People

So here’s what I wrote in my notebook yesterday when I spent the day at Uhre motocross field:
It is so hard to find the time and place to write when you’re surrounded by other people all the time. It’s even hard to put thoughts together in your mind when there’s always someone close “interrupting” your personal space and trail of thought.

I would be miserable after some kind of catastrophe where I’d be forced to live in a large sports arena or sports hall like they did in New Orleans after hurricane Catharina. I would not only have lost everything I owned but I would also be surrounded by people everywhere, all the time! That much people make me tired, extremely so. I’m so tired now, after only a few days with no own time or space, I would probably break down because of the mental distress of being surrounded by thousands of people all the time.

So now I’m constantly tired and I want to sleep all the time and I think this is the mind in it’s need for personal and private space taking control over the body and making me constantly tired and wanting to sleep all the time, because in the world behind my eyelids it’s only me and my thoughts and everyone else may be shut out.

If I was to choose after a catastrophe to be stranded somewhere completely on my own or end up in a sports arena with thousands of people I think I might choose to be on my own.

I like people, I do, but I don’t feel the need to have them around all the time, in small portions they’re quite ok and fun really. Those I call my best friends are those who understand this; that I can love them and appreciate their friendship but still not wanting them around all the time. They understand my need to be left alone with my thoughts and whatever is going on on the inside without someone on the outside intruding all the time.

I chose this vacation myself, and now, when it sometimes feel like I’m suffering, I keep reminding myself of this – and the fact that I might actually learn something from it all, if I just manage to stay awake long enough….

Vacation Day No 5 of 18: What I’ve been doing today

I haven’t exactly been doing what the picture shows, but I have spent my entire day from 0930 till 1700 at Uhre motor racing field about 30 km outside Herning, where my uncle Hans (he is the one in the yellow shirt on the picture, and he ended up in 3rd place!) has been participating in the Veteran motocross games. I watched the two races he was in, at 10 and at 1330, both lasted about 30 minutes – the rest of the day I’ve been reading a Discworld novel: “The lost continent”, I’ve actually been sleeping the car for a couple of hours and I’ve been writing in my notebook; thoughts on how come I actually volunteered to spend my day in the middle of nowhere with a large amount of dirt and noise everywhere and nothing much else…. Oh well, the things we do for the people we care for! And of course, watching the actual races isn’t that bad really.

And tomorrow we’ll spend about 12 hours in the car I guess, driving from here to Untersteinach in the south east part of Germany. When I get there, that’s when I’ll feel that my vacation has finally started. The only drawback being that while we’re in Untersteinach there won’t be any fast internet access available – so only emails and no blogging! Oh well, you can never really have it all, can you?

Free at last….

Free at last, well, as long as it lasts anyway. What I’m referring to is my lack of internet access for the last few days, it’s been even worse than I thought since I brought my laptop with me. It’s almost like it’s taunting me when I stare at it and know I won’t be able to use it for anything useful on the internet as long as the only connection I’ve got is through my mobile phone. For a couple of days now I’m in a hotel in Herning and fortunately here I do have wireless internet access and it’s heaven! Yeah, I know it’s awful to be complaining, but once you’ve gotten used to having the internet all the time not having it almost feels like you’ve lost one of your senses, like you’re isolated from the rest of the world; my world is suddenly no bigger than what I see around me and it’s giving me an almost claustrophobic feeling.

I’ll survive it though, I know I will. First of all I’ll just have to make the most of it till Sunday when we’re still in Herning and for the week I’m in Untersteinach I’ll hopefully have such a busy schedule that I won’t even have time to miss my internet access….

Sorry folks

But I’m off for the next 2 ½ weeks on vacation and I doubt there will be very many opportunities to update my blog. Here are my vacation plans:

• 25 – 27 July: Will be spent in Son south of Oslo, at my aunt and uncles place, they are the ones I’m going on vacation with.
• Night 27 – 28 July: On the ferry from Oslo to Denmark.
• 28 – 30 July: Herning in Denmark, my uncle is going to participate in a motocross race there on Saturday 29 July – and I’ve been there a couple of times before and there are a couple of excellent Irish pubs in Herning.
• 30 July – 5 August: Untersteinach/Kulmbach in Bavaria/Germany. My aunt and uncle have a flat there, and I’ll be meeting up with friends I’ve made during the last 14 or 15 times I’ve been there – and of course there’s the bierfest in Kulmbach!!!
• 5 August – 6 August: Namur in Belgium. World Championship in motocross or something… My uncle is not participating, but he really wants to see this.
• 6 – 10 august: Oostende in Belgium. Never been there but it is by the sea and is supposedly very nice.
• Night 10 – 11 August: Ferry from Kiel to Gothenburg
• Evening 11 August: If everything goes according to the plans above this is when I’ll be back in Solör.

