sports are… um, brain washing. They make you insane and single-minded and you start saying stuff like “we have too many groin injuries” and “our boys are FRAGILE” and see nothing strange about it. (Other people, however, do.) So there. I’m sticking to this one, even though it’s kind of crazy and certainly nothing I would’ve thought a year or two ago…
	2 – Becoming with kitten. Once a cat owner always a cat owner. Or something. I love having her around, even if she demands constant attention, climbs the Christmas tree and follows me into the bath room, prompting me to say “oh my God, shut your mouth and act like a normal human being!”. And I guess she’s not a kitten anymore,and nearly a teenager, but let’s not talk about that. I can’t afford to have her fixed for another few months, so let’s hope she stays this age for a good long time.
	3 – Blogging and Twitter as a substitute for TV. I wrote the first entry of this blog on October 29th, 2008. Since then it’s become something I write in, if not every day so at least every week. It helps me a lot, even though I sometimes wonder if I share too much. As for Twitter, it has been a great help in finding new blogs and news and current events and such. I follow something like 80 people, which is a lot less than most, but just what I can keep up with. This is also where I get nearly all my news. I don’t watch TV, save a few select shows, and rarely bother with the news. Because my blogroll and my Twitter-people are plenty smart and keep me updated. They’re awesome like that.
	4 – Finding fat acceptance. Everyone who reads this blog on a regular basis knows my stance on health and weight, so I’m not going to say it all over again, but a year ago exactly I felt repulsed by myself and my body, put myself in a strict regimen of 1500 calories per da (which yes, included weighing my carrots and quit eating corn because they are more “fatty” than say cucumber), took long walks in sleet and rain and everything inbetween, telling myself IT’S SUPPOSED TO HURT YOU DISGUSTING FATTY KEEP WALKING, and forced myself to wear too small, unflattering clothing to punish myself. It was pretty awful, and when I, a few months later, came across Kate Harding’s blog Shapely Prose it was all turned on its head. It was quite revolutionary, and while I can’t say that I never wish that my body would be smaller, I most of the time is fine with it. And that’s an amazing feeling. I do want to start exercising again, but not to lose weight, just to get fit(ter), and that is something I never thought I’d say… I don’t know what yet, my mind goes back and forth between yoga, horse back riding, a traditional and super scary gym membership and running/walking. Suggestions for alternatives are welcome.
	5 – Getting a diagnosis, and starting to take the oh so elusive B12. My quality of life has doubled since my medications were changed and I started taking B12. Being able to be awake for more than four hours at a time is AWESOME. Here’s to hoping the last addition of pills will make my lows less frequent! Under this one goes also “getting out of my depression enough to care about other human beings”, and “actually remembering people’s birthdays and favourite what-have-you, because my brain isn’t stuck in survival mode”. Big stuff! (Note: These are not my pills. They are all boring and white and not all that exciting.)
	6 – Moving. I was hesitant, because my old city was, well, a city, while this is pretty much just a, um, little town with nothing exciting going for it, but I think we can all agree that it was the best thing I could possibly do. I’m still not well, but feel at least a bit grounded, for what is possibly the first time in my life, and it’s amazing to be able to ask my family for help with shopping and stuff when I have bad days.
