A Roll in the Universe

(Edited) I know I said I wasn't going to talk about my digestion any more, but since other bloggers have given me information by telling their stories, I've decided to give an update. It is clear that alcohol and coffee do not agree with my stomach. I can drink coffee if I make it weak. Alcohol I haven't tried since restricting my diet after my doctor's visit. That hurt the instant it hit my stomach and after debating with myself on my way to an anniversary party last night (a co-worker's turn), I decided flavor and buzz did not outweigh being pain-free, especially at a party. So I had non-alcoholic wine with my five-course meal, which included the most tender and tasty lamb I have ever eaten in my life. My stomach was on its very best behavior until I was served fruit. With cream. But even then it was just a little comment from the tummy. I did avoid the cake later, and watered down my cup of coffee. It's the first time I've eaten such rich food and no

Yesterday, right after work, my division had a meeting about the climate. Some of the questions were about how we thought the climate changes would affect our work. I can't really see any direct influence on my work as a graphics designer. Indirectly, there are heaps. The climate changes has made us aware of how humans influence even big systems like the global temperature. Now, I belong to the camp that doesn't believe that all the changes are solely due to people, but we do pollute. A lot. And I am happy that the climate is making people focus on pollution again. We had a quiz and I did very badly. I guessed that emissions, electricity use, waste, etc. were far lower than they actually are. For example, did you know that it takes 75 kg of materials to make one cell phone? (I guessed 15 kg and thought that was a bit much.) And 1000 metric tons of water? I wonder what it took to make my beloved Mac. I haven't thought about much more than that the machine is manufactu

Wordless Wednesday

"What do I desire?" was the prompt on the prompt generator - and a good prompt it is. Last night's seminar has (happily) given me a lot of inspiration and - desire. Desire to look seriously at what I really want out of life and the faith that I can make my desires realities. But I have to first clarify what I want. I have never been concrete. I have never had definite plans. That whole business of writing down where I want to be in one year, five years, ten years, has never appealed to me. (Still doesn't, to tell the truth.) But in the meantime, where I am right now could use some tweaking. Life is good, basically, and yet there are little things that mar the goodness: My stomach , the situation at work , an increase in tagging on walls in my immediate neighborhood, making the place look trashy. These are things that can bring one down, if very slowly. I'd like to not be affected by some of the grumbling and stress I'm noticing at work. I'd like t

Tonight I attended a course that uses this . It was advertised as teaching The Secret , and I had no clue what to expect since I hadn't even heard of the course instructor. However, the Norwegian woman who held the four-hour seminar was both lively and brilliant and real. I am very happy I went to that seminar. I'm very happy the seminar even exists, and, really, it is because of the popularity of "The Secret". That book is currently Norway's No. 1 seller. It looks to me like Norway is finally going to wake up to a new way of seeing the world. Tonight's seminar was the first I've ever heard of that teaches the law of attraction. Finally, positive thinking and consciously choosing happier, more self-supporting thoughts and behaviors has reached this side of the Atlantic. You have to understand: Norwegians have been mired in a very special attitude that one can find anywhere on the planet, but only in Scandinavia did it get written down and called a law

Lured by a free outdoor concert I took a trip to town on a glorious Sunday afternoon. Me and my camera. Among the things I wanted a picture of was the sparrows' favorite drinking spot. I had noticed them a couple of times before as I walked by on other occassions. They had found the perfect perch (though I think it's actually a carp - HA!) in one of the city's older fountains, featuring a crying boy , which is understandable as he is perpetually showered by four fish. The sparrows were there again today, so I walked over and got my camera ready. The sparrows, of course, scattered. Darned skittish birds, they are. So I waited. And they didn't take long to come back, though a bit cautiously: They didn't wait long to move around to the other side of the fountain: And there they are, on this one particular fish in the fountain, drinking and bathing. Other birds are not able to balance on the bronze fish's back and drink. They rely on puddles formed o

It's almost 8 pm. It is the first time today I sit down at the computer. And it felt good, in more ways than one. I have been struggling with some achy hip joints, which - I discovered - have to do with too much sitting, especially on a bad chair. I now try to make a point of stretching my hamstrings a couple of times a day. That helps and this morning I woke up with no hip ache and no tummy ache. Lovely! I actually eagerly got out of bed today. I don't know what I did right yesterday, but the satisfaction of having cleaned out both fridge and pantry and leaving a large pile of clean dishes may have something to with it. So this morning started with putting away dishes, breakfast and the newspaper. Since I was up and dressed by 9 am (on a Saturday I'm usually up and dressed by 11 am or 3 pm or whatever), I could open my door and get the newspaper in front of the delivery guy. It's not a 13-year-old boy. Hasn't been for years. But I really wasn't expecting a

