25 Random Things (part two)

Yesterday I started writing a list of 25 things that mean something to me when I think about Sweden, but I ran out of steam at number 17. What can I say, it was a long day. Anyway, here are a few more random things, to round out the quarter-century.

18. I can't wait to pay low prices for magazines again. They've got a real racket going on in Scandinavia. Here, magazines are actually worth something, as opposed to being given away in order to boost up the rate base for advertisers. I applaud the business model, but as a consumer, it blows. Yesterday I bought two magazines and spent over $20. And I've heard a yearly subscription to Science Illustration costs around $100. Oh, darling U.S.A. with your $7 magazine subscriptions and collapsing publishing industry....

19. I've been puzzled by the Stockholm accent since I moved here. Not everyone has it. Most people speak Swedish without the inflection I'm about to describe, but there's a certain "posh" Swedish accent in which the speaker puts the vowels "e," "i" and "y" in the back of her throat in a really strange way that I can't imitate. I really wish I knew the history of that linguistic tendency, because it's super weird.

20. Swedish staircases would be a risk-management liability in the U.S. I may have mentioned this in another blog post a long time ago, but I guess that means I just really care about the issue! Instead of having landings every 7 to 13 stairs in order to create room for an upward turn (I only know that's the norm in the U.S. because I used to run up stairs for exercise a lot), the whole thing just twists treacherously in an upward spiral, with no room to walk on the inside of the twist, and no banister. There's not much room to pass if there's another person coming, which is a bad thing considering the fact that Swedes don't really give each other the right-of-way to pass at all. I wouldn't want my grandma to have to navigate a crowded Swedish staircase.

21. The best experience I had during my stay in Sweden was the first weekend I was here, when I went to Torekov to visit Kai and Randa. It is really freaking beautiful in Skåne in the summertime. The cows grazing on the beach are still one of my favorite mental images of picturesque, pristine Sweden.

22. I really love my job here. It's so exciting to be in the head office and learn about the ideas and projects that are influencing the whole company. It could just be that my timing is especially good: there's a lot of fresh energy here and a lot of big changes happening when it comes to the corporate philosophy. I really believe in the branding and communications work I'm doing, and it has been amazing to have the freedom to build a new Web site and social network based on best practices and research rather than on arcane, publishing-industry enterprise standards, which is what we used to have to deal with.

23. Jonas Bonnier is a cool cat. He presents himself very modestly and endearingly when he addresses the entire staff, but he's also a shrewd businessman with very good intuition about people. I'm not too keen on authority, which means I only want to follow people I respect and believe have something to teach me, so it means a lot to have company leadership I can get behind. This feels like kind of a banner year in that regard, what with learning that Bonnier is a company whose values I share AND getting an intelligent new U.S. president.

24. I was really lucky to actually make some good friends here in Sweden. I mean, I'm pretty outgoing, but it really would have sucked if I had come here and not liked my coworkers. And making friends outside of work happened just through the sheer luck of mutual acquaintances. I don't think I would have been able to get through the winter months without my new girlfriends!

25. I'm really excited to go see the movie Mammut (Mammoth) tomorrow night, which I think will be a big international release. For my American friends who haven't heard of it, it's a new film by the Swedish director Lukas Moodysson, but it's in English and stars Michelle Williams and Gael Garcia Bernal—two of my favorite actors. It's already speculated that it will go to Sundance this year. Here's the trailer:

25 Random Things (part one)

Inspired by the viral Facebook notes thing where you're supposed to list 25 interesting things about yourself, I decided to write my 25 random things about Sweden. I only have about a month left here in the land of Svea, and I'm feeling a little bittersweet about it. On the one hand, I'm going to miss my friends and my exciting job and the cool restaurants and bars, and the pretty green spaces, and on the other hand, I'm ready to get the eff up out of this miserable weather. Ah, but Sweden, you're so naive and safe and gentle. I'll miss you.

25 Random Things:

1. I love the orange bouncy mountain at Vasaparken, and I go there to jump on the trampoline sometimes when no one's looking.

2. The Stockholm canal boats have the most boring audio tour I've ever heard.

3. Finding an adorable new shop filled with a well-edited selection of super design-y things is a more regular occurance in Sweden than anywhere else I've ever been.

