A Roll in the Universe

I stole this from Paula's 2 x 13 questions (which had me thinking about one half of a deck of cards, and the fact that the Norwegian alphabet has 29 letters, but I digress). Current profile pic from last year. Heh. 1. Share your profile picture. Shared. 2. Who are you named after? Nobody. My mom saw "Keera" in an obituary. 3. Do you like your handwriting? Yes. But sometimes I can't read it. 4. What’s your favorite lunch meat Gudbrandsdalsost—Norwegian brown cheese. 5. Longest relationship? That would be either my friend Ann in actual years or my friend Torleif in years in a row of regular contact. Or the parental units. 6. Do you still have your tonsils? Yes. The only thing I've had removed are my wisdom teeth. 7. Would you bungee jump? If I'm sitting in my own couch with VR goggles, sure. 8. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off? Always. I was taught that to not to would ruin the shoes. Wait, do I even still have shoes that tie? 9. Favorite i...

I could give you all kinds of astrological reasons for why my flow suddenly choked, but suffice to say that the communication planet Mercury is slowing down to turn around and right itself on Sunday. Until then, I shall amuse myself—and hopefully you, too—by wondering about the "false friends" language has. Things that look related or alike, but do not mean the same thing. Take "glimmer" for example. A word that means faint or wavering, especially of light. The dying beams of your flashlight are glimmering. Then there's the Norwegian word "glimmer", which means brilliant or excellent or brightly shining and flickering. Both the English and the Norwegian word have made the rounds but started with German. At what point did the English version come to mean faint rather than bright? Anyway, if someone tells you you're glimmery or something like that in Scandinavia, beam brightly and steadily with pleasure. The Daily Prompt: Glimmer

I have been to the US embassy in Norway only twice. The first time was when I was 13, and had to say an oath in front of some embassy officer in order to get my passport renewed, seeing as how I was living in a foreign country. I remember my first passport, probably lost in a move, and I assume I'll remember my last, currently on its way to the Department of State in Washington, D.C. My first experience at a US embassy was why I was expecting an office and a massive desk and flags all over when I went in for my renunciation appointment. Instead, I got a typical waiting room, and numbered windows, and some magazines to read while waiting. Basically travel magazines about the US in Norwegian. I remember getting my first passport. Or parts of getting it. Sometimes, being a child is a lot like being a dog: The grown-ups stuff you in a car (or plane or bus or whatever), maybe first it involves dressing differently than usual, then you go somewhere else, and you don't know why but yo...

As the man said, as he took my signed papers, when I finally get notification that the Department of State has approved my renunciation in a couple of months' time, the date on all the paperwork will say January 30, 2018. My renunciation day. All the having to be my own travel agent, map reader, logistician and accountant aside, the big moment was the US embassy itself. I reread a good description of the renunciation process itself before I left home, and the part about the physical visit to a US diplomatic post was very helpful. I was (as is my habit) confused by where to stand, but a guard called to me and got me in the right place. He was Norwegian. I had to empty all my pockets, put my purse, watch, and belt in a small bin, and switch off my cell phone. I got a number, almost like getting a coat check ticket. Then I went to the sign that said "Wait here" and waited there. All of this was outdoors, in front of the guard hut or security forehouse or whatever they c...

I've seen "visceral" used to describe something I perceive as instinctual or pathological from the context, but honestly, I don't know what the word means, so I looked it up. Oh, what do you know: It can mean instinctual. Visceral means "relating to deep inward feelings rather than to the intellect" according to my dictionary, and it also means relating to the visceral nervous system. Now to look up what that is. Ah, it is another term for the autonomic nervous system. OK, so visceral is that stuff in us, literally or figuratively, that is beyond our conscious control, our conscious thought. It is that part of us that responds before we've had a chance to form a thought about what we are responding to. I realize that a lot of my reactions are visceral. I feel or sense things and cannot give a good intellectual reason for the sensation or description of it. That actually frustrates me because I understand my world best when I can put it into words. But ...

Some words in the English language are a lot of fun to say or look at or both. Skedaddle, poppycock, aviation, jiffy, moron. Today's Daily Prompt (I'm obviously not doing them daily) is Jiffy . I am a person who walks fast and likes to get things done quickly, but I never say I'll get things done in a jiffy. I'm never too sure how long something will take me, and am absolutely certain that a jiffy is not long enough. As Wikipedia points out (I found that link in a jiffy): Jiffy is an informal term for any unspecified short period of time, as in "I will be back in a jiffy". From this it has acquired a number of more precise applications for short, very short, or extremely short periods of time. And there's the rub. Extremely short periods of time are wonderful at the dentist's. Who wants drilling to go on for more than a second or two? Or have a metal tool scraping plaque off your teeth for more than a moment? These things are wonderful when they ...

"Gate" is one of those words that linguists call "false friends". The word looks alike in two different languages but does not have the same meaning. So a movable barrier in a fence in English is a street in Norwegian (pronounced as GAH-teh).  I'm bilingual, equally comfortable with my mother tongue English, and with Norwegian. I learned Norwegian at age 8 so I speak it without an accent. Being bilingual does not mean translating stuff on the fly. Both languages exist with their respective glossaries, grammar, idioms and sentence structure. On occasion my brain will glitch and try to speak Norwegian using English sentence structures, which leads to some awkward phrasing and some fumbling around as I try to correct myself. The reverse only happens if I'm trying to translate Norwegian into English on the fly. Somewhat more frequently, my brain will toss in an English word while I'm speaking Norwegian or vice-versa. I have yet to refer to a street as a ...

Disastrous: Causing great damage. Fortunately (heh, see what I did there?), I have never experienced a disaster. Neither of the natural kind, nor the personal kind. And that leads me to the word's origin: From " disaster " which means "ill-starred" or to be ill-fated because of the stars. Modern astrology is more psychological and less about fate, more about choice and less about destiny. If I really want to scare myself all I have to do is read an old book and my own birth chart will horrify me. I should be in prison or a psychiatric hospital, or perhaps married to a violent man whom I stay with because he's stinking rich. Here's where I like the modern stuff better: Understanding that a birth chart is exactly that: A chart, a map, not a reality. You can experience your map in many different ways, and how you do will be colored by the people in your life and your circumstances. We all share a birthday with many people and none of us are having the e...