friday lists

very busy day ahead....here's my list (because we know i love lists):

1. lots of work to do (yes, i do work, believe it or not, i just don't sleep enough)--it's this work that's currently giving me nightmares about global warming and the environment in general. 
2. hair appointment (desperately needed, nearly unable to appear in public). 
3. thing at child's school where parents must buy middle ages inspired things made by twenty-first century danish children over the past week (i saw piles of cool leather in a classroom this week, so i'm looking forward to that). 
4. having visitors from north carolina for dinner (they are not the dinner, we intend to serve dinner to them). 
5. figuring out how to connect macbook pro to big-ass flatscreen t.v. for gala confirmation party on saturday. 
6. transporting said t.v. + Wii, wiimotes and basket o'Wii games to party location without breaking or losing any of it or having to strap self to roof of elderly toyota to serve as cushion for big-ass t.v.
   
7. creating playlist for party and putting it on one of our many iPods.
8. clean out horribly dirty ancient yet reliable toyota so husband can transport the north carolinians without being completely humiliated.
9. thank heavens for GEC* and the EU because they have brought me my beautiful, wonderful, fabulous sent-from-heaven cleaning girl from poland.
10. figure out what the hell this is:

edited: second picture added for full effect:

seriously, these are the only two extra large phallic protrubences (is that a word, it's the second time i've used it this week) on this tree. i know i said that the entire plant world is behaving in an overtly sexual manner, but this is simply carrying it a bit far.

* * *

and because it's a friday a mini grateful friday list, i always forget to do these, but i love that del remembers and she's the one who originally gave me the idea. it's good for the soul to stop and think about what you're grateful for right now at this very moment (in totally random order, if it was order of importance, 3 would be 1, followed by 5 and then 6 or perhaps 4 (if husband brings home asparagus, we get them both at once)).

1. someone from the middle of siberia visited my blog (or so site meter told me). for some reason, that just tickles me. maybe because i studied in kazan and although that's not siberia, i felt the pull of siberia from there, so it's always held some fascination. i'd like to go there and dig up a frozen wooly mammoth.
2. this whole zany week of the bestowing of BoN by the blogger illuminati (thanks suecae sounds for that apt word) and the influx of new friends--thank you all so much for stopping by! double thank you for following. and quadruple thank you for the comments. looking forward to getting to know you better.
3. all of my "old" blog friends, who've been here with me through all the rants and the laughter and that whole thing with sarah palin.  you guys totally rock.
4. that husband's coming home today after being away at a course all week. 
5. there's a lovely south african chenin blanc in the fridge (6 bottles of it, to be exact).
6. asparagus is in season.
7. the sun has shined all week.
8. the birch pollen counts are already on their way down (my eyes are grateful for this).
9. jon stewart and episodes of the daily show that are only a day old.
10. that i don't have to do anything special on sunday.

 i wish you all a most glorious weekend and i hope you have lots to be grateful for this friday. and if anyone knows why that tree produced two mutant pine-cone-agtig thingies when all the rest of its pinecones are totally normal and petite, please do let me know about that....botanists...anyone...bueller?

* GEC = global economic crisis (i get tired of typing it out)

a WTF? wednesday experience

ok, i swear that the bizarro world thing is spreading....

i just got a phone call from someone who was trying to sell me a hospital clown. or at least a sponsorship of a hospital clown. i could not make this up people, this is a true story. i had a rather hard time understanding what he was getting at and he thought i couldn't speak danish, but i think that my ears simply couldn't believe that someone was trying to sell me a hospital clown. what is a hospital clown, you ask? apparently, it's a clown who goes around to hospitals, trying to ease the fears of children who are facing surgery. frankly, i find clowns deeply disturbing and i would imagine that what really happens is that the children end up preferring the surgery to the clown.

anyhow, this guy said that my clown would be at my closest hospital, which he said was the big main hospital in copenhagen, which is definitely not my closest hospital. he also mentioned another hospital that's nowhere near where i live. since i have an unlisted phone number, i asked him where he thought i was. he then said, somewhere in jylland (which is the bit of denmark that's attached to germany and definitely NOT where i live and REALLY far from the hospitals he had named). he actually said this right after he READ OUT my address, so he knew the name of my town and didn't know where it was in HIS OWN COUNTRY. please people, the place is the size of wisconsin, it's not that difficult.

