Blog is good for answering the most pressing question these days: What do you want to see under the tree this year?

This toughie tops my list: Motorola defy+ with the +. My current smart phone started acting weird right from the start, and has really developed a personality by now (Sometimes I can hear you, sometimes not. It will freeze for no reason at all. It frequently loses reception in broad daylight, with or without telling. I’m in luck if I can get online.) In short, I need a new phone. And this time a durable one. This is Norway, not California.

Though it is hard to keep a dressy wardrobe in the current, temporary residence with little room for such, I dress reasonably business-esque for work. This necessitates the use of blouses on a daily basis (who’d have thought?) I love green, turqoise,  dark, intense colors in general, and unusual cuts. And this: 

Oslo can be a cold place in more than one way, and I’m always out of warm sweaters. I love the style with a huge, wide neck and a slim body that covers the butt. Color preferences much same as for blouses, plus grays. Continues under the image (stupid linkback feature, that white wall beneath the picture was completely unnecessary).

No acrylics! My work computer has a metal case, and if I build up static from moving around in synthetics I zap it several times a day (sometimes with visual and auditive effects)! I don’t think inadvertent electrocution is beneficial for macbooks OR human hearts. I know the trick in which you touch the metal object with a key in your hand to spread the charge exchange over a bigger surface, I just can’t do this every time I touch my comp.

I would be very thankful for thin socks, but no need for warm ones -I have a bag full and they don’t wear out.

Jumping out of character for a moment, I observe that posting a list of stuff is completely out of fashion. All it-blogs (that are not paid to do otherwise) are currently pouring home-made, non-consumerist gift ideas (which mostly require heaps of fancy supplies, but let’s not do the math). I do care about the extra spending at Christmas which can be quite wasteful, and I too could have made an anti-materialist let’s-send-it-all-to-children-in-need-post. However, these posts tend to be just as vain as anything else (yosh look at me, I’m being selfless!) and change little. The above items are things I will be getting myself anyway, and putting them under the tree will not lead to more spending. The best strategy to reduce Yuletide overspending is making specific and sensible wishes.

In other news, we are still looking for our flat, it’s good to have ample time to wait for the place that feels just right.

What do you want to see under your tree?

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:

September seems eternal from here. It is like a never ending stream of work, with which I can on no account compromise because others depend on it. Still, whenever I feel empty I can take a mental look back to June 6. and the months leading up to it and feel the sweet relief of never, ever, ever needing to complete a master’s thesis again. No matter what my professional life throws at me, it will never match the stress and distress and feelings of insufficiency that came with the last phase of that project. I am able to keep work at work, it is not my life or identity or basis of existence (though it may be part of my pride). I do stay an extra hour every day, but that hour keeps me from bringing it all with me throughout the evening.

My team is solution focused and a very pleasant bunch, my pupils are mature and well-behaved (if quite whimsical and independent) and I am learning as much as I am teaching every day. I may well have found the best school I could have ended up in. Of course I hope every teacher in every school is able to say that.

Muslims go all day without food this month, and I thought to see what it’s like, I just skip that huge dinner they have after sundown (I do eat breakfast and take vitamins, and if anything adverse happens I’ll stop in that instant. Don’t worry).

What can fasting plus daily exercise do to you? Reducing your waistline by 5 cm in a week and a half! (Back to where it were before England, it’s nice to fit in my clothes again.) I’ve never had much of a sweet tooth, but suffer from regular snack attacks. One day without meals and my blood sugar is stable as never before, the urge to snack is gone, and energy levels are higher than ever. I’ll definitely do this again.

WordPress is updating constantly, and now it’s gone in Apple mode and hid all the buttons. I am unable to navigate this interface, or should I say lack thereof. And I who have a heap of great pictures to show y’all!

It worked the way it was, dammit.