I’m Penny, which ambiguous dyke are you? Quiz by Turi.
Though I am not, as far as I know, a lesbian, that could have been accurate, except I did actually play with Barbies. We had some very long and involved stories going with those Barbies. One of them owned a baby elephant (filched from my brother’s Playmobile), and Ken came to the rescue at some point as the handsome local vet. Ah, the good old days…
Music in my head: I’m Coming Up (Pink)
I think I might go to see a flat tomorrow afternoon… A flat on a lower floor of my block is for sale. It’s the same size as mine, but the kitchen and store room have been knocked together and then been made kitchen and bedroom of. Which gives you a nice large living area and a separate bedroom, but a tiny kitchen. Not my idea of a Good Thing, but it does mean I’m curious to see what it looks like in real life… I can always claim I’m interested in moving to a flat with less stair-climbing required if they ask me what I’m doing there. Or I can just admit to being curious, of course, it’s not as if it’s been made illegal (yet).
As of yet, though, I think I’m sticking with my original plans for the kitchen. More interesting news are that the new IKEA catalogue is out, and has some new kitchen front designs. IKEA is my friend. I want the catalogue. I should, of course, have gone looking for it today, but forgot. Instead, I bought an electric fan, which has been working full blast since I got back and put it together and which seems to have been a very timely investment. My thermometer says 29 degrees centigrade, and it feels like it, too.
I want autumn.
Music in the room: God Help the Outcasts (from the Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame)
Blame Nicolette (yes, the other one, still). I’ve jumped on yet another bandwagon (hey: 101: I jump on bandwagons) and created a 100 things you might not know about me list. In fact, you might already know a lot of it if you actually know me personally. There may be some surprises, however. It’s hard for me to tell.
Another bandwagon: eatonweb. You a blogger? Then register, why don’t you?
Music in the room: I’m just a girl (No Doubt)
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Apparently the average woman has 25 items in her handbag. Ha! I don’t know where the statistic came from – I read about it on Nicolette’s (the other one) blog. Now, don’t be scared, but, seriously, this is an average I can beat hands down… The best part of making this list is that it’s a good opportunity to consider whether I actually need to carry all these items around with me. Items to be removed will be marked with a *
1. wallet (stuffed with pretty much everything possible except money)
2. digital camera
3. umbrella
4. sunglasses
5. at least one book (two at the moment)
6. various pens and pencils (5)
7. swiss army knife
8. mini maglite
9. house keys
10. house keys extra set (oops, better take those out)*
11. fork
12. fork again (don’t ask)*
13. string-thingymagig to hang glasses around neck
14. water-bottle strap from Epcot
15. filofax (also stuffed)
16. roll of tape
17. eraser
18. teaspoon
19. wet-wipe (Scandinavian airlines)
20. “Velkommen til SATS” booklet from the gym*
21. AA batteries (4 with charge, 2 dead*)
22. pile of business cards (other people’s)*
23. pile of own business cards from previous job*
24. mobile phone
25. liquorice (heksehyl-stang)
26. “that-time-of-the-month” stuff
27. mini Piglet
28. old broken keyring*
29. multi-ride card for trams/buses in Oslo
30. hairbrush
31. lip-balm
32. old brush for electric toothbrush*
33. nail file
34. gadget to get secure pin-code for internet banking access
35. pack of cards
36. fan
37. fresh breath mints
38. Impulse body wipes, several
39. post-it page markers (blue)
40. various receipts, cinema tickets etc.*
41. “The Balvenie guide to nosing and tasting scotch whisky”, booklet*
And that’s just the stuff that’s normally in there, the books change, of course, and I will remove the 10 marked items, so that gets me down to 31. If I eat the liquorice I’m down to 30. Nice round number.
Music in my head: Just Shoot Me theme
This is one of those “I can’t consentrate!!!” days. Well, first it was one of those “Do I really have to get up, I was so comfy in my bed?” days. Which may explain the lack of consentration (my body might have been trying to tell me that I needn’t bother).
