Last one, I swear!

This is the last car-related post today, I promise.

But skeet shooting with cars? Instead of clay pidgeons? Jeremy Clarkson is mental!

Autobahn police.

By the way, when seeing this in your rear view mirror... pull over! I have no idea the top speed of that one, but it sure is waaaaaaaay more than whatever clonker you're driving!

Really kickstarting the Bucket.

Crap! Yesterday when getting in the car to get some grocery shopping done, she was dancing all around the place, sounding really weird. The torque (?) was also totally off. Uh-oh... And with Simon no longe available, who to call? My car-crazed colleague naturally. So after describing the symptoms to him (car jittery, sounding awful, torque weird), he diagnosed it with mis-fire and told us to drive around the block in first gear, getting the torque up to 4-5 000. For those of you who don't see the problem with this, I'll illustrate. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE the Bucket said, making anyone witnessing us think that Love has no idea how to handle a car. Because that's what it sounds like. And I couldn't very well poke my head out of the window and yell to them we were just trying to get the fourth cylinder to fire again. Oh man... The shame!
But it worked. The question now is of course, is it just the spark plugs that need to be exchanged or is the Bucket starting to be afraid of water (it was very rainy and humid out yesterday) just like Pea was? BAH! We got a new(er) car so that we wouldn't have problems like this!
Which leads me to think that cars suck anyway... You can't get a brand new one, because it costs a fortune and the value loss of it within two years would be enormous. And even brand new cars have charming faults (that are usually covered by a guarantee though). If you get an older car, you have to expect costs to repair it, because older cars have parts that needs to be renewed. Love and I had quite a row yesterday about the damn Bucket. What do we do with it? It's been a money pit, but then again, a money pit we kind of like. But she needs to have a decent look-over to figure out what's wrong with her. Hopefully it's nothing major (hell, it shouldn't be after the major work we had done on her this spring). Then she needs to have some body work done, to get some rust removed that surfaced this winter (lots of snow, and salted streets = car eater).
We'll see. First she needs new sparks and that shouldn't be that much of a problem. Then I need to convince Love that I should get a lover who happens to be a car mechanic and who will adore me so much he'll work on our car for free. Or maybe not. I'm having trouble enough to handle my one man. With two men, they'll probably gang up on me and I'd be forced to watch kung fu movies and mindless action flicks. Eeek! Not to mention the endless thumb wars... *shudders*
OK, plan B then: anyone know where I can learn to fix cars?

Don't leave me home alone!

Dang... Don't leave me alone, because then I do stuff like this!


Holy shit, that's dark...
I used to dye my hair this way in my teens. The rebellious days, you know. But the last three years I've kept it very low key, very "almost natural", and now I wanted to stand out again. Oh man... I'm sure I'll be terrified tomorrow when I walk into the bathroom, having forgotten all about the dyeing.



It's not that dark in bright day light, but still a radical colour. Me loves it!



While waiting for the dye to work, I sported some nice side burns. Especially for you, Simon, who have a strange fascination for those things (he wants Love to have a Mr. T doo, and I keep telling him to shuttup because I don't want Love to get a Mr. T doo, 'cause that would be a big turn off for me and.. you get the idea. Then I'd need to get toys, and I can't afford that now. I've also heard that they cause cancer, so not too keen anyway).

I've never used this particular brand before, and I was a little more than skeptical when the dye was bright signal red right away (before turning almost black, like in the photo). But... I dunno, I think I like it?

Mighty swordsmen, eh?

As I've mentioned, Simon is ditching us. But we were nice enough to let him play Munchkin with us once more before he left. So last Monday we invited him and two other guys (one, my colleague with a fascination for swords and a master at keeping his tongue).
My colleague brought with him his long sword and light sabre replica, and we couldn't resist having some fun with them. I have a sword of my own, Sting from Pakistan. And Love has a kiddie light sabre, which I'm sure he thought kicked ass until E showed up with his non-cheap edition. Oh, and Love also has a double katana, and a pirate gun replica. I'll show you! We had a mini photo session, and ended up with several silly photos, most of them not fit to view here.


Love pointing at Simon, who's pointing at me with the long sword and me pointing at Love with Sting (see left side). We totally failed looking serious though. As I said, very silly.



Love with two katanas, and Simon pretending to be bad.



In most of the shots, Simon looks just hilariously harmless (sorry, but it's true!), but here he looks kind of creepy. The sword is long, though. It looks so short here, but when I placed the tip on the floor, I had the other end right below my nose. It's a two handed sword, actually. Blunt, of course. Just like Sting.


Then came the industrial revolution and laser knowledge:

E: "Come on, you wuzz, you can't hit me, I'm a jedi master!"




Yes. We're big babies.

Lots of lego!

Love loves lego. As in always looking for more, always using every opportunity to play with his nephews kind of love. So "The Collectivity Project" was perfect for him! Last friday we were in Oslo for a "creative breakfast meeting" anyway, and when walking around afterwards we found this.


