The snow and I

Saturday was the first day of snow this year. I was standing in the kitchen early in the morning, when I glanced out of the window, and say huge, white snowflakes zigzagging down from the sky.

For a few seconds, I just stood there and stared at it, in disbelief. However late in the year the snow decides to turn up, I always react with amazement. And then the bubbles start. From the bottom of my tummy, at first, then they travel upwards, until they reach my brain where they promptly ring the snowbell. “Snow!” my brain shouts. “Snow, snow, snowsnowsnowsnowsnow!!!”

Once all that is done, I have to run out into the yard, so that I can catch flakes with my tongue. I even caught a few with my eyeballs, actually. Having a snowflake melt on your eyeball, is a very strange sensation, by the way. I also took the dog for a long walk. Before I went, I considered bringing an umbrella, but decided against it. You see, although the ultimate outcome of walking in the snow might be the same as walking in the rain (wet), the process is completely different. Therefore, I decided that I didn’t need the umbrella.

On the first snowday, I always get lots of stuff done. I don’t know why. I think time works differently when everything is covered with snow. And everything goes completely quiet. Snowquiet is like lots of quiets stacked on top of each other.

I wrote lots and spent the rest of the day in a comfy chair with my aforementioned strawberry milk and a book. Every now and then, I’d glance out the window, the bubbles would rise upwards again, ringing the snowbell, and my brain would go “snowsnowsnowsnowsnow!!!”

If it keeps on snowing, this state of mind usually last for about a week. After that first seven day period, it starts to look as if I might have to move the stuff around. I then stop referring to the snow as “the snow” and start referring to it as “the crap”. Also, the ultimate outcome of being out in the snow (wet) becomes much more important than the process.

My general feeling of grumpiness will continue to grow until it’s almost Christmas, at which point it will be replaced with more bubbles and an almost frightening enthusiasm for anything Christmasish. This also lasts for about a week. Afterwards, we’re back to general grumpiness until the snow (now referred to as “the crap”) starts to melt.

And there you have it – the next six months of my life, pretty much mapped out.

Pic by Iguana Jo for www.flickr.com

The strawberry demon

It all started on Thursday, really. At the store. I was hungry, and you shouldn’t shop for groceries when you’re hungry, I’m completely aware of that, but it fitted into my schedule so perfectly. The store is right across the street from the station, where my buss stops. Otherwise, I’d have to go to the marked in Hellhole, which is all the way on the other side of the river. Granted, it’s not far, and it’s not as if I’d have to swim across, or anything, but still… It would have been Out Of My Way. That’s right: with capital letters.

So there I was, drifting up and down between the isles, with my stomach making all sorts of suggestions about what I should put in my little, blue basket. Most of which, I ignored.

All of a sudden, something caught my eye. It wasn’t prominently placed in any way, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that it was bright pink and placed right in between several large bags of white stuff, I probably wouldn’t have noticed it at all.

It was strawberry milk powder.

Pensive, I picked it up. After having looked at it for a while, studied both sides of the packet and weighed it in my hand, I put it in my shopping basket along with the eggs, bread and a carton of milk.

Half and hour later I was home, feeling completely exhausted. It had already started to get dark outside. Wanting to relax, I stuck a DVD into the machine and made myself a tall glass of strawberry milk. It was pink, and although I’m not a huge fan of pink, it looked nice. And it tasted nice. And then I drank more. And more. And by Friday night, the milk was gone… But there was still more powder left. Lots of it. Potential strawberry goodness just waiting to be completed.

On Saturday, it started to snow. “I don’t want to go to the store today,” I though. After all, the only thing that I was out of, was milk. But at the same time, there was a little, nagging voice inside my head. That voice wanted more of the strawberry stuff. Eventually, I gave in. By then, the snowflakes from earlier that morning, had grown and were now more balls then they were flakes.

I put on boots, my coat, a scarf and my new gloves and headed towards the bridge, while my mind was playing with pictures of pink liquid in tall glasses. Every time I walked underneath a tree or a lamppost, they would drop cold, wet lumps of snow on my head, but I just kept right on walking. Why? Because I had a goal, dammit.

