My mission for this weekend was to glue the kitchen table and, if possible, paint it. Well, it’s in one piece now and has had one coat of paint, so I’m reasonably confident that I will achieve my goal. Which is a good thing, I guess. Other goals for the weekend included a long, pleasant picnic yesterday as a means to avoid hearing anything about the football game (“the football game” was Denmark vs. Norway and the papers been full of it for weeks, it seems, making all us sane people heartily sick of the whole thing). That was successful, too, meaning the picnic was indeed both pleasant and long and I have no idea who won the game.

I have just settled another mission for tomorrow (which, this weekend being Pentecost, is a holiday in Norway), in addition to giving the table another coat of paint. I’m going rollerblading with Linda. It’s got to be two years at least since I last wore the rolleblades, so this could be interesting. Some exercise will do me good, I suspect, and blading is fun, so that’s a good start.

On a completely different note: I have just been watching Justin Timberlake on MTV, trying to figure out why people like the guy. I really can’t see it. Honestly. I try, but fail. I think he’s boring at best, creepy at worst. The music’s uninteresting. And the way he goes on about Britney Spears is, frankly, just pathetic. It might have been sweet if he’d chosen someone slightly more interesting to be heartbroken over, but as it is it really is just pathetic.

Voice in my head: Kathy (Singing in the Rain) – “All I do the whole day through is dream of you” (you know, that bit where she jumps out of the cake)

You know how I said I thought I could sort of spread Harry out so that I’d finish Goblet just before the 21st? Ha ha. I just finished it now. A whopping 4 days after I started (I mean, I have been trying to space it out…), with two weeks to go until the planned date.

Well, ok, change of plan. This one might be a bit unrealistic, too, except in the other extreme. See, on the 30th I’m leaving for Ireland with Linda. And I really want to reread Ulysses before we go. Three weeks… Well, there’s another hitch. It (by which I mean my copy, the nice penguin one with notes at the back, I’m not going to pretend that notes aren’t helpful) is in Bergen. My brother’s got it. He’s said he’ll bring it when he comes. On the 15th. Which leaves me two weeks. In the middle of which I’m supposed to sail to Bergen. And, oh, maybe go to work a bit, to…

I figure I’ll start on Portrait of the Artist, and see how we go from there. I’m also itching to reread About a Boy all of a sudden, so evenings like this one are to be appreciated. After a brief but taxing karate session (both our normal practices were cancelled this week, as there was some sort of huge thing going on at the fitness center, and as our grading is next Friday (please cross fingers and anything else you feel is appropriate) we were allowed to join in on the session for the intermediate “belts”) I had a whole delicious evening all to myself. So I finished Goblet and watched Parky (partly simultaneously) and now I am considering going to bed. My head’s swimming just a tad.

Voice in my head: Carly Simon – You’re so Vain

You can generally tell when my life gets a tad too busy from the fact that the posts here are either far between or all “Q&A” (such as the Friday Five) – or both. Sorry, folks, it will pass.

Voice in my head: Prefab Sprout – (If You don’t Love me) I will Know

The Friday Five goes all mushy, too, this week. What’s with all the mushyness? I feel an attack of cynicsm coming on.

1. How many times have you truly been in love?
Zip. Zero. Zilch. (I have believed myself to be, obviously.)

2. What was/is so great about the person you love(d) the most?
Uhm. See 1.

3. What qualities should a significant other have?
(In order of importance, roughly, though order is probably irrelevant as I’m not really interested unless he has all of these:) A sense of humor, which means, most importantly, the ability to laugh at oneself. Intelligence. Honesty. Curiosity. An interesting library (is that a quality, I wonder?). Imagination. Empathy. Maturity, including the maturity to not be “grown-up” all the time. A sense of adventure. Self-confidence.

4. Have you ever broken someone’s heart?
Well, how would I know? I never speak to people “afterwards”. No one’s jumped off a bridge on my account, yet. Not that I’ve heard of, anyway.

5. If there was one thing you could teach people about love, what would it be?
It’s hard to find.

…get the hang of Thursdays.

1. You know something about your company that very few other people do, something that, shortly, will drive the stock price way down. So happens your folks invested in your company, because you said it was a cool place to work. Do you let them know before the public finds out?

Probably. Though the chance of me having any idea of what’s happening to the stock price of the company I work for is unlikely to the point of laughable.

2. Your neighbor is getting rid of junk, and you spot something he’s putting out on the curb as a collectable that could probably fetch a few hundred dollars on eBay. Do you tell him? Or do you sneak it out of their trash late at night?

Depends on the neighbour. Unless He/she is also a friend I’d consider it fair play to make use of the discovery myself. Though I’d probably just go over and ask if I could have it, rather than sneak out at night. Give him/her a fair chance of reconsidering, I mean.

3. Where does your ethical obligation to intellectual honesty and openness to differing viewpoints end, and your need to shut off lunatic opinions of an annoying co-worker because they’re driving you batty begin? And does politeness factor into this equation?

I’m pretty good at ignoring lunatic opinons, actually. People can basically drone on for ages and I’ll just get on with whatever I think is the best solution. If the lunatic opinion comes from someone in charge, it’s a different problem altogether, of course.

Oh, this is great. We’re having a development-blitz-workshop at a hotel not far from the office. It’s working quite well according to intention in that we are able to work in peace without the disturbances that we get in the office, on the other hand, we’re working on our computers back at work through a remote desktop connection and the system is running like a dog. And that is not, contrary to what you might think if you hadn’t heard the expression before, a compliment. Imagine syrup. Thick syrup. Now imagine that you pour this syrup all over an ancient typewriter. Then imagine trying to write code using this typewriter.

There is a lag in the refresh which means that I finish typing each of these words before they appear on the screen.

Lovely.

Not.