I had another nice walk to the police station this morning. I learned that if I were a European citizen the stamp in my passport would be valid for 25 years. I am, however, not a European citizen. As I left the police and walked to work, I thought about changing my citizenship. Giving up my US one and becoming Norwegian. With a Norwegian passport I could visit Cuba, for example. I could also live and work anywhere in the EU. That could help my latent dream of living in England come true. And I could have a say in who actually runs this country. But… I checked this question before so I know that the US has rather strict rules about giving up one's citizenship, along the lines of "If you leave, don't bother coming back". And, am I really expecting never to go back to the US? There's something about waving the dark blue passport as I land in on US soil that makes me feel I belong, that I'm somehow home. But the US isn't "home", really. Not any

I wrote earlier about a frustration I have being foreign, which involves getting a new visa in my passport. I have permanent residency, so it's just a matter of constantly renewing the official stamp in my passport that says so. And it was indeed a breeze to use the local police station. (The queue ticket amused me.) After a pleasant walk from home (with camera in tow), I made it to the office building with the sign that said "Police, 2nd floor". Of course, in their usual helpful way, the Norwegian woman behind the counter confirmed that the foreigners go to the other end, but said nothing about the anonymous-looking queue ticket machine. That's when I understood why the Russian woman in line had grunted in the direction of the machine when I first asked her if she was in line. She didn't smile no matter what language I tried, but talked up a storm with the woman waiting on her, who spoke fluent Russian. I figured it was going to be a while to wait, because w

Wordless Wednesday

Paula kvetches about her daughter's high school guidance counselor in this post . I put in my 2 cents in the comments, but I thought my own readers deserved to hear my own kvetching . I actually liked high school, though I didn't like homework (but always did it, because I am unable to cram) and by the end of my junior year was terribly tired of the whole thing. (One of my reasons for moving back to California when I did was to get away with only two more years of school rather than three, which was what I was facing in Norway.) But in general, I liked high school. I liked my friends, I liked most of the teachers, I liked the school itself and its school colors (red and black) and our somewhat dorky name for our football team, the Dynamiters (guess what our mascot looked like). I never got the hang of American football. I went to one game, cheered for the wrong team, and decided that my talents lay elsewhere. One of my electives in my senior year had to do with office work,

Talking about digestion is something old people do. So let me talk about my digestion now and get it over and done with because I really don't want to be having this conversation when I'm old. I am currently reading a book, "Hidden power for human problems" by Frederick Bailes . I hadn't heard of Bailes until quite recently, when I was reading about Thomas Troward . (I wander with Google like other people backpack foreign countries.) So I ordered a book, and am enjoying it. Bailes claims that there are some basic attitudes that give us trouble, that trip us up. He also claims that it doesn't take 50 years to undo a 50-year-old habit. One of his examples involves a man with an ulcer. I have been to the doctor's today. I described my grab-bag of symptoms, stating that I've always had sluggish digestion, ever since childhood. The doctor told me to avoid milk products, gluten, potatoes and coffee, and prescribed ranitidine . I got tired of constantly bein

Talking about digestion is something old people do. So let me talk about my digestion now and get it over and done with because I really don't want to be having this conversation when I'm old. I am currently reading a book, "Hidden power for human problems" by Frederick Bailes . I hadn't heard of Bailes until quite recently, when I was reading about Thomas Troward . (I wander with Google like other people backpack foreign countries.) So I ordered a book, and am enjoying it. Bailes claims that there are some basic attitudes that give us trouble, that trip us up. He also claims that it doesn't take 50 years to undo a 50-year-old habit. One of his examples involves a man with an ulcer. I have been to the doctor's today. I described my grab-bag of symptoms, stating that I've always had sluggish digestion, ever since childhood. The doctor told me to avoid milk products, gluten, potatoes and coffee, and prescribed ranitidine . I got tired of constantl

Yesterday, my blog looked like this: I moved my blog to Blogspot because I wanted a couple of things posting with FTP to my homepage site couldn't give me (simply): A collapsable archive list and a label list. Mainly I do this for me (as the commercial goes). To me, a long list is just visual clutter, and I can never remember my own labels or what I wrote when, so… Now to scurry over to the old address and redirect folks. Done. (Looks like you may have to update any RSS-feeds you have. I did. :-) One nice thing about moving back to Blogspot is that publishing is blazingly fast. What's left is figuring out how to add external widgets and badges with this new template. Yes, I want my stinkin' badges. I'll figure it out. For now, at least one can go here (the other one's complaining about an open tag): Here was to be a Blog365 widget. View my page on Blog 365

