The joys of having a clean car...

I have a car, and one I am very fond of. It's my first and only car, and been with me since before I even got my license. I can still remember the day I drove it home (or rather, my brother drove, the same brother I can thank for having a car altogether, he was the one who found it for me), and the day I sat down in it with my license in one hand and the keys in the other, overjoyed and terrified at the same time (had someone actually signed off on me being allowed to drive all alone?). Thanks to the car I've been more mobile than most of my friends, taking me to school or back home again, to my friends, to festivals, to cabins and other holiday sites, to work, or just for a drive if I felt like it, and consequently getting me out of a lot of boring bus and train rides over the years. A couple of gay friends of mine even gave her a name about four years ago, a silly Norwegian one that I rarely use, but I still think of it as a "her". If by this point you're wondering what sort of car I have, it's a 91' BMW 316i. Nothing fancy to brag about, I know: it's heavy, it's german, it's rear wheel driven and I'm quite aware of BMW's tendency to set off the cock-o-meter, but I don't care, because she's mine, she's my first and I love her.

One would think that with this amount of affection for a car, it'd be spic and span all the time, that I'd be lying on my back polishing dust off her wheel arches every Sunday. But I don't. And I don't have any good excuses for it, just bad ones; lack of time, lack of motivation, lack of suitable place to wash it, lack of place to keep it mid-winter so it doesn't all freeze up, the list goes on and on. MAny of these excuses doesn't even hold water, seeing as my dad and brother owns a garage where I can wash it for free, it's stocked with all sorts of washing supplies and I can keep it there to dry during winter. What? I said they were bad excuses!

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, I got around to it, after a rather long period of feeling guilty and being hassled by my brother and father to do it. "Isn't it nicer with a car that's clean and tidy?" My dad always says with a smirk when I'm done polishing the windows. Well, that depends. When I first got the car, I used to love it, the feeling of having a car that was gleaming on the outside, tidy and smelling of window polish on the inside. But as time went by, the feeling sort of lessened and eventually disappeared, and now I remember why... Rust. Because, as the degreasing and soap washed away weeks and months of asphalt dust, mud, salt, dead bugs and whatever else that can accumulate on a car, the bubbles in the paint that are the tell tale sign of advancing corrosion became more and more evident. The doors, the wheel arches, the bonnet, the grille... I am well aware that corrosion is inevitable in a car that's 18 years old, especially one that's rolling on Norwegian roads that are mostly covered in salt the 11 months we have winter over here, but I still hate seeing it. Because I know I can't stop it, I can't afford to fix it, and that it will, in the end, result in some vital part or other rusting through, and before I know it I'll be looking down on bare asphalt through a hole in the floor. And when that day comes, I have to let her go.

So that's why I don't clean my car often. Because the dust and dirt conceals the corrosion too well. Basic denial 101.

Technology these days ...

Posting from my "mobile device". Have to try everything. I'm such a
kid...

Sent from my iPod

Curse my inner geek!

My unconditional love for my iPod have never been a secret. I've spent more time with that thing than anything else in the world, apart from maybe my dog. It's been with me through a dozen books, thousands of songs, a bunch of podcast, millions of sudoku charts and quite a few movies and Top Gear episodes. It's kept me company through insomnia, boredom, depressions, road trips, parties, dog walks and even survived a few festivals! I've even stated that if my iPod ever went up in flames I wouldn't know what to do with myself - I'd probably have trouble falling to sleep at night.

Lately, thought, I've had to come to terms with it - my classic 30GB iPod have been showing signs of fatigue and old age. It's getting slower, the hard drive whirrs and buzzes louder and louder, and it freezes up or crashes more and more frequently. For the four years I've had it, not one day has gone by without me using it. The "old" and classic iPods has actual hard drives in them, similar to the one you have in your computer, and I've read several places that the life expectancy for a hard drive iPod is about a year, so four years of vigorous use is actually quite good. But, fearing the day my beloved gadget would draw it's last power charge and go dead forever, I realised I had to do something, and quick.

For once, I had some luck, and surprisingly found myself with a bit of cash left over. So, I paid my rent, the bills, bought a plane ticket to my sisters for the summer, put a bit aside with holidays in mind, and actually found that I wasn't broke! Knowing that I'm about to enter 3 years of student life and, consequently, 3 years of a tight economy, I thought it best to run to the shops and get my hands on a new gadget that would see me through nurse school. And voila - I am the proud owner of a new 8GB touch!

It's amazing what I can do with this thing. I can check my mail, follow twitter, continue to solve sudoku, watch movies, read books (or listen to them while doing something else), I can surf the web, listen to podcasts, check the weather forecast or check a map if I'm lost. Admittedly, I need a wireless internet connection to do many of these things, but those are everywhere these days, and more are being set up every day. And even if I find myself without web access I can still read or listen to books, watch movies and listen to music I have stored on the thing.

