An odd assortment from This or That – due to taking suggestions from participants this week, I gather.

1) DVD or VHS?
No contest: DVDs.

2) Best Literary/Movie Villan: Voldemort (Harry Potter) or Sauron (LoTR)?
I’d have to say Voldemort. Sauron is “more evil” if you like, but he’s not very interesting as a character (he’s almost not really a character, more like a natural force, like gravity) – whereas poor muddled up Tom Riddle is fascinating in himself.

3) Meat: rare or well-done?
Well-done. “How would you like that steak, m’am?” “Nuked, please.”

4) High Speed Internet-Cable or DSL?
I just sorted out the former yesterday – I now have broadband through the same cable as my digital tv signals. Love it.

5) Women: 1-piece bathing suit or Bikini?
For swimming; 1-piece. Not very good for getting a tan, though, is it? On the other hand, I’m not all that fond of lying about in the sun, so that doesn’t really matter much.

6) To be fair–Men: Boxers or briefs?
Am I supposed to answer this or not? (In case I am: The answer, of course, is boxers.)

7) Beer or Liquor/Wine?
Not beer. Cider. Or wine. Or whisky.

8) Coke or Mountain Dew?
Uh? No thanks. Ok, Coke very occasionally.

9) In honor of my 10/18/03 nuptials: Morning or Afternoon/Night Wedding?
Morning ceremony, celebrations the rest of the day/night, surely?

10) Carpet or Hardwood Floors?
Hardwood with rugs.

11) American cars or foreign?
Frankly, I couldn’t care less.

12) Cutest TV Twin: Mary-Kate or Ashley Olsen?
Ok, I was wrong, I could care less…

13) Coffee: Caffeinated or Decaf?
As long as it tastes like coffee I don’t care. I need at least one cup of caffeinated every day (or I get a headache), but I sometimes make an effort to drink decaf if I am drinking a lot of coffee (more than 4-5 cups a day).

14) Thought-Provoking Question of the Week: Computers: Do they make life better or worse? Why?
Oh, better, definitely. So much convenience (databases instead of file archives, online yellow pages for the whole world at your fingertips, e-mail etc.), so much fun (C-programming, Tetris, e-mail, etc.).

Voices in my head: The Beatles – Penny Lane

The rain I’ve been hoping for has arrived. This is good.

However:

I left the house this morning with a sleeveless dress and no jacket. This is not good.

Oh well. A few hours more in the office, perhaps it will have stopped by this evening.

Today’s quote from the always excellent Daily Philosophical Quotation:

If you hear that someone is speaking ill of you, instead of trying to defend yourself you should say: ‘He obviously does not know me very well, since there are so many other faults he could have mentioned’.

Epictetus — Enchiridion

I følge nettavisen har noen italienske (måtte jo være det) forskere funnet ut at det er sunt å spise pizza – det kan forebygge visse former for kreft. Hurra.

Plan for the week:

– do some actual work at work
– get self-starter pack for broadband from UPC
– install broadband (possibly with all computers at home in a network, but that might have to wait)
– do some rather major work on nmwl.no (long overdue)
– look at installing gallery software on sandlund.net (via my usual source of all delicious things netty: Donna)
– see Nobody’s Fool at Cinemateket Tuesday or Wednesday
– do blogathon this weekend
– addendum: finish cleaning the fish-tanks (poor fish)

And, oh yes:

– spend some time with (dare I say it?) the boyfriend (I like the sound of that)

My concentration is shot to hell. For explanation see previous post, also it’s still f***ing warm and I’ve had too little sleep – the latter is partly my own fault, but as what hours of sleep I have had have been spent tossing and turning because of the temperature (20+ degrees at night is not natural), I refuse to take the whole blame.

So I’m glad it’s Friday. I suspect this is a good thing from my employer’s point of view, too, as I might just possibly be a little less giddy by Monday morning. Possibly.

In the meantime I’m seeing Lillebjørn Nilsen in concert tonight, which is all kinds of good. He’s one huge reason to feel sorry for anyone who doesn’t understand Norwegian. I mean, Ibsen, pft, you get decent translations of Ibsen. Lillebjørn has to be experienced in the original, preferably live.

And in good company.

Looking forward to tonight.

Strawberries are in season (yay!) and I love my employer (I feel ungrateful in repaying them with zilch concentration) – they buy us fresh strawberries every day. I also have two baskets in the fridge at home, and cream. Meant to consume them yesterday but got sidetracked by a pizza and then some wine (oh, and some other stuff, non-ingestible). Might end up freezing them and buying new ones to eat with the cream (the frozen ones will be good slightly heated with ice cream in the autumn).

Will have to write this last hour off as in lieu of previous long hours. Have just been writing this and helping AK in a quiz the support people have been having on msn (name the band/artist from the LP title). Great fun, especially when M discovered why AK was doing so well (two heads being better than one) – “YOU! No wonder it didn’t help pulling out the really weird questions!” I’ll take that as a compliment.

Voice in my head: still Sinatra, but with disturbances from Genesis with I Can’t Dance, related to one of the quiz questions

…of what’s been playing on the crenjuz today, you could take it as an indication of my mood if you like.

Nat King Cole – Let there be Love
Gene Pitney – Something’s Gotten Hold of my Heart
Eddi Reader – The Right Place
Bjørn Eidsvåg – Mysteriet deg and Tålt
Billy Joel – And So It Goes
Frank Sinatra – Fly me to the Moon
The Monkees – I’m a Believer
Alison Krauss – When You Say Nothing at All
Vonda Shepard – Hooked on a Feeling
Lou Reed (or “Various”, rather) – Perfect Day

Voice in my head: Sinatra – Fly me to the Moon

I was trying to watch the skies outside at the same time as watching The League of Gentlemen (series 1) yesterday (helped by the tv being next to the window, but still a bit tricky), as we were having more lightning and thunder. More than 100,000 flashes of lightning according to the people in the know (I assume that’s all of Norway rather than just the Oslo area…).

… to “All I see is love, sweet love, on the horizon” – is it Mel something, I wonder? – on the radio, which seemed oddly appropriate for once.

The Friday Five invites us to tell all this week:

1. When was the last time you cheated?
Dearie me. Well, actually I spent a lot of time looking up answers on google yesterday while doing a “test yourself and win” thing at digi.no, but as there’s no time limit, maybe they expect you to do just that? Still feels like cheating to some degree, though.

2. When was the last time you stole?
Ah. Now. That’ll have been a glass in a pub. Or three glasses. In a pub in London. And I’m not going to tell you which one, it might get back to them and then they’d ban me and I want to go back.

3. When was the last time you lied?
Walking through “Nothing to declare” on Sunday.

4. When was the last time you broke or vandalized another’s property?
I’ve never intentionally vandalized anyone’s property, I don’t think, but broke? Hm. Unintentionally, right? I really can’t remember.

5. When was the last time you hurt a loved one?
I don’t think I do very often, actually – not that I know of anyway – could be because there is such a small circle of “loved ones” that keeping tabs on them (or at least on what makes them happy) is pretty easy. I am constantly hurting my grandparents by not coming to visit often enough, but as “often enough” would really mean moving in next door, this is rather unavoidable.

Voices in my head: Kathrina and the Waves – Walking on Sunshine (and there is no sun, for once, hurrah!)