March 19

A lot has happened yesterday. GOOD STUFF. Some of it I can’t share, but for now, all I can say now is that I had 2 burgers at Tommy’s yesterday, got tickets to Northside, and now have a brand new turntable and a pair of 180W speakers sitting in our living room, waiting to be installed. Things are good and the sun is out…

March 13

So, I have just been to the optician and they basically said I need to see a proper doctor because my vision is quite fucked up, especially on my right eye, which has gotten much worse over the last few years thanks to a bloody keratoconus. For what I can gather, the only way out is to either start using rigid, gas permeable contact lenses (which I have tried before and couldn’t stand) or have some sort of surgery done (of which I’m really scared of). I guess carrying on with spectacles is an option too, but that wouldn’t really improve my vision and will allow the condition to keep getting worse so I’m afraid I’m gonna need to make an uncomfortable choice soon…

March 11

Spent all of yesterday at home, either laying in bed or sitting on the couch, dealing with a very annoying back pain. When I left the office on Monday afternoon, I felt a strong prick in the top centre of my back and I knew right away I was in trouble. I got home, took some painkillers and lay in bed, hoping the discomfort would go away but it didn’t; it hurt when I walked, it hurt when I tried to move my head to the sides, it hurt when I was trying to sleep… it just fucking hurt all the time.

I barely got any sleep so I called in sick yesterday and stayed at home, trying to rest my back. I took that as an opportunity to catch up with “Better Call Saul,” which I hadn’t been able to watch since it premiered a few weeks ago. I managed to watch six episodes before Kat came back home, at which point we made a quick brake to watch “Ex on the Beach” (dreadful, I know) and then picked up “House of Cards” where we left it on Monday.

This morning, I stopped at Kaffekilden for breakfast and then to the place where I used to do my physiotherapy for a back massage. I was expecting it to be painful but Aline, the Norwegian girl in charge of my appointment, did a great job at sorting me out without making me suffer. I really appreciate that.

I’m now in the office, feeling a much better, watching live videos of Judas Priest on YouTube and wishing I could be out enjoying the sun. Who knows, maybe I will sneak out and go for a walk. I’m sure you’d do the same if you could…

March 6

A lot is happening at the moment and, despite knowing things are probably going to be okay, I can’t help but feeling slightly overwhelmed; my brain keeps sending my heart mixed signals, of both fear and hope, and the process of sorting those feelings out is difficult sometimes. I have also been listening to “Comfortably Numb,” which for some reason makes me both melancholic and delighted. No idea why.

* * * *

Last Friday, I finally met Dorte, one of Kat’s co-workers, who invited us for dinner at her place. Dorte is 65 and her husband is 72, yet they come across as a joyful, cheeky couple the moment you meet them. They are good fun and they know how to treat their guests.

On Saturday, Kat and I went to check out a Chocolate Festival that sounded much better than it actually was. The venue wasn’t very exciting, the way the stands were setup was a bit confusing, and there were lines of people everywhere. We couldn’t be bothered to stand in line to get tiny pieces of fancy chocolate for free so we decided to try the less crowded exhibitors instead. I had a couple of really nice nougat and milk chocolate bars, a passion-fruit and ginger filled chocolate that was very interesting, an okay tiramisú ice cream, a pretty decent chocolate brownie and took home a couple of chocolate spreads: one with olive oil (which was pretty disgusting) and one of dark, bitter chocolate that was acceptable but certainly nothing to write home about.

Later in the evening, we signed up for a free month of Netflix and started watching “House of Cards” from the beginning. Kat hadn’t seen a single episode and I thought it wouldn’t hurt to watch the first couple of seasons again before jumping into the new one so we stayed in and got five or six episodes out of the way in one sit. Kat likes the series so we will be binging on “House of Cards” for the next couple of weeks.

On Sunday, the weather was so nice that we decided to go for a walk around the Botanical Gardens, a beautiful place I hadn’t visited before. It was nice and quiet. We had a look around the greenhouse and then sat by the little lake for a while, taking up the sun. Copenhagen looks fantastic on days like these.

We got a bit hungry around noon so decided to try some hotdogs we saw outside Torvehallerne. Now, I’m not a big fan of hot dogs but the “Red Devil” by Pølse Kompagniet is probably the best hotdog I have ever had in my life. Seriously, it was perfect. If you live in Copenhagen, go check it out for yourself, you won’t be disappointed.

In the evening, Kat and I went to see Hayseed Dixie play in a shithole, in Kødbyen. The tickets were cheap and we had listened to some of their AC/DC covers so we decided to go check them out, just for the fun of it. The audience was mostly old men with receding hairlines and prominent beer bellies, some teenage rockers, a few girls, and a kid that most have been about 10 years old. Altogether, we were about 200 people on a Sunday night in a shitty venue hidden in a trendy meatpacking district. The right setting for a southern bluegrass cover band to work their magic and win some hearts over with blazing banjo lines and witty, political jokes. It felt like a stand up comedy show by John Wheeler with a few musical intermissions in between, and that combination worked pretty well.

The band opened with “Hells Bells”, followed shortly after by “Ace of Spades” and “War Pigs.” Needless to say, they got me in their pockets right from the beginning. From there it only got better: “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “You Shook Me All Night Long,” “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” “Eye of the Tiger,” “Paranoid,” “Highway to Hell,” “Hotel California” and, surprisingly, a really nice version of “Clandestino” by Manu Chao.

If it wasn’t because I had to wake up relatively early today to go to work, I think we would have stayed after the show and buy the band some beers. They were unpretentious, funny, and truly friendly with their audience. You simply don’t get to see that very often…