Over the weekend I gobbled up enough milk to dry up a full-grown cow.

Today I think I’m over the worst of it. A slight feeling of nausea has begun to tickle the back of my throat when I look at that brightly coloured pink packet in my cupboard. I will beat this demon. Yes, I will.



Strawberry pic by Social Advances for Flickr.com
Snowflake pic by Captpiper for Flickr.com

The evil in its eyes...

Ever seen that Hitchock (or however you spell that) movie "the birds"? It had lots of different types of birds, but I can't remember seeing any swans there. If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it is that the swans are the ones you need to look out for.

I first started to suspect this when I was walking the dog one cold winter night. There's this lovely path along the river that we use sometimes. During the whole walk, I kept hearing little sounds behind me, but everytime I turned around they were gone, and there was nothing there. But after a while, I saw something moving out in the water. Right there, in the middle of the river, with it's eyes fixed directly on me, was a huge, white swan. It looked evil.

After that, it kept happening every time we walked along the river path. The swan would turn up and follow us, all the while it was staring at us, but it never once came out of the water.

Then, it was just before christmas (during that mild period we always have a few days before christmas eve, when everyone worries that we're not going to get any snow this year), we met a man. He was out walking all alone. He smiled and nodded at us. Said something along the lines of "what a pjutty woggie" (to the dog, not me) as he walked by. Then there was a mighty splash and an even mightier scream. I turned around to see the woggie-man run for his life with the swan coming after him, hissing like a snake. Never before have I seen a swan move like that.

I still walk on the river path every now and then. It's pretty. But the swan is always there. And I always bring my dog.

Picture by Chris Sainsbury

Meet Mr. Philosophy!

As I may or may not have mentioned, I enrolled in a class in idéa history this semester, just for the hell of it (which, after three years of studying for a degree in science, is kinda like visiting the Twilight Zone).

Our professor this semester, is a philosopher and a bit of an oddball. A very clever oddball, but an oddball nevertheless. He's... *insert drumroll here*... Mr. Philosophy.

Mr. Philosophy has managed the feat that it undoubtedly is to combine the look of a somewhat posh, upper westside (why are the fancy places always up and westwards?) professor with that of an old, english sheepdog. His head and shoulders always enter the room before the rest of him does, because he bends forwards a bit when he walks, as if he's contemplating charging through a wall like a mad rhino, or something. At least that's what he'd look like if he didn't always have the smily-little-boy-on-christmas-eve-expression in his face.

When he's made his way into an auditorium, however, the posture changes. Now, the pelvis is tilted forwards, while the torso sort of slumps backwards. The smily-christmas-face is constant, though, and, as he gets excited about what he's lecturing, his arms start to move around in circles, and he begins to jump in place, as if he had little springs in his knees. Then he actually looks a bit like a skiing-instructor I saw on TV once upon a time.

And that pretty much sums up what I got out of my class today.

Head-implosion

I'm bored. I'm very, very, terribly, horribly, excruciatingly bored. In fact, I’m so bored, that I feel as if my brain is imploding inside my skull. It’s the kind of boredom that I usually reserve for my late classes, but here it is. On my day off, damn it.
I thought I might entertain myself by looking out of the windows (it seems to work really well for the dog), but it’s so foggy out, you can’t see a thing.

Something scary happened this morning, though… I got up (and okay, since it was my day off, it wasn’t really quite morning anymore), only to discover that there was only one, single warm degree outside. And a Celsius degree, at that.

C.O.L.D

I actually went into the woodshed to find wood. Why? So that I could stack it in the fireplace. Why? So that I could set it on fire. Why? Because it was that cold. Of course, as soon as I got back inside and had made a nice pile out of it, the sun came up. I also discovered that there's a small hole in the door of the woodshed. Apparently the neighbours cats are convinced that it leads into some sort of kitty toilet. Or maybe they reached that decision by default, I dunno. The happy toilet-days of summer are over now, though.

(Pic by Richard Winchell for www.Flickr.com)

Bah, humbug!