4. Cloudberries. Even the name is magical.

5. People in Stockholm have incredibly lousy public etiquette. I can't even count the number of times someone has refused to let me pass on the sidewalk, let a door slam in my face or jumped ahead of me to get on a bus or subway car. It really is infuriating, even to other Swedes. Maybe Stockholm needs that lady who tried to teach the Chinese manners prior to the last Olympics....

6. Vete-Katten, and Bonnier's relentless sponsorship of their business: So wrong, yet so right.

7. Aw, Niklas. I'm gonna miss my buddy. And his wife and kids. By the next time I see Elton, he will probably be able to say something other than the gruff, Viking-like "Där!"

8. It's probably a bad idea to go naming names. Then I'd have to name all the people I've met and will miss in Sweden. But if you've read this blog before, you may notice that Niklas is one of the few characters that I actually name. That was a little stylistic thing I was trying to do, like in the Peanuts, where all the non-children just say "wah-wah-wah-wah-wah."

9. I'm really sick of my apartment. It's kind of crappy to begin with, and I've spent way too much time in it by myself.

10. God, I love Djurgården. If I had long evenings filled with daylight, I would just spend all my time there.

11. I am very jealous of Ganda, who gets to fill the next spot in the job rotation after I leave, and will be here for the very best possible span of seasons.

12. I wish I had gone out and partied more in Stockholm. I may have missed the true essence of the city because I never really did any big nights out on the town. I'm not really hanging with the right demographic for that, unfortunately, since most of my friends have small kids. Hopefully when John comes to town, we'll have at least one late night at the clubs.

13. On Friday, February 13th, while John's here, I'm getting a group of people together to sing karaoke at a place that's stumbling distance from my house. I have a long-standing bet with my boss in New York about whether I can get Jonas Bonnier to sing karaoke with me. We'll see what happens!

14. I wanted to go up and see the north of Sweden, but I never got around to it. I think it would be better in the summer. There's an indigenous people who live there called the Sami, who are analogous to America's Eskimos, since they continue to live in the traditional way of their ancestors. They breed reindeer, make all their own tools, clothes and homes, and speak an ancient language. I'd really like to meet some Sami someday.

15. I also meant to kayak around Stockholm's canals and then skate on the frozen-over canals, but both seemed kind of sketchy for a foreigner to do alone (okay, it's not about being a foreigner—I have an appalling sense of direction), so I never got to go. Dang, I'm a loser!

16. Speaking of water, Sweden's is so clean you can just carbonate it and serve it as a soft drink. We have a faucet at the Bonnier building that dispenses seltzer water. Amazing!

17. Dang, it's tough coming up with 25 things! Plus, I'm still at the office a couple hours after everyone else has gone for the day, so I think i'll come back with things 18 through 25 tomorrow.

Open Letter To Swedish Girls Who Think T-Shirts Are Dresses

Dear girl-going-up-the-stairs-of-the-Tunnelbana-in-front-of-me,

Yes I snapped a photo of your butt with my iPhone and yes that was creepy, but I needed to blog about you, so hear me out.

You are not wearing a dress. That's a t-shirt. It's made of sheer white jersey cotton and it barely covers your ass. You're supposed to wear it over jeans, not translucent black stockings. I can see your thong, and I don't want to see your thong. The fact that you keep tugging at it means you subconsciously know this isn't your best fashion idea and you're feeling insecure. It doesn't matter if all the other 20-year-old girls in Stockholm are doing it. They look stupid and insecure, too.

Remember when Britney Spears wore that tunic with no pants? She thought it was a dress, which made everyone realize she was having a nervous breakdown. Don't be like that, okay?

Love,

Megan

Sales and Semlor

I realized the other day that I haven't really been utilizing all of Stockholm's resources lately. Namely, it's been a long time since I've gone out and just walked around town, which is the main weekend pastime here. So yesterday after a killer kettlebell class (my hands are getting ripped to shreds from all the swinging and snatching) I walked downtown to check out the scene. To my great joy and mild apprehension—gulp—I discovered that every shop in town has deeply discounted its merchandise to make room for the spring collections. Signs everywhere read 70% off! Slut rea! Realization! Final sale! Translation: the city is my Century 21. So, I did a small amount of damage. I picked up a fantastic cropped leather jacket from superhip Swedish designer Whyred, a corset belt and daringly draped turquoise jersey dress from Malin Berger and a pair of sexy but highly walkable black knee boots from Kenzo. *Long, low whistle.*

Aaaaand I might have also stopped into a salon and had my hair dyed red. My mom and husband are not thrilled about this because they "like me better blonde," but I feel like I look more interesting with a little bit of colorful pop, especially when I'm here in Sweden, surrounded by towheads. Plus, my dad, grandma, aunt and cousin are all redheads, so I feel like I have genetic carrot top cred.

