mi

In my last post, 5th of March, I mentioned that my favourite book included a big white dog whom I hadn't found yet. Now I have.
Introducing Honiahaka Spirit of Sirius aka Cafall

Stolen from tarangryph, because books are awesome.

The book I am reading:
How to grow food in your polytunnel by Mark Gatter and Andy McKee

Because we have a polytunnel! (It came in on of the boxes for the tunnel, with a tunnel owners guide and a bag of tea. :) )
It's a good UK growing guide with specifics for tunnel growing as well as outside and a bunch of nifty tips and tricks on how to grow stuff without nasty chemicals.

The book I am writing:
"Kaninernas år" (Year of the rabbits).
I have no clue what so ever what it's about yet, but I have known for six years or so what the title is.

The book I love most:
Probably Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. It is, for me, just such a lovely book about finding freedom for yourself.
THHGTTG is not far behind, or most things by Diana Wynne Jones, Ursula K Le Guin and Neil Gaiman.

The last book I received as a gift:
Probably the five graphical novels about Scott Pilgrim that I got from my lovely Cambridge friends for last birthday. They were interesting, and hard to stop reading, but not something I would have thought of buying myself. Nope, have not seen the movie either. :)

The last book I gave as a gift:
It has not reached him yet, but How to keep a pet squirrel by Axel Scheffler for my father as a Christmas gift and birthday present.
I love the fact that an amazon book search for "How to keep" turns up "a pet squirrel" first, above "chickens/sheep/Volkswagen/woman/man".

The nearest book on my desk:
At work currently, but cheating and using my bedside table instead. It would be the polytunnel book described above, The wild wood by Charles de Lindt, Down to the bone by Justina Robson, Wireless by Charles Stross and probably some kind of paranormal romance/erotica (No, NOT vampires, they are sissies!) as well.

The last book I bought for myself:
Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones
I am pretty sure I already have a copy of this one somewhere, krfsm gave it to me a few years ago when I tried to find my childhood favourites in English instead of the translations I had read. When I find it I will give this copy to my nephew.
This is the book that made me fall in love with a big white dog that I haven't found just yet. However the breed we are getting a puppy from later is not far from my imaginary dog, even though I don't know if we'll get a white one or not.
The book is great, as most of DWJ books are, do read it if you ever get the chance.

Happy birthday krfsm and o_we. I hope your birthdays will be wonderful, marvellous and just as you want them. Also, I hope they will include enough cake for everyone. :)

So, we have now been house owners for 10 days me and unixsmurf. It feels somewhat unreal still.
There's boxes everywhere, even though we have been pretty good at unpacking them (all fiction paperbacks are now in bookshelf, sorted by author). Somehow it feels like we need more storage, or less chaos, or both.

We have sorted out the old house,well, unixsmurf has, I was mainly sleeping, working night shift and driving things back and forth in between. We have been to the recycling centre with the big bags with Styrofoam and a bunch of shelves left here by the previous owners.

The furniture in our different rooms are slowly put into optimal layout, lamp shades are getting bought, all those important small things are getting done/bought, but there are still some big things that will have to wait until we can afford it.
We have a gas oven... gas hob is just fine, actually quite amazing when the initial fear of "Waaaaaaaaghhh everything will EXPLODE if I do something wrong!!11!" (which I actually managed to deal with years ago in Stockholm but some of my friends and family who comes over still needs some reassuring sometimes). Gas ovens however, are tricky, uneven and hard to work with. We need a proper electrical hot air one and soon. Otherwise no saffron scones for us. :/
Then it's the new roof, kitchen door, kitchen, underfloor heating downstairs (after making the floors level), triple glass windows... well, as said, we are house owners now.

The sad thing is, with all this chaos I haven't had a chance to start planning the garden properly for this year. There's a lot of plans in my head, and a lot of seeds that should be bought pretty soon, but I guess it will have to wait to next week.

Today I have packed 25 boxes in 6,5 hours, mostly with books, dvds and clothes. I am very much out of shape.
There's still 25 boxes left to pack in and probably more stuff than what fits in them. We will get the keyes this Thursday, move Saturday... My back hates me already. :)

God jul allihop. :)

Woho! This is the last day of November and also the last day of NaBloPoMo.
This year I won!


Granted a bunch of the posts this month was not at all quality posts, but I don't envy the ones who can do quality posts every day for a month. They probably do this for a living and I have little interest of writing blogs for a living. After all, I am solving problems in silly ways, until it works, and I get paid for it.