	7 – Re-learning how to cook. I stopped eating eggs when I was eight because I found them “gross”. I could only keep eating meat for as long as I did (until I was twenty) by sternly telling myself that it wasn’t really meat and meat didn’t come from animals and there was certainly no blood involved… Then I moved away from home and had to start cooking my own food (yes, our Mum spoils us), and within a year I was a vegetarian. I find fish and seafood equally gross and once started crying because we had to cut into a fish in biology and it had small fishies in its stomach. So, um, that is a prime playground for all kinds of food related quirks. For the longest time I didn’t let myself eat or I ate too much and felt crap about it. It’s only in the last year that I’ve started cooking because it’s FUN. I used to like cooking, when I was a vegan, but the step from being all obsessive-compulsive about foods and eating to actually enjoying it again… was a big one. This year I also did a brief stint as an omnivore, which lasted about two weeks. Then I returned to vegetarianism because, um, meat is still “gross”. Sorry. That hang up I can’t lose, even if I could put the animal welfare thing aside (which I can’t). In all it taught me why I’m a vegetarian all over again. All good things.
	8 – Starting to read again. When I was younger I was the sort of kid that snuck extra books from the library when we were only allowed to check out a certain number, which was supposed to be “just what we had time to read in a week”. I was found in hedges reading, I could be seen walking and reading at the same time and so on. When we did a reading challenge in fifth grade where we were supposed to read for twenty minutes every day I had to ask for an extra form cos I ran out of space after a week. And then another one. And another one. Somewhere down the line something (depression, I think) happened and I just STOPPED. In late June of this year I started reading again, mostly YA, and I’m happy to say that I’ve read 52 books since then. Yes, I counted. I keep track of them with my Book List, because I’m neardy like that. Reading gives me a million ideas, I learn neat turns of phrases, I learn what NOT to do and so on. During my non-reading phase I thought that reading was a waste of time, cutting into my writing time, but actually it works the other way around – it’s reading that gives me my best ideas!
	9 – Visiting Edinburgh. Going to visit Scotland and get to meet a dear, dear friend. I was gone four days, popped anti-anxiety meds like they were crack (they kind of were) and it took me two months to recover, but it was so worth it. I want to go back already, because I loved the city and Scots are, although difficult to understand at times, the loveliest people ever. I love their accents, I love the mountains sneaking up on me, I love the tiny, tiny gardens in the middle of the city and I looooved the roof terrace of the museum of something-or-other, all the book shops, the vegetarian baked potato shop, the insane hills and curvy roads and of course, the tiny taxis that drove like mad. Aside from seeing Jenn for the first time I think that going to see Amanda Palmer in concert was the highlight of the trip; she’s just amazing and I will mention her again in a bit…
	10 – Writing. As for writing this was a big year. I finished my first big novel manuscript (Eld) in April or so, I wrote a number of short stories, one non-fiction piece, in November I wrote a lovely YA novel that needs about fourteen more rounds of edits (Mundane Secrets), and I also started another project (The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere) that I’m dying to get back to. In all, I did a lot of original writing and almost completely stopped doing narrative RP-ing, and it feels great to move on from that. I try to write a little every day, but obviously some days are better than others. I’m hoping that next year, when I do this (if I remember), I will have something more substantial to add to this one… (Note: This is what I’ve told myself every year since I was 15, and also, I don’t write on a typewriter, but I love this pic so much so I’m using it anyway.)

Runner-ups:
New Years with siblings and cousins in Gothenburg last year.
New Years with cousins and siblings in Stockholm this year. (Sadly kicked off the list as I am NOT GOING).
EVerything involving my siblings and cousins. Seriously. They’re that awesome.
Buying Christmas presents and doing random holiday things because I want to! (A year ago I wouldn’t have wanted to.)
Weaving. (This one was kicked off the list because of the little old ladies fat talk.)
All my crafting and of course my business doing fairly well.
All the new music. (It got its own list instead.)

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10 AUTHORS
I read 52 books this year, and hope to get another two in before the 31st. The ones below are the ones that stuck most with me this year. Eight of these are YA, one is non-fiction and one is adult fiction. Four are part of a series, so I think we can agree that series and YA are my personal crack.

	1 – Cabot, Meg: The Airhead series (Young Adult) These books look suspiciously fluffy from the outside (the paperback even more so, it’s pink and silver), but they are not. Trust me on that one. They tell the story of sixteen-year-old Em Watts who wakes up after an accident and finds her life tangled up with that of super teen model Nikki Howard – against her will. It’s really engaging, rather creepy, and full of drama. Airhead, the first book, is my favourite, mostly because Em acts kind of stupid in the second book, but I have yet to read #3, so I may change my mind.
	2 – Crowley, Cath: The Gracie Faltrain series (Young Adult) The story about Gracie Faltrain, who plays soccer with the boys, and has boy and friend and everything trouble. These books have a million different POVs, and I love them for it. Gracie is sometimes annoyingly dense, but the other POVs makes these books awesome nonetheless. My favourite character is Flemming, a totally minor character that I think you’re supposed to hate… Book #3, Gracie Faltrain Gets It Right (Finally!), is my favourite of these three.
	3 – Harding, Kate & Kirby, Marianne: Lessons From the Fat-O-Sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce with Your Body (Non-Fiction) I’m not big on non-fiction, but this one is amazing. It talks about Health At Every Size, debunks myths about fat people and gently lets you know that being HEALTHY is a good idea, whether you’re skinny or not. I so wish this book was available in Swedish, because I want my parents (and really, everyone I know, regardless of size) to read it.
	4 – Lanagan, Margo: Tender Morsels (Young Adult) This one was probably the hardest read, but also one of the most amazing books I read this year. It’s about Liga, who bears two children after being raped (two occasions, about a year apart), and who ends up in a different world when she is so wounded from these two events that she wants to, you know, throw her baby and herself off a cliff. Margo has horrified people on several continents with the contents of this book, and continues winning prizes with it. She deserves every single one of them too.
	5 – Larbalestier, Justine: Liar (Young Adult) This book is about Micah, who lies about everything. It’s absolutely fascinating to read her story, because you have no idea what’s true and what’s not and then you think you know and just as you figure it out she tells you that you were wrong all along. It’s a great book, and the narration is amazing, but I really can’t say much more about it without going into spoiler territory, so let’s just leave it at that.
	6 – McCarthy, Maureen: Queen Kat, Carmel and St. Jude Get a Life (Young Adult) A book with three POVs, telling three very different stories. The first part is about Carmel who is overweight and lets it consume her life in the worst kind of way, and we also get to see her come out of her shell and come to terms with herself and her body, and that without losing weight. Part two is narrated by Jude, who is going to be a doctor just like her Argentinian father that she’s never met. She becomes horribly depressed and it’s fascinating (and painful) to see how it changes everything before she manages to turn things around. Katerina meanwhile is rich and beautiful but not nearly as happy as everyone thinks… I love Maureen McCarthy; her book Rose By Any Other Name is brilliant too.
	7 – McKinley, Robin: Deerskin (Young Adult) A painful story of a princess who is the daughter of the most beautiful queen in seven kingdoms. When her mother dies her father goes mad and forces her to run from his violence and delusions, and that’s when things get interesting… This book goes into the same category as Tender Morsels, painful yet beautiful and IMPORTANT to read. Especially if you are a teen, which I’m not, but I love this book anyway!
	8 – Murdock, Catherine Gilbert: The Dairy Queen series (Young Adult) These books are about D.J. Schwenk, whose parents own a dairy farm. She’s quite sporty, and in the first book she decides to try out for the boys football team. In the second book she concentrates more on basketball, and her family is a big part through it all. I love the narration more than anything, and can’t wait to read book #3. So far, though, I think the first one, Dairy Queen, is my favourite.
	9 – Rees Brennan, Sarah: The Demon’s Lexicon series (Young Adult) A book from the POV of the dark, broody bloke that is the love interest in most books out there. It’s fascinating to see the thought process of a guy whose main complaint is “why are you talking so much?”, and I can’t wait for book #2, due to come out in May. Even though Nick is no longer the POV. (Or maybe because of it.)
	10 – Waters, Sarah: Tipping the Velvet (Adult Fiction) I know. The rest of the world read this book ten years ago. I didn’t. It’s amazing, though, and I love how authentic it feels all through it, with the theatre terms and old fashioned language and everything that comes with it. Now I want to see the movie, and also, I am so not admitting how long it took me to figure out what “gay girl” meant, which is amusing considering that the direct translation for an old fashioned term for “whore” in Swedish is exactly that.

Runner-ups:
Cross, Shauna: Derby Girl (aka Whip It)
Gaiman, Neil: The Graveyard Book
Johnson, Maureen: The Bermudez Triangle
McCafferty, Megan: The Jessica Darling series
Pierce, Tamora: Protector of the Small series
Roberts, Tansy Rayner/Shearman, Robert: Siren Beat/Roadkill

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10 MUSICIANS
Note that Ani DiFranco isn’t making the list. That is kind of a first, I think. Nice to be moving on to new stuff, though! And no, I am not picking songs. I can’t choose just one. I am choosing an album that meant a lot for me instead, because I’m special like that.

