So, I just got back from a week in Vemdalsskalet (http://www.vemdalsskalet.com/) with Mia, her brother, his wife and their two children. Maja, one of Pidde's daughters took ski lessons and she took to them like a natural. As you can see below, she has already got the hang of standing on other peoples equipment, just like a real skiier  With only 1 hour lesson a day I was surprised when I arrived that she was already going down the lesson slope on her own and by mid-week had even figured how to ride the button lift on her own.

It was the first time I had seen Mia in a fair while so it was great to see her again and get to spend time with her after so long. Unfortunately she decided not to ski this year so my slope time was spent with her brother Pidde.

Pidde and I ended up having two competitions. One to see who fell over the most and the other to see who could kick up the most snow at each other. I went down twice within about a minute of each other after hitting a couple of bumps in the snow coming off a bridge and just before the chair lift. Then Pidde fell while trying to turn around from standing followed by a pretty spectacular jump followed by face first snow plough impression down the mountain. Luckily he was unhurt so the competition continued.

Pidde did eventually win the falling over competition after her put his pole in the snow behind my snowboard causing me to go over backwards (bending his ski pole) and sliding backwards down the mountain. I realised I wouldnt be able to stop my slide with my hands so spun around and jammed my snowboard in the snow to come to a stop. That is when Pidde took the opportunity to draw level for kicking snow up at each other as he came down the mountain and sprayed me with snow as I sat there recovering  Curse you Pidde, next time I will have my revenge...

Got to do some night riding too (well it was pre-8pm but it was still dark )

All in all it was a fun week and a good restart to being with Mia again. Just a shame it had to end and now I have work tomorrow instead. Guess you can't stay on holiday forever...

So before I go on holiday this evening, hitting the slopes of Vemdalen, I bought some Monster energy drinks as I have to travel over night on the train and be sure I'm awake at 6am to get off the train or continue to who knows where.

So I went to pay for these and the cashier was either checking me out or more likely checking to make sure I was old enough to be drinking energy drinks. This has come after calls in Sweden to sell to people over a certain age as kids were getting hyped up on it at school etc.

While I partially agree with limiting the drinks to kids I'm 30 years old and really don't look under whatever age they set it to (16 or 18 I'm not sure). Hell I go into the same store and buy beer almost every other week with a credit card. I'm surprised they aren't used to me yet and know I'm old enough without having to look twice. If it was McDonalds they would know what I was buying before I even got to the counter but that is another story

Time for me to go catch a train to Northern Sweden and see my ex who is now my current again

The SEGA Dreamcast is 10 today (well the USA one is, Europe is slightly younger) but the best console made was brutally killed off by the evil Sony and PS2. I can only hope Microsoft stomps Sony into the ground to bring sweet sweet justice for what happened to Dreamcast.

So both Whitelines (http://www.whitelines.com) and Onboard Snowboarding (http://onboardsnowboarding.com) sent out their newsletters last week including the Friday Fix and whatever Onboard call their version. This is a sure sign that the 09/10 season is almost on us. Hurrah!!! It took ages, what has it been since last season started? About a year or something crazy like that?

Well today after a bit of thinking about it, I took the big step and severed my connection with Facebook and set my account there to be deleted. I joined the site later than a lot of people and didn't really want to join back then either. So I joined, messed about with the site for a while and even met some old school friends through the site. My sister and even my mum joined the site recently too but no matter who I managed to connect with I just didn't like the site and what it was doing to people. No one talks to arrange anything anymore it's all done with requests through that damn site. I visited the site less and less even though I have seen some of my friends do nothing but sit on that site all day every day, can it really be THAT interesting? If it can then I missed something

So I set my account to delete and now just have to leave it in-active for a couple of weeks and away it goes, removed for good from the site even though Facebook doesn't make it too easy to find how to actually delete your account.

So for those of you who were on my Facebook I didn't delete you so don't worry, I'm not ignoring you, you just need to talk to me in another way. Live Messenger, email, phone, SMS, in person etc.

So the time has come to move house here in Stockholm. My landlady is coming back from America and is selling the apartment I hoped to stay in for another year. So I found an apartment a little bit further away from work which I move to on June 1st. Only problem is, from May 8th I have to have all my stuff out of my current apartment so the landlady can try and sell her place. Thanks to one of the guys at work I'm moving all my stuff into his place for May and then living in my "old" apartment for a month without anything . Costing me a small fortune too. Two rents AND a deposit to pay plus my hateful UK bills to pay and I can just about afford to eat. Ahhhh why do we rely on food?

To make things worse, Mia has been moving house in her home area too so I haven't seen her for about 3 months now which really, REALLY sucks.

No, I don't need a creme for it, its not that kind of itch. Instead it is of course the one to do with going snowboarding. Seeing people going boarding all around me, getting sent videos, seeing pictures and hearing stories is driving me nuts. I mean I love seeing and hearing it all because it fills the void I have by not going myself.

Trying to arrange a trip with people at work is like pulling teeth, slow and painful with the only cure being drugs only there arent any

Anyway, there does seem to be a silver lining on the horizon in the form of a day trip to some semi-local mountains next weekend (14th/15th March 2009). I'm gonna board that mountain until I have to leave or until I break something cos they have a park. Ohhhh yes. Time to hit some kickers.

Well its officially Christmas. Yesterday I saw the one advert that has always meant Christmas is here... The Coca Cola Christmas advert.

Probably still my favourite of the adverts: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ogetBqMgau0

Who would have thought a soft drinks company could decide when it was Christmas  

Short blog today... So as most people will know I moved from Blighty over a year and a half ago and coming up to my 2nd Christmas in Sweden. I haven't been home since I got here and to be honest while I miss family its not all that bad here in the land of meatballs and IKEA.

One thing I am missing though is Xscape and the ability to be able to go snowboarding at any time I like. Yeah I now live in a country of mountains and snow but its as close as I was to getting to Scotland for a day trip when I lived near London.

So while there are a lot of benefits to Sweden (and there are LOTS) there is also the biggest downside I can imagine. Although on the other hand I did take up skateboarding. So I guess I have boarding of some kind to keep me occupied when I can't get to the snow.

So I've had the question, why did you close Face Plant and then bring it back again?

Well I originally closed the site because it wasn't where I wanted it to be or doing what I wanted it to do. The old software that I used was called Postnuke, and for the longest time they promised an update to it which would bring new features. This tuned up just after I decided to close the site so I went to upgrade it and POW, it broke the whole website. So I thought "fuck it" and shut it down early.

Another bit of software was on the books to try as well but I never got round to it, since Postnuke broke the site BIG TIME, I thought why not. The site thats here now is the result and is based off software called Dolphin and forum software called Orca. Thats why you'll see mention of fishy things on the site for a while

Another thing I want from Face Plant is to be self sufficient, having members providing interesting information about their favourite sports and themselves. To form groups and friendships. To basically have a good time with people who enjoy the same things you do. More sports will be added to the site so be sure to spread the word that Face Plant is the extreme sports website to go to.