As for updating my blog or otherwise being online: I’m hoping that there will be internet access at the hotels were we’re staying in Herning, Namur and Oostende, as I do know that there is no phone in the flat in Untersteinach. The week I’m staying there I’ll only be able to go online on my mobile phone, and that should give me just enough speed to download my emails if there’s nothing heavy coming- but it’s impossible to use to get on the net.

So, that’s it folks – I’ll tell you all about it later!

Reality becoming even more real…

Today I’ve booked a short trip to Chichester from Monday 14th to Wednesday 16th of August, when I hoping to view some potential properties to rent there. At the same time as I made this booking I also made a one way booking of a flight leaving Oslo on the 1st of September at 0740 to Heathrow airport. This last booking actually felt a bit strange to make, I think perhaps it’s the first time ever that I’ve made a one way booking of a flight, because always in the past when I’ve booked a flight it’s been for a vacation and I’ve known when I’m coming home – and now I don’t. Of course, I do know I’ll be going home for Christmas, but I don’t yet know the exact date, thus a one way ticket made more sense.

As the University of Chichester offers Bed&Breakfast during the summer I have also sent them an email asking to book a room for the 2 days I’m staying there in August. It might be a nice occasion to start checking out the university that I’ll be attending only a couple of weeks later.

Making all these preparations certainly makes everything become a whole lot more real than it’s been so far; I feel the butterflies in my stomach flying a little faster, and if I’ve been looking forward to this with 95% happiness and being about 5% worried, I guess the ratio has now moved on to about 92% vs. 8%. Wonder how it will be in about a month?

It’s just still so hard to believe. I leave on vacation tomorrow, to Denmark – Germany – Belgium, and I’ll be back in Norway on the 11th of August, and then the move to England is only 3 weeks away.

Yeah, reality becomes a little more real every day now…..

Poems

One of the things I’ve been asked to do before I start at the university in September is read a poem every day for 2 weeks or so then find poems I like and find out why I like them.

I do not have much experience with English speaking poets except for those I encountered when I did my first 60 credits in English at the university.

I remember really falling for 2 poems by William Carlos Williams:

The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glaced with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

This Is Just to Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

It’s hard saying why you like one poem and not another one. For me I think the poems that work best are those that are like sentences or sometimes just sighs taken out of someone’s every day life, they just seem so real, so touchable.

I am pretty sure about what I don’t like in poems: when they’re just too long! If you have that much to tell, write a short story! I always skip long poems, they just look so boring, to me poems are something that short, well formulated, often with a play of words, sometimes funny, sometimes very beautiful, but never something that goes on and on page after page!

I do of course sometimes write poems myself, but I’m not very good at it. What I want to do with my poems is paint a picture with words so that others by reading this picture will experience some of the same feelings I had when I wrote it. My poems are usually very emotional, they are usually written when I feel something very strong: love, hate, sorrow, emptiness, loneliness….
They are like outburst of emotions on paper. And when the urge to write a poem comes over me it’s hard to hold back, it just feels so fulfilling to put my strong emotions in words on paper.

One of the most beautiful and saddest poems I know is by W.H.Auden: “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone” (“Funeral blues”).
I think perhaps one of the reasons why it touches me so much is that the first time I heard it was in a movie: “Four weddings and a funeral” and it was read at the funeral and it was just so fitting. Somehow, even though it is so extremely sad, it’s also such an outburst of love, every time I read it it makes the hair stand on my arms; it’s like the ultimate love poem. A friend of mine who read it she said that reading a poem like this really makes you wish that someone would some day love you just as much, I totally agree.

“Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone”
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public
doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West
My working week and my Sunday rest
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Pirates of the Caribean

I went to the cinema on Friday and saw ”Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead man’s chest” – I loved it! The movie is really great, and of course, it’s impossible to hate a movie that’s got both Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom in it! The effects, the music and the story, I think perhaps I liked this one even better than the first. And now I’m eagerly waiting for number 3.

Finishing up

I suddenly realized yesterday that since this is my last month on my internet course, and I’m going to Oslo for the weekend, and then off on my 2 ½ week of vacation from next Tuesday, that I’ve only got like 3 days left to finish up everything that needs to be finished up. I don’t know why I haven’t actually thought about this earlier, must be the heat or something but it sort of had just slipped my mind.

To finish up the course what I have to do is send in to the university:
My final submission, 2000 words
A reflection on my writing, 500 words
3 pieces of critique that I have done on other students work
1 assessment on each of those 3 critiques, 500 words each

I am also, because I’m lazy I guess or for some other reason, a little behind on doing the critiques on other students work, so yesterday I had like 6 left to finish which should also be about 500 words each.

Sounds bad, doesn’t it?

Well, it isn’t AS bad as it sounds, because I have of course been working on my final submission all along, because it is a piece of my new novel and I’m writing on that all the time, so it is practically finished. I have also been working on my reflection all along, so that too is almost ready. The 3 critiques have been written during the course, and last night I sat down and wrote an assessment on each of them, so that’s almost done as well. So all that’s left are the critiques that I feel I should get done before I leave the course, and I’ve been working on 3 of those today.

So hopefully by the end of tomorrow I will have gone through all my final work and finished it, and I will have finished the 3 critiques I started on today, and began on 3 more – so that I may finish the last 3 ones on Monday and thus feel that I leave the course with everything done that should be done.

In this nice and very warm summer weather we have these days though, I must admit I don’t really feel like working, but then again who does? And I am fortunate enough to decide myself when I want to work during the day or night so I do get to take a couple of hours off each day to sit in the sun and working on my tan! What I would have like more than anything is drinking ice cold beer and partying with my friends, but I’ll get to do that when I go to Oslo for the weekend so, I guess, I REALLY don’t have that much to complain about.

Like to do it anyway though…..

Sounds in the forest, Bättel 2006 - notebook entry on the 9th of July

When I stepped out from the outhouse where the toilet is, I heard a sound in the forest across the road. In the darkness I could not see what made the sound. I stood for about a minute watching the darkness between the trees, but the forest made no more strange sounds, it was quiet. Behind me it was not quiet. I turned around, my back to the forest and watched my friends and the fire at our camp site about 20 metres below me. I thought, if I cross this road behind me, walk into the forest in search of whatever made that sound, and I for some reason disappeared, how long before they’d miss me? 8 of them, divided into two groups, one group by the fire, the other inside the tent. When would they notice that I wasn’t in the other group and still hadn’t returned from the outhouse?

I asked a couple of them when I got back to the camp. On of them said “I’m sorry but honestly I don’t think we’d notice till quite a long time had passed. With all the drinking, the talking, the music and the darkness – yes, it could be a while”.
The other one she said that it would be maximum 5 minutes before she’d notice and I said “really?” and then I asked if she thought this would be true even if it hadn’t been her I had been sitting next to before I went to the “ladies room” and she said it was.

I’m not convinced though. My guess is something between 20 minutes and closer to an hour. After all, it was getting late and dark, people might soon be going to bed – wouldn’t they just assume that I had done so as well? I don’t know, but I do think that if I had crossed the road in search of the sound and something dangerous had been behind that sound, much could’ve happened without them knowing. And that’s an interesting thought – when it comes to writing stories!

Away for the weekend

I'm off to Oslo and Son for the weekend so that's why it will be rather quiet here the next couple of days - but you can of course spend the weekend looking forward to new notebook entries that will follow on Monday or pretty close to Monday anyway....

Thunderstorms – notebook entry on 11th of July 2006

Thunderstorms, I hate them and I love them! I’ve never been especially terrified of thunder and lightning, growing up with a father who would sometimes wake me at night so that I could come watch the beauty of it I’ve always been used to this kind of weather. It really is beautiful the way the light so spectacularly cuts through the pitch black night and all the sounds that follows. I love the sight of it – BUT not when it’s too close!