I woke up today with a major, throbbing ouch(!!!) in my left arm. I figure that it stems from either sitting by the computer for hours on end, trying to finish the first draft of my termpaper on time, or it's the longest, most drawn-out heartattack in medical history...
There's nothing like a little surge of pain to make you really, truly grumpy in the morning. But being the industrious student *cough* that I am, I puttered off to my classes, after all.

An hour into my final class, the grumpyness returned with full force. I came to the decision that I had to get out of there or projectile vomit straight across the auditorium. The last option probably would have had some sort of negative consequenses, so I opted for running away. Or at the very least, walking very quickly.

And after spending all day being babbled at, I'm going to go take a painkiller, watch TV and feel sorry for myself.

Mature adult? Me? Neeeeh

I've come to the conclusion that, in many ways, I'm still the exact same person that I was when I was about five years old. Granted, there are some external changes, such as the fact that I now drink coffee and wear a bra, but the internal stuff is pretty much the same.

When I went to the bathroom last night (I'd had to glasses of soda the size of my head before going to bed. Yet another thing that hasn't changed much since was little. And now that my mother isn't here to keep it in check, it runs rampant on occasion), and in order to get back to my room, I had to walk through a very dark kitchen, then a very dark hallway and up the winding stairs. Which, of course, were also very dark. The whole way, I pretended that there were ghosts and goblins creeping up behind me or hiding in the shadows in front of me. Then, when I got to bed, I spent a few minutes to make believe that there was a monster underneath it.

One major change has taken place, though: I no longer manage to convince mysef that these things are true. I don't need to pick up my cellphone and call my mum at three a.m, and have her come and rearrange objects in my room, so that the shadows don't look scary anymore.


I can do that all by myself, thank you very much.

When good fish go bad

Last night there was a story in the news about a man who’d been out in his boat on the water (duuh!). All off a sudden, a stingray jumped into his boat, and stung him in the chest with its butt-spike-thing. As we all remember (those of us who’ve been somewhat sober, anyway), Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray recently.

For years and years, we’ve been polluting the waters and eating their offspring. We swoosh and putter through their homes on our boats, whilst playing music that they don’t understand and sticking fishing hooks into their livingrooms. They’ve finally had enough. And who can blame them, really? It had to happen sooner or later. The people who created “Jaws” and “Planet of the apes” had it all wrong. It’s the stingrays you need to look out for.

The time has come to stock up on canned food, alert the military and stay away from the water.

Then again, I might be over-thinking this…

(Pic by Reiscakes for www.Flick.com)

Hooray/Hurray!

Today I had an exam. Hooray. Not because I've had an exam, but because I'm done with the damn thing. Although I guess it was more of a midterm kinda thing. They’re going to use the curriculum from the midterm in the final exam, because, apparently, they don’t trust us to remember the stuff until then (I know I won’t), and feel the need to test us again. Of course, I’ll forget all of it once I’ve finished the final exam, anyway. This way, I’ll just have more stuff to forget. That’s my master plan.

As usual when I have an exam, I tried to go into exam hibernation the week before. That’s when I fill the fridge and cupboards, stick my nose in my books and don’t come out unless I absolutely have to. Reasons for leaving the house during my hibernation period are: Fire and… No, that’s pretty much it.

This time I was constantly interrupted, though, by everything from the dog to the Jehovah’s witnesses. I pretended not to be home, and they stuck flyers about false religions and the terrible things that’ll happen to them. Also, the dog couldn’t fathom why I’d rather sit there and stare at a pile of papers, when I could be doing something meaningful, such as, say, scratch her ass.

In the end, I gambled that they’d probably ask us about either Plato or Aristotle. If they didn’t, it would be the first time in that college’s history. And today I got to write a long paper on Plato’s ideal state. Hurray for that, as well.

I’m not actually sure wether it’s hurray or hooray, so I decided to use both. Clever, eh?

They're back...

This morning, like every other morning (or noon, depending on wether I have to get up early or not), I was standing in my bathroom, doing my morning stuff, thinking my morning thoughts and feeling the morning chill that came crawling in through the old bathroom windows.