While walking around town I also noticed an interesting foodie/cultural thing: There's a new seasonal pastry on the scene called "semla" (plural: semlor) and it's apparently very, very Swedish and important. There are coffee shops and konditori (pastry shops) on every block in Stockholm, and right now each one holds displays of this round yeast bun flavored with cardamom and filled with cream and almond paste. They were traditionally made for Fat Tuesday, as a way of using up all the rich ingredients prior to the pre-Easter fast, but these days they're served as early as possible, because people can't get enough of them. So now instead of just one fat day, there's basically fat January, February and March. I sat down to lunch at my usual salad place yesterday and people were queued up around the corner buying semlor. I sat there picking at a plate of greens while watching people stuff these huge cream buns into their faces and I just about died with jealousy, but managed to get out of there without eating one. Then I continued to be tortured by semlor calling out to me from every shop window in town: "Megan! Eat me!" I knew I wouldn't be able to fight the good fight forever and I'd have to taste one, so I was super psyched when I saw a gorgeous display of miniature semlor in a shop window on the way to work this morning. I got to experience the deliciousness in a golf ball-sized portion, which was exciting to my palate but not overly treacherous for my hips. It really is a nice flavor combo: the buns are soft and yeasty like dinner rolls, and kicked up with a touch of cardamom. The cream is barely sweetened, and a thin layer of marzipan provides a sugary bit of texture and rich almond flavor.

According to Niklas, the endless font of random historical knowledge, an 18th century king named Adolf something or other died after gorging himself on 14 semlor in one sitting. I assume this was after a full meal or something. Modern-day eating champions would scoff at such a poor performance. He was probably poisoned.

I was hoping to leave you with a video on how to make semlor, but a quick YouTube search yielded much stranger stuff. A Rammstein song set entirely to one unmoving image of a single semla and this little gem. They're singing about how the semla comes to cheer us up when it's dark and the weather is bad!

TGIF Fo' Real

It has been a loooooong week. Monday through Wednesday was the second session of the Bonnier Publishing Program 3.0 and we cranked out a pretty unbelievable amount of work. For those who didn't read my post about this a month ago (I'm flattering myself with the idea that you're all regular readers), BPP is a gathering of 20 Web people from around the Bonnier world, and it's sort of an entrepreneurship bootcamp. The idea is that we will come up with four solid ideas for new Web sites and pitch our business cases to the company management for potential launches in 2009. I'm not gonna spill the beans on my group's idea, but I think it's really innovative. We got surprisingly far into the project in 3 days, and the evenings involved dinners and socializing, which always adds up to a fairly sleep-free arrangement. I'm a social person, but this on the heels of CES had me wanting to just crawl into bed without talking to anyone.

In other exciting news, there seems to be a "change" movement blowing through Bonnier's tech department as well as through the U.S. government. In fact, I'm thinking of making a forum page at change.bonnier.com just for the hell of it. But don't click that yet—it doesn't exist right now. I'm really excited about the prospect of connecting employees all over the world through our new global social network. The idea is that people will be able to collaborate on projects and share code, which will be a huge breakthrough for us. This project is basically the whole reason why I went to Sweden, and it's finally about to launch in a few weeks. Thus, I've been working some pretty long days trying to knock a ton of tasks off the list. Next week I'm going to start pretty much camping out at the office of the development team so I can produce content and answer questions on the spot. I am pretty much the ideal client, if I do say so myself. But I've set an insane schedule for this project, so the least I can do is get down in the trenches.