Today however, there will be writing about feet and toes and what to wear on them.
Cambridge is snowy and icy at the moment. Trusting the roads is a bad thing to do so instead of going to work in my lovely, cute, fantastically comfortable KSO Trek I am now using my Arbesko winter boots, proper worker boots with a hard plastic cap toe, thick soles that would stop a nail from reaching the foot and nice breathing leather. The feeling of feet containment is still somewhat oppressive and driving in them is most definitely different, very stiff.
Now the Arbesko shoes have wide soles so they can be used all day even when the feet get swollen by being in shoes for too long, but even with the wide soles my toes miss the freedom of the wiggly toe Vibram shoes. They are awesome.
Granted the first weeks were a bit weird, getting used to putting the toes in their own pockets, walking as if barefoot just a bit more protected, getting muscle aches from working out the calf muscles and the muscles that runs on each side of the knee, but after a month I could take the heavy blob I am and actually run, without any pain at all in my knees, my posture got better and my poor crammed in toes loved me dearly.
Now most of my socks are toe socks, but since my feet dislikes cotton (or possibly likes, the chemical warfare that cotton socks and my feet create together...) the hunt for wool or silk toe socks were on.
At Toetoe the hunting grounds were open. Silk toe socks might be considered a luxury, but I see it as a means of not exposing my family and friends of my stinky feet. At least it's a good excuse when I feel guilty over spending €60 on 7 pairs of socks.
A couple of weeks ago I found instructions on how to knit toe socks too, not sure if my knitting skills will ever be up to the task of making socks, but at least I have the option.

Now back to work. In a future, when all is done and dusted, there will be a blog post about a house that hopefully by then is ours.

It was snowing this morning. I never saw it falling since I tried to change sleeping patterns to night shift (and failed somewhat) but it was still there when I woke up.
Now a thin layer of snow that are sure to disappear soon wouldn't be so exciting if it wasn't in Cambridgeshire, where I now live (and love, as my fingers wanted to write). All troubles with the snow scared population aside, snow is a wonderful thing. It makes me happy even in very small batches. Cat paw prints in the garden are lovely to see.

In My home town, Skellefteå, this time of year snow is the main light source of the world. It reflects sun, moon and star shine 24/7 and even when there are only 2 hours or less of daylight each day it is not very dark. Back in the days we used to play late in the evenings and with the snow around us it never felt scary or hard to play in.
We used to build snow ball lanterns on the porch, or ice lanterns with a big bucket filled with water and put out on the porch for a while until there was a proper frozen ice layer against the bucket walls, then we cracked the ice surface and poured the water that wasn't frozen yet out before we pushed the ice out of the bucket (with or without the help of warm water on the bucket sides), made a small hole for ventilation on the top of the lantern, put some tea-lights in it and watched the spectacular show of light and ice.

Living here makes me appreciate the amount of light we got in Västerbotten, the few hours of dusk in the summers, the reflections of all kinds of light in the snow. During summers here in England it is dark and gets so around 22, 23. Winters are equally dark because there is no fluffy layer of snow to brighten up the world. Maybe there is no wonder that the snow makes me so happy even in small amounts.

This is not, the greatest blog in the world, this is just a tribute.
Couldn't remember the greatest blog in the world, this is a tribute.

At least I remembered to post.
Today has been both lazy and productive. We made food, and then we ate it. Luckily we made enough to have lunches or the rest of the week too. Then rum based glögg (mulled wine, but Swedish, and better), Robots, hot chocolate, candlelight and cat cuddles. Not a bad day at all.

Now I just have to stay up all night so I'll be ready for my night shift tomorrow.

This Saturday night is spent in the sofa. Drinking 16 year old Highland Park, eating chocolate thins with gingerbread spices, varied with drinking water and eating carrots with unixsmurf's tzatziki. Noms.

We have just finished watching Appaloosa, don't watch it unless you only want to drool over Jeremy Irons, Ed Harris, Renée Zellweger, beautiful horses and Viggo Mortensen (and seeing Viggo Mortensen cuddle horses of course.
There isn't really a plot or any kind of action. Sure, some people die but not in an orderly western movie manner. Not even in an unorderly (see Desperado) western movie manner. There are some kind of love story, and a lot of man to man tension, but nothing substantial there either. Just nothing but "Eh, what is this movie trying to tell us, really?!"

Now I'm watching Assassins Creed, Brotherhood instead. It makes more sense and is actually quite fun to watch.