That’s when I heard it…

It came from my right, from a cupboard in the corner. A small, kinda sliding sound. Since the bathroom cupboard is where I store all sorts off mess that doesn’t seem to have a natural place anywhere else in the house, I thought something had just fallen over in there, or something. But then it came again, with more scratching this time. And it wasn’t from inside the cupboard at all, but from the wall behind it. That’s when I realised that it had to be them. They’d returned. It was... The Mice.

Every autumn The Mice turn up. They come in through the basement, I think, and so far, there’s been no way of stopping them. As we speak, they’re probably eating through the new insulation as if it was a woolly snack. Why can’t mice just stick to their natural habitat (laboratories or Disney World) where they belong?

I’d get a cat if it wasn’t for the fact that the dog would eat it…

Pic by Za3toooih for www.yotophoto.com

What -is it- with people???

Yesterday, I read a newspaper article about Canadian forces patroling in Afghanistan. They ran into some problems trying to move through a 3 meter tall forrest of cannabis. At some point, they tried to burn it down. But then some of the soldiers got caught in the smoke and experienced what the article referred to as “negative consequences.”
As soon as I read that, I had a scene from “The history of the world” by Mel Brooks flying through my head. If you’ve seen it, you’ll remember the bit where they’re being chased out of Rome by soldiers. If not, I’ll just tell you that they come across a pot forrest and roll up a bunch of plants into a gigantic joint, set it on fire, and the soldiers all inhale the smoke, get high and start to dance. It doesn’t sound funny, thought.

Another article read that some moron had gotten caught whilst trying to smuggle over 100 kg of live snails into the country. The authorities suspect that they were meant for eating. I don’t know what’s weirdest about this: smuggling a gigantic horde of slugs across the border, or someone actually wanting to eat them… There’s not a drop of French in me, that’s for sure. And why smuggle them across in the first place? You could make some extra cash by lining them up just behind the border, and having a slug race. But seriously – watch the picture and imagine yourself chewing on that. Yuck.

Good morning, Hellhole!

Whenever I have morning classes, I have to get up at six am if I'm going to have enough time for all the crap that people do in the mornings (this includes standing in the middle of the bathroom whilst staring straight ahead and trying to remember what you’re doing there, a process that takes about ten minutes) and make the morning bus.

Morning crap includes bathroom activities, such as my zombie moment, getting the dog to go out and do her business, having breakfast and packing my handbag. The first problem is the dog. She’s definitely not a morning… uhm… person. As soon as she sees me getting out of bed, she clenches her eyes shut and doesn’t want to get up at all. I read somewhere that dogs don’t know how to pretend. The hell they don’t. They just don’t have the intelligence to do it well. I, of course, see right through her clever sleeping-disguise, and make her come downstairs with me. At this point, she’s actually quite eager, rushing down the stairs like a white, furry bullet. There’s a large chest in the hallway, and between it and the stairs there’s a rug. The dog lands with all four paws on the rug, causing it to slide across the floor. She manages to turn sideways while sailing on the rug, and slams her side into the chest, which then always makes a small jump towards the right, in order to stop. Then she does the bullet-impression again, heading straight for the couch (her second favourite sleeping spot in the house). This is where I intersect her and force her to go outside. Once she’s actually outside, she’s probably got the slowest bladder of any dog in existence. I swear that she sniffs every single damn grass in order to find the perfect one to pee on. And before she gets that far, she has a zombie moment of her very own, which is almost as long as mine.

Breakfast is also a bit tricky. I usually get around to that at about 7:45. The thing is that my stomach doesn’t actually wake up until around ten. It’s very hard to get an unconscious stomach to digest food, but I can usually force down a sandwich. Being a mature adult, I always watch the cartoons and drink a large glass of milk while I'm eating.

And today I have to do all of that, despite of the fact that it’s my day off. All because there was a problem with the computers at the college on Friday, so I couldn't get my term paper printed. Again.

*Insert sigh here*

Being really, really, super cool

When we were kids, we watched a lot of TV, and learned all about smoking grass. Or so we thought. Whenever we felt the need to be really, really super cool, we'd get on our little bikes (I remember mine was pink) and go down to a field by the river, where a local farmer grew his crop. Large trees surrounded it, making it a perfect hiding place.