A shitload of lego! Three tons, to be exact. Here's Love and Simon, admiring the work.



See? A whole lot of legos. Or, un-elegantly said, a shitload.

I think we spent around two hours there, all fidgeting with the tiny plastic pieces. Later, a bunch of kids and other adults joined us, and after a while we had finished a couple of master pieces. Well, Love and I had, but Simon was only half way done. He had spent one hour standing around, refusing to participate in the childish behaviour. Heck, even I sat down and built something (and I suspect that will be brought up on several occasions later). It was fun, in a very collective way.



Love's greek house in the background and my "let's se what I can build out of these three-dots legos" house.



Love's house properly installed, between all the sky scrapers and sillyness.

Does this guy have a point?

Here's an entertaining, but thought-provoking clip from Break.com.

Note to self:

... when I get older and my hair turns grey/white, I will either:
- keep it grey/white, or...
- dye it every frikkin week!
White hair and roots equals bald-spot look from behind. Not very fond of that middle age monk look, I must say.

I was out driving last night, with Simon. He leaves for the UK next week, and will make an expat of himself there, so using every opportunity I have to drive with him. (Bad Simon, how can he leave us and Mrs. Bucket? But then again, I completely understand the need to go somewhere else also. Looking into options myself. Life-altering, dizzying options. Ugh... Me no like.)
Anyway, yesterday it was dark, and the foggiest fog I've ever seen. I could barely see over the hood someplaces. But I was on a regular road this time, with roundabouts and traffic lights! Woooo! And we drove to Edvard Munch's house. It's a very purty little village, and would have been even purtier if I could see anything, but we stopped (I mean, *I* stopped!) where he painted "Girls on a Bridge/The Bridge" and walked up to his house. It was around midnight, dark and foggy, and the lights from the marina cast an eerie glow over the water. It was gorgeous, I wished desperately for my camera, but I never learned that "accio" spell from Hogwarts. Oh well... I know where it is, I can go there any time I like.

Kickstarting the Bucket.

After yesterdays nocturnal schmoozing session with mrs. Bucket (wondering what kind of interesting google hits that sentence will give me?), we're steadily becoming buddies.
I'm also befriending mr. Clutch and the eager beaver gas pedal. It's not just random anymore when we move forward, I am actually doing a thing or two right by now. AND I've been outside the parking lot! On purpose, not accidental, in case you were wondering. Apparently my left turns are fine, but right turns are at the moment a bit threatening. But I'm having a helluvalot of fun!
I still have so much to learn, but it's nice to see that I'm making progress. And enduring the snide remarks from Simon about women and driving. I didn't really notice that he'd been rude at all last night, but apparently I was too focused on not getting nature all over mrs. Bucket to notice.

On a different note, I photographed the new desk. Wanna see?
(A bit untidy, but this is as good as it gets with me.)



And we got matching shelves!



I've started collecting these faeries. They're so detailed and purty, I love them! I only have two so far, but it's a start, isn't it?

Manatees are fun too.

PanDOH has company. This manatee doesn't look too bright either.
This looks both painful and hysterically funny. I can't really decide which one it is.

I drew my muse in class today. Now, if that was in Norwegian, that would have been a very r-rated sentence, but it isn't. We had a lecture on the greek muses today and where inspiration comes from, and were put to doodle our own muse afterwards. I hardly know which end is the right end of a pencil, so drawing is not my strength, but I kind of liked my muse. It's abstract and curly, and has a feather. Everyone got a feather for their muse, because the muses nicked the sirenes feathers when they beat them in a song contest.
In case you were wondering, this isn't kindergarten, it's still college. Sometimes I have to double check.

Yesterday I got the car rolling without choking the engine. I'm very, very proud. I switched my "teacher", from Love to Simon. I kept transferring my frustrations over the clutch and the gas pedal onto Love and got so pissy because I couldn't get it right (you know, some days everything just bugs you), so doing these first lessons with Simon is a much better idea, seeing I don't have to sleep on the couch if I get mad at him. Not that I've ever had to sleep on the couch so far, except almost that one time when Love had been out eating dinner with his colleagues at a tapas restaurant and he could strip paint off walls just by breathing on it.
But back to mrs. Bucket and me. We got along just fine yesterday. We're working on the smooth starts now, and trying to roll without getting too much kangarooing. She's being patient with me, I guess. And Simon gets a giggle or two out of my worry about not having enough space to finish my turn.

I like taking Spiff to school. Taking notes has never been easier. Especially in philosophy is that a big plus. I did use my old laptop at school also, but it was two kilos heavier (5kg, compared to 2,8kg now) and only had a battery time of about an hour. Spiff has over three and in the philosophy auditorium without any power outlets available that's a pretty neat. *pats Spiff*

By the way, compared to Aristotle, Plato suddenly looks very appealing. Bah!