weekend accomplishments

when the possibility of blog camp transitioned from fantasy to reality, i took at look at this little slice of hallway hell and panicked a bit:

but, thanks to the tidying frenzy which preceded my sitting down and getting to work, and an entire day of effort on the part of husband during which he put in a new floor, it now looks like this:

and i can tell you that is a big relief! and we now have our very own room in which to iron. which makes us feel strangely posh. but probably isn't really that posh as long as we're doing the ironing ourselves.  which are are.

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other than that, i invented a new recipe for rhubarb-strawberry cake. it was necessitated by discovering quite a ways into a rhubarb-strawberry crumble that i didn't really have enough brown sugar. i've never invented a cake recipe before, but it turned out pretty well. this is a shot before i discovered the thing with the brown sugar.

those two mangoes in the upper right of the picture (looking suspiciously breast-like) were diced together with some red onion and served over grilled halloumi as an appetizer last evening. they were the really good kind of southeast asian mangos and are almost buttery in texture. they kick those green ones from south america right out of the kitchen. no comparison. tho' there was a twinge of guilt involved in the carbon footprint of buying either one. however, that was eased by the taste of the velvety sweetness mingled with the salty halloumi all smoky from the grill. yum. and gone too fast to get a picture of it.

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after getting down to work this afternoon (thank you rain), i finished three articles and got a good start on three others. now there are only three to go (because yes, it was nine, not seven). but the night is young and there is much caffeine in the house, so i will soldier on.

but first an after-dinner walk in the evening sunshine, since the rain of the day cleared up around 4 p.m. the world was fragrant and green and so alive.  even the dandelion seeds were luminous.

thanks to all of my procrastination, the house is tidy, the laundry is done and put away, ditto the dishes and nearly half my work is done. i have that sunday evening feeling--when you feel relaxed and ready to face whatever the week brings and even have optimistic thoughts that you'll start running tomorrow. the sunday evening feeling is that good.

things i learned in norway

i'm sitting in the lounge, my flt should have been in 20 minutes, but instead it's in 50. however, i'm content because i love airports, there's free internet and yes, free wine (albiet italian not south african) and free coffee (strangely can feel the effects of the coffee more than the wine, which is perhaps something i should ponder on another occasion).

but i've learned a few things sitting here:

• if you are a bit chubby totally fat, but wearing a suit and think no one is watching, you should look around and see if anyone is in fact watching before straightening your skirt in a way which would make people who were watching glancing up curl up their toes.
• some british guy's wells (we're talking oil here not water) are showing very encouraging results.
• someone's competitor is laying up five ships (he wouldn't say who that competitor was, tho' the wife on the other end of the phone really tried).
• people have some weird notion that b/c they're in a foreign country no one will speak english.
• they are wrong.
• they've changed out the south african white for an italian one. 
• it's not bad.
• i just saw a guy with a red wine glass full of bailey's.
  
• if you wear some seriously cool high heels, wolford black stockings with some kind of tattoo-like patterns on them (yes, they are worth the $47 you must pay), flat-iron your hair and wear eyeliner that borders on night-time makeup along with your big hoop earrings and molly's fabulous beads, boys in shipping will tell you anything.

life is good here in the lounge.

she's at it again

remember the last time i came to oslo (i'm talking to all of my pre-BoN lovelies) how some moron apparently packed my suitcase, leaving out essential items like clean underwear and deodorant and footwear one could be seen in in public, but including things like knitting needles (when i don't even know how to knit) and three different kinds of perfume (that at least we understand)? well, apparently, she's been at work again...

1. she failed to pack my toothbrush, which i didn't discover until after the big-ass mall next door had closed and i was forced to brush my teeth with my finger and some toothpaste (which thankfully WAS in the makeup bag as usual--and i'd really like to know where my travel toothbrush is).
2. she ordered my tickets home for late friday afternoon, not realizing that friday is a HOLIDAY and therefore a day off in norway. and then, when i tried to change my ticket today, i discovered that on a holiday, norwegians apparently choose to flee norway via copenhagen, as there was NO WAY to move the flight up. not a flight to be had outta here tomorrow evening or friday morning, so i'll be the ONLY ONE IN NORWAY until 16:20 on friday.
3. that moron keeps insisting on speaking danish to clerks in shops (double lattes are allowed during austerity april) and waiters (so is dinner). this leads the norwegians to think that i have a prayer of understanding their response. which i don't.
4. she ordered a double latte after 4 p.m. this will not be good after restless swine-flu ridden sleep last night (coughing, couldn't breathe--ok, it might be the birch pollen, not the swine flu), but i need some beauty sleep!
5. she broke austerity april and impulse-purchased an album called little things (thinking perhaps it wouldn't count against the austerity april thing if it was just a little thing) by hanne hukkelberg . it's a bit weird (in a good, tori amos/regina spektor/marie frank kinda way) and although i think she's norwegian, she largely sings in english and swears in danish. which, on the whole, i like. and it was a nice price album at only 89.90NOK, which is close to free, so it didn't break austerity april THAT badly, or wouldn't have had she not also authorized the purchase of the new whitest boy alive. she apparently knows we like norwegian music.