A tiny, borderline chubby kid with blonde, spiky hair - let's just call him Bo - was responsible for bringing matches. The ground was always more or less muddy, so we'd all lay our bikes down in a circle and sit on the frames. Then we'd cut straws into longish bits, light them and smoke it. I guess we didn't quite grasp the concept of smoking grass as well as we thought, huh? We all felt terribly grown-up.

Despite this, we turned out alright. Well, all of us, except Bo. He was younger than us, and we lost touch. I heard that he did grasp the concept eventually, moved on to bigger things and died a few years back. Weird how things turn out.

I have a friend in Canada, by the way, who insists that she makes the best potbrownies in the whole, wide world. And that they go well with milk. Very childlike and very teen-rebellion all at the same time. I’ve never actually tried a potbrownie (or a pot-anything, for that matter) so I won’t argue with her.

shiiiny! oh, so shiiiny!

I like lipgloss. I have a lot of the stuff. But the latest in lipgloss technology isn't just to make you look shiny, but to also make your lips tingle and swell. Just last night, I saw an advert for it in a magazine. "Look great for your date!!!!!" it said, with lots and lots of exclamation marks.

It does kinda make me wonder, though… Say that you put this tingly stuff on, and go on a date. And say that the date turns out really, really well. In fact, let’s say that it turns out so well, that it ends with a big, sloppy good night kiss. Will his lips tingle and swell? Won’t he find this a bit odd? “Could it be an allergic reaction to the dinner? Should I go to the emergency room?” he might ask himself. Or maybe he’ll think that he caught some scary disease from you. I don’t think there are many ways to explain to a guy that you’re wearing special lipgloss to make your lips larger, without sounding like an insecure knob.

Now, let’s say that you’ve already thought of all this, but decide to use the magic gloss on your date anyway. You want big, puffy lips, after all, just like Angelina Jolie. You start your date, all tingly and swollen, but at some point towards the end, you go into the bathroom, wipe it off, and put on regular gloss instead. If you come out of the bathroom with thinner lips than when you went in, won’t he ask himself what the hell you were doing in there? Or maybe it takes a little while before the swelling goes down. I wonder if a man would find it a bit conspicuous if his date’s lips inflated and deflated right in front of his very eyes. He just might.

All in all, there are probably better ways of getting attention.

Holes

You come into the world equipped with a certain amount of holes, all for their own purposes. So far in my life, I’ve been quite content with those, and haven’t felt any particular need to add new ones. However, I’ve been getting earrings for Christmas every single year ever since I was about ten years old. And although the holes that nature supplies you with are all fine and dandy, you can’t really hang jewellery in them.

One fine morning (or perhaps it was afternoon. And it might have been raining) I decided to add more holes. In my ears, to be specific.

I went to the salon, and as of 13:00 today, I have a place to hang my earrings. Oddly enough, it didn’t hurt. It was just a bit like being pinched, really, and it left behind a slight tingly feeling. I’d have expected it to be painful when someone took a sharp piece of metal and shot it through you body. Go figure.

It did feel a bit odd when I walked home, though. Obviously the weight balance shifts a bit when you attach relatively large, fake diamond studs in your ears, and it felt like they were dangling in the wind, although I realise that they weren’t. Not really. I checked in front of the mirror when I got home, just to make sure.

Pain in installments

It doesn’t feel as if it’s been very long since the last time I went to the dentist, but it’s almost time for me to get another of those reminders in the mail. When I was younger, I went to a public dentist. I remember he had on those mouth protector things (can’t remember what they’re called) all the time. He never ever took them off, so I only ever saw the top half of his face. Beady, little eyes and bristle-like beard sticking out from behind the mask. Maybe he was afraid that his patients would give him some horrible disease, or something. He would also whistle constantly, and never speak unless he absolutely had to. If he was drilling, the whistling became very intense.

Then last year, I started going to a private dentist office, and I discovered that there are two fundamental differences between private and public when it comes to dentistry.