I only got around to going to bed at about a quarter past twelve last night. Could that be the explanation, I wonder? Funny thing is, I don’t actually feel tired, just unfocused.
I want a Palm handheld. Now that I no longer have a laptop, I need something portable. Hm. They’re not that expensive, I think, though looking at the palm.com website what I get is US prices, and Norway is another kettle of fish completely. (Does quick check – what else is the internet for?) And I’m right – they’re about twice the price here. It will be considered, however.
Music in my head: Promise Me (Beverly Craven)
Further details on the sights seen in the west to follow, for now; the books:
Though I didn’t find any of the books I had on my current “look for these right now” list, I obviously managed to spend some money in Fjærland nevertheless. I found some of the Lord Peter Wimsey books (some of those that I had managed to get from the library for the first reading) in reasonably cheap paperbacks, and since I was planning to reread these soonish, I thought I might as well get them. I also got the other odd book or two, including some by Baroness Orczy, mostly in the Scarlet Pimpernell “series”. But then… I came across a box full of Puk books. These are Danish school-stories for girls written in the 50ies. I’ve been haphazardly collecting the Norwegian translations over the last year or so, but here they had the vast majority of them in Danish. Not only that, but it turns out only about half were ever translated anyway. In Norwegian I think I’ve seen up to 27 – in Danish there are 58…! Could I resist? Of course not. So now I have a few Puks in Norwegian for sale if anyone’s interested. Since I am still missing a few – even if I now want them in Danish – I did a Google search on the author this morning. Turns out the very female name of the author, Lisbeth Werner, actually hides the presumably male Knud Meister. So much for the books being girly. Come to think about it, it shouldn’t surprise anyone, as Puk is not a very girly girl and the most girly thing about the books is, in fact, their colour – they are all a lovely (ugh) shade of pink. It does, however, say quite a bit about the 50ies – a series for girls obviously had to be written by a woman – hence the nom de plume. Seems silly now, perhaps, but consider that the very first print run of Harry Potter had “Joanna” spelled out, until someone figured that boys might not want to read books ostentatiously written by a woman, and they changed it to J period.
It’s a mad, mad world.
I’m following an auction at QXL.no at the moment. I have been outbid by someone on my original maximum bid, and I figure the best thing to do is put in a bid again shortly before the auction ends on Friday, in the hope that the other person will think that the lack of activity in the next couple of days will mean that they’ve won and won’t check in just then. It is quite nerve-wracking, though, as I really do want the lot, and, of course, I have no idea what their maximum bid is. Repeat after me: “Aloof, unavailable Ice-queen. Aloof, unavailable Ice-queen.” (Not quite the original context, but it might work in this case, too.)
Music in my head: Hemmet – Hoola Bandoola Band
I’ve had it stuck in my head on and off for the last couple of days, and I just located the lyrics on the internet, as I was really only sure about the first couple of lines. The first stanza goes:
“Jag har varit och taget igen meg ett slag
på ett hem för så’na som jag.
Dom sa, jag behövde vila ett tag,
se’n skulle allting bli bra.
Men jag sover med öppna ögon
och jag vilar med öppen mun.
Och så vitt jag förstår, är det tvärtom så
att det blir värre för var sekund.”
Which can be loosely translated:
“I’ve been away to collect myself
at a home for people like me
They said I needed to rest for a while
and then everything would be fine.
But I sleep with open eyes,
and I rest with open mouth.
And as far as I can tell, to the contrary of what they say,
it gets worse for every second.”
And I’m back in Oslo. Having had a bit of a holiday, I now need a holiday in order to recuperate. Fat chance.
Had a lovely time, but need to work now. I’ll tell you all about it later.