	1 – Amanda Palmer: Who Killed Amanda Palmer? It feels strange that I’ve only listened to her music for less than a year. It feels like forever. Before she went solo she was part of the group The Dresden Dolls and my favourite album of hers is actually the first Dresden Dolls album, but I would never have figured out how brilliant it is had a friend not zipped up and emailed me WKAP. So that’s the one that goes on my list. One of my favourites on this album is Strength Through Music which has the most chilling video ever.
	2 – The Bird and the Bee: The Bird and the Bee. Usually I like my music to be noisy in a very particular way. This album is everything but. It’s very smooth, and Wiki describes it as “a jazz-influenced electro pop project”. I guess that about sums it up. The first song I heard was Again and Again (video here), and I promptly fell in love with the simple and to the point lyrics: “You’re so stupid and perfect / And stupid and perfect / I hate you, I want you / I hate you, I hate you, oh / Again, again, again, again…”
	3 – An Horse: Rearrange Beds . This band I learned about from my Australian Music Fairy (yes, I just promoted her to that). We listened to it like crazy when it was just an EP, and then the whole album came out and there were YouTube videos and I started obsessing about Kate Cooper who is the singer and cute as a button. The song that first hit me like a ton of bricks was Company (video here), but I also really enjoy Camp Out (“This is a song for the one that I love / No, I haven’t met them yet / But I’m quietly confident”) and lately I’ve been all about Shoes Watch (“But I got so scared / That you might be a better me than me”).
	4 – The Indelicates: American Demo . This band was the opening act to Amanda Palmer when I saw her, and I fell madly in love in about two seconds flat. I love that the two front figures, Julia Indelicate and Simon Indelicate take turns singing, and that makes for very different listening experiences depending on the song. Two favourites, sadly not on YouTube, are Stars (“I’m in love with the boy next door / He treats me like a filthy whore”) and We Hate the Kids (“Absolutely anyone can play the fucking guitar”), but here is a link to America, which shows said vocal contrast between the two singers…
	5 – Jenny Owen Youngs: Batten the Hatches. Found this album by way of the excellent (and suitably depressing as all the songs I love) song Fuck Was I, which you can see here. I bought both her albums before going to Edinburgh, because I suddenly decided that I Had To Have Them for the flight. I hear Jenny is currently the opening act of Regina Spektor who is also the voice in the beginning of the song Voice on Tape (and don’t ask me how many months I listened to that song before figuring that out).
	6 – Kate Nash: Made of Bricks. I found out about Kate’s music through Female Appreciation Month, and it kind of hit me over the head like a well-placed brick (ha, ha, ha). She was this year’s Lily Allen, in a way, and the song Foundations inspired me to write a certain blog post, but I think my favourite song of hers is Mariella, which you should check out here, and not just because Kate has the most delicious British accent…
	7 – Lily Allen: It’s Not Me, It’s You. Lily’s first album was my post-break-up-fuck-you-I’m-doing-fine-really-I-am-music. I don’t think I listened to anything else for months. I didn’t get nearly as obsessed with this album, but it’s still a good one. I love The Fear (video here), Not Fair always makes me giggle and I Could Say is beautiful. Yes, really.
	8 – The Lucksmiths. I refuse to pick one for them, since they QUIT this year and anyway I love this graphic Google found me, which doesn’t belong to an album, I don’t think. This is a band I never thought that I would like. See above when I ask for noisy stuff. My Australian Music Fairy, however, disagreed and shared some music with me and got me hooked. She’s evil like that. I’ve got parts of four of their albums in my ipod and I so can’t choose one above the others. When I went to YouTube to see what there was of theirs on there I found this cover of The Smiths’ There’s a Light That Never Goes Out, which made me smile (disregard the video, okay?).
	9 – Pony Up!: Make Love to the Judges With Your Eyes. I extremely randomly tripped and fell over Pony Up! when a friend sent me their song Shut Up and Kiss Me (“If I left you wouldn’t miss me / I don’t care, shut up and kiss me”, and later bought some more of their stuff to see if I liked it as much. I kind of did. I don’t like everything they do, like most of this list, but they’re still pretty damn brilliant. From this album I especially like The Best Offence (”My self respect means more to me / Than you do / Or at least it used to“).
	10 – Regina Spektor: Far. I pretty much like everything Regina does, so I don’t think anyone was surprised when I started obsessing over this album. My favourite song from it is, by far, Folding Chair (video here), but Eet is brilliant too. My favourite Regina song right now, however? It’s a tie between Chelsea Hotel #2 (a Leonard Cohen cover, available here) and Mockingbird, apparently a play on a nursery rhyme or something, which you can see here. Neither are on this album. Sorry about that.

Runner-ups:
Anything and everything by Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday
Rilo Kiley: More Adventurous
Yeah Yeah Yeahs: iTunes Originals

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STUFF, STUFF AND MORE STUFF
Wow. Nearly 4000 words now. That is crazycakes. I am pretty much done, but will toss in a short list of “extras” that I can’t fit in anywhere but still want to mention…

How I Met Your Mother, especially the unreliable narration.
Glee, and pretty much everything involving Mercedes and/or Kurt.
Post Secret, which is an oldie but I still love it.
Questionable Content, my favourite web-cartoon of them all, especially when there is Marigold and/or Hannelore.
The Guild, the best five minute episodes of web-TV you will ever see. With Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton, people!
Ill Doctrine and his defense of the Being Grouchy About the HAPPY HOLIDAYS Thing.
Shapely Prose and all its four (I think?) writers.
Bokhora, the most brilliant book review site in Swedish I know (the fact that their name translates to “Book Whore” helps).
Baby Power Dyke, blog that preaches the goodness of Rachel Maddow and recently got suspended (and un-suspended, thank fuck).
Any and all blogs by authors, publishers and literary agents that I read, which I can share if somebody cares, but the list is kind of long.