1. A public dentist will cause you more pain and take less of your money. You will have to sit in a waiting room and wait for up to an hour, never less than thirty minutes.
2. A private dentist will cause you less pain and take more of your money. You rarely have to wait. This is probably because of the fact that it’s more expensive and they’re eager to get their hands on the content of your wallet.

I read somewhere that many Hollywood superstars have their own teeth yanked out and replaced with falsies that are white and shiny. I guess this might save you many trips to the dentist, but you’re kinda getting all the pain of all the dental treatments that you’d receive in an average life-span, all rolled up into one session.

Personally, I think I prefer pain in instalments.

Cooking sweaters and running from the dog-plant

The other night I dreamt that I was trying to dry my clothes in the oven. For some reason, I owned a whole helluva lot of angora sweaters (in pastel colours, no less), which I balled up and stuffed in there. And for some other reason, I was quite upset when they started catching fire. For me, owning pastel, angora sweaters would probably qualify as some sort of nightmare, and watching them burn wouldn’t bother me at all. But I guess you do strange things in your dreams.

Then tonight, I dreamt that my doggie turned into some sort of dog-plant, dead set on eating me. At least I think it was going to eat me. It didn’t actually say so, but I got that feeling. Call it a hunch. The dog-plant couldn’t see, although it was still as much dog as it was plant, so it stretched out looong, thin vines to search for me. All of this took place in the kitchen (the same place as the angora sweater melt-down) and ended up with me crawling out of the window. I’m not really sure how you could trap and eat anything big (I’m of course not big, by the way) using a long, thin vine. Even if you are a mutated plant-dog. It just seems like something that probably wouldn’t work. But then again, what do I know?

In either case, I probably shouldn’t have watched a movie like “The Fly” right before I went to bed. Tonight I might watch “Children of the corn” and see if that has a better result.

Typewriters and serialkillers

What is so damn special about typewriters? I don't get it. Recently, I saw a movie about a writer, who wrote all of her stuff on an old typewriter.
I have an old typewriter myself, actually. I used my pocketmoney to buy it from an antique shop when I was ten. It’s a great typewriter, as far as typewriters go, but actually writing on it is a bit like trying to get a three-year-old to eat its vegetables: it’s a slow process and sometimes you get your fingers bitten.

Those who love the idea of writing books on a typewriter, probably aren’t writers. They might want to be, I suppose. They might think that creating one masterpiece after another on a typewriter, is a terribly romantic idea. And every once in a while, someone (who’s obviously been staring at theirs for way to long) says that it helps them to “get in touch with the words”. I still think that after the second, third, fourth or maybe fifth draft, they’re going to wish they had a laptop. I mean, you can only sniff a certain amount of whiteout before you start going a bit loopy.

In the movie, the writer moves to a tiny, little island community with only 100-and-something citizens. Here, she moves into a tiny, little cottage with her typewriter (obviously) in order to work on her next book. She meets a handsome man (obviously) and falls in luve. Then he turns out to not only be a deranged serial killer, but a ghost as well. The thing that struck me as being the most odd, wasn’t the dead-bit, but the serial-killer bit. Son of Sam killed only killed a handful of people before folks started freaking out. And that was New York. I could go on a killing-spree in Hellhole, and I’m pretty sure I’d get arrested quickly. But this guy takes out several percent of the population, and nobody notices.

I guess everyone was just to busy messing around with their typewriters.

Chinese food, unconsciousness and a new discovery

There’s a Chinese restaurant in town where I like to eat. It got busted on health regulations a few years back, but then they changed owners and now you can eat there without having to worry about kidney failure.

Anyway, I was having lunch there with a friend on Monday. I’d been in classes all day, since early in the morning (the kind of early where there should be a law against getting out of bed, unless you have a cow to milk, or something), and I’d hardly had any sleep all night, so it was fair to say that I was barely conscious. After I decided on what to eat (which took forever, due to the previously mentioned lack of consciousness), the waiter asked what I wanted to drink.