Nicolette, you need to hit the refresh button on the picture of teh day page, you’re still getting the old one…
Music in my head: Precious Illusions (Alanis Morisette)
Whohoo! My nephew-that-I-am-the-honourary-aunt-of, Konrad, is getting his own room. At least, Janne tells me they’re moving to this flat, they may be intending to keep him in the broomcupboard, I suppose (I somehow doubt it though).
Even better, I will get to see him (and his parents, I hope) this weekend, as I’m off to the west country (ok, that sounds like Ireland or something) – leaving tonight, in fact. I’m getting on a bus shortly after ten pm, and if all goes well I will wake up in Stryn tomorrow morning at six am (shudder). More likely, I’ll spend most of the night looking out the window. I don’t sleep well on buses (I don’t sleep well unless I am flat out on my back on something resembling a bed). Hopefully, though 23 June is long gone, it will still be light enough most of the night to make the window worth looking out of. I will be armed with Emma and The Prisoner of Zenda (that’s two titles… though a mixture might be interesting) as audiobook, which should take me a lot further than Stryn if I should so wish (which I won’t, it’d be pointless). In Stryn, hopefully, my parents and brother will have spent the night in a hotel, and will therefore be in a state to feed me breakfast (well, not my brother, he is not a morning person). They are, as we “speak”, already on their way. The idea is to convey my brother to Bergen – for his second year of art history at teh university there – while having a bit of a holiday among the fjords at the same time.
Once we’ve all piled into the car, we will head off gaily towards Fjærland, hopefully taking in Jostedalsbreen (a glacier), and a lot of other potentially stunning natural beauties on the way. Cameras will be brought (not that that will do you lot much good, seeing as I never seem to get around to fixing a page to display them… Ah, well, somthing to do on those long winter nights.) Fjærland, of course, should be good. It’s the Norwegian equivalent of Hay-on-Wye (the word “equivalent” loosely applied, Hay, of course, is matchless), a Town of Books. Hold on to your credit-cards. With my predilection for books in English, I am not expecting miracles, but it should still afford some lovely hours of browsing. Topping it all off, we’re staying at the Hotel Mundal, which looks a stunner.
We’re expecting to arrive in Bergen some time Friday, all booked out (I have my doubts about that last bit, it is a state I have rarely reached). One of the many nice things about Bergen is that they have a couple of convivial Irish pubs that serve Blackthorn. And, as previously mentioned, one of the other nice things is I get to see Konrad and Janne and Stian.
Music in my head: Huddinge, Huddinge (Hoola Bandoola Band – occasioned by an e-mail referring to someone working at Huddinge Hospital)
When I was a kid we frequently visited friends of my parents who have two sons, Torkjel is a couple of years older than me, Åsmund a couple of years younger. One summer (I might have been nine or ten), we kids managed to get into some sort of argument, and it was Torkjel and me against Åsmund. Now, naturally, it was all Åsmund’s fault (*grin*), but the grown-ups sided with him. This, we felt, was fundamentally unfair. Moreover, it was so typical. The grown-ups always sided with the youngest, no matter how much everything was their fault to start with. We concluded that there really was no hope and our only solution was to run away from home. We announced our decision to Guri (T and Å’s mother) in the kitchen. She said, quite calmly, that that was quite all right as long as we were back in time for dinner at about four.
I wouldn’t have said that either of us were (or are) particularly slow at catching logical flaws. However, at the time we agreed that this was a reasonable request and set out quite happily to spend a lovely day climbing big rocks and having conversations along the lines of “What if I fell down here and broke my leg – I’d end up in the hospital and they would all be REALLY sorry and bring me lots of gifts…”
And that is the only time I can remember even contemplating running away from home – I suppose this means I had a pretty happy childhood.
I’m off to Stryn. I hope. I’ll probably not be online again until Sunday night.
Music in my head: some jingle from a comercial (and it doesn’t even have any words…)
Check out the new picture of the day.
Noise in the room: Just Shoot Me (or whatever the tv-series about the magazine Blush is called)