Dr. Dolittle

It’s the animal this or that

1. Cats or dogs?
Cats, if I have to chose. I like dogs, too, though.

2. Butterflies or birds?
Flutterbies. Or birds. Or maybe flutterbies. Or Birds. I don’t know.

3. Horses or cows?
Horses. Despite the fact that I love milk, I find it hard to get “into” cows. I want to go riding.

4. Turtles or snakes?
Sssssssnakes.

5. Frogs or grasshoppers?
Frogs! Frogs are cool. I was supposed to specialise in amphibians when I was still planning to study biology. Yucky grasshoppers.

6. Lions or tigers?
Tigers. I must stick to my own kind.

7. Elephants or mice?
Eh? Elephants, I guess.

8. Porcupines or aardvarks?
Both.

9. Unicorns or dragons?
Used to be unicorns, then I grew up. I want a dragon!

10. Thought-provoking question of the week: You live in a rather dumpy apartment. A friend offers you a chance to be a roommate at a new place s/he is moving into, but they don’t allow pets. You have a pet. Do you find your pet a new home and take the new place, or do you keep your pet and stay put?
Depends on the pet (a hamster would be more likely to end up in a new home than a dog, for example). Depends on the apartment (how dumpy?). I’d probably pass on the apartment and look for something else where I could keep the pet (whatever it is).

Voice in my head: (aargh, back to) ABBA (though now singing) Take a chance on me

Rambling, again

It’s funny how I can feel like I have all the time in the world over something which, if it works out, is so important when normally “patience” is not in my vocabulary.

Just a thought.

Voice in my head: (yay, lost ABBA) Joe Dolan (methinks) – Make me an Island

Feeling a little bloated

Norwegian lesson of the day:

Magen blir mett før øya, idiom, literally “the stomach gets full before the eyes” (øya is dialect for eyes, the norm would be øynene), meaning the tendency to fill your plate up with too much food when presented with something you like, forcing you to either eat yourself sick or to leave embarrassing heaps on your plate at the end of the meal. Sometimes used metaphorically, when a rough equivalent in English would be “bite off more than you can chew” (though we have that – literally – in Norwegian bite av mer enn du kan tygge).

Voice in my head: ABBA again – Don’t go wasting your emotions, and so on

The mission

As he says, a bit mushy…

1. One thing that really annoys me is when someone at work will just start clipping their fingernails at their desk. In most cases, it is men who do this, which only makes it worse. I can’t explain why this grates on my nerves, but when I hear that “click-click-click” of the clippers, I just imagine nasty fingernail fragments flying everywhere. What habit do people have that drives you crazy but doesn’t seem to bother anyone else?

Uhm. Talking loudly on their mobile on the bus? Though I suspect that annoys a lot of other people, too.

2. I just had to replace the compressor in my car. That was $400 I didn’t have that is now gone. Have you had any expensive car trouble recently?

I don’t have a car. I love not having a car.

3. A friend of mine came over for dinner with us this recently, and brought her baby. At only 8 months he is as cute as the dickens, but when he got hungry, his momma just whipped out her boob for him to start chowin’ down on. Among friends or family I can see why she wouldn’t be shy, but it still made me a little uncomfortable. I realize it is a natural function and wonderful bonding experience, but I wasn’t ready to be a part of it. How do
you feel about mothers who breastfeed their children in public? At what age do you think they should stop?

I say go to it. I’d much rather have people breastfeeding in public than screaming babies, and the latter is what you get when people are too shy to “whip it out”.

4. I was watching the “Antiques Road Show” recently, and the resident “expert” presented the “Atari 2600” game system as a popular collectible. I am now officially OLD! Do you recall the first item from your youth that became an “antique” and made you feel old and how you felt? Or if it hasn’t happened, yet, what item do you think it will be and how do you expect it to make you feel?

Several things from my “youth” have become if not antique then at least collectible. Whenever I see anyone talking about these things, I mostly regret the fact that I no longer have whatever it is, or that I never had it in the first place, as my parents bought me sensible, timeless toys for preference, things like Lego and Playmo, which, though the model may not be available in the shop any more, the toys’ design has changed so little that they might as well have been brand new (except for the marks of use, obviously). As a rule, though, I don’t mind “feeling old”. Whenever that feeling hits me it’s more a case of disbelief than of regret (“Surely I was 13 a few weeks ago” rather than “I wish I were still 13” – I most certainly don’t wish I were still 13).

5. It started raining last night as I was going to bed. Not storming or a hard rain, just a nice rainfall. The pitter-patter of raindrops hitting the window made for a peaceful way to drift to sleep (and also made it hard to wake up this morning). Do you like rainy days/nights? What type of weather makes you feel relaxed?

I love rain. Especially sitting inside watching it, but I also like to go out and get wet. As for relaxing, well, rain’s good. The only weather I really don’t like is too much sun and heat, which makes me feel sticky and hot and bothered, and also lazy and restless at the same time, which, I can tell you, is quite an uncomfortable feeling.

6. We used to joke about the retired couple across the street. Every night, they would pull out their lawn chairs, sit in their driveway and watch the world go by. We laughed about how someone would just waste away their life like that. Now 8 years later, I pull out the lawn chairs and we find ourselves doing exactly the same thing. Life has a way of making one humble. Have you ever found that you have become that which you once ridiculed?

I can’t really think of anything I’ve ridiculed that I’ve started doing. I’m sure there must be something, though. I will update if anything crosses my mind later.

7. Have you ever sent an e-mail to the wrong person? What was the most embarrassing experience you remember?

No. That’s rather boring of me, but what can you do?