“I’ll have… Uhm… Hmm,” I said. Usually I order Cola, but I had an idea in my head that I wanted to drink something else this time. However, there simply wasn’t enough juice in my brain (or whatever it is that brains run on) to both produce an alternative drink and transporting the name of it out from between my lips. Once again, I ended up with Cola. I’ll be original next time, when I have the energy for it.

Another thing I noticed, that I hadn’t really paid any attention to before, is the fact that the bathroom sink in that place is placed really, really low. I’m a tiny, little dwarf by Scandinavian standards, and I almost had to bend over double to wash my hands. Even a really small Chinese person would find it a bit disproportionate. But, as I said, I never noticed this before. And as I’ve been in there a few times, it is possible that I was hallucination due to exhaustion. I’ll have to check again next time.

risking my life in the photobooth

As I might have mentioned, I take the bus into town every morning in order to get to my math lecture. The drive is about ten minutes or so. There aren’t that many morning buses, so I have to leave the house at seven, even though my class doesn’t start until nine. I also think that there’s a rule around here that says the busses have to be at least ten minutes late. This rule applies with one exception: if you’re not on time, it’ll turn up five minutes early and leave before it’s supposed to, so that you miss it. When that happens, you stand there forever, confused, because unless you actually see the damn thing, there’s no telling whether it’s gone already or if it’s just late again.

It’s not as light out in the morning as it used to be, only a few weeks ago (although I’m still denying the existence of fall until I see snow), so the bus had the inside lights on. None of which worked properly. They all blinked in unison every five seconds. I counted. It was a bit like riding a photobooth.

Another thing about the morning bus, is that it always drives in the middle of the road. This has nothing to do with who is actually driving, because all the drivers do the very same thing. I guess that’s just another one of those weird rules.. It will (and does) stop absolutely anywhere. There aren’t all that many actual busstops, so you just pull it over where it’s most convenient to you. Even if that happens to be in the middle of an intersection, where you can’t see a damn thing in either direction. Not that there’s any traffic to speak of. This is Hellhole, after all. Of course, the moment someone decides to take a morning drive, we might all be screwed.

Sometimes, riding the bus into town is the most exciting point of my day.

Childhood, briefcases and the big bucks

When I was a kid, I decided that I wanted to be a lawyer. Basically, the reason for this was that I’d been watching LA Law, and I wanted to wear a powersuit and carry a briefcase. That was pretty much it. Still, the idea stuck in my head until I had to start thinking about which college I wanted to apply to. It wasn’t until then that I started asking myself why I wanted to study law. Eventually I came to the conclusion that the outfit and the briefcase weren’t all that important to me, after all. And so, law was out.

Another thing that I was even more obsessed with as a child, was the thought of having a big income. And by big, I mean huge. And by huge, I mean gigantic. And by… Well, you get the picture. My parents used to say that I could probably chew my way straight through the walls of the National Bank. Sometimes I dreamt that I actually did.

I figured that in order to be like the people on LA Law and make really big money, you’d have to be an overachiever. The only problem was that I had very mediocre work ethics. I still do. I’m lazy at heart. But I’m okay with that. It’s not necessarily a good thing to overachieve. Look at Napoleon, for instance. He did really well at first, but in the end – not so happy.

So the fact that I’m sitting here, writing this, in stead of solving various math problems, like I ought to be doing, doesn’t really bother me all that much.

Red and stinky vs. the movies

How come people who exercise in movies always look so damn perfect? Take running, for instance. People who run in a film never really sweat, except for a small patch on their chest. Their hair is always perfect, their faces never get shiny and they’re never so out of breath that they can’t carry a conversation.

I, on the other hand, go running and I come home more or less drenched, my hair is a complete mess and I’m so shiny you’d think I’d been recently polished. Not only that, I’m as bright red as a rose in bloom, although sadly lacking the rose-like smell.

Now, I realise that making a movie where the characters just huff and puff and look as if they’re about to die, might be a waste of time. And you do want to show off the fact that this person is physically healthy, seeing how we out here in the real world are more or less obsessed with physical health. An obsession that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the condition of our own bodies.


I would love to learn how to run like they do in the movies though. I would probably get a lot more exercise if I could do that.

Piano

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