Our office is fairly buzzing with brain power these days, as two really interesting new people have joined the R&D team. One is Web whiz kid Bjorn Jefferey, who's not really "new," but has moved from Malmo to Stockholm and is now in the office contributing ideas a whole lot more. The other is a former Nokia bigshot named Erich Hugo, who will be in charge of Bonnier's mobile strategy. He is really smart and funny and I'm looking forward to seeing what ideas he comes up with—it's quite a coup to bring him from the tech world over to publishing. There's also four other R&D people all working on digital strategies, new site launches and market research, which means a huge portion of the energy at Bonnier HQ is going into digital matters. And THAT means that Jonas can't help but turn his attention toward the Web and mobile markets in 2009. He's headed to the U.S. next week for a series of interviews with company leaders to get a "helicopter view" (I love this Swedish expression) of our Web program. We've got a new VP of digital media in place in the U.S., and he seems to be very smart and open to new ideas, so it'll be interesting to see what the new year yields. I chose a sunshiney shot from last weekend to, um, symbolize my optimism for 2009. (Really I just couldn't decide on an image, but ssssh.)

And on the personal front, I think I mastered the kettlebell snatch this week. Well, okay, maybe not "mastered" it. Surely there's more I could learn. But something clicked and my form suddenly got a whole lot better. Also, a shout-out to my friend Robin Bunker, who decided to take up kettlebells and sought out a trainer in Colorado. I'm looking forward to seeing how she likes it!

Now I have to decide whether to take a bath and crawl into bed with a book, or go to a cocktail party with a bunch of Web entrepreneurs. The latter would probably be a good move, but I'm not sure I can swing it tonight. Hmmmm.....

Kettlebell Stockholm!

Okay, so I'm feeling a lot happier now that I just went to kettlebell class. My fears about stinky thuggish guys were totally unfounded: there were only three of us in the class and while the other two were male, they were unintimidating, normal Swedish dudes. And Fredrik is a pretty good teacher. His class wasn't nearly as hard as a typical Keira Newton class, but she's a psycho, and he just opened his gym on Tuesday. In any case, he payed close attention to form, which is important. And we did a retarded amount of snatches, which is also important, since I need to get up to speed in order to pass the RKC test in May. Today, I did 140 snatches in 10 minutes, using a 12 kg bell. By May, I need to be able to do 70 snatches in 5 minutes using a 16 kg bell. My cardio and strength need to ramp up in order to compress the intensity into that short period of time.

I wish Fredrik had opened his gym a few months ago! But I'm happy that it exists now. I was going to post a video of the snatch, so everyone would know what I'm talking about, but the YouTube videos I saw either featured the aforementioned big-sweaty-type dudes, or else people with really bad form. So instead I decided to leave you with a funny photo of a 1940s Russian military guy swinging a kettlebell. Maybe Keira will post a video and show us how it's done.

Grumpy, Dorky, and Kicked Out of the Club

After my last post, I'm sure you're gonna read what I'm about to say and go, "Oh geez, the girl's off her meds..." But I'm going to say it anyway: I'm pretty sick of being here. And damn, it feels cathartic to say so. I've been so polite and done my best to be upbeat and gracious about the downsides of winter in Sweden, even when—for instance—it's only 50 degrees in my apartment.

I know what you're going to say, I've been back for less than a week so it's not really fair to take the gloves off and start pummeling Sweden. But the fact is that being in the sunshiny southwestern U.S. for three weeks and then coming back here brought the "sick of" feeling into sharp relief. I hope my Swedish buddies reading this won't take offense—from what I can gather, most people get sick of Sweden between November and February, and unluckily for me, that time frame has comprised the majority of my experience living here. I fell in love with Sweden a little bit between August and October, but since the leaves fell off the trees, my time here has basically been spent in a series of coping strategies, with varying levels of success. Bury my head in work? Successful! Drink a lot of alcohol? Successful! Overeat? Successful! Exercise regularly and get the proper amount of sleep? Completely unsuccessful!

Speaking of the proper amount of sleep, since I switched up my prescription for vitamins a few days ago, I've had a ton of energy, which is remarkable since I ought to still be jetlagged. But I think the jetlag hit me in a single punch, instead of spreading itself throughout the week. Yesterday I mysteriously and alarmingly failed to wake up in the morning. I hit the snooze button at around 7:30 am, half-noticed that the sun was peeking through the clouds and then rolled over and went back to sleep. The next time I woke up, it was 3:30 pm and the sun was going down! Good thing it happened to be a Saturday, but it was still an eerie feeling. An entire day passed and I didn't miss anything. I did not wake up, and no one noticed. Most people don't lead solitary lives where it would be possible for no pets to need a walk, no children to climb into bed, not even friends wondering why I didn't make it to brunch! I'm not only flying solo in Sweden, but anybody who might have been looking for me is six to eight time zones away. Creepy.

