there's no place like home!
we've been to umeå this weekend. the main reason for this trip was that my tommy wanted to go to a concert (there's a jazz festival in umeå right now). we also decided to have a look at some cars, as we didn't seem to be able to find one here.

so we left friday morning (there's a school holiday in sollefteå this week), and looked at several junky cars before the end of the day. and by some lucky chance we found the wonderful saab, that we bought yesterday morning.

when handing over the keys the previous saab owner said "i feel mean selling it after 10 years...", which i saw as a good sign. people who talk about their cars as persons are normally nice. and cars that are talked about as persons are normally nice too. it's good for their self confidence, i guess.

i also had time to see some friends. i made a quick visit to humlab between the test driving of junky cars on friday, and yesterday i went to visit a friend who has recently had her second baby. it wasn't nearly as good looking as the old baby, but it was ok. and she didn't cry when i held her, so i like her. the old baby was sweet as always.

we stayed with another friend of mine, and while tommy was at the concert with a friend we stayed at home talking all night. very nice! that's one thing i miss here: being able to sit and talk with my friends. to be honest i don't really miss that very ofte, but it happens now and then.

yesterday we went for a walk with the dogs and another friend. dog walks in umeå are hell! people and bikes and cars everywhere. it's almost impossible to talk, as there's so much noice everywhere. i'm SO glad i don'd have to do that everyday anymore!

i had a really nice weekend, and i'm very glad i was able to see so many friends! but it was great coming home again. the dog went mad and ran around playing with frozen horse shit when i took him for a walk. and then he ran around in the house, throwing things around and almost breaking the sofas. it was nice to see that he seems to like it here too :)

the cats were very happy to see the dog again. especially the smallest one. he followed bob everywhere, and didn't want to leav him for a second. he didn't even say hello to me though...

the only sad thing about the trip to umeå is that i lost my favourite cap/mössa. i had made it myself, and it was perfect. i must have lost it when looking at a crappy car somewhere. we went looking for it at a few places, but we had been all over the place and it would take us another day to go back everywhere... i wouldn't have been so sad if i knew that someone would use it and love it, but it might just be thrown away, or left in the street. so; if you see a perfect red woolen cap somewhere in umeå you can either feel free to wear it with love, or tell me.

  ¶ 11:46 AM

  we've bought a car! a saab 9000. turbo. i don't really know what a turbo is, or how it works, but whatever it is i like it :)

and the heating is great. i drove home in a sauna!  ¶ 12:18 AM

  tomorrow will be my last day at work  ¶ 10:58 PM

  we're looking for a new old car, as we will need one car each to go to work from next week on. today we looked at an opel kadett. it was blue and nice, and the heating worked great (the heating system is the most important thing in a car, for those of you who don't know much about cars). unfortunately there was a weird sound from the engine (which is another quite important thing in a car)... when i consulted my brother the car expert over the phone he said something like: "it might be no problem at all, but the entire engine might have to be replaced". which didn't really help us much in our decision... apparently replacing the engine is no big deal, at least not if you are either of my brothers the car experts.

the engine didn't worry my brother much, but he was more negative to the rust in the floor (which i didn't pay much attention to, as i wasn't planning on looking under the mat very often). we'll have to do some thinking tonight! maybe we woun't be the proud owners of a blue opel after all...  ¶ 10:24 PM

  this morning i realised i worked "illegaly" yesterday...

my neighbour insisted on paying me for the hair cut. i tried to refuse, but he wouldn't hear of it, and left the money in the kitchen. and made me a criminal...

i hope i can plead temporary insanity, because of my cold.

anyway it's interesting to see how quickly i've adjusted to the life in the village. work "on the side" is much more common here than real work. i'll probably be a real "hillbilly" soon :)  ¶ 10:00 PM

  today i have:

* bought myself a pair of skis, ski sticks and skiing boots
* found my favourite tea in a grocery store in sollefteå, and bought it
* bought some other stuff in the grocery store in sollefteå
* tried to buy a thing to shift tyres on the car (but they were sold out)
* been friendly with our neighbour, who was a bit sad and a bit drunk
* cut my neighbour's hair
* had tea with my neighbour and my tommy
* seen a dead elk without skin hanging from a tractor in our neighbour's garden. looks a bit like a big alien. but bob think's it looks delicios. (he also thinks horse shit is delicios...)
* cought a cold. i guess i cought it a while ago, but i didn't really notice it until today
* thought i'd freeze to death
* analysed some of the material i'm working on for my essay, and sent the results to my supervisor. my head was spinning while i was working on it, but i really wanted to do it as quick as possible, as i guess i won't feel like working too many hours a day once i've started at the unemployment office... i hope i didn't just mess things up! for a while i almost thought excell was trying to be mean to me, but i guess i was just too tired to think clearly
* watched a cohen film on tv
* had coca cola and crisps and ginger bread. a think all of those things are good when you have a sore throat

i think that was about it... now i'm going to bed, and hopefully i'll be well again tomorrow. good night!  ¶ 11:22 PM

  rain and falling autumn leaves can make it very difficult to find a naughty dog hiding in the woods

today was one of those times. eventually i found him, chewing on a big bone. fortunately it didn't smell too bad, and it wasn't too difficult to persuade the naughty old man to bury it for a possible future of starvation. he's very good at burying bones, our dog! i must admit i'm quite proud of him.

