According to this site, that is.

But, as Donna says, you shouldn’t believe everything you read. Especially on the internet. Especially when it tells you your IQ is 161 after a 13-minute test done in 9 interrupted by your manager asking you a question. Especially if it then wants you to pay $9.95 for a certificate to prove how smart you are (yeah, because paying $9.95 for a certificate is a really smart thing to do).

Better get back to work, with an IQ like that I’m obviously the one keeping this company afloat (right…)

Voice in my head: Frank Sinatra – Fly me to the moon (not a bad thing to have in your head Monday morning, I can tell you)

Tomorrow is 17th May. Help! My bunad isn’t ready – it’s still in slightly too many pieces to make it wearable.

Well, I guess it will be done by tomorrow, it always is. (What?)

Which reminds me – I had to stop by and check out the 2003 collection at Despair, Inc.. It’s good, but my all time favourite remains this one from the classic collection:

Not that I feel it applies to me or to the situation re the bunad or anything.

This one is another good one:

If you live in the states, go buy stuff (sticky notes, for example) – the shipping over here would be just a tad too ridiculous to make it worthwhile, unfortunately. Just a tad, though.

Back to the bunad, One thing I still don’t have (apart from one that actually hangs together), is a suitable sølje*. With my bunad, which is the old Hedemarksbunad (1935 design), Husfliden (who owns the design) says little silver was worn, but that a heart-shaped sølje was usual, such as this one:

I’m considering a traditional, heart-shaped one. However, I am also considering getting a modern one, from Huldresølv, for example. They have several nice designs, and they are generally heat-shaped, which would be according to tradition. Something like the right hand one of these:

For tomorrow I guess I’ll stick to my old sølje, though. It’s the wrong “colour”, in a way, as the fittings on the bunad are either pewter or oxidised silver, kind of blackened, and the sølje is more towards white silver. But it’ll work, and a sølje is not something I want to buy in a hurry.

And what am I sitting in front of the computer for? I need to go sew!
——

* Norwegian lesson of the day:

sølje, n. (f or m, depending on dialect), a piece of jewelry, usually silver (silver is sølv in Norwegian), in the form of a brooch, worn with national costumes. The søljes vary widely in design, some are specific to certain areas and are only worn with certain bunads, this one, for example, is meant for the Nordlandsbunad:

A good place to see more bunads and their accessories, is Husfliden.

At one point I did contemplate the possibilty of becoming a landlady, Dylan Thomas’ local might be a good place to start…

Voice in my head: Bob Dylan – Tangled Up in Blue (natural association, I suppose)

Well, they all seem to be “ingestables” related. Yet again, it’s Friday.

1. What drinking water do you prefer — tap, bottle, purifier, etc.?
Tap, if available. In Britain I stuck to the purifyer (too much chloride in the water), and I buy bottled water if I’m out and about. Actually, saying “tap” is inaccurate, I prefer sparkling water…

2. What are your favourite flavor of chips?
Salt & Vinegar. Or just plain salt.

3. Of all the things you can cook, what dish do you like the most?
Tough one. One of the various “pasta and bacon” dishes I do, I think.

4. How do you have your eggs?
Scrambled.

5. Who was the last person who cooked you a meal? How did it turn out?
Apart from myself? And does chucking a frozen pizza in the oven constitute cooking (both Pia and Linda have done recently, and there was nothing wrong with the pizzas)? And does “for me” mean for me exclusively, or does my mother’s cooking for my grandmother’s 80th birthday count although it was a buffet for some 20 people? I think the last meal someone cooked for me, as in it was just me and the cook eating, must have been Linda, too, though that was a while ago. As I can recall, the food was lovely and the company good (well, that second part really goes without saying, doesn’t it?). People really need to cook for me more often ;)

On the Sunday, as you might have noticed, I located an internet café in the morning. (Internet addict, me? What are you insinuating?) Afterwards, I thought I’d go see if the National Gallery was open, but was put off by the realisation that the weather was far too nice to spend time inside. Somehow I managed to meet up with the others and we set off towards Djurhagen and Gröna Lund. After some lunch and some lying-on-the-grass-in-the-sun, we entered Gröna Lund, and Ir watched our bags while AK and I went on the rollercoasters. We also went on this ride which is basically a tall tower (and I mean tall) where you sit in a row of seats around it and they raise the seats quite slowly to the top and then simply let go… The view from the top was quite spectacular, and I was busy attempting to calculate how tall the tower was when they let go, so I was not prepared at all, which was quite funny. You fall for quite a long time, so you have time to give a short scream before the air is knocked out of you and then spend the rest of the descent going “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god” and so on (well, in my case “Fy flate, fy flate, fy flate”). Only once you’re down at the bottom are you actually able to draw breath and start laughing.

Once we were all coastered out, we returned to The Bull and Bear Inn and lazed there for a while to recover from the stomach wrenching. None of us felt like pub food, however, and Ir suggested thai, a suggestion eagerly agreed to by AK and me. Question: How to find a good Thai restaurant in Stockholm when you’re pretty much a complete stranger? Answer: Ask the locals at the bar. They all had opinions and they all agreed there were two main options, one on the north side of the center and one on Söder, which was where we were staying, so we’d be able to walk back to the hostel afterwards. They all also agreed that the one to the north might have the edge foodwise, but that the one on Söder had more “atmosphere” – so we decided the one not requiring a taxi home would do us fine. And boy are we glad we did. I can’t see how the other one could possibly have had better food, and I would not have missed that thunderstorm for anything. We almost went back to the pub to thank them for the recommendation, but figured that the chances of the same people still being there was slim (on second thought, though, maybe not? It was obviously their local, after all).

We made an attempt at getting to bed early – a somewhat futile attempt, it must be said – because in order to make the flight back to Oslo we had to get up at quarter past three. Needless to say, Monday seemed like a very long day. I think we all concluded that if we’re going to Stockholm again, we’ll get the train, even with the very cheap flights, the bus from the airport makes the train only slightly more expensive, and the express from Oslo to Stockholm only takes four hours, which is less than the Oslo-airport-flight-airport-Stockholm trip takes.

I am in possession of a nation state:

The Queendom of Ragnhildia is a tiny, environmentally stunning nation, remarkable for its burgeoning dragon population. Its hard-nosed, intelligent population of 5 million are fiercely patriotic and enjoy great social equality; they tend to view other, more capitalist countries as somewhat immoral and corrupt.

The government — a sprawling, bureaucracy-choked, socially-minded morass — devotes most of its attentions to Law & Order, with areas such as Social Welfare and Religion & Spirituality receiving almost no funds by comparison. The average income tax rate is 40%, but much higher for the wealthy. A very small private sector is dominated by the Book Publishing industry.

Crime is relatively low, thanks to the all-pervasive police force. Ragnhildia’s national animal is the dragon, which frolics freely in the nation’s many lush forests, and its currency is the dragon.

Lets see how this develops. What I’d like to know, though, is how they “knew” that that bit about Book Publishing would please me.

I’M GOING SAILING!

(In case you can’t tell I’m somewhat excited about it.)

Voice in my head: Mikael Wiehe – “Kom och sett deg her intill meg lilla venn, så ska jag berätta hur det er och hur det kjänns. Og om du lovar meg at fråga hur jag har det, så ska jag lova deg at fråga samma sak.” (Over and over and over and over… ‘scuse the spelling, btw, my Swedish is a bit wobbly.)

So, what did I do this weekend apart from catching the sun? Well…

Girls’ weekend out. What do you think we did? We shopped. And how. We also ate good food. Plenty of it. And we had a few drinks. Or more than a few. And we stared at boys. Seriously. It’s a wonder we didn’t get ourselves into trouble.

By the time we got to Stockholm and the hostel (Pensionat Oden, lovely place) Thursday evening we were all starving. As we’d had tips from two separate people that Akkurat in Hornsgatan was a good place for whisky, and I had a vague recollection of the website mentioning food, and we realised that our hostel was also on Hornsgatan, we walked there. In fact, we practically ran there. The food was very good, though we barely had time to taste it. The menu was even better. The others laughed at me because I spent the first hour, and much of the time following that, too, simply drooling over the list of whiskies (it’s available on the website, so you can go see why). Ir got mad at me because I ended up talking to the guy she’d been eyeing up – it was completely unintentional, I swear, he just happened to sit by the only open spot along the bar when I went up to order a Linkwood and he obviously knew something about whisky. I must admit he was rather good looking, but, you know, it’s me we’re talking about here, I don’t chat up men in bars. Though Ak and Ir don’t know me well enough to know that so that was my reputation shot for the weekend. Quite amusing, really.

Friday… Well, we went shopping, didn’t we? We walked through Gamla Stan and arrived at the castle just at the time when the changing of the guards took place, which was pretty cool. Even more cool, in a one up for Norway kind of way, was the very obvious fact that the guards at the Swedish castle are positively sloppy compared to the Norwegian Garde (HM Kongens Garde). They couldn’t even keep pace properly. We all had attacks of fierce national pride, but took lots of pictures anyway. Well, you know. Men in uniform, right? And you can’t deny that it was a pretty spectacular sight, as the relief guard actually comes riding in and then they change over and the guard going off duty rides off on the same horses.

A little later we passed the Opera House, and I suggested we check the programme and ask if they did “last-minute” tickets at all. They did, and so at half past six we returned and aquired seats for La Boheme. We’d planned on grabbing a burger or something if we did get tickets and eat out properly if we didn’t, but in search of a burger we found a likely-looking Italian restaurant and gave in to temptation. I don’t think I would ever have planned to eat one-and-a-half calzone (Ir didn’t finish hers) and drink a third of a bottle of red (lovely wine with an easy name: Piane de Maggio) in less than twenty minutes, but it turned out to be possible. The opera was enchanting, though the supporting soprano was better than the lead – at the very beginning I thought: “This was a bad idea, I am way too tired, I won’t be able to enjoy it and it will seem to last for ages.” But in fact it seemed to last for about fifteen minutes. I couldn’t believe it when the interval arrived (and no, I didn’t fall asleep, I was quite definitely awake and enjoying myself the whole time). I should definitely go to the opera more often.

Following all that culture we ended up at Akkurat again, and AK and I gave Ir lessons in how to flirt (remember, I’d established myself as an expert the night before – in any case, if you know a little about body language you can pretty much make it up as you go along). Nothing came of it, though, and we all went home to sleep around one instead of partying the night away.

Ir wanted to do more shopping Saturday, whereas AK and I really just wanted to potter about, so we split up. Unfortunately, pottering about in shops such as Indiska and “The English Shop” does tend to mean you end up shopping anyway, but never mind. Towards lunchtime we met up with the guy that had offered to sort out blind dates as he’d offered to give us a little bit of a tour in lieu of the non-appearance of the promised dates (which was just as well, really). And a tour was what we had, though I must admit I was the most grateful for the last stop on the tour, when he left us (he had a dinner-party to attend) outside The Bull and Bear Inn, which we promptly entered. An “English” pub with Stowford Press on tap, excellent food and a good whisky selection – what more can you ask? I could happily have stayed, but we had planned to “go out” properly, so after a few pints we headed back to the hostel to prettify ourselves and check out the nightlife on Söder. It had it’s ups and downs…
Down: The Half Way Inn – a scottish pub that did an ok Irish Coffee, but was otherwise pretty boring.
Up: A curry house nearby with delicious food (they did chicken kashmiri, which is unusual).
Down: Snaps – a nightclub sort of thing. We watched some people play blackjack, which was interesting, but decided that a combination of excessive heat and humidity and people smoking something that definitely wasn’t tobacco would not make for a good combination in the long run, so we moved on.
On the level: The Old Beefeater – on the upside, they had cider and we were chatted up by several people, including a woman, on the downside none of the people who chatted us up seemed interesting enough for us to want to extend the conversation – including the woman.

And then I went home to sleep, being, by that time, pretty much cidered out, and left the others to scaring Swedes.

And Sunday… I’ll tell you about Sunday later, I really need to get going now.

Found a new, potentially interesting service today. Blogmatcher allows you to enter the URL of a blog you read (or your own) and gets you a list of blogs that link to the same things, with scores, so it’s basically an alternative attempt at “similar interests” blog search. Most of my hits at the moment are people who also link to movable type and blogwise and such, which isn’t as interesting, but I’ll drop by occasionally and check the results.

I started my day on a combined diet of Michael Moore‘s Stupid White Men and Mikael Wiehe’s 30 Sånger. They’ve got things in common besides their first name. I had a potentially embarrassing moment at the bus stop when my eyes teared up because I listened properly to Titanic (andraklasspassagerarens sista sång) – luckily the tears didn’t quite make it over the edge. I don’t suppose it would matter if I stood silently crying at the bus stop, I don’t normally mind being stared at anyway, but people might get concerned and ask me what the matter was, or worry about me for the rest of the day wishing they had asked (which is probably what I would have done, had I seen someone else crying), so I’m just as glad it didn’t come to that. Good song, though.

In the news this morning: There has been very little rainfall on Islay lately, so that the water reserves are even lower than usual – the Islay distilleries have been contending with the wagaries of rainfall for decades. Unless the levels in the reserves rise significantly, several of the distilleries will have to limit their production rate. It just so happens that my favourite distillery already has problems producing sufficient stock to meet demand from other reasons besides water shortage. If you happen to be of a praying disposition, would you mind putting in a good word for a rainy summer on Islay, please?

Today’s best link, though, is to a country duet of an unusual kind. Be careful who’s watching when you click this. Oh, and you’ll really need the sound to be on, so be careful who’s listening, too.

Voice in my head: Prefab Sprout – Cruel

For now, this or that, though:

1. Packrat or minimalist?
Packrat still.

2. Computer: desktop or laptop?
Both.

3. Seashore or mountains?
Both. I live in Norway, you know…

4. Carpeting or bare floors?
Bare floors. I hate carpets. Rugs are fine, for softness and warmth, but carpets are horrid.

5. Drinking water: bottled or tap?
Whatever’s most practical. At home I drink tap water, if I’m out and about I buy bottled, but refill it from the tap if I have the chance.

6. Shopping websites: eBay or Amazon?
Amazon. I have yet to buy anything at eBay. I don’t buy used items at Amazon either, though, for used books I go to ABE.

7. Cute little kitties or big scary tigers?
Both, but the tigers, definitely.

8. Front door or back door?
I don’t have a back door. If I did, it would be pretty useless, as it would have to sit in the wall on the fourth floor.

9. Lots of jewelry, or little/none?
None, a little (one necklace or bracelet) very occasionally.

10. Thought-provoking question of the week: At the last minute, you obtain tickets to an event you’re dying to attend. However, you have to work that day! Do you ask the boss for the time off, or just call in sick?
I ask for time off, or, rather, inform them I’m taking time off. If there’s a reason why that would be a problem (important meeting, for example) I would probably not go anyway, because I’d be too concerned about the meeting myself.