I went digging through the archives and apparently, I'm more fascinated with oystercatchers having sex sitting on eggs than I am Norway's Constitution Day . It's a day of sack races, balloons, ice cream, hot dogs, throwing up in the bushes only to go right back for another ice cream, and forced to do all that in the Nice Clothes. No matter the weather. The local elementary school has a 17th of May parade, with an appreciably shrunk school band this year from earlier years. I think that may explain why there was no flea market for the school band last fall: Not enough people. A parade just isn't the same without a band, so I hope they keep theirs. It's nice that Lyshovden skole still marches around our neighborhood, though no one here attends the school any more (rearranged school districts). It certainly is a pretty parade, with everyone all dressed up for the day, including the kids. Earlier this afternoon, one group had a dry run (I guess), giving me a b

Norway's largest labor organization, LO, has many member unions. Some of them organize airport employees. And some of those employees went on strike today at 8:00 am, closing five airports including ours in Bergen (BGO). It's rather interesting to hear what sort of emergency solutions people and airlines come up with. The airlines did not want to land at BGO because that would strand the machines there. So they diverted traffic - and passengers - to the airports in Haugesund and Stavanger, two cities south of Bergen that can be accessed by car, bus or ferry. The train between Bergen and Oslo is now sold out and some people are renting cars. The thing is, this is a major traveling day because a lot of people want to spend Constitution Day with family. The morning news was full of reports on how airlines and passengers were handling the upset of closed airports. But our local radio station started getting several calls about something else that was of even greater importanc

I have a good friend, Ken , who has often functioned as my personal guru. He has a simple but effective suggestion for when life seems to get difficult or worrisome: Go find the party. Or, if that's a little out of reach, affirm to yourself, "I am safe as long as I'm breathing, no matter how it feels. Life supports me." I really need to say that to myself right now. Granted, my stomach's been doing some weird things lately (will see doctor Monday), but there's another feeling in it right now that I know has nothing to do with digestion. I recognize it. It's been some 20 years since I last felt it, but I recognize it: It's the fear of losing one's job. It's the fear of having the rug pulled out from under one's feet and having no (good) options. It isn't just me. The whole department - actually, the whole section - is feeling bummed out by a situation that shouldn't be happening: Dedicated, hard-working employees providing servi

Wordless Wednesday

From Neatorama's own post about a story without verbs , inspiration. Otherwise, none at all. Too short a night, too long a day, too empty a mind, too empty a blog post. But, no! 365 days of posts! Yes!

This being a three-day weekend in Norway since it's Whitsund, I decided that I should do something different, so I went looking for a day trip. I found one that would take me by boat to the barony in Rosendal . It said trips daily Monday through Friday and I wondered if that included this Monday, which is a public holiday. Well, their website sold me a ticket for today, so I showed up at the pier and waited for the boat. And waited. And discovered some other people waiting. We were about ten people who had all managed to buy tickets for a trip today, only to discover that the boat had no intention of sailing this particular Monday. The largest group were a bunch of Icelanders, some who lived in Bergen, and they decided to drive to Rosendal. I ended up talking to a couple from Singapore and we agreed to go to the tourist information office and see if they could help us. The service at the tourist information office was impressive. Not only did they refund our tickets (NOK 6

I can't remember when I last made a home-made Mother's Day card, if ever. Mother's Day is the second Sunday in May in the US, so I made this card at home, 21st century style (Photoshop. layers, effects, more than one photo), showing Grandma and me, and sent it to my mother:

After our 6K walk, the girls and I talked over pizza. One said that a friend of hers, who now lives in Florida, was shocked at American nationalism, with all its flag-waving. So I tried to set her straight. I told her that it took a lot more to make me start thinking of out-of-control nationalists than the use of the stars-and-stripes. Americans use their flag and its pattern of stars and stripes for everything. Sometimes tastelessly so. I'm not charmed by seeing the star-spangled banner as a pair of Speedos. But that does show that the threshold for displaying the flag or its pattern is relatively low in the US - relative to Norway. Norway displays the flag only on flag days - or birthdays. You can always tell when one of my neighbors has a birthday because a flag will be displayed on their balcony. I have, however, never seen garments that look like the Norwegian flag. The other time I see the Norwegian flag in use, is at Christmas; the Norwegians make garlands out of little

An annual rite for me is to go to the tourist information office and pick up the season's new guide to Bergen. It's just as useful to us locals as it is to the tourists. The tourist information office used to be on Bryggen, the old wharf, a logical place but the office itself was dominated by a very large, old-fashioned counter and not much room beyond it. If there were more than five people in there, browsing pamphlets, exchanging money or signing up for "Norway in a nutshell", you'd instantly feel that you were inside said nutshell. So they moved. They took over the main floor of the building that had once been the Bergen Stock Exchange. I was so happy that's where they moved because that office contains one of my strongest childhood memories. I didn't know it was the Bergen Stock Exchange when I was a kid. When I first came to Norway, the building belonged to a bank, Bergen Privatbank. My maternal grandparents, whom I was living with, opened an acc