I think this new gadget and me are going to get along just fine.

Soap and glory!

It might be a result of me working at a farm, spending my day among mud, cows, pigs, heavy machinery, potatoes, poo and other things dirty, but I'm a big fan of anything that smells nice, and am a real girly girl in the fact that I have a pile of scrubs, soaps, shampoo's and whatnot. In my defense, these days I actually really need it, I feel like I have to scrub down every day I come home from work, just to avoid the smell of pig getting too strong of a hold on me. Yesterday I went to the brand new Boots that's opened in the mall I live in, and found something called Soap and Glory. Best stuff ever! It's a series of lotions, scrubs etc, and it smells good, isn't expensive and they're good products. And I love the retro 50s design !

Goosefraba...

Urban Dictionary says:

1.	goosefraba	68 up, 10 down
	1. A soothing sound Eskimo mothers would whisper in order to sooth their young. 2. A word used in the film "Anger Management" by Buddy Rydell in order to keep his patients from becoming irate. Don't loose your cool, remember goosefraba.

I'm not an angry person, but I do have some triggers, and one of them is plain stupidity. Today this questioned was posed at the lunch table at work: "Can you make omelette out of eggs?" If this was a one time occurence I would've let it pass, one can inadvertently blurt out questions that are beyond retarded, but this one wasn't. The same person did ask minutes before what day Tuesday was in Norwegian. Sadly I can't think of any more examples at the moment, but it's just an endless line of these. Stupidity can't be helped, I know, I should feel sympathy or something, but I just can't. Mainly because I don't like this person, which a lazy, spoiled fuck. *Sigh* Goosefraba...

Batting down the hatches!

These past two days I've worked more or less voluntarily at the farm, originally we're on easter break but I can't bear to watch the bloke owning it, who has a pacemaker for crying out loud, work himself to death trying to do everything he has to do before he himself is going on holiday with his family. Currently we have 110 pigs, and the pen they have is, along with the rest of the farm, consisting of about 30 cm of mud and goo. Which makes farm life bloody tough, and one hell of a dirty job. I've daily hauled about 30 buckets of various animal food around, dragged a heavy ass water hose all over the farm, filled up crates with pellets, made a cow pen, herded bull calfs, driven the tractor (which really doesn't sound like hard work, but it kinda is). Basically I've worked harder these past days then I've ever had on a normal weekday, and am bloody knackered. Thank heavens (pun intended) for easter!

My entire family is going to a ski resort in Sweden, and I am not going with them. At first it wasn't a conscious choice - I thought I'd be broke all easter and wouldn't afford to come with them. That worked out, thankfully, but after giving it some thought I've decided I'm not coming with them anyway. Seven adults, two hyperactive three year old toddlers and a 6 month old with heavy asthma tends to result in one hell of a chaos - it'll be much more of a holiday staying home alone. So today I went on a big shopping spree, I bought food, soda, beer, snacks and the entire series of Fawlty Towers and Black Adder. In other words both me and the dog are well prepared with both nutrition and entertainment. I'm batting down the hatches! Let easter come!

It's that time again...!

What time? Time for a lyric, I say!

Depeche Mode - Peace (from Sounds of the Universe)

Peace will come to me

I’m leaving bitterness behind
This time I’m cleaning up my mind
There is no space for the regrets
I will remember to forget

Just look at me
I am walking of incoming
Look at the frequencies of which I vibrate
I’m going to light up the world

Peace will come to me

I’m leaving anger in the past
With all the shadows that it caused
There is radar in my heart
I should have trusted from the start

Just look at me
I am a living act of holiness
Giving all the positive virtues that I possess
I’m going to light up the world

Peace will come to me
Just wait and see
It's inevitability

I've hit a wall...

Quite literally. I've sort of become the new chief tractor operator on the farm - the two guys who used to handle that sort of thing have left, leaving me as the only one who knows for example how to pick up and move crates. I know how on most days, anyway. Today wasn't one of them. I have lots of things to blame - my poor depth perception, my wonky corneas, the sleeping pill I took last night which turns me into a semi zombie, the lack of caffeine, me being slightly over-confident, the list is long. But the fact remains that I almost managed to fuse a wall and a wooden crate together permanently, today. The crate was in bad shape even before it met me, and the wall wasn't spiffy either, but both looked considerably worse for wear after I'd miscalculated a wee bit and hit the wall with the wooden crate, knocking off the entire side of the crate, and a few wooden boards off the wall. Thank god for hammer and nails. And nice coworkers who refrains from mocking me, and helps me repair the wreckage in stead. Oh well, that's me. Ambitious - but rubbish.

Oh, and yay for easter holiday!