Good bye Kolbotn – Hello Oslo!

One more week and this beauty will be out of my hands. So long Kolbotn, it’s been four peaceful years between a pond and a skiing slope. If only our friends had been more mobile (it gets lonely when no one else dares venture across the city border!) we might have stayed longer.

Human and rabbit companions and myself have flown already, to a tentative residence right above nightlife bonanza Grünerløkka. The place is great, but one room is a tad small when you have 25 plants and not the willpower to bin any of them (they’re alive, dammit! How would you feel).

Plan for the rest of the year: Dig through the real estate section of every medium, find the perfect crib and invite everyone to said crib before we need to replace the calendar.

These are exciting times. It is such a blessing to have this room in the city, enabling us to sell the Kolbotn place on a move-right-in-basis and have ample time to find a new nest.

I’ve made a list (several lists, in fact) detailing the requirements of the new place.

•  First of all, it needs to be practically on top on a public transport transit. Failure to comply with this is a deal-breaker.
• The second room needs to be big enough to fit a double work station with at least five monitors.
• Nothing about the building can in any way resemble a communist living machine. This point rules out many options in the upper right corner of the city, as well as anything over ten stories.
• Lastly, the place needs to have an x-factor, something that peeks the interest of a couple of nostalgic minds. Non-right angles, non-standard windows, an unexpected built-in shelf or a blue door are possible x-factors.

We’re prepared to pay the extra heating costs that come with an older flat, simply because older flats tend to be more interesting.

Work is still killing me, but people keep telling me it only gets better from here. November is the time when new teachers have depleted their energy stores from summer, but have not yet established the time-saving routines that are so vital in this profession. Makes sense. I counted my hours for this week, and according to the economy curriculum I’m teaching at the moment, my current workload is not even legal on an hour-to-hour basis (this comes down to me being too thoughtful about the things I do, and having to prepare all material from scratch. My employers are great and gives me all the flex that they can, it is not really their fault the previous science teacher took a hike and took all the materials with them).

So I bite my lip and do my best, the feeling of always lagging behind is horrible but I try to not take it personally -there is just no way I could do more.

Also I need to say that sorry everyone; the prize for best Halloween costume of the year is already taken by this guy: