Mememania!

My Mentor-In-Evil-Deeds commanded that I did this one:


Four Jobs You’ve Had In Your Life:

1. Gas station attendant (or whatever you call us, I know how to change your windshield wipers)
2. Post office clerk
3. Grocery store slave (but not for very long)
4. Telemarketer (two whole days, then I quit. Never never again!)

Four Movies You Could Watch Over And Over:

1. Ever After
2. The Princess Diaries 2
3. The Sissi trilogy
4. Pride and Prejudice (both the 5,5 h BBC version and just as likely the new version)
(Yes, I do see a pattern here.)

Four Places You’ve Lived:

1. Lillestrøm, Norway
2. Nowhere/Nothingtodo, Norway
3. My current city
4.

Four TV Shows You Love To Watch: (Norway, people, we don't get everything)

1. Gilmore Girls
2. My Name is Earl
3. Desperate Housewives
4. Mythbusters

Four Places You’ve Been On Holiday:

1. Germany
2. Denmark
3. Dublin, Ireland
4. The west coast of Norway

Four Blogs You Visit Daily:

1. Tales of a Texpatriate
2. M
3. Cy
4. Leslie

Four Of Your Favorite Foods:

1. Salmon with sitronpepper, rømme and taters.
2. Fruit smoothie
3. The second day of Christmas Turkey dinner Love's brother serves.
4. Practically anything my aunt makes when I'm in Germany visiting them.

Four Places You’d Rather Be:

1. Germany
2. Anywhere warm
3. Disney World
4. Dublin

Four Albums You Can’t Live Without:

1. Afterglow, Sarah McLachlan
2. Mutter, Rammstein
3. My best of the Bangles cd
4. Moulin Rouge OST

Four Vehicles I’ve Owned:

1. A red 1986 Ford Fiesta 1.1
2. British Racing Green metallic 1997 Rover 414
3.
4.
(Gimme a break, two cars are pretty impressing considering that I don't even have a drivers liscence. Which means Love is the one driving the car)



ABC Meme

A - Accent: Depends on which language
B - Breakfast: Not my favorite meal of the day
C - Chore you hate: Tidying. Folding laundry.
D - Dad's name:
E - Essential everyday item: Coffee
F - Flavor ice cream: Amarena kirsch
G - Gold or silver?: silver. I find gold in any form, whether real or fake really tacky.
H - Hometown: Lillestrøm
I - Insomnia: It takes me forever to fall asleep. Always
J - Job title: gas station attendant?
K - Kids: No, just four piggies.
L - Living arrangements: With Love, our piggies and a washer called Fritz
M - Mom's birthplace: Germany
N - Number of significant others: Huh?
O - Overnight hospital stays: No
P - Phobia: spiders
Q - Queer?: Nope
R - Religious affiliation: Officially none
S - Siblings: two younger siblings
T - Time you wake up: If sleeping without an alarm? Dawn. Which means 8.30 ish around now.
U - unnatural haircolors you've worn: well, basically a lot of different reds
V - vegetable you refuse to eat: brussel sprouts and "surkål". That's about it.
W - worst habit: Dunno?
X - x-rays you've had: dental, chest
Y - yummy: salmon, norwegian sour cream, gulasch
Z - zodiac sign: Pisces

Sighs and smiles.

I've been in a funk these last couple of weeks. The lack of sunlight, the chill, lack of social interaction, it just gets me down. Not that it's something new, I always feel like this around this time of year. Nothing excites me, nothing makes me smile. It's like walking around inside a dark box and not really noticing the outside world.
The enormous amount of snow that tumbled down this weekend didn't make it better. I haven't gotten around to photographing the nightmare, but Karla has. We got the same amount here also. And with ground level windows... well, I think you can imagine it.

But you've got to give yourself things to look forward to, right? And when DFDS offered "romantic mini cruise to Copenhagen", Love and I scrounged the money together. There are so many other things we could have spent that money on, but at least I'm really excited about it. We dished out a little extra cash so that we got a deluxe cabin and the romantic cruise itself includes a 4 course dinner and heart shaped balloons in the cabin (weeee!). Ooh, and chocolate! Yay!

Let me tell you something.

If there is a hell, it's not hot. It's, like the vikings believed, cold. Very cold and full of snow. And it's right outside my damn windows and door! It's complete madness out there, it's snowing like crazy and if it doesn't stop soon, our windows will be snowed shut! Fuck! It's already piled up so much that we can't open them (ours open at the bottom) and that's the only means of getting fresh air in here! Another thing, our windows are at ground level. They're big and all, so the flat doesn't feel like a basement flat, but it doesn't change the frikkin fact that our windows are ground level and about to be snowed shut. I'd post a photo, but it's too dark for my cell phone right now.
Another thing, I spent an hour shoveling our driveway today, in addition to the half hour I spent yesterday. Now, after coming back from the movies, you can hardly tell!

I'm a wegie, I'm supposed to be used to this, but this is crazy. This isn't normal! In two days we've had the same amount of snow we get during a whole winter. The snow ploughers can't even make all the streets, by the time they've finished, they need to start over again. It's insane, and I just want it to stop. This is the worst weather we've had since... forever. And I'm opening the shop tomorrow, so I have to be up bright and early to shovel out the car and hope that Love can keep it from sliding off the streets. I need a sleigh and some frikkin well-trained reindeer!
Fuck!

Wanna see what I'm talking about? Webcams from my area.

Mooooooo!

Now this would be a dream come true! Miniature cows!
As in actual moo cows, only much smalled. Me wants one! Or five... Must convince boyfriend to buy farm and mini moos.

Arrrgh! I'm going blind!

I take no responsibility for any harm caused to you by this. With that said, do see it and laugh your ass off. Maybe if it gets too bad, I'll call the collect-and-reASSemble ass rescue team for you.
(And yes, I realise that those words will get me more of those perv hits)

Cue words: David Hasselhof, salmon, the worst green screen I've ever seen and a caveman. Got you hooked now, didn't I?

Mr. Darcy vexes me so!

Well, not really. He's quite an agreeable man, I must say. In any form, whether written or on the silver screen. Even a not so good looking Darcy is agreeable.

What has gotten into her now, you ask?
The new "Pride and Prejudice" movie opened here today. And Love would rather gnaw an arm off (preferrably his own, I need mine!) than to go with me, so I rebelled and went to see it by myself. Not that it bothered me, I'm one of those weirdos who feel I get more out of a film if going by myself. No distractions, just me and the movie.
But Austen's novel is a classic, and it still works. It was difficult at first to free myself of the BBC series so fresh in my mind, but when I did, I was just completely awed. Keira Knightly makes up for one adorable Elisabeth Bennet, and she was supposedly not wearing any make-up in that movie (and still looked like a million bucks! not fair...). Well, they all looked very make-up free, and very not modern at all.
I just loved the whole authentic feel of the movie. In the BBC series you don't really get the impression that the Bennets aren't that well off, at least not from their house and their clothes. In this new movie there's a bigger gap between the Bennets and the Bingley residence.
Another thing, the BBC series stretches over five hours, this one "only" two, but it doesn't feel like important stuff has been cut out. In fact, I'm trying hard to think of what makes the BBC thing so much longer than this movie. Gahhh! Does this mean I have to watch it all over again?
And even though this new Mr. Darcy isn't as much of a looker as Colin Firth Darcy is, he has his own charms. Although, watch out for the scoundrel Mr. Wickham.

But where were the steamy hot s*x that the US Jane Austen interest group were so angry about? That's not fair! Not that steamy hot scenes like that would have had anything to do in a movie based on a Jane Austen novel... Oh well, I guess I'll just have to use my imagination.

Oh btw Karla? No Mr. Darcy diving into the lake with white shirt on this time. I'm sure Bridget Jones will be very disappointed.

Sorry, I was applying lipstick, what were you saying?

Customer support is a funny business. I fully understand they get absurdly stupid questions and automatically assume the customer is an idiot, as I've had my share of those questions myself. But that they themselves are capable of asking such moronic questions, I had no idea.
Or maybe the guy taking my call yesterday automatically assumed, hearing my girly voice, that I was one of those less computer-abled that would call customer support because I wouldn't find the on-button.
Anyway, after I had told him about which lights were blinking on our router, he proceeded to ask me if I had turned the router ON!
"Well, how else would I see blinking lights on it?" I replied, sugar sweet. Duh!

That reminds me of the stupidest question I've had at work so far. A guy comes in, wants to wash his car. He gets the best programme and is handed the complimentary interior wipes. "Huh? Is that done automatically?" he asks, referring to the wipes.
The evil Kjersti wanted to reply "Yes, little gnomes spring out of the package and cleans your entire interior". But of course, that's not how we do things. So I painfully (trying not to laugh my ass off! hard I tell ya!) explain the guy that no, you have to do that yourself. He looked disappointed.

Cut off from the world...

... Or so it felt like for the last week.
Our DSL was down. The company was upgrading their stuff and suddenly we weren't online anymore.
Now, several calls (by cell phone mind you, our DSL-dependent phone was naturally not working) to a "please hold and we'll help you" *insert 30 minute wait here* and hopeless advice, they finally figured out there was an unstability on our line. No shit?
Anyway, it's up at the moment. I'm hoping it stays up, but there's your explanation for why I've been away.

And our family welcomes Fritz, the amazing machine!

The old washing machine has made some "it's gonna blow!!" sounds for a while now, so when my student loans money arrived the same day as the big january sales started, there was only one thing to do. Get Fritz, the amazing machine!
It's an AEG and has everything except an anti-wrinkle program. And compared to the old one, it's huge!
This is the first big household appliance I've bought myself, not conveniently inherited from parents (stove), given by inlaws (freezer) or bought dirt cheap from friends who didn't need it (fridge). Oh wait, I paid for the vacuumer last summer, but it's technically a "small" household appliance (small, blue and follows me around, love it!). Anyway, Fritz and I have really bonded, after a wonky start with Fritz beeping at me for something I didn't know what was and got so stressed I couldn't find the instruction manual. He's a rude one, Fritz. You know, being German and everything... Loads of nice words there. No wonder they've cencored it. Turns out Fritz was annoyed because his lid wasn't properly shut. Poor Fritzie, I won't do that again.

Hello 2006!

Whoa boy, I feel like I've been run over by something large with its name ending with "truck" (monster truck for instance). Our guests were well behaved last night and arrived fashionably late, and it was a lovely bunch of people, but already a bit pooped, I went to bed "early" (meaning around 2-ish). And everything spun around me. I know, I know, it's called being drunk. Except I had only had one cider with barely % alcohol and a sip of baileys in my coffee. Seriously. But somehow I ended up feeling sea sick and unable to sleep. Yay for that!
That made arriving at work today very embarassing. "Yeah sure, you're sick, riiiiight!" Oh my... But of course being the spitting image of an angel, I got away with it. Not that it was anything to get away with, I was sick because I had worked all day and not eaten properly and THEN shoving down an enormous amount of cake and cookies and snacks and chocolate. Duh!
The fact that I brought cookies and chocolate with me, also gave me some brownie points.
I spent half the day handing out chocolate coins to customers who looked like they needed a cheer up. But by the end of the night (ten pm) I was completely exhausted. I still am. Can't keep my eyes open. Every muscle is achy, even my cheek. What a rough ride these two last days were. Off to bed now, so that I can greet 2006 properly tomorrow, one day late.