The snow has, indeed, stayed!! Which has made for an excellent December, I have to say. For the first time since I've moved to Norway full time, I can say that the snow that first fell in November is sticking around, while more has come to join it, more or less regularly. The end result has been an excellent white December, and Christmas!
We've even managed cross-country skiing a few times, and with more snow coming, likely to go out again before long :). Which is great, because I finally bit the bullet and bought myself a new pair of skis, wax-free ones at that! No more messing around with trying to get the right amount of the right coloured wax applied in the appropriate manner to a) have enough grip but at the same time b) not clog up the underside with snow. (Yeah, I was getting a bit pretty annoyed with my waxing results the last few trips of the previous season and the first one this season went just as badly :P.)
Otherwise, the year got just as crazy busy as expected towards the end, so I have really enjoyed the last couple of weeks. Time off, with no big plans, relaxing and having fun making yummy food, walking around in the snow, the occasional skiing trip, a couple of social calls with a very small number of friends and good Norwegian Christmas beer. What