When the thunderstorm gets too close it touches something fundamental in me, something at the core of being human I think. I believe it’s been there since the dawn of human kind. Back then people didn’t know why there was thunder and lightning and they would fear what they did not understand. It’s only in the last couple of hundred years or so that we’ve come to understand what causes weather and have learnt that most thunderstorms (well, the kinds we have in south-eastern Norway anyway) are very very rarely dangerous. Still, I guess it’s a heritage from our ancestors stretching thousands of years into the past that scares us.

At least I think that must be the case with me, because when it was getting pretty close this night I asked myself “What is it really that you fear, that it’s going to strike this house?” I thought about it and felt my feelings so to speak, and I just didn’t know – I just felt worried and slightly afraid, far from hysterical though. As I said, I’m not very scared in this type of weather, I love it at a distance, it’s only when it gets too close that I might start to hate it!

About being tired – notebook entry on 12th of July

I’m so dead tired these days it’s hard to get anything useful done. Today I even had to sleep for an hour in the evening because I was just too tired to stay awake. And when I go through periods of exhaustion like the one I’m in now I keep wondering if it’s just me being lazy or if it’s the Thyroid’s disease that is fuckin’ up my systems?

When I was first diagnosed in 2000 with Hypothyroidism I read just about every article I could find about it and I even joined the national association for people with Thyroid’s disease. The more involved I got though the more I felt like this illness would take over my life; that this would be all I was about, that I would start to blame all my failures on it, and every time I wouldn’t feel like doing something I would blame Hypothyroidism; “poor poor me who just can’t cope!” And I did not want to be that kind of person. I am sure that there are people who really are terribly ill from Thyroid’s disease and who can’t do anything else than life the life it allows them to, but not me!

So I stopped reading about it and I cancelled my membership in the association because all this would do was telling me just how bad some people could get from Hypothyroidism. Focusing on all the bad stuff that might be has never helped anyone so…. Now I don’t think about it very much, I take my pills everyday as I will have to for the rest of my life and that’s it!

But sometimes when I get so tired and exhausted as I’ve been lately with no apparent reason I can’t help but wonder: is it the disease or am I just being lazy? And I’ll never know!

Keeping a notebook

It seems like I’m continuing to have trouble finding things to post on this blogger page. But now I’ve got an idea: before I start university in September I’ve been told that I need to keep a notebook, and that I should write in this for at least 5 – 10 minutes every day. Actually the text that asked me to do this was formulated in such a way that it seemed like they assumed that I’ve already been keeping a notebook for years, I haven’t. What I do when I feel inspired is I write on whatever is available at the moment. And I do keep a diary, but honestly, the only times I write anything in that one is when there’s something that’s got to do with men – so it’s not really much of a notebook, more like my inner thoughts on love and men, and well, you know….

I don’t really know what I’m supposed to write about in a notebook, but I don’t write about topics like those I just mentioned, they’re just too private. What I have found that I do write about in my notebook is life in general, and it’s really not much of secrets I write there – so I’ve decided that I might as well share some of what I write there as long as it’s not too private.

I survived Bättel Kynndammen 2006

I had as expected an excellent time at Bättel (the annual weekend-long camping in the forest of Finnskogen with friends) this weekend, but lots of beer and not so much sleep sure can make a person tired. Yesterday I was totally off after I got back home, today I’m just a little off. My parents left for a five-day vacation today, to somewhere my father can go fishing, so I guess this is going to be a quiet week, and that’s nice after a “hard” time at Bättel.

Tomorrow I might actually also manage to do something usual as well, like training and studies, today however, I’ve just given up on getting anything serious stuff done, so I’ve decided to watch “War of the worlds” – have to get started on the pile of DVDs I bought last weekend.

Worrying about our cat Daisy

A year and a week ago, on the 30th of June 2005 I wrote a posting called ”The loss of a pet”. We had to put one of our cats, Fremon, to sleep that day because of cancer. I said that I had been so happy about the A I got on my last exam that day, and then suddenly I was so sad because of Fremon.

