Sunday, August 31, 2008

Tee-hee!!

I received an offer of marriage today. :-D

So take that, all of you out there who think that nothing constructive can ever come of aimless websurfing!!

Ha!

Yes, it was a joke. But it did really happen. :-)

The Stupidest Man Alive

I think I may have found him.

Read this.

:-o

and/or

:-D

Saturday, August 30, 2008

I really wonder sometimes ...

... who watches my videos at youtube. Seriously. Someone is watching them. I so wonder how they come across them. I've uploaded about 40 videos now, almost all of them of my turtles ... and all of them have been watched by someone, or a few someones, even though I've done nothing to promote most of them. Some of the videos I've put in blogposts, so that makes sense - when someone watches them here on the blog, that gets registered as watched on youtube. I assume. But most of them are only on my youtube channel. Which I have linked to on the right hand sidebar, but still. I can't really imagine a lot of people following that link. I don't think I have more than a dozen readers here, tops. :-)

Yesterday I uploaded four more vidoes - Raphael climbing and running, and Herman and Henrik begging for food - and within a few hours all of them had been watched several times. By whom, I wonder? :-) I also got my first subscriber yesterday, and my first ever comment on one of the videos. The subscriber is someone in Denmark (she is one of the people who's watched my new videos, I assume), and the comment came from someone in the US. The weirdness of the intarwebs! How did these people even find my videos. I have to wonder.

If anyone reads this and wants to do me a favor: would you go to youtube and do a search for, let's say 'reeves turtle'? I'm not sure if I do it myself the results won't be skewed somehow. Then post a comment to let me know if any of my videos come up with that search. Or 'RES' or 'red eared slider turtle'.

Not that it matters, but I am curious. :-)

Friday, August 29, 2008

Happy Anniversary to the King & Queen!

Today is the 40th wedding anniversary of HM King Harald and HM Queen Sonja. I think that's a ruby wedding. Not too shabby. :-) I'm sure they've had their ups and downs like any couple (although I'm not sure I believe even half the rumors floating around out there) but all in all they've probably been happy with each other. They seem to be a great fit as a couple. I loved what the king said in the interview yesterday - that the queen has made him a different person, that he used to be introverted and shy (which is true; I know a guy who went to school with him) but with her help he's gotten past that. I have no trouble believing this, because although a lot can be said about our queen, introverted & shy I don't think anyone would claim that she is. :-)

The royal couple are in Croatia today, celebrating the occasion with a private cruise with the Crown Prince and his family. I hope they'll have a lovely day together. :-)

Her wedding gown was fantastic, btw. :-)

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Dagbladet sinks to a new low

Un-be-fucking-lievable.

Check out this blogpost.

It's bad enough that they refer to a pair of conjoined twins as a 'two-headed boy' - how can someone be capable of getting through journalism school and still be that ignorant? - but this takes the cake. I thought I was beyond being surprised by how low this 'newspaper' is happy to go. But check out how they tagged the photos in the article on the twins.

Seriously, that almost makes me physically ill.

I'll remember this.

Thanks to the perceptive blog owner who pointed it out.

'Men Who Hate Women' ...

... is what it should be called, but instead they're going with the dumbass title the UK publisher gave the book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Completely insipid. And they'll regret it later, because there is actually a good reason why the first book has the title that it has. Oh well, too late now. Anyway:

I am of course talking about Niels Arden Oplev's movie version of Stieg Larsson's brilliant thriller Män som hatar kvinnor. I am SO psyched about that movie. The casting of the male lead is perfect and the book has the potential to become a truly great movie. However ... now I'm a little worried.

The first teaser trailer for the movie was released a couple of days ago. And it completely and totally SUCKS ASS. It's completely stupid and vapid and says NOTHING about the movie, about the story or the characters or the plot or anything. Seriously a very very extremely bad trailer and obviously not a good sign. See for yourselves:



YAWN. Is it me? Seriously, is it me? I DO NOT SEE how someone who knows nothing about the book is going to be able to make any sense whatsoever of this trailer.

Ever heard the phrase, 'too clever for their own good' ... ?

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Hadrian the turtle, 200?-2007

I used to have four turtles. Well, actually, I used to have just one. Then I had none, then one again, then two, then one again, then two, then four, and now three. Longish story. But the point is, up until a year ago today I had four. :-(

From April to June 2006 I had Herman and Raphael. Then in June I got into contact - pretty randomly - with a woman in Kragerø (a city a couple hours further south) who had two turtles she was desperate to get rid of. Well, not get rid of as such ... she wanted someone to take them who knew how to care for turtles. She herself had no clue. She'd bought their tank from some stranger online, at a suspiciously good price ... she was going to use it for some of her fish. At almost the last minute the seller informed her that there were a couple of turtles living in the tank. I know, WTF, right? But he told her all kinds of lies about how easy they were to care for, would take no time at all, calm & placid animals that needed hardly any attention, etc. Total BS of course. There was no pump in the tank, so the water got fouled up very quickly and she was doing a full water change daily (!!) to keep it from stinking up her living room. The tank was way too small so the turtles were totally stressed and hyper. She didn't know what to feed them and the seller gave her lousy instructions on that. And obviously, any fish put in with those two critters wouldn't last long. So she was eager to find a new and more knowledgeable owner for them ... and this ended up being me.

There was one small turtle and one relatively big one. The latter was Henrik, of course. The former was my fourth little guy. They had no names when I got them, that anyone was aware of ... but of course they had to have names. ;-) Since they were the same species as Herman, I wanted them to have names that would match his. Ie, starting with H, and ideally two syllables. Henrik's name I came up with quickly ... not least because I could tell that he was a male. The length and thickness of the tail gave it away. The little one, however, was a little harder to figure out ... because it had no tail. It had only a stump left. I will never know for sure of course but I've never doubted that this was Henrik's doing. He was older and bigger and he's species aggressive, and as I've discovered, he does tend to go for the tail. >:-)

Since I didn't know what sex the little one was, it stayed nameless for a while. Finally I decided on Hadrian, since it was a name I liked and since I would be able to just drop the n to turn it into a female name if that should be required. But not too long after that I was able to ascertain that Hadrian was in fact male too. :-) Because he was so much smaller I got him his own little tank to live in. He was very frightened of me at first, and wouldn't even come to me to be fed. The first few weeks were rather stressful since I clearly often scared the living daylights out of him - he was living in the big tank in the living room with Herman and Henrik, since Raphael was in his pond on the balcony, and could hardly avoid seeing me for hours every day. It was so sad - he clearly wanted to bask, but didn't dare to do so while I was present. I was so scary that he felt too vulnerable on land around me. :-( Being caught and taken out of the tank every other day for feeding was quite an ordeal. Although when the food arrived he seemed to mostly get over it. ;-)

Eventually though he did learn to trust me. Getting his own tank was an important step; I set it up in the guest room so that he didn't see me that often and could bask in peace. Hand feeding did the rest of the job. He came to trust me and be very responsive and tame. And he was so cute ... !! :-) He had a rather strange-looking face as his beak was a little deformed ... I don't know if this was congenital or if Henrik was responsible for that too. He could eat with no problems though. And the rest of his face and head wasn't damaged. He used to go crazy in his tank when he saw me come in the room ... he used to do lots of adorable things that I used to think I ought to get on video. But I never did, and then it was too late. :-(

I only had him for a little over 14 months ... in August last year he got sick, unexpectedly and quite suddenly, and died. :-( One year ago today. I don't know what was wrong with him. I should have made more of an effort to find out. :-( I was so sad when he died ... I'm not going to go over that again now but you can read about it here, a post on the Scandinavian BookCrossing forum that I wrote a year ago today. (It's in Norwegian, sorry to any & all non-Scandinavian readers.) I'd thought I would have him with me for many years to come. He should have had a long life ahead of him. But it didn't turn out that way. :-( I'm glad I got to know him and care for him for a year, though, at least.