I got a pleasant surprise in my e-mail Tuesday. In fact, it was so pleasant, I actually teared up from joy: Our editors recently reviewed your blog and have given it an 8.1 score out of (10) in the Education category of Blogged.com. This is quite an achievement! http://www.blogged.com/directory/education We evaluated your blog based on the following criteria: Frequency of Updates, Relevance of Content, Site Design, and Writing Style. After carefully reviewing each of these criteria, your site was given its 8.1 score. The description at Bogged's website through me a bit, and wasn't entirely accurate ("A spiritual journey through life with an interesting Norwegian woman named Keera Ann Fox."), but after thinking about it, I'm cool with being labeled Norwegian (not to mention "interesting"). Regular readers know better. :-) So check out the new badges! A little badge in the sidebar, and a nice big juicy one with my overall score is right here

Wordless Wednesday

Well, I don't know if it will be 6K of fun, but how can it not be? Especially since we have the loveliest day for it, and the walk itself is along one of Bergen's prettiest foot paths (Fjellveien) with a spectacular view of the city below. We have a pure Norwegian summer day today, with 18 glorious degrees Celsius in the shade. There's a woman in a tank-top, pushing a lawnmower for the first cut of the season. Some kids have already pitched a tent (I used to do that, too, as a kid; sort of like having a tree house at ground level). Most kids are in shorts. I have the balcony door open and the temperature feels wonderful. I am in the process of getting ready for a 6 km walk [PDF] this evening together with some girls at work. If we were English-speaking, I'd dub us the "Basement Beauties", but since we speak Norwegian, we are dubbed "Underetasjens Underverker". Close enough. Anyway, the walk is an annual event, and I'd actually like to meet G

It's not nice when you deliberately delay going to bed on a Sunday because you're trying to hold off Monday because you just. Don't. Want. To. Go. To. Work. I rarely feel this way, but I've been feeling this way more lately. For some reason, I was thinking about this this afternoon as I chatted with a co-worker. Something about annual reviews (which are mutual between worker and boss) and our boss telling us to pretend it's business as usual. You see, upper management has been staring at the bottom line and blinded by a desire that every year end with more profits than the year before, have pulled up a ghost from the past to haunt and taunt us with: Outsourcing . This they do even though managers in the US have already discovered that outsourcing doesn't work and certainly doesn't save money, and are now "insourcing". We've been "investigated" since November. My boss has been running around, trying to fix a price to absolutely

Yes, dear reader, I am one of those people who doesn't go nuts over fruit. Unless it's dried. I like the dried version and it likes me. What had me thinking this? Well, I had parked a blog idea, swiped from Paula , and thought I'd offer it up this Sunday. But I was bamboozled by the first question: "What do you like about fruit?" The options given are: There's so many different kinds to try It's better for you than eating candy It's a quick snack that you can grab The sweetness The intense flavors That the taste changes as it gets riper I kept looking for a none-of-the-above but couldn't find any. What would be the closest reason for me to eat fresh fruit? It's juicy. On very hot days there is nothing better than a couple of perfectly ripe nectarines or a deep red slice of watermelon. Stuck in a hotel conference room all day, fresh fruit makes a lovely break from the stronger stuff like coffee, or the pure sugar kicks like Danish, bu

Some folks with chainsaws have been hard at work today, thinning the woods on the little hill behind my building. Really thinning them. It remains to be seen if what is left will fill in so much as the leaves come in that I won't notice the missing trees. I rather like the illusion of woods rather than buildings. PS: I thought about going for heaps of Google hits by calling this post "Going naked in my backyard", but decided to alliterate instead. I still may get some hits.

I went to work today, yesterday being a national holiday in Norway, and the day before being a sick day. So since I last walked to work, the world has exploded into green. It is amazing how green the lawns are, a sharp green, an Irish green. The trees are dabbling in various shades of delicate, still, while the bushes are mimicking the grass. The wait for green is over; the landscape is filling in with green and the branches of the trees are becoming hidden. I'm a bit sorry the wait is over. Now we enter the most beautiful time of year in Norway, and I know it will pass too quickly. Still, it's a relief to finally have temperatures that allow me to forget I've left my bedroom window open all day. On my way home today, the theme was not green, but skin color. Last summer on the cruise ship, I was introduced to mineral powder foundation/bronzer for the first time and it was wonderful! I keep getting compliments for my skin whenever I use that stuff. But it's one of thos

I found some genuine, bright orange and sharp cheddar in my local grocery store. I was looking forward to having some really tasty mac-and-cheese. Instead, I made a discovery. One does not melt the cheddar in the microwave. It doesn't melt; it goes crispy and that doesn't melt, either. Now I feel like Scarlett O'Hara : Tomorrow is another day. And I have more macaroni and more cheese left.