But back to this blog post's original theme. The icing on the "sick of Sweden" cake came last night, when I was declined admission to a two-bit nightclub. (This is where Urkel, or at least feeling like Urkel, comes in.) My American colleague Tom (in town for the Bonnier Publishing Program) and I decided to go to this place called East, which serves pan-Asian food and then confusingly becomes a hip-hop club after 11 pm. Tom usually dresses well—I don't ever think I've seen him without at least a sport coat before—but last night for whatever reason, he was wearing a Patagonia fleece and a wool hat. And I was wearing a cute outfit, but with glasses and a long puffer jacket, and no makeup. So, glibly conversing about something or other, we walk between the velvet ropes, up to the doorman, who mumbles something about "try coming back in an hour." And we're like, an hour? It's already midnight, what's going to change in an hour? But the doorman has turned away. Now, Tom and I have been to a few clubs before, in places like New York, Las Vegas and L.A. And neither of us has ever been turned down before. It doesn't even occur to us that it's possible to be turned away from a nightclub in effing Stockholm, so we don't realize what's going on. We're just standing there going, huh, what do you want to do now? And this girl behind us in line goes, "Honestly, you guys, I think it's your outfits. This is Stockholm, you've gotta dress up!" And we just crack up. She might as well have been like, "This is Des Moines, you've gotta dress up!" But apparently we'd stepped into the center of the universe, and woefully misread the dress code.

The whole velvet rope thing is really lame in any case: the idea that you either have to "be" somebody special or look like somebody special to get inside? Yuck. I don't care if the people next to me on the dancefloor are wearing headgear and Crocs— I just want to dance, man.

Next order of business: In an hour I go to the St. Eriksplan kettlebell gym I was so excited about, but now I'm feeling apprehensive. I'm worried the place is going to be full of 200-lb meatheads, swinging around castiron bowling balls. Gulp. I'll report back later about how it goes.

Woman, Heal Thyself

I'm back in Stockholm now, slowly preparing to face reality again. And by "reality," I mean the winter doldrums. On most days this time of year, the sun rises at 9 am and sets at 2 pm, and what happens in the sky between those times can best be described as a sickly pea-soup mess. That beam of sunlight pictured at left shooting through the Bonnier offices is such a precious and rare occurrence it warranted a photograph.

Before the holidays, I was so into the groove of my work routine that I didn't fully realize how much the Scandinavian winter darkness was affecting me. The difference really became clear after I spent a few weeks out of the country.

My first days in Santa Fe consisted entirely of sitting in the sunshine, like a plant, soaking up as much light and vitamin D as possible, skin-cancer be damned. To that regimen I added baths in the women's tub at Ten Thousand Waves spa, healthy food, and vigorous exercise in the form of horseback riding and kettlebells. John was supportive, but he sort of looked on in wonderment, like, "You sat in front of the window all day again, plant-girl?"

But something really was wrong with me, and I've decided that for my remaining two months in Sweden, I'm not going to let it happen again. What was wrong was this: against my best intentions, I slipped into a routine of gorging on sleep, skipping workouts and eating too many carbs, and my body paid for it by putting on pounds, losing muscle tone, developing caffeine addiction and weird sleep patterns, and getting achy and stiff.

I told myself that as long as I wasn't "sad," I wasn't depressed, but while my mood stayed sort of steady, depression manifested in seriously low energy. Because I've dealt with seasonal affective disorder in the past, I took a prescription antidepressant to keep things in check in Sweden, but I didn't like the dull, placid feeling it gave me. It's not like it made me "happy," I was just sort of "eh" all the time.

So about 10 days ago I stopped taking the pills. I missed a couple of doses during my "sitting in the sunshine " phase, and things seemed to go okay, so I made a conscious decision to just not take them anymore. The problem is, you're not supposed to go off antidepressants cold-turkey because you can have withdrawal effects. Withdrawal, as in the thing that happens to heroine addicts. Great!