Aw, he was soo cute. :-) Just look at him:

This was the first picture I ever took of him. Henrik had markings equally bright, but they faded quite soon after I got them, I don't know why. (Maybe something to do with their diet.)

His little stump of a tail.

Trying to hide himself away from me in a corner of the big tank. Obviously not quite realizing that glass is transparent. :-D

Basking on the Turtle Dock in his very own tank.

Having buried himself in the soil in a little indoor garden I made for him. He enjoyed digging. :-) Aww, look at his little face!!

Out walking in the great outdoors. Because he was so small I used to tie this organdy ribbon around him, to help me keep track of where he was in the grass. :-)

In my hands. Curious about what was going on. :-)

(Photo credit: 1, 3-6: me; 2, 7-8: trilltrall)

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Just My Luck

This is just so incredibly typically my luck.

This afternoon I got a little delayed leaving work. I didn't run to catch the subway, because I knew I wouldn't make it. Then it turned out to be just a little bit late, so that I would have made it if I had run. But I didn't run, so I didn't make it.

It's just SO typical. Completely classic. Woe!

This is a lesson to us all on the importance of never going anywhere without a book.

Mountain vacation 2008. August 15th: Olav Dille

On the Friday we had planned to take a day trip ... or actually we were going to do it on Thursday, but then my second cousin Elin wanted to come too and because of her schedule it would have to be the next day. No problem, since we totally had no schedule. :-) Our destination for the day was Røros, a city a little further north (a little closer to Trondheim) which is famous for its charming architecture and its now defunct copper mine. The copper ore was discovered in 1644, the mine and works was opened in 1646, and via a long series of ups and downs did not close until 1977. When it was at its height, it was raking in enormous amounts of money. Not sure how much of it stayed in the country for the first 170 years or so, but there you go.

Anyway. More on that later. As Elin had a meeting to attend before we could leave, my mother and I stopped by to visit with my grandmother. I discovered something completely hilarious that my grandmother had done ... but more on that later. ;-) The drive to Røros was uneventful although through some beautiful scenery. We got there at about 2pm ... a little too late to get to see as much as we wanted to, but what can you do. Elin's mother Mille had told my mother that there was an art gallery we absolutely had to visit which none of us had seen (I hadn't been to Røros at all for years and years) and coincidentally we ended up parking the car literally outside the front door of the place. So of course we made that our first stop.

The artist who owns and runs the gallery is called Olav Dille, and he paints a lot of semi-naturalistic scenes, often from the town and its characteristic architecture. The gallery was quite unusual as it was basically in his home. Some rooms were closed off to visitors, of course, but he was using his living room as a showroom for his paintings ... he also had a lot of antique furniture which was quite interesting. His studio was upstairs along with another room which seemed to be a potential guest room used as a second studio, display room and storage room. :-)

The painting he was currently working on. Check out that pile of paint tubes on the table. How does he find the color he wants??

Some paintings on display in the second studio whatever room.

His worktable in the second studio. My mother (left) and Elin perusing some more of the paintings on display. (The photo's too dark, I know, sorry. I need a better camera.)

Something else he was working on ... this was on a table behind the easel, up against the wall. I am so nosy, shame on me. :-( I guess this is a draft for a new painting, some idea he's working on. It was quite fascinating to see all this. :-)

I'm sexist?? No, YOU're sexist!!

I just read the most annoying article in VG (piece of shit 'newspaper' that unfortunately is the biggest selling in the country) during my lunch break an hour ago. Let's see if I can find it in their online edition (I almost never read that because it has the most annoying layout ever and they only write about bs anyway) ... Yeah, here it is. Sheesh.

Brief recap of the article: some stupid cow who thinks she's a Democrat is soo disappointed that Hillary wasn't nominated. Boo fucking hoo. She says she will never vote for Obama, never ever in a million years. She's going to vote for McCain instead. *facepalm* 'I am a proud Hillary Clinton-Democrat' my shiny metal ass. How stupid can one person get? And they're saying that it's a sexist thing, that it's because of sexism Clinton wasn't chosen, it's just because Obama's a man.