Hard work

It’s hard work, all this relaxation. At least I feel totally fagged out now. Mind you, I have made an attempt at deconstructing part of the kitchen today. This would be good, except I decided it was impossible to take it piecemeal – I’ll have to get it all out in one go, and that will not happen this month, probably not next month, and, lets face it, the chances of it happening this year are pretty slim.

So now I’m collapsed on the couch (well, right now I’m in front of the computer, but I was collapsed on the couch just a few minutes ago and will be again shortly) rereading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Considering how little time I will have for reading the next few weeks, if I space them out a little, I should be done with The Goblet of Fire just about the 21st when The Order of the Phoenix is due.

Voice in my head: some chick singing Genie in a Bottle

Jukebox bonanza

I have gone to bed with the laptop. My grandfather is watching Heartbeat with the volume cranked up (his hearing’s not what it used to be) and I decided to retire. I thought I’d amuse you with an account of the songs on the mental jukebox so far this weekend. For almost two days – Thursday and most of Friday – I had Agneta and Annifrid singing “One of us is lonely”, which got pretty tiresome. However, I did not crack until I managed to get “Fyra bugg och en coca-cola” stuck in my head after a trip to ICA at Torsby. It was especially bad as those five words are the only bit I know. So, upon leaving the place I asked my father to put some music on in the car. One round of Graceland later and I was (reasonably) happily humming “You don’t feel you could love me but I feel you could”. Today it’s been mostly eerily quiet, compensated for by a deluge this evening. We had “Do you want to know a secret?” earlier, but we’ve also had “The tracks of my tears”, “When I fall in love” (still as sung by Rick Astley, which I think is inconsiderate of him. Why does he have to hang around in my head and block Nat King Cole out? Doesn’t he have anything better to do?), “Kor e alle heltar hen?” (following Absolutt Norsk) and “What’s the name of the game”.

I wonder what, if anything, all this says about my mental state.

Voice in my head: (for no apparent reason) Paul Simon – The Myth of Fingerprints (though it’s difficult not to love that song for the brilliant “I’ve seen them all and, man, they’re all the same.”)

Hytteliv

Det er få gleder i livet som å sitte i solveggen i kveldssolen et sted i Norge med utsikt til vann og et glass god rødvin i hånda, og vissheten om at mobildekningen er så dårlig at det at du har skrudd av mobilen er betydningsløst, ingen kan nå deg uansett… Verden blir så fjern og du blir tvunget til å leve i nuet for en gangs skyld.

Men langt inne i meg et sted var den en stemme som lurte på om vi ikke kunne sjekke mail på noen måte allikevel. Jeg kvalte den stemmen. Enn så lenge er hytta ett av de få steder i Norge der mobildekningen er for dårlig til samtaler. Det varer sikkert ikke så lenge, man får nyte det mens det står på.

Jeg skal få nøkkel til hytta. Jeg lurer på om det er en slags tillitsærklæring og et tegn på at foreldrene mine begynner å anse meg som voksen – sist det var snakk om noe slikt mener jeg å huske at jeg ikke ble tatt fullt så alvorlig. Det begynner vel å bli en stund siden. Det er ikke som om det er så lett å komme seg til hytta. Det er vel teoretisk mulig å hoppe av en buss og dekke det siste stykket på sykkel, men ettersom jeg nå kjenner både en og annen person med bil og en og annen person med tilgang til bil, kan det vel tenkes at jeg kan få selskap i mitt ønske om av og til å nyte skogens fred. Jeg satt til og med og kikket på vannet og tenkte at en liten jolle med seil ikke hadde vært dumt. Hvor mye må man ut med for en sånn, mon tro?

Sun

I got up at 5 am to watch the solar eclipse this morning. It was a 91% eclipse where we were, which I thought was worth losing an hour’s sleep over. It’s a very odd experience, in a way, because it doesn’t actually go dark at all, but the light changes quality, becoming feeble and pale – a bit like bleak midwinter – which feels very odd when you’re standing about in sandals and there is green grass and flowers everywhere (actually, I suppose there was more heather than grass and flowers where I was).

The weather’s been gorgeous, so I’ve been lounging about in the sun this weekend – one more day of doing that before it’s nose back to the grindstone. I’m at my grandparents’ right now, connecting with the laptop and my mobile – a sort of connection which has not yet paled into familiarity – it seems like magic of sorts. If there had been more stable mobile coverage at the cabin, I would have gone into the woods with the laptop just to be able to feel the wonderment of it even more keenly. Kid in a candystore – me, a gadget freak? No…

Voice in my head: Eddi Reader in the Fairground Attraction version of the Beatles’ Do You Want to Know a Secret? (Well, do you?)

Deeper and deeper

Backdated to fit the Friday Five.

1. What do you most want to be remembered for?
By people who knew me or by posterity in general? The former, I guess, for being a good friend, the latter, well, for writing the best loved nobel prize novel ever. No reason to set your targets too low, is there?

2. What quotation best fits your outlook on life?
I like my current e-mail signature:
‘Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend.
Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.’
— Groucho Marx

3. What single achievement are you most proud of in the past year?
I’ll have to think about that one. I believe in little victories every day rather than whacking great big ones, so singling one thing out is difficult.

4. What about the past ten years?
My masters degree. I may not have much use for it, but I’m pretty pleased at having finished it in any case.

5. If you were asked to give a child a single piece of advice to guide them through life, what would you say?
Be yourself and follow your own heart, whithout reference to what other people think. Those who judge you for being different are not worth the aggravation.