lastly, she made me get a brownie with my coffee after 4 p.m., tho' arguably that might have been molly's fault.

ready for the weekend

husband comes home today! we're ready to see him and hang out with him again, for sure! i've volunteered to pick him up at the airport (and no, it's not ONLY because i want a starbucks grande venti latte).  i really can't wait to hear his stories of places with names like belo horizonte. doesn't a place with a name like that sound just wonderful? (more wonderful than clayton, NC, in any case, which is also where he was.)

i'm also looking forward to seeing the D60 and what pictures he managed to take with it. i don't really know what it thought of being sent out into the world without me and i'm a little sad that it's been to brazil and i have not, but i know it was safe in husband's capable hands. i told him he had to take a few hotel mirror self-portraits, but i'm not sure he did that (for some strange reason, he doesn't always do what i say). it's just that the D60 will expect it.

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husband said the other day that we should go to the states sometime this year. 

my response, "oh yeah, i just got a sale email from KLM and there are super cheap tix to joburg, like under 4000DKK or something like that." 

husband said, "that's not the states."

oops.

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watching all of the leaders arrive at the G20 summit in london it struck me that they're there to talk stimulating the world economy and about the environment and such, but they all pulled up in giant, bulky, beefed up armored gas guzzling big-ass cars and vans and SUVs.  is that really any better than the message sent by those assholes from the carmakers who showed up for their first meetings in their private jets? i also thought that instead of "growth" in the subtitle of the G20 conference, it maybe should have said "sustainability." because we can't sustain the kind of growth we saw. we've only got the one planet, you see.

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this is a screenshot of my flicker view stats. check out the spike when my kitchen was on apartment therapy! i normally have a rather steady amount of  views (between 200-400), but that day it shot clear up to 1854. it helped that the moo people tweeted another of my photos that day. i guess i don't really care about any of this one way or another, but i thought it was pretty funny visually.

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this is the weekend where we attend the wedding party for husband's sister. i'm so excited to see what they thinks of their atelierBB goodies. the party will be at the wonderful gamla kassen in landskrona.  these shots are from another party we attended there early last summer.

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note, i've been on a roll of late and put up a bunch of single entries over on balderdash, be sure to go check them out. they're autobiographical, but there's a couple of pretty funny ones.

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they promise sunshine and up to 15 degrees this weekend, so you won't see much of me here. i hope the weather is fine where you are and your weekend is filled with laughter!

a monday kind of a day

i love this picture. it looks like a creature of some kind. he's got green moss hair on his head and a large eye and some kind of a trunk-like appendage, along with that arm-like branch sticking up. i love the wrinkles under his chin. i don't really know what i'm going to do with him, but he speaks to me somehow. there's some glimmer of something there. it's one of those moments of intuitive inspiration. i don't know what's going to happen with it, but i'm sure that something will. and no, i'm not going off about inspiration again.

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i made sabin and karoline turn the channel to house at 6 p.m., just like i do nearly every weekday. you see, i need my fix of house. he's so deliciously mean. sabin had my laptop in her lap and announced, "i'll just go to you tube and type hannah montana and watch it there." when did the child learn about you tube? i think i've got to keep a better eye on her.

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this morning, we braved THIS traffic (thank goodness i normally fly to my job) to go in and get husband some vaccinations at the only place we knew for sure would have a yellow fever jab available at 9 a.m. on a monday. mom asked me if i had to twitch him or ear him down for the vaccination, like we used to do with the horses, but i don't actually know if that was necessary, because i was running around frantically trying to find an ATM to get some cash to pay for the damn shots because their stupid card machine was broken. and let me tell you, there was no cash machine within a reasonable walking distance in any direction (reminder to self: do not try to find cash in the area of the royal palace, apparently they have no need for cash). finally, it dawned on me that there was an ATM on the 4th floor of my old workplace, right across the street from the doctor and so i asked a good friend who is still on the inside (if that sounds like prison, i do mean it to a little bit) to help me out with some cash. naturally, during this frantic run, i managed to find time to grab not one, but two double lattes. and by the time i got back, not only was husband vaccinated against yellow fever, but also against hepatitis B AND their stupid card machine was back up and running, so they didn't need my hard-earned cash (tho' i am very grateful for irene's help!). it was a monday kind of thing.

and then i set this guy off at the airport so he could head off to north carolina (no yellow fever there) and then onwards to brazil (possibility of yellow fever there). i'm a bit envious of brazil. south america is one of my missing continents (Oz is the other one). then i high-tailed it for home, where the feverish child had been left on her own (with big sis when we left) and where research into these called. so much for being a resourcestærke parent, leaving the child home alone sick. but it was deemed better than dragging around in the car to get carsick at the moment of leaving. i wish we'd all been headed off for brazil. i already had yellow fever. the vaccine. or was it japanese encephalitis? or maybe typhoid fever. i never remember.

in lieu of going to brazil, perhaps i'll just have to watch the movie:

hope your monday was fabulous.