...and if he should ever have to face starvation he probably has enough bones in the woods around here to keep both himself and three or four of his closest girlfriends satisfied at least a month :)  ¶ 10:12 PM

  comment on an earlier post, where i complained about the darkness:
it's the indoor darkness i don't like. outdoor darkness is wonderful! as long as it's "real"... i don't like the darkness in cities, where all the light from houses and street lights and cars make the darkness into a thick grey foggy thing... i like the darkness to be dark and light.

last week the few street lights we have here in nyland were lit all through the night. this made me really upset, and i nearly telephoned someone to complain about it, but fortunately they now turn them off at 23.00 again. i love going on the last walk of the day in darkness. most people here seem to go to bed early, so there's not much light from windows to disturb the sky (and there are not many windows anyway, so even if the entire village would stay up i wouldn't have to walk very far to find the darkness).

we can see both långsele and helgum from our house, as pink lights in the sky. both långsele and helgum are rather small places, about 6 km from us in different directions, and we can't see the "real" lights as they are both on the other sides of a couple of hills. but we see the pollution in the sky that their lights are causing. it doesn't take much light to destroy the darkness...  ¶ 11:11 PM

  i was mistaken about the winter... seems like fall decided to stay a bit longer   ¶ 7:54 PM

  it's so cold my nose hurts  ¶ 10:27 PM

    ¶ 6:53 PM

  today i noticed that it's not only our neighbours that have some ice in their lake. we have it in ours too! but only in the upper half, our half is still "iceless".

i'm both dreading and looking forward to the lake turning into ice... i'm curious about what it will look like. this is the first time in my life that i have water right outside my window, so that i can follow it's freezing process from scratch (as i did with the breaking of last years' ice only a few months ago...). and i'm looking forward to being able to walk on it again. but having the lake turned into ice also means a looong loong winter...

it's not so much the cold that i'd like to wait a little longer, it's the darkness i can't stand. i've been trying to convince myself that it's cosy, and to light candles and read books and drink tea and to sit under heavy blankets in the sofa, but nothing helps. i still can't stand the darkness. i hate eating breakfast when i can't even see the treas outside, and i hate having darkness surrounding the house from all sides. and this year i don't even have a bathtub :(  ¶ 10:51 PM

  just a few minutes ago i had the biggest sign of recovery this far. i was vacuuming the floors (something i seem to do all the time this time of the year. the dog and the cats seem to be filled with sand....) and i bent down to reach in under the sofa! i can't even remember when i did that last... normally vacuuming under the sofa is a very painful activity, and i do it with both knees and hands on the floor(or in the worst cases; lying flat on my belly). so bending down is a big step for me :)

and now, after having filled the vacuum cleaner with a ton of sand and leaving only half a ton of sand in our home, i'm not lying on my back being unable to move. i'm able to do lots of things now that i couldn't do a few weeks ago without having to rest half an hour afterwards.

i love not being in pain all the time! i realise now how tired i've been this last year. the week before last i was able to sleep several nights without any pain at all!  ¶ 4:25 PM

  the northern lights are dancing over the lake tonight. wonderful! this is the first day of winter, i think... the nights have been below zero for a couple of days, and the small creek in our neighbours' lake has been covered with a thin layer of ice, but today was the first day with the smell of winter in the air. and the first day of toes turned in to ice. it was also the first day of using the winter shoes, and the day of covering up my poor rose with it's winter garment. i hope it will survive the winter even though it comes from a much warmer neighbourhood. i'm refusing to take my winter jacket out of the closet as long as possible. once the winter jacket is on there's no turning back...  ¶ 12:03 AM

  the sound of rain in the forest is almost the same as the sound of fire... isn't that a bit weird?  ¶ 2:40 PM

  i have decided to go for the new job at the unemployment office. i don't expect it to be extremely interesting, but i guess the chances of getting nice co-workers are quite big. i think they said we will be 80 people working together...

and i don't find the job i'm having extremely interesting either, to be honest :)
sometimes it's nice, and sometimes it's "un-nice". in some ways the "un-niceness" can be quite interesting though, for instance: how one student can affect the mood in the entire class. there's one student that is rather demanding, and i have to admit i'm very relieved when he's not there, because that means we can actually *do* something that day, but it's also a bit fascinating how a grown man can be so self centered that he doesn't even notice (or care?) that there are other people in the room that might have different interests than him. another interesting thing happened the other day, when a new student started. she didn't say much, but somehow she managed to make all the others restless and nervous, and when she left after the break everyone was so happy and relaxed. maybe there was some political tension between her and some of the others... apparently it's quite common at the school that people can't be in the same room as certain other people without fighting.

but the most horrible experience i've had at this job so far is when i had to take care of a class whose teacher was away. they were mad! running around hitting each other with sticks... like monkeys :) i was exhausted after 20 minutes, and was finally totally convinced that i'll probably never like being a teacher.   ¶ 3:26 PM

  the rain is so heavy right now i almost can't see the forest right outside the window  ¶ 12:01 PM

  rain in my face, the dog by my side, fresh air to breath, total silence except for our steps in the muddy road (i guess the last birds must have left the lake yesterday... normally they are quite loud), bright colours all around, the daylight hasn't left yet and my jogging shoes still not soaked. can it be much better?  ¶ 6:42 PM

  Il en faut peut pour être heureux
Vraiment très peu pour être heureux
Il faut se satisfaire du nécessaire

...my new motto

(a friend of mine gave me this verse on icq. his girlfriend sings it to him, apparently. cute :)  ¶ 11:09 AM