For the record: I am a woman. I consider myself a feminist. I belong on the left side of the spectrum politically (and should any Americans read this: by 'left' I mean the European left, not the perceived American left ;-), I am a social democrat. I vote Labor. Although I did actually vote for Red Alliance in last year's local elections, but that was just a fluke.

I recently posted about how the Republicans must be stupid, but going by this, Democrats can't be far behind. And ignorant too. Someone among these people - McCain-supporting 'Democrats' - is quoted as saying that Clinton as the nominee would have been historic. Well, read your own goddamn history, then! Over the course of the civil rights movement in the US, one pattern is conspicuously clear: the blacks conquer new territory first, then the women follow. First blacks, then women. Seriously. It is completely normal for there to be a black male president first, and then, at some later stage, a female one of whichever color. Oh, sorry, whatever. >:-)

And now to the real point I'm trying to make here. OK, so it's sexist that Obama was picked over Clinton. That's what they're saying, some of these people. Not all of them, but some. A great opportunity for American women, yada yada. Yalla yalla. :-) And because of that, they will not vote for Obama, but for McCain instead. Doing so is

1) STUPID. To the extent that Clinton's politics diverges from McCain's, he opposes her rather strongly and will do things she would not. So these people

1b) DON'T CARE ABOUT CLINTON'S POLITICAL VIEWS. They are so willing to let someone with different views and goals take over. Just out of sheer spite. So they don't care about what Clinton's trying to achieve politically. Rather revealing IMO.

Finally, this is

2) SEXIST.
Obama only won because he's a man, so they don't want to vote for him because it should have been a woman instead, sniffle. In other words, are they only rooting for Clinton because she's a woman?? Politically, these two candidates are almost identical, as far as I can tell. So what these people are doing is just as sexist as they're accusing others of being. Support the woman no matter what?? How is that not just as wrong as supporting the man no matter what??

Equal rights does not mean special consideration for women. It means that both sexes are considered equally. Maybe what these people are really griping about is the fact that their candidate was beaten fair & square - that she came up against someone better and lost. Because having equal rights in a society (which the US doesn't have, and hardly any other country in the world either, but that's another story) does not mean that women will, or should, always come out on top.

Sometimes a man will be more competent and popular than a woman in the same situation. Deal with it.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Mountain vacation 2008. August 14th

On the Thursday the weather was very unstable ... it went from sun to rain to neither and back again every five minutes. But nothing really got going - the sunny spells didn't last and we never got any real showers of rain, just drizzles - so my mother and me decided that it was great hiking weather; it's all down to what you wear. :-) We packed my backpack and set off to a little tarn a couple of hours' walk away - Gjermundstjønn, ie Gjermund's tarn (a tarn is a kind of lake). I have no idea who this Gjermund was. When we took a look at the map after we got home, it turned out that the place isn't even called Gjermundstjønn, but ... something else that I don't remember right now. A name that no one we asked could remember having heard ever. Weirdness. Anyway.

The first part of the hike was to Musvollseter again. Then we continued along the old cart road past the shieling, and eventually turned off onto a path. There were two paths to choose from and of course we picked the wrong one. But in our defense, that was the one that had the signpost on it, the other one had nothing. More weirdness.

Two paths were available to choose from in a not-yet-yellow wood
We took the one we thought was most travelled by
And it didn't make a lot of difference
Vaguely inspired by Robert Frost

I took lots of photos along the way, both there and back again. Brace yourselves ... :-)

I liked this for some reason. It's just an uprooted tree that we passed. But I liked the image. Imagine what it will look like in winter, covered in snow. :-)

This type of moss-covered ground is very typical of the area. You can walk for hours and never get away from this moss - 'reindeer moss', we call it in Norwegian. The wild reindeer in the area eat it in winter, they dig down through the snow to get to it. It's difficult to walk on as the surface below the moss is quite slimy and slippery.

I was hoping we would get to see a moose during the hike ... unfortunately that didn't happen. The closest we got was some, ahem, evidence of moose activity. ;-)

Because we picked the wrong path we ended up having to slog through some marshy patches. There are a lot of these smallish marshes in the area.

