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Showing posts from 2010

The next half

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New Year's Eve. The day when people are either scrambling to get food and champagne for the evening's festivities or are contemplating what resolutions to make for the coming year - or both. For me, 2011 is the start of the next half century of my life. I was 50 in December. It was actually a wonderful way to end the year. 2010 was turbulent at work and in my stomach. At work, the knowledge that our department and in-house printing was going to cease to exist by summer was something we all had in the back of our minds. We were, however, all so old (I was the youngest at 49) to get worked up about it. Instead, the strategy was to do our jobs and behave in such a way as to make management realize they had some great people working for them; we did not complain and we did not sic our union on anybody (though they were apprised of the situation). Our representative from HR was impressed by our good cheer. She said it motivated HR to do everything in their power to help us sta

Wordless Wednesday - Red and green

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Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday - Chained near (not to) desk

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Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday - Ducks not in a row

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Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday - Winter sunset

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Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday - Freaky flame

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Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday - Frosted

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Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday - A Moment of Zen

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday - All that glitters

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Wordless Wednesday

Actually, I'm having fun

Ah, yes, once again a long hiatus. I still owe you guys my Normandie adventure, and I haven't forgotten. The nice thing about the war is that writing about it has no time limit. (Is my excuse. :-) ) Thing is, I'm having a collision of Fun Things to Do. I want to focus more on my blog, no, my astrology, no, my yoga, no, my decluttering (which has been neglected and therefore resurfaced), no, my venture into low-carbing, no, Joomla, because what that web guy is doing looks like so much fun, and why are there so many good web sites to browse, and a re-run of a surprisingly well-written and well-done Norwegian sci-fi TV mini-series to watch, oh, yeah, and "The Event" is showing now, and that pile of interesting books to read, and all those podcasts to listen to, and meditation. I want to get back into meditation. And in between, my bi-weekly subscription to our local symphony orchestra's concerts. Whew. It's pure abundance. And at work, new department, youn

Wordless Wednesday - Autumn mix

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Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday - Chillin'

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Wordless Wednesday (Same bush)

Wordless Wednesday - Archaeological site

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Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday - Autumn bud

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Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday - In case of fire

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Wordless Wednesday Emergency numbers in Norway are 110 for fire, 112 for police and 113 for ambulance.

Wordless Wednesday - Autumn parking lot

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Wordless Wednesday

I want you to know them

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It is perfect weather out today. After two days of a hard north wind, the air is calm, but the sky is still clear, and the sun still warms. It is the perfect walking weather. And because it is 2010, I walked to my grandparents' grave. The Norwegian custom is to bury the dead, primarily, though cremation is more common in crowded cities (and their equally crowded churchyards). Norwegians usually tend the graves themselves, with one of the more beautiful customs being a lit candle on the grave on Christmas Eve. I have never done any of this, but part of the funeral costs included gardening services from the city so the grave is always tended. The dead here are not embalmed, so their bodies do return to dust, as the Bible says. The usual is to reuse a grave after 20 years, when there is nothing left of the previous "resident". Exceptions are made for historical graves and family plots. I don't care either way. I am ambivalent about visiting graves. Mostly they remind

Wordless Wednesday - Autumn pansy

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Wordless Wednesday This would have been my grandma's 100th birthday. She loved pansies.

Digestion: Discovery and dilemma

I have been reading a lot lately. My latest read is a book by a Swedish doctor, Annika Dahlqvist, who was reported for malpractice a couple of years for advising diabetics to eat a low carbohydrate, high fat diet. She was found innocent of the charges as her advice was supported by studies. Lately, this nearly-vegetarian has given up her decades-long breakfast choice of rice milk and rolled four-grain mix and replaced it with boiled eggs and bacon. Butter is back in my cupboard. Meat and fish are finding their way into my home (if not in great amounts). Fruit is abandoned completely while nuts and vegetables are still favored. My beloved pasta is ignored, and I no longer eat bread or even oatmeal. This is the first time in years, lots of years, that I am not gassy and getting stomach pains on a daily basis. The discussion about whether or not you'll lose weight aside, the scary thing about reading up on diets, is discovering all the disinformation that's been fed us since

Wordless Wednesday - Happening

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Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday - Sunbathers

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Wordless Wednesday

A weed is a flower

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…that happens to be in the wrong place. Yesterday's photo is a close-up of the sunflower that has surprised me. I started this summer with pansies in all my flower boxes, but they quickly died. One did manage to sow a seed, though, so I have a pansy plant in one flower box. Weeds took over the other flower box. I decided to leave them as an experiment and to see what they would turn out to be. Most I recognized as local flora, but one was a bit odder. It turned out to be the sunflower. The other weeds do seem to be the flowering kind. And since they are welcome where they are, they are no longer technically weeds. PS: I can't remember where I first heard the definition of a weed introducing this post. The closest I can get to an original is by E.J. Salisbury, found at this delightful page of weed quotes .)