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I believe that’s all. Oh thank fuck for that, it would be sad to still be working on this by midnight…

I am in a ridiculously crappy mood. Day before Christmas. Oh joy.

REASONS TO BE CRANKY:

1. Just put the Christmas tree back in an upright position for the SIXTH time.
2. Have yet to make the damn stuffing for tomorrow.
3. Claw marks on my thigh from an enthusiastic present wrapping helper.
4. Ripped back hat for the third time. Damn it.
5. My brother’s presents did not arrive on time! (But all the others did.)

…

REASONS TO GET OVER MYSELF AND STOP BEING CRANKY:

1. Wrapped all my presents and packed them up nicely for tomorrow.
2. Finished my sewing just on time.
3.Vegetable pot pie for dinner.
4. The vegetarian ham (yes, really) waiting for me and my parents’ house.
5. Cousins coming over day after tomorrow. (I pretend I don’t know about the cleaning that must be done before then.)
6. The awesomely awesome presents from Tansy, including a DVD of the kids! Which I opened a day early. Hush. You would have too, if you got a parcel smelling that good.
7. A drawing of Raeli’s is on my fridge!
8. My enthusiastic little helper is finally asleep and leaving me the hell alone.
9. Spotify acknowledges that The Lucksmiths exist.
10. The shower I am about to take. It involves Lush soap and Lush shampoo, do I need to say more?

Having tea, listening to old school music and pondering my best-of-list for 2009. Only one book to go to hit my goal for the year! (Also, what do you buy a 23-year-old male that has EVERYTHING in terms of music, movies and TV shows? Beer?)

In the last week I have finished two of the three books that has been half-read and ignored since my move in SEPTEMBER. The two I’m done with are Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters (and now I must see the movie) and Lady Knight in the series about the Protector of the Small aka Keladry of Mindelan by Tamora Pierce. That is quite a mouthful isn’t it? Not to worry, she goes by “Kel”, for the most part, and I suspect that if I’d understood why people would become knights (or detectives, or police officers, or any other high risk profession) I might’ve liked this quartet of books even more.

My favourite character from the Pierce set will always be the cynical, often exasperated and extremely green-eyed apparently (as it’s mention at least twenty times per book) friend of Kel’s, Nealan. He’s awesome.

Only book left to read on that particular pile is Deerskin by Robin McKinley, and then I get to start fresh! Four more books before January first and I will make my goal of reading 50 books in six months. Which wasn’t a goal until I a few weeks ago went “whoa, I’ve read 42 books in the last five months”, and decided to bring it up to an even number.

In other news I today (literally) had a camera shoved down my throat and while uncomfortable, it was far from the least pleasant medical procedure I’ve undergone. It does however look like I don’t have Celiac (hooray!), though won’t know for sure until the biopsy comes back. I did get stern lecture about eating too much Ibuprofen. It apparently has left pretty polkadots on the lining of my stomach. NOT GOOD.

I do feel a bit strange when I eat too much bread, but as I mostly eat bread with cheese it might just be the lactose playing up again. I have no idea, and need to call my doctor’s office and get a print out of what the blood work said, because he wouldn’t have referred me for this procedure (which cost 100 SEK, less than 20 USD, sometimes I do love Swedish health care) if there was nothing steering him in that direction…

In all, it seems like I’m getting to keep my medical mystery badge, which I was so ready to give up.

On Thursday I have my long-awaited psychiatrists appointment, which is good, because I can feel the effect of the antidepressants starting to taper of fucking already. I feel physically stronger, but mentally? Not so much.

I’m buying my Christmas stuff this weekend despite the pleas from my sister to wait until she comes home on the 19th, and I’m sure that the cat will climb it and knock it over every single time I sleep. And sometimes while I’m fully awake and yelling at her for doing it. Kittens are very… kitten-y.

Other than that I’m mostly knitting, writing, cuddling said menace, reading many books and being upset that I am missing Regina Spektor’s show in Stockholm tonight. I do need to save my spoons – Christmas and New Year’s will be hard enough as it is – but I so wish that I could’ve gone.

Maybe next time.

PS. If I could marry a fibre it would be Malabrigo Silk Blend in various greens. You’ll see when I post pictures.