i know he was just doing his sucky telemarketing job, but i told him i thought clowns were scary and there was no way i was going to play any part in paying one. then, i suggested that he try to know something about the people he's calling, otherwise he shouldn't really call. i also asked him to remove my unlisted number from his call list. i pointed out that it was unlisted so that i wouldn't get calls from people who didn't know who the hell i was or where i lived and that if i wanted to purchase something or sponsor something, i would seek out that information on my own, but it would never, ever, under any circumstance be a friggin' clown!!! and then i hung up. seriously, WTF?

this is the second telemarketer who has called in as many weeks. they never used to call, so i guess it's a sign of the GEC that they are resorting to this technique. telemarketers are something i most decidedly do NOT miss from the US. in fact, the only thing i really miss is the Gap. and really good fajita salt. oh, and proper mexican restaurants.

p.s. i looked for clown pictures to go with this post, but they were all too friggin' scary to share. which only proves my point.

taking off

iPhone photo of SAS in-flight shopping catalog

despite the fact that i have, for years, now, thought known that i will die in a plane crash (a statement that makes people very, very nervous when you utter it calmly and matter-of-factly), i love to fly. i adore it. it gives me a rush and a high.  sitting on the runway, catching a glimpse of the shadow of the plane, i feel a flutter of good excitement in my chest:

just thinking about how incredible it is that such a large hunk of metal can be airborne. the moment where it's our turn and the plane pivots into position at the end of the runway.

you can almost feel the whole plane taking a deep breath and getting ready for the rush of speed that will  lift it off the ground. and then, the blissful rush of speed. and lift and the sight of the ground moving away beneath us. the feel and the sound of the landing gear tucking up into place in the belly of the plane (unless you're on one of those Dash 8-400s (note: never name a plane something that rhymes with crash) planes that SAS sold off to Philippine Airlines, the landing gear not so reliable on those, naughty design, you Bombadier people. however, i digress). the climb up to cruising altitude.  i love it all.

i love seeing the ground recede. i love catching a glimpse of sunshine glistening on the wing. i love bursting through to the quiet, clear skies above the clouds (which almost always happens in leaving copenhagen, since it's ALWAYS cloudy).

i have more affection for taking off than for landing. i think it's because i'm always a little disappointed that we're landing already, especially on the short flight from oslo to copenhagen, which i will be taking more frequently again, since i'm starting a new job up there. with the same company as i worked for last year, but in a different position and this time as a "real" employee, rather than a consultant. and despite the GEC and CO2, i will be flying quite a lot, not only to work, since i live in a different country than my workplace, but also to all sorts of exciting destinations to interview people and gather stories. so i have lots of take-offs and landings to look forward to. and i think it only hit me yesterday, when i flew for the first time in nearly two months, how much i crave that take-off rush. i hope i never get tired of it.

maybe i was a bird in my last life.

just say no...

if there's one thing you can say about danes, it's that they have a great sense of humor. i just saw evidence of this on the TV2 evening news, where they reported a story of the director of a factory in jutland (the bit of denmark that's attached to germany) who has banned all of the bad news regarding the global economic crisis (hereafter GEC) in the workplace.

he and his assistant spend the first hour of every workday cutting all articles which reference the GEC from all of the newspapers in the building. they then distribute the severely shredded newspapers in the canteen and breakrooms. his idea is that all of this negative talk isn't helping. and perhaps he's right.

he's serious about it at the same time as he realizes the absurdity. the workers took it very well, laughing and not feeling it as censorship in their workplace. if people make reference to the GEC, they owe 5 kroner to a kitty. i didn't catch what they were going to do with the money, nor did i catch the name of the company and it doesn't seem to be up on the TV2 website as of yet. when it appears, i'll update this post.

in the meantime, i think i'll go cut all of the articles which reference the crisis out of the two newspapers we get on a daily basis, just to see what's left. who knows, maybe it will help.