The path least travelled by, indeed. The other path - which we accidentally ended up taking on the way back - was obviously the one that people actually use. So few hikers use the one we first picked that ... well, see for yourselves. (Post a comment if you spot what I'm talking about. ;-)

Believe it or not: this trail has been worn exclusively by ants. :-o Untold millions of tiny feet ... !

Here's the trail with my hand pointing to it, just for scale. Pretty amazing.

Here's the anthill it led to. It wasn't that big, actually. But those things are like icebergs, ten times bigger below than what you can see above the surface.

Another lovely forest scene. I like those uprooted trees.

The tarn. Too much vegetation in it for its own good, unfortunately.

My mother, having just forded a stream that crossed the path.

Like I said before, it's a shitty year for cloudberries. We found a few during this hike. I spotted an absolutely perfect one that I wanted to pick for my mother. She absolutely loves them; I'm not a fan. It was a little risky, since it was growing on the edge of a very deep part of the brook. Really very deep, take a look! :-o (Can you see the berry? :-)

But I got it and apparently it was delicious. Here it is in my mother's hand, seconds before it was devoured. :-) An almost perfect specimen!

Mount Musvollkampen seen from a completely different angle.

Me sitting in a very strange-looking (and no doubt very old!) pine tree that we came across.

Another strange tree that was growing alongside the path closer to the cart road. It's very unusual to see trees as mossy as this in the area.

The bridge across a little river called the 'Deepbrook'. As I said before, the road isn't really used much these days. :-)

A view of Mount Musvollkampen from right where the path comes up to the shieling. Mount Svulten in the background.

Mount Musvollkampen again. Some tourists had rented a canoe to go fishing in the tarn - lake Musvolltjønn - and were cooking their catch. :-)

A good time was no doubt had by all!!! :-)

Things Only Idiots Believe, Part Five

There is plenty of untouched wilderness in Norway.

People who genuinely believe this either do not know what 'untouched wilderness' means, or are painfully ignorant.

Wilfully or otherwise.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

More turtle walkies

Wonderful weather today. Really nice and warm, and sun almost all day. :-) I went to a flea market at Tveten Farm, which is only a couple minutes' walk from my building ... bought some books, just what I needed! and of course a waffle ... and when I got back I took all three little guys out on the lawn. We stayed out for about an hour and a half ... I mostly walked about reading, as I will, but towards the end some of the neighborhood kids discovered us and came over to meet & greet with the turtles. Raphael got a little stressed, but not very. Actually less than I expected. Herman enjoys meeting new two-legs (they may have FOOD!) and Henrik ... well, he was a little freaked at first, cause there were quite a few of them, and they touched him! but then one of them sprayed water on him, which he seemed to like a lot, in the heat and what have you. It was really cute ... there is a Sri Lankan family that lives in my building (very well integrated, I'm impressed with those people actually), they have three daughters and the youngest two were among the turtle watching crowd today. The middle one had a water balloon and when she realized that the turtles were starting to get kind of dry she offered to make a little hole in it and 'give them the water'. :-D She got a very gentle spray coming out of it and the guys seemed to really enjoy it. Raphael stretched his head out to get water on it. Aww. :-)

Here's a really great photo - IMO, of course - that I took of Raphael. I think the colors came together really well and the composition, or whatever it's called, works well too. I'm happy with this one. :-)

A couple of really good shots of Herman. He is soo adorable, it's easy to take good pictures of him. ;-)

Henrik. Anne Ida, KAS, trilltrall, if you see this, do you remember what we talked about last night? That Herman seems to be so much better at 'clowning for the camera' or whatever - obviously that's not what he's doing, but it is undeniably much easier to get good/fun pictures of him than of Henrik. But I think I managed to get a couple of good ones today. :-)

And, good news: his claw is definitely growing back. Not sure how well it shows here, he didn't like me fiddling with his foot so much, but you can see it:

I tried to be creative too today ... I tried to get a shot with one or two real turtles and one shadow turtle. They didn't come out as well as I'd hoped (Raphael wasn't cooperating, big surprise) but here's the best one. Can you see what I tried to do? :-)

Beste debattinnlegg EVER!!!!! :-D

Som mange vel har fått med seg, om de vil eller ei, har Barack Obama valgt Joe Biden til sin visepresidentkandidat. Jeg skulle ønske det interesserte meg, men jeg er så drittlei av dette valget nå at jeg ikke orker å engasjere meg. Nok om det. Dagbla' på nett la selvfølgelig ut en artikkel om saken og åpnet den for debatt. Denne har ikke blitt så hektisk som man kanskje skulle ha ventet. Det har muligens noe med været å gjøre. Men det skyldes nok også, meget mulig, at debatten ble åpnet med et innlegg som, kort sagt, sier alt. En som kaller seg 'Bender' har skrevet det. Vanvittig bra. Har man lest noen debatter på Dagbla' på nett - fulgt med en stund :-) - så kjenner man seg 100% igjen i dette. Asså lissom - det er sånn det ER. :-o

Overskrift: 'Here we go again'. Tatt SÅ på kornet. :-D

Ja USA, Bush, Obama, Osama, muslimer, muhammedanere, FRP, Siv, vi har det så forferdelig her i landet, bensinpriser, Rødgrønne, Jensemann, The Bilderberg Group, NWO, 9/11, aluminumshatt, verden går under!
Sånn!

Mr Bender, jeg bøyer meg i støvet.

Jeg linker ikke til artikkelen med sånn Twingly-ting. Men det er mulig at det kommer til å skje automatisk. Bare så det er sagt, i så fall: jeg vet at denne posten ikke har noenting overhodet å gjøre med selve artikkelen. Få linken slettet den som vil, klag i vei. :-)

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Raphael out & about

I've posted videos of Henrik and Herman, time to show off Raphael a little bit too. He doesn't have the same outgoingness :-) about his personality that the little guys - especially Herman - have, but, well, I like him anyway. He's my little four-legged friend regardless (although I clearly am not always his big two-legged friend ;-).

I took him out on the lawn on Thursday, because the weather had been so lovely for hours and hours ... lots of sun, I'd seen it through the window at work. :-) But by the time I left work (I work 8am-4pm) it had started to cloud over and by the time I'd gotten home, quickly changed my clothes, forcibly inserted Raphael into the travel cage and gotten out onto the lawn, we had literally FOUR minutes of sunlight left. :-( But we stayed out till it started to rain, anyway ... about half an hour. Better than nothing.

Here he is out on the lawn just after we got there, trying to get out of his travel/carry cage. Well, theirs, it isn't just his. (And it wasn't bought for any of them originally.) But I have another smaller one for just the little guys. For some reason he absolutely hates the cage and doesn't want to be put in it and is always desperate to escape from it. He can climb out of it on his own, he really can ... but on Thursday I gave him a little boost. :-) Of course as soon as he got out he immediately hurried away. :-D


Voice in background: Me saying Come on, you can do it! Come on, now! Hm?

Here he is trying to dig in the grass, but I'm just disturbing him, annoyingly. :-)


Voice in background: Me saying You are so strong! You’re so strong. You sure are.

Digging ...

Having dug. :-) This ... thing ... that he dug (I mean, it can't really be called a hole, can it) was pretty big, almost as big as his body. But then he suddenly lost interest in it and ...

... wandered off. :-)

Here he is walking. He's pretty fast ... you don't turn your back on him for too long, let me put it like that. :-)



Here he is right after we got back inside. In his travel cage, looking very desolate. Sad and down-hearted. Oh noes, trapped again!! :-(

I really don't know why he dislikes that thing so much.

Here he is trying to get out of the cage after we got back inside. Having less luck than last time ... and my assistance wasn't really helping either this time.

Voice in background: Me saying Oh, it’s so awful. But you can’t get out through there, you’ve got to get up and over, like this. That’s where you’ve got to get out. Don’t you understand that? Yeah, well, not right there where the lid is, actuallly. So that was actually pretty bad advice, but. Yes, there! Try again.