Today is another one of those days. My mum has just taken our cat Daisy to the veterinary, and I fear the worst. On Monday or Tuesday we discovered that she had what looked like minor infection on the back of her left thigh. She has allergies in the summer so we thought is might have something to do with that. She didn’t seem very bothered by it, but very lazy and sleepy, but with 30°C both cats and people are very slow and lazy these days. In the next couple of days it grew a lot worse, and yesterday my mum called the veterinary – they said we couldn’t come in till Monday morning! Today however when I looked at the floor where she’d been lying it was wet, and when I checked her back parts the infection was leaking and it looked really bad. We called the vet and said we had to get an appointment today, and we did. Having seen cancer when we had to put Fremon to sleep last year, we all fear the worst.

So, now my mum’s at the vet, I offered to accompany her, but she wouldn’t allow me. 5 – 6 years ago we put our cat Ellinor to sleep and then I came along and complete fell to pieces when they put her to sleep, after that my mum’s said she’d rather do this alone. And I know she too feared that she would have to go home with one cat less today.

I can’t do nothing but wait. I’ve got most of my things packed for the Bättel, only a couple of hours ago I was dancing to the music when I was packing, then I went upstairs to my parents apartment and saw Daisy and suddenly I don’t feel like dancing any more. I was so happy, and now I’m afraid I’ll be very very sad!

Update:
My mum's back from the vet - WITH Daisy. It looks like it's just an infection, this time, and that she'll be fine once she's finished her 10 days penicilin tratment.

Song of the day, or the week….

It’s strange how you can sometimes rediscover a song. I was watching “ER” on TV the other night and in the background they played “You’re beautiful” by James Blunt, and since then I’ve not been able to let that song go. I downloaded it and I must have been listening to it 20 – 30 times since then…

The making of a CD

When preparing for this weekend’s Bättel I’m also as usual putting together a CD that I call “Bättel 2006”. So far this is what I’ve got on the list of what I want to put on the CD:

1. Lordi – Hard Rock Hallelujah
2. Shakira (feat Wyclef Jean) – Hips don’t lie
3. Big&Rich – Save a horse (ride a cowboy)
4. The Dubliners – Seven Drunken Nights
5. The Dubliners – Whisky in the Jar
6. Dixie Chicks – Goodbye Earl
7. Jill Johnson – Red Neck Woman
8. Carleen Carter – Every little thing
9. Sidsel Ben Semmane – Twist of love
10. The Pussycat Dolls – Tainted love
11. Gavin DeGraw – I don’t want to be
12. Kim Larsen – Spillemand
13. Kate Ryan – Je t’adore
14. Slade – My Oh My
15. The Beatles – Hey Jude
16. Robbie Williams – Angels
17. Carola – Det regnar i Stockholm

What I will be doing on my summer vacation

Well, I have told you a few things that I have done on my summer vacation and I thought I’d also share my future plans with you.

First though I should clarify: I call this my summer vacation because well, it is summer isn’t it, and lots of other people have got summer vacation so I think of it as mine as well. In reality though, my days now are really no different from what they were like in February or April or May, I’m still an online student with the University of Lancaster, I still try to make sure that I exercise at least 4 – 5 times a week, and I spend lots of time preparing for moving to Chichester. Still though, the summer is indeed a time for travelling and doing fun stuff with friends and that’s what I’ve been doing so far and plan to do in the next month too.

Bättel
Next weekend, the 7th to 9th of July, I’ll be camping with about 15 – 20 friends at Kynndammen in Finnskogen. Finnskogen is a large forest area not very far from where I live and Kynndammen is a small dam on the river Kynna in Kynndalen where it’s excellent to camp. Kynndammen is a rather large property that we rent through the local upper high school and it’s really a very nice place for camping. We bring along tents; small to sleep in and one large army tent that we can gather in at night. There is also a cabin at Kynndammen, without any water or electricity, but with 8 beds for those who prefer to sleep indoors. What we do this weekend is mainly just talking and partying and catching up. Some of these friends I hardly ever see during the rest of the year so Bättel is so great for meeting friends that I haven’t seen since last Bättel (we do this one weekend a year). On Saturday afternoon I also arrange a competition for all those at Bättel, this competition varies from year to year, but there is normally 8 different tasks that are competed in, both physically and mentally challenging – and it’s always great fun! This year so far I know that we’ll be at least 15 persons attending and the weather forecast so far says sunny and 26°C, so I have big hopes for this year’s Bättel as well.

Bierwoche – Kulmbach
For the last 10 years or so (with the exception of one year about 3 – 4 years ago when I was ill) I’ve been on vacation in Kulmbach in Germany from the last weekend of July, that’s when they’ve got their annual one week beer party; bierwoche. Normally this has been a great party, but last year the weather was awful, raining and about 12 – 15°C all week long, and it really wasn’t that much fun. At that time I said that I probably wouldn’t go back this summer. My plan was to go to Kulmbach to meet up with friends there earlier this year, but for various reasons I have not been able to do this so far. And now bierwoche is only a couple of weeks away (it starts on Saturday 29th of July) and I find that I’m actually planning to go back there this year too. Not so much for the bierwoche, but to meet friends that I haven’t seen for a year. I usually have the best of times in Kulmbach (and Untersteinach which is where I actually live when I’m there) and now I feel myself really looking forward to making this trip again.

Apartment hunting – Chichester
I’ll return from my vacation in Germany around the 10th of August, and the week after that I’m planning to spend 3 – 4 days in Chichester to go apartment hunting. I was originally thinking about doing this in mid July, but I wasn’t sure that if I find a place that I like that the estate agent would allow me to sign a contract from 1st of September when that was still 1 ½ month away – so I’ve pushed this vacation plan into mid August instead.

Studies
What I will have to be doing all summer through is keep working on my studies. During July/August I will finish my online course with the University of Lancaster, but this isn’t the only thing I’ll be doing.
I got a large envelope from the University of Chichester a couple of days ago, and they’ve already given me homework, things I have to read and write before school starts on the 2nd of September. I think it’s great. I’ve been looking forward to this for quite some while now, and starting to do some real work that prepares me for university life; it makes it all seem so much more real.

So, I guess those are my main plans for this summer. I might spend some days in Oslo with friends as well, but those plans aren’t fixed yet – I’ll let you know when and if that happens!!

Recently bought DVDs

As I told you in my previous post I’ve bought some DVDs in the last couple of days. At “Solör Mart’n” you could buy 4 DVDs for 300 NOK so my father and I bought 9 DVDs together, we roughly like the same films so it seemed like the logical choice. Here’s what we’ve bought:

• Dawn of the dead – Director’s cut
• Sahara
• Mr and Mrs Smith
• War of the worlds
• Fantastic Four
• 28 days later
• Alexander
• Tigerland
• Starship Troopers

And out of these movies, the only one I’ve seen before is “Starship Troopers” which I think is excellent and have seen lots of times before. So, once the weather stops being so… summerly… I know what I will be doing.

What I did on my summer vacation - part II

From Thursday 29th of June to Sunday 2nd of July “Solör Mart’n” is arranged at Flisa (about 5 km from where I live). This is sort of like a fair or a market; all the shops and stores have special sales and most of them bring their things out on the pavement in front of their buildings, there is also a funfair for children. The best part however is that most of the year Flisa is a rather quiet place where not much goes on. There are a couple of pubs that are open on the weekend but not many people go there. During these 3 days of “Mart’n” approximately 30 000 people visit Flisa (Flisa has got about 3000 inhabitants of its’ own) and many of them come for the partying at night. It’s a gigantic party every night, with more places to party than the rest of the year, and the opportunity to meet people you haven’t seen for a really long time. Lots of people that have moved because of school or work do come back for “Mart’n” – and it’s just great!

I went to Flisa both on Friday and Saturday night. The first evening was so great and I don’t think I got back home till about half past 3 in the morning. Saturday wasn’t as great, mainly because I was slightly hangover all day long, and when I started drinking beer again in the evening, it didn’t taste as great as it did on Friday evening – I ended up going home early, around half past midnight. Today I kind of regret doing that, since this only happens once I year I should’ve made the most of it, but, what can I say, I must be getting old; I felt tired and at the time it seemed like a good idea to be going home early. At least I’m not hangover today, so it must’ve been good for something. And in about an hour I’m going to Flisa again to be doing some shopping, since all the stores are open from 2 till 5 this afternoon, and I’m sure, even though I’ve been shopping for the last 2 days there as well (and bought nothing else than DVDs….. I’ll tell you about those in a later posting here) that I’ll manage to find something to spend my money on today as well.

And next weekend is “Bättel” – I’ll explain this to you later today, or tomorrow, or anytime soon in the immediate future!