Of travelling ceiling lamps, lost electricity meters and slushy snow

Recency bias is a thing. I mean, I know for a fact that I've definitely felt run off my feet during most of March, yet, having had a nice and very relaxed Easter break for most of the last week, I'm feeling closer to chill than I have done at any point this year. Yeah, crazy! Well, that's how it feels anyway.

But yes, it has been very nice to be able to kinda slow down. Took the first couple of days to just sleep in really! And since then it's been more about pottering about the flat, sorting a few more things out. To be honest, after the initial spurt and the visitors, there hasn't been that much headspace to do all that much really. Although it must be said, getting used to a move takes time, so it's probably for the best that we didn't try and do too many things too soon.

The internet's working properly though!! Yay! And it took most of three months, but we finally have all our ducks in a row when it comes to transferring over all the bits and pieces from the previous owners. We think. How boring does that sound?! :D. I feel like there's nothing that makes you feel more like an adult (in all the mostly boring/blah ways) than owning a place.

So why didn't it feel this way the last time around? Hmm. Food for thought. I wonder if it had something to do with the fact that at that point I was also trying to adjust to landlubber life after nearly a decade of offshore rotations? Adulting has many faces. Mostly though, it seems to be about figuring out that the adults never really had anything figured out anyway. Hurray!

On to the more mundane (or exciting, depending..) matters of weather and such, spring is definitely on the way. In that wet, damp and somewhat miserable way it has sometimes when the snow disappears more from getting washed away while the world stays enveloped in fog, rather than getting melted away in the more exciting company of blue skies and sunshine! But hey, the crocuses are trying to put in an appearance, so I'm not necessarily complaining. 

Somehow I'm not unhappy at all to see the back of the snow at this point. Maybe it's because we did manage to get in one more day of some pretty fun cross country skiing. And even an afternoon of snowboarding! But the cross country first.

Got invited to a weekend away to Blefjell with some acquaintances, so we get there Friday evening and settle in. All of Saturday is basically a blizzard blowing outside, the likes of one I've never seen before! Once the winds abated and the clear skies came out, there was a bit of work to be done to dig the cars out :/.

The Sunday was just amazing weather though! So we made the most of it :).

Then later the same week, we had a Winter Day with work, which involved carting our choice of snow shredding equipment to work and heading off the Tryvann Winterpark at lunchtime! The rest of the day was spent enjoying some of the very slopes where I took my first very shaky steps on a snowboard sixteen years ago!! Time does fly.

So that was most of the excitement, but I've also been reading a little bit! Richard Osman's latest was entertaining enough, if not spectacular. Although, I did have a very enjoyable time on the train to work one day, so much so that a fellow passenger had to sneak a peek at what I was reading to see what was making me shake quite so much while I tried to stifle my laughter :).

After that I decided to try some more Norwegian, but this time took the easy way out with Batman: Earth One. Norwegian translations of which are to be found in our local library :). Quite an interesting take on Gotham's finest. I mean, weird, but kinda novel!

While I was at the library, also decided to pick up a copy of Fight Club. Why? Not entirely sure. I guess it had something to do with the fact that the staff had decided to stick it on the recommended shelf? I'd watched the film, maybe a couple of times, but nearly twenty years ago and was left suitably dazed/shocked. The book though, is entirely at another level.

One interesting thing was to try and keep my knowledge of the protagonist/Tylor Durden relationship from messing too much with the reading experience. But then I'd see sentences like this:

"I know this because Tyler knows this."

Anyway. I think I got a bit creeped out by some of it. The satire is very very dark for my taste. But then again, was that really unexpected? So now the book's just sitting there on the living room table, waiting for me to pick it up again. I think I'd like to finish it. We'll see.

Well, there's one more day of the break left before getting chucked back out into the churn and bustle of the world. To be honest, not looking forward to it. Maybe I just need a longer break. Don't we all though?

Is this too early to be wishing for spring?

Not that I want to wish any of this year away. Despite the extra day, February felt brutally short :/. Although, while my abiding feeling about it, a bit like with January, is that it was incredibly busy with not a moment to catch my breath, that's probably, mostly, proximity bias :). I mean, this last week's been a bit crazy, but there've definitely been some quieter bits.

For instance, there was that Saturday evening when I went cross country skiing with my brother-in-law. It was snowing somewhat softly to start with. The woods were slowly darkening with dusk and it felt like we had the whole world to ourselves. Of course, that was in the midst of a weekend when I went skiing four times, and by the time we were getting back to the car the snow was practically driving horizontally into our eyes :D.

So, we've had our first visitors in the new place! Always best with family, particularly family you get along well with, to try out new things, like how easily can six adults and a nine month old fit in the apartment you moved into a couple of weeks earlier :D. The answer is, very happily, I'm glad to report!

And yes, we went skiing, sometimes all together, sometimes in smaller groups. It was a good thing too, the snow was nice and fresh, and it was nice to have an excuse to really make good use of it. Since then, there's neither been the time, nor the weather really. It's been above 0°C most of the month, and raining :(. Well, such is life.