I serien 'ting som irriterer ved Dagbladet' ...

... har vi i dag kommet til Denne debatten er automatisk stengt for nye innlegg etter 48 timer.

Hva er det for noe egentlig? Det har jo ikke noe med noen tid som passerer, 48 timer eller noe annet, å gjøre. Bevis? Vel, i dag tidlig la de ut denne saken - det står at den ble lagt ut klokka 07:40. Jeg leste den da jeg kom på jobb ... og utover dagen så fulgte jeg litt med i debatten. (Ikke mye å gjøre på jobben i dag. :-) I kveld var jeg ute, på Mela-festivalen på Rådhusplassen og så på Standup-festivalen på Latter, og når jeg kom hjem for litt siden og sjekket Dagbla' igjen (har en nesten ekstrem lakenskrekk, og noe må jeg jo finne på ;-) så var debatten stengt. Med denne bisarre forklaringsteksten hekta på seg nederst.

Men det har jo ikke gått 48 timer. Det har ikke gått 24 engang, langt derifra.

Hvorfor gjør de sånn? Man skulle nesten tro at det var for å stoppe kjeften på folk hvis man syntes at debattantene skrev ting man ikke likte. Men denne debatten var da ikke så ille. Og det er uansett langt fra den eneste gangen jeg har sett at dette har blitt gjort.

Hvis det er det som er grunnen, så burde man kunne være ærlig nok til å si at man stenger debatten fordi folk har kommet med upassende innlegg, eller 'tonen' i debatten er feil, eller hva det nå er man ikke liker. Selv om man helt sikkert ville komme til å få litt pepper for det. Pinlig at redaksjonen er så ... barnslig, eller hva jeg skal kalle det (dårlig ord, men det er seint ... :-) at de løser det med et grep som dette. Et triks. Som de sikkert kan skylde på teknisk feil eller et eller annet sånt no'. Jeg synes det er ganske feigt og egentlig litt løgnaktig.

Ja ja, enda en grunn til å føle seg skuffa og bitter som Dagbla'-leser gjennom mange år. Ikke for at jeg egentlig syntes at jeg trengte flere, men.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Mountain vacation 2008. August 13th

Mette and the girls spent the night, and on the next day, Wednesday, we were hoping to go on a hike to the most unique destination you can find in the area. (More on that in a later post.) Unfortunately this is really only a pleasant hike in reasonably good weather, which we weren't having. :-( We had mostly constant rain during the morning and early afternoon ... so we stayed indoors and played Carcassonne and read and talked. And ate. :-)

Fortunately, as the day wore on, the cloud cover wore away. We had decided that regardless of the weather we were going to walk at least down to Bjørnhollia, which our guests hadn't really seen. You've just got to get out and move around a little at least once during a day. :-) We ended up going not only to Bjørnhollia, but also down into the valley, to the Myllinga river and its starting point, lake Kampetjønn (lit. 'mountain tarn'). The weather ended up being quite lovely for a while there, with partially clear skies and sun and everything. :-) Warm too. :-)

As soon as we got down to the river, the girls rushed to the bank. I agree, water is fun. :-)
(Left-right: Klara, Emma, Frida (in red).)

A view across lake Kampetjønn.

The water is wonderfully cold and clear. :-)

Here's everyone ... I guess my mother was explaining something about the lake.
(Left-right: Emma, my mother, Klara, Frida, Mette.)

As we were walking, I saw photo ops everywhere :-) ... the sun coming out so immediately after the rain created diamonds in the grass almost everywhere you looked. It was really beautiful. Grass and plants weighted down with beads of water that sparkled in the sun. I took lots of pictures, but unfortunately - although not surprisingly ;-) - most of these didn't come out too well. My camera isn't good enough to capture visuals like those. I did get a few pretty good ones though. The bottom one especially, I'm pretty happy with that. Click on it to see the bigger version, this smallish one doesn't really do it justice. :-)