Wordless Wednesday - Birdseed surprise

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Wordless Wednesday

A brief list of happy

Came in from the rain and met a co-worker who needed an umbrella for an errand outside. So he got to borrow mine. Nice to be able to help! Got on full elevator. Full because our building superintendents had a cart for moving small furniture in it. No place to stand around it was left, but there was a place to sit - on it. So there I sat, joking with the supers, and offering a seat next to me to people wanting on on the other floors. Umbrella was set to dry by borrower. Nice to roll up a dry umbrella. Laughed myself silly during lunch. Even managed to be one of the ones saying something funny, making the others laugh, too. Made a joke with the new boss, without thinking. Discovered that that went over well. Making the joke, I mean. Cracked myself up writing this blogpost, remembering everything.

Wordless Wednesday - Flip side

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Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday - Skeleton

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Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday - From my boss's garden

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Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday - French textures

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Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday - Windpowered

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Wordless Wednesday

Bonjour

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I don't advertise vacation time anywhere online because I'm told that if I do that, I may as well leave the key to my place under my mat. But it sure is nice to just disappear and come back and discover I've been missed. Very nice, and I love the two of you who have said so. :-D I have had such an heady adventure. I have been an American in France, which went amazingly well. The French are very nice, even when you don't know the lingo. Menus have translations and a phrase book and a lot of bonjours and mercis go a long way. The heady part isn't the joy in discovering I could order food without trouble, but the visits to World War II museums, the walk on Juno Beach, the view over Omaha Beach and the tears I shed walking among the crosses in the American cemetery. It's going to take me a bit to digest all that. It'll be easier sharing photos from Bremen… …And a drive through Paris. We had a brief stop at the TrocadĂ©ro , and my photos of the Eiffel tower

Wordless Wednesday - Krøderen

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Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday - Sunny side of the street

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Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday - Sound waves

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Wordless Wednesday by Bergen sculptor BĂĄrd Breivik

Added some links

So, if you scroll down a bit, there's a list of stuff I read. I have a lot of this on RSS-feeds but decided to share here. Under the category "READ" are blogs and sites that are mostly for reading but may contain photos. Here be some good writing by friends - not necessarily opinions or language you'd agree with, but good writing - a couple of health blogs, a blog for web designers and design junkies, and the official Getting Things Done blog. Under the category "VIEW" are blogs and sites that mostly for looking at or watching. In the first four are three friends of mine who photograph, and do so very well. Don't miss! The Periodic Table of Videos and Sixty Symbols offer videos that explain chemistry and physics, respectively. I would have aced my high school chemistry class and maybe gone into physics if I'd had these videos! Ugly Overload and Walk the Wilderness are about critters: One has the intent of finding things humans deem unappealing,

Wordless Wednesday - Birdseed bloom

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Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday - Time stamp: 2313 hours

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Wordless Wednesday

Years

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Probably a mistake to try to blog while tipsy, but I just got home (the photo was taken at 2:44 am!) from celebrating a co-worker's 25th anniversary at work. I had my own 2 years ago. I had hoped that my co-worker's anniversary party was as wonderful as mine, and since we all hung out until nearly 2 am (when the bar closed), it must have been. She certainly was happy, and that's the main thing. It's weird to watch the years suddenly go by. The inevitable happens. The impossible date arrives and, although expected, still catches you off-guard. At the party, I was talking to a recent hire, a man about my age who started in our company about 18 months ago, and I felt a bit strange being one of the old-timers. I don't feel old. I don't feel like 27+ years have passed. Certainly, they don't weigh on me. It's bizarre, really, to think that at this point, I have fewer years left to retirement than the years I have worked. I have no idea how or when that

Wordless Wednesday - Study notes

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Wordless Wednesday

Busybusybusyhappyhappybusybusy

Not posting on Facebook, not posting on Twitter, not posting here (more than usual), not answering comments or e-mail (sorry). And why not? Because life got busy and fun and busy and I find that if I am to get things done, I can't spend the same amount of time I usually do at the computer (i.e. surfing the internet) or in front of the TV. I can't get away from the computer entirely; it is vital to several of my projects, including learning Wordpress (in hopes of redoing my new website and maybe move this blog there, eventually) and finishing my weather forecast for summer, while starting on fall's. I made the mistake of getting hooked on "Hotel Babylon" , a British series about the staff of a five-star hotel and basically a well-done sort of prime-time soap with some interesting characters. They air it four nights a week here in Norway, which means watching almost every day to keep up. I found I can't do that. I can't dedicate that sort of time to a ser

Wordless Wednesday - Parallell

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Wordless Wednesday