I did get back to reading a bit more. In fact, I'm really chuffed that I managed to read a whole book in Norwegian! The book club book for the month was At Risk. But it wasn't available in English from the library. Or rather, someone had already borrowed the English copy. I noticed, however, that there was one available in Norwegian, and more or less as an experiment, decided to get it.

So, it happens to be the debut novel of former MI5 spymaster Stella Rimington, who I'd never heard of before, to be honest. And it's a spy novel :). The first of a whole series apparently. As far as debut novels go, I guess it was fine. I mean, this was no Slow Horses, but neither was it a difficult read, or annoying in any particular way.

That doesn't really sound like a roaring review does it? I suppose the main thing I found was that reading fiction in Norwegian, and fiction translated from English at that, reminded me of reading books borrowed from the library at school, nearly thirty-odd years ago :). There was a sense that I was probably missing some details, but at the same time, I was definitely getting the gist of the story and plot just fine :). Or some version of it at least!

Since then I've moved on to The Last Devil to Die, the fourth instalment of the Thursday Murder Club series. So far, I feel it's taking me a little bit more effort to get into. Possibly because of the significant gap since I read books one to three back to back :). Still good fun though!

Right, now if only the remaining stuff around the apartment would just fix itself, some new snow just show up so we can go skiing some more, and I could feel just a little bit less run off my feet, everything would be just perfect :D.

PS: Those new cross country skiing boots are just amaaaaaazing!!! :)

Changes! Changes!

Man! 2024 feels like it's been going for absolutely ages! By the end of the first week I was already feeling like we were at least two or three weeks in, and I know for a fact that I've not been alone in thinking this :). It's been good though!

Coming back from the UK on the evening of New Year's Day, we faced record amounts of snow! Like literally amounts of snow on the ground around our neighbourhood I've never seen before! Luckily some friendly neighbour(s) had cleared enough of a way for us to wade home without much trouble!

Perfect skiing conditions right?! Indeed! And we did manage to go out once the first week. Since then, not even once.

With the move looming, and much to do - cleaning up the floors, walls and ceiling, plastering, painting, getting skirting boards fitted, not to mention packing... the list of tasks felt endless, the time short. Yet somehow, with a lot of help from friends, we managed to move in to the new apartment a week and a half ago!

Still feels crazy, but I have to say I'm really getting used to the new place already :D. Good sign right? I certainly think so! I mean, there's loads and loads to get sorted. Plus we kinda have to wait till the spring before the garden stuff can even begin to get excavated from under the absolutely monumental amounts of snow that we've seen this January!

Unfortunately the weather's turned quite unpredictable and generally warmer and wetter since the move, so the temptation to rush off on our skis hasn't been pressing :). (Or fortunately, if you account for the fact that it only changed after we'd moved!) 

Hopefully things will cool down a bit before long though, and we'll get to make some more use of the snow. I mean, I did decide I'd had enough of my feet freezing, and bought a brand new pair of x-country boots, so, really hope to be able to use them this season :).

I suppose one thing with moving not many people focus on is the place one is leaving behind. Somehow, that part hasn't quite sunk in. As I said, there's a bunch of stuff left, mostly garden/summer things, the bikes, the summer wheels... things that we couldn't finish sorting through. Going back to pick up or drop off things, or water the plants, brings back the sense of "we're back"...

I guess I've been thinking a lot recently about the nature of things. Things begin, then grow, dwindle and end. We seem to automatically assume that the first two are good and the last two are not. Which is not necessarily the truth, life consists of all these things. Finding a way to embrace them is probably important. 

Things change, change for the better doesn't necessarily make everything that came before bad :). All to say that I've really appreciated the nearly eleven years spent in the old flat, and looking forward to the new :).

In between yesterday and tomorrow

So for the first time in a few years, it's time for a post from the phone :-). Mainly because it's the end of the year and we're not actually going to be home till the new year! So here I am, sitting by a stunningly crackling log fire and a prettily lit Christmas tree, typing into my phone :-D.

We're back in the UK for the Christmas holidays. Which still feels like a bit of a special treat even a couple of years on from Covid. Although, by the sounds of it the no longer so novel coronavirus doesn't seem to be ready to head off quietly just yet. Luckily, barring the cold at the end of November, we've managed to avoid further respiratory drama.

It's been a relatively quiet holiday time this year. Which I've rather appreciated. It's true of most years, but feels particularly the case this time around, this feeling that the year has just rushed past. Spring feels at once hardly any time ago and at the same time so far away that I can hardly remember the details from our long awaited India trip.

The cross-country skiing was really good this year though! With some longer trips as the daylight hours got longer helping me feel like I was getting back to really stretching myself on the skiis rather than just trundling along :-). Which came in quite handy once we started cycling! The first downhill skiing weekend in many years also feels like a highlight worth mentioning. Maybe it'll be nice to do some more of that this time around.

I think in many ways one of the highlights of the year was the cycling! We managed to more or less consistently cycle throughout the snow-less months, all the way from April to October!! And out of the various cycling adventures, the most utterly crazy one was obviously the 400km North Sea cycle in May :-). A bit like the Hallingdal and Numedal cycle in 2020, it continues to feel a bit surreal that we actually managed to do it!

But the fact that we ended up cycling three times as much as we drove in the summer was less down to that one trip and more down to the fact that afterwards, we kept going out on the bikes almost every week, not least all the trips to and from work :-). Hopefully that's something I'll keep doing next year! It's a good feeling, the distance getting easier, finding a level of fitness I'd missed...

On the travel front it was a bit of a mixed bag, the most I've travelled for work in years, but also a fair bit to visit family and friends! India was a highlight, as were the weeks in Bath in the autumn and of course the trip to Jordan more recently.

No post these days is really complete without a little bit about the books :-). The Culture series, of course was a highlight, although most of that I read last year except for the last book. What followed, now that I look back, seems to have been a heady mix of book club books, graphic novels and Middle Earth! And genuinely, it's been really fantastic!

All the Brian K Vaughan stuff was slightly weird, but gripping, Monstress was definitely eye opening and fresh. And then Gaiman was, well, Gaiman :-). But the most fun I had immersing myself into books this year was reading Tolkien! Sometimes the old stuff is the best stuff!

On a more immediate note, I have actually started reading again. The book club book for this month, The Girl with the Louding Voice, was an interesting one. I had very little idea as to what to expect and I have to say,  found it generally engaging. The writing is quite nice, particularly the evolving English as the story progresses. It will be interesting to see how the different members of the club made of the overall story.

I then decided to start on next month's book, one None of this is True, which is rather a different kettle of fish. I don't like thriller types that are trying to be oh so clever :-|. They annoy me. And I find myself trying to get through this one as quickly as I can so that I can return it to the library before the return date. Turns out someone else actually wants it, 'cos I can't actually extend the date any more...

The biggest deal of course was the new apartment! And it's properly official, now that we've got the keys and everything :-). Hopefully the moving will be as painless as everything else has been up to this point :-). I guess that one is definitely the beginning of a hopefully long journey.

So, as I often do in such situations, I went hunting for my post from when I got the keys for our old apartment (which is only old as a contrast to the new one at the moment, seeing how we haven't actually moved yet). I genuinely think, if someone had told me at that point that I'd live there for ten and a half years, I'd not have believed them! I mean, up until that point in my life, I'd never lived anywhere for that long at a stretch :-). Just goes to show, one really doesn't know what's around the next corner in life.

I guess that's as good a place as any to call it a day/month/year. Looking back and appreciating much of what has been, looking forward in hope for the things to come :-).

PS. This one also has a bright red door :-D.

Interlude

I should really post those photos that go with last month's post :D. I keep thinking about it, but for once, the sheer number of them seems to defeat me, and I keep putting it off... Oh well.

In the mean time, it's snowed some more! The snow from October did disappear after about a week, but since then the temperature's been below -10°C and now the snow seems to be back! Not quite enough to get into cross-country season though. 

Or, maybe it's just been a bit too hectic for that. It is that part of the year, where being active and lively takes that much more effort, everything feels dreary and somewhat miserable. Yup, not my favourite time of year in Norway. However, it's less than a month now till the days start getting longer!

It was nice to get away for a long weekend to the UK actually! Nicer weather, more autumn than the depressing part of winter :). Met family, ate amazing food. The usual :). Well, almost followed India losing the CWC finals... Can't have everything I suppose.

And then at the beginning of this week travelled to the Netherlands for a work trip and the colds and what not that seem to have been felling people all around us finally caught up with me :(. Amersfoort was nice though, what little of it I got to see in one short evening stroll. At least it wasn't raining then :|. So yeah, this week's kinda been miserable. But working from home does have it's perks, extra sleep, let stress, less talking. I guess I'm also in my not too happy to socialize phase just at this moment. Hmm.

I guess there's also the fact that I've basically not been reading at all for most of this month. And I partly blame Votan. It's one of those books I bought because Neil Gaiman wrote an amazing intro for it that I read. While it's not been 100% the case, but I'm beginning to get the feeling that while I absolutely love his own writing, and I do appreciate from time to time where he gets some of his ideas from, his actual taste and mine probably differ quite a bit :|.

So yes, Votan. Cheeky, annoying, and quite mean mostly. But also one of those characters that seems to be around at least partly to hold a mirror up to everyone and everything around them. Well written, no doubt. I guess just not a great read for the darkening miserable winter :).

Instead, I've been spending a bunch of the time I'd otherwise be reading, playing NFS No Limits! And loving it! It's been absolutely aaages since I've played anything Need for Speed :D. It also turns out I'm eight years late to the party, but who cares?!

It's really fun to get into something that does, by and large, let you get on at your own pace. Unless you get bored accumulating XPs (or whatever they're called in this one) to get to the next level in the campaign that is. But I'm just happy racing with as little drama as possible. Yes, swiping and tapping on the phone is not nearly as fun as mashing the arrow keys and slapping the spacebar, but hey, still a lot of fun :). I suppose I will get bored at some point, but not yet :D.

Right, that's enough screen time for now.