So in the midst of CES madness, while I'm running from booth to booth, fielding phone calls and emails and running to booths again, I start getting what Web forum users refer to as "brain zaps"—this feeling like I've just touched a live wire— anytime I turn my head quickly to the left or right. I was glad I'd read about this side effect in advance or it would have freaked me the fuck out. Apparently it's harmless and it will go away—it's a result of the neurons in my brain readjusting to life without serotonin reuptake inhibition. And apparently, almost everyone who goes off SSRI antidepressants deals with brain zaps at some point, even if they're tapering slowly like you're supposed to. What I want to know is, why don't doctors tell you about this before they put you on the drugs to begin with? And why don't most doctors know that there are natural remedies you can use instead of prescription antidepressants and/or while you're transitioning away from them?

Luckily, my doc (a new one I started going to in Santa Fe—not the same one who gave me the pills) is as familiar with natural medicine as she is with prescriptions, and she recommended a cocktail of vitamins and herbs for shoring up my mood and protecting my nervous system. It's quite a laundry list, but hopefully it'll be worth the effort. This is the first day that I've taken this stuff, and I've been brain-zap free, with plenty of energy. I'd be interested to hear whether anyone else has experience with these supplements:

The first is a combination of two herbs that come conveniently boxed together in Sweden: arctic root (also called rhodiola) and Siberian ginseng (also called eleuthero; no relation to regular Chinese ginseng). Both are members of a family of compounds called "adaptogens," which help to regulate your physical systems' responses to stress. (Here's a site that sells them in the U.S.: I'm taking the Swedish equivalent of both the "Arctic Root" and "Adapt 232" products.)

Another helpful supplement is Omega 3 fatty acids, which are antioxidant and anti-inflammatory, and therefore beneficial for all kinds of things, but important in my case because they're neuroprotectants, and can be helpful in alleviating anxiety and depression.

Magnesium is a good one to add to the mix, since it's an important element used in metabolism in the body (and my last blood test showed I was low in it). Deficiency can result in low mental and physical energy. The doctor actually gave me a bottle of liquid magnesium to take before I left for Sweden and I kind of stopped remembering to take it each day, but I'm going to start again.

In addition, I'm supposed to take a B vitamin complex and vitamin D3. The B vitamins play an important role in mood regulation by facilitating the production of neurotransmitters in the brain. There's a very interesting and easy-to-read summary of this process here, if you'd like to read about it. You may or may not feel the need to supplement with the other stuff I've listed here, but I've come to believe that almost everyone could do with an extra shot of B vitamins. Same with vitamin D, actually. I always figured everyone gets enough vitamin D between sun exposure and the modern diet, but it turns out that's not necessarily so. I don't eat much dairy, so I probably don't get the minimum RDI, and now that I'm never in the sun in Sweden, my body probably isn't making much, either. I read up a bit on Vitamin D and learned that, in addition to causing rickets (which pretty much went out with scurvy), vitamin D deficiency may cause cancer. Whoa!

If I wanted to really get crazy—or "get happy," as the case may hopefully be— I could add SAM-e, and L-theanine to this cocktail of natural pick-me-uppers. But six supplements per day is more than enough for me, so I'll stick to the minimum for now. Like I said earlier, if you've tried any of these, I'd love to hear about your experiences in the comments.

CNN, CES and the Adult Industry Expo

A lot has happened since my last post, but none of it had anything to do with Sweden. Last week, I put on my Popular Science hat and traveled to Vegas to cover the Consumer Electronics Show as an on-air "tech expert" for CNN (I'm still the editor of PopSci.com, don'tcha know— at least on paper). I've done this for the past few years, and it's exhausting, but pretty fun. This time around, I shot 11 segments (you can see some of them here, if you're interested), but burned the candle at both ends slightly less than usual, resisting the urge to get drunk and dance all night at Pure or Tao and then get back to the broadcast booth for a 7 am East Coast hit. That is, except for the last night of the show, when I had a great time cutting loose on the dance floor at Studio 54 with the CNN crew. The only thing I had to do the next day was fly to Orlando, give a presentation to Bonnier's U.S. CEO and then hop on another plane for a 20-hour flight to Stockholm. No big deal (aaarrrgggghhh).

One weird thing about CES—and there are many—is that it always happens concurrently with the Adult Industry Expo, resulting in a culture clash of balding computer nerds and silicone-enhanced porn stars. This is especially true at the Sands resort, where the bottom floor of the convention center hosts the toys, robotics and lesser-known inventors from CES, and the top floor hosts booths for porn production companies and innovations like a floor-to-ceiling lucite pole that retracts into the ceiling "when the kids come home." The CNN producer I was working with on the last day of the show thought it would be funny to shoot our outro inside the Adult Expo, and I agreed, since I'd never been there and was sort of curious. As I expected, it was a total freak show, but not in the glitzy way I'd hoped. Most of the porn stars (both male and female) were worn and sad looking, the hall itself was badly lit with unflattering fluorescents, the booths were sort of bare and poorly constructed... it could have been a vacuum-cleaner convention but for the occasional giant plasma screen showing explicit video footage and the bizarre number of booth babes wearing nothing but body paint. While we were in there, we also shot a quick interview for a CNN show called "News of the Absurd" with the reigning it-girl of porn, Stoya. She was the exception to the worn-out rule, with porcelain white skin, almost no makeup and a slender, unenhanced figure. But there was something unsettling about her, too. We wanted to interview her because we'd read that she was really bright and unusually well-read and we thought it would be fun to get her take on some current events, like Obama's inauguration and the Gaza conflict. Well, Stoya was articulate and polite, but she definitely hadn't been watching the news lately, so our segment didn't work out as neatly as planned. At the last minute, the producer decided he'd like to do the talking while I held the videocam, but he was sort of stumped as to what to ask her when it appeared she didn't know anything about what was happening in the world. "I guess you read my bio," Stoya said. "You know, I didn't write it. Our PR people may have picked out some elements of my personality and exaggerated them a little." Hmmm, in the adult industry? Really?! I guess that also means the Hustler Honey was never a park ranger. Oh well. I'll leave you with these two images of me cheesing it up with the porn stars. I might have been a little afraid of Stoya...

Holiday Bootcamp

Last week's big Allt Om Mat dinner went off almost without a hitch and was a ton of fun, and now it's time to work off those calories! But first a recap: I say "almost without a hitch" because I dropped the entire roasting pan of brussels sprouts, bacon and chestnuts on the floor, which was a damn shame, but they tasted so good that my friends ate some anyway before I could throw them away.

It was quite a challenge juggling the tasks of being a good hostess to nine guests, getting courses out hot and served to everyone at the same time, and helping the photographer get the shots she needed, but everyone had a great time except for a few stressful moments that were hopefully only noticeable to me. I'll post a few photos (the ones I'm sure won't go in the magazine) in a week or so, when Stacey is done processing them.

And in the meantime, I'm on to a new challenge: getting fit for my '09 New Year's resolution! I'm not talking about the standard "I'm going to lose five pounds" resolution: that never works for me. Basically I'd rather scoop out my eyeballs with a spoon, Slumdog Millionaire-style, than commit to a vanity-based diet. I always need some specific, performance-related goal that I can push myself toward achieving, and then the physical results are a happy side effect. To that end, this year I'm committing to getting my RKC (Russian Kettlebell Challenge) certification so I can teach a few classes a week at Keira's gym, and also be in the kind of kickass shape that inspires students. The sad truth is that no one wants to take classes from a fat fitness instructor—you have to lead by example, and it's fairly easy to make that happen when your workout is as physically demanding as kettlebell.

So where does Sweden fit into all this? Well, this week I got a wonderful surprise. I've known for a while that there's an RKC instructor based in the chichi Stockholm suburb of Djursholm, about an hour north of me, but he was doing mainly personal training. The distance and cost were prohibitive enough that I previously opted to just do my kettlebell workouts in my living room. But this month the same guy opened a new training studio in St. Eriksplan, about 5 blocks from my apartment! He's going to give group kettlebell classes several times per week at 80 SEK a pop (about $10/class). What serendipity! My goal is to train with him for the next couple of months and then launch into an intensive program with Keira from March through May to prepare for an upcoming RKC test in 2009: probably the May workshop in Copenhagen, which I could do while I'm in Sweden for the Dragon's Den portion of the Bonnier Publishing Program.

All that said, I've spent the past week (after I got done with all the cooking) working out hard with the kettlebells and also schooling some horses at my showjumping alma mater, Las Campanas Equestrian Center—a combination of activities that has left me limping, applying ice packs to my thighs and guzzling Aleve for the past three days. I ask you, who comes home for the holidays and kicks her own ass?