Finally! A new toy!

I did promise a Christmas gift list, but seeing as I got "only" very sensible and practical stuff, I didn't want to bore you with it. If you are, however, immensely curious (and maybe a bit weird); here goes:

Thermal underwear and a bunch of thermal socks
Cooking pots
Gift card for curtains for my bedroom
iPod-charger for my car
Outdoor clothing (fleece underwear, soft shell jacket and pants etc)
Money

See? All very sensible, grown up and practical stuff. And of course I am very grateful for it, it is stuff I need and don't want to spend money on, but I did feel that I lacked a good toy for the Christmas holiday. I thought about what I wanted to buy with some of the money I got, thought long and hard, considering possibilities like a new pc, new pc components or even an XBox 360. But I finally landed on what I've wanted for a long while, something that would make me, if not more active, at least less likely to become stationary. I bought a camera! I've always been annoyed by the limitations of a point-and-shoot, you have no control over focus, depth and such, and therefore wanted an DSLR. I am, however, not interested enough to buy the more expensive ones, and went for an "entry-level", the Canon EOS 1000D. I still feel I have more than enough configurative possibilities, though, and I am still learning.



Of course I am such a child that I have to have some extras, and immediately went online to search for a battery grip, and found a relatively reasonable one in the UK, which I've already ordered... The money I got for Christmas is running out fast, and I still need a camera bag of some sort, can't keep carrying around, I freely admit that I am such a numpty I won't trust myself with carrying it around very long without some sort of protection. Even considered buying camera "armor" for it, to give it the best possible chance of a long life.



Tomorrow is new years eve, a night I've always hated. People always talk about welcoming a new year - and the new possibilities it represents. I always end up thinking about all the stuff I still haven't gotten around to do, studying, travelling, moving away, loosing weight, whatever it might be. All in all I tend to get rather emo and weepy, and probably not very pleasant to be around. So either I need to get drunk and have some fun, or crawl into a chair with a blanket and my laptop, and just relax like I do on every other night. Might end up shedding a few tears either way. But never mind me - Happy New Years!

It's raining pianos!

My title underlines what my life has been about these past few weeks: it's generally been a few weeks of weird. They've been so weird it's actually the reason for me not writing much: I've haven't had the time, or I've been to tired.

It all kicked off with my lovely and - up until now - very healthy but prematurely born niece Jakobine, getting sick. And not just slightly, she got a virus called RS, stopped breathing several times and got sent to a major hospital in Oslo and put in a respirator. My brother and his wife followed her, of course, and my dad and I had to help each other out with watching my nephew. This in turn resulted in me having to sleep over at my brothers house for a while, getting very little sleep both because I was worried, and because my nephew was also sick and I was just waiting for him to cough up a lung.

The day after this happened I went to a christmas party at work, where I was told that one of our cows had died. If you'd asked me three months ago I would've told you that I am not a fan of cows - all right, thank you for burgers, cheese and milkshake, but they're not my favorite animals, but the ones we have at work, however, are actually sort of cute - all black and fluffy, and shy creatures. The cow who died had tried to give birth, but something went wrong and both she and her calf died, and to my surprise this made me feel really bad - I imagined how painful her death must've been. "You do realize you're sympathizing with a cow?" a mate asked me. "Yes, I do!" I was even more horrified when I realized that we would have to move said cow away from the field, and the only way to move a huge cow (a cow and a half, actually), is by tieing her to a tractor and pull her out of there. Furthermore - the people who come to collect dead animals couldn't make it until after christmas, resulting in the poor having to lie under a plastic wrapper behind the barn for weeks. Just... uch. This just goes to show that I could never have been a farmer tending to animals - I would've given them all names and cried every time something went wrong. I'll just settle for a pack of dogs, thanks.

Speaking of dogs - mine is behaving rather wierdly. I'm afraid she's sick - she's suddenly refusing to eat the food she was happily munching a few weeks ago. Maybe she just suddenly decided she didn't like if after all. Which figures, seeing as I just bought a 7,5kg bag of the stuff.

Another proof of this being weird times must be what I've been listening to the past weeks. Usually I listen to stuff like Tool, Depeche Mode, Arcade Fire - Yes, it's varied, but I do feel I keep to certain standards. Lately, however, I've been stuck on songs by Pink and Dido, of all people. Oh, and this song, which makes me really happy these days.


My title for this post comes from the last Top Gear episode, of which a (grand?) piano gets dropped on a Morris, supposedly by accident. Go download the 7th episode of the 12th season, even just to watch the news segment. I laughed out loud for the entire thing.

Today I suddenly realised that there's only 6 days left until christmas, which made me sort of panic, even though I am not quite sure why. I've finished all my gift shopping, I've finished all of my dad's gift shopping, I've got my hair fixed, shopped most of my food, I should be all set. I guess it's just the uncertainty of it all - I still don't know wether my brother, his wife and my tiny niece will be home by Christmas Eve, although I hope so, even only for their own sake , but the fact remains that they will be in the hospital for days still, and all the preparations will have to be done on the fly and under what I can only guess will be sort of stressful conditions. Good thing tomorrow is the last day - after that I have over two weeks of holiday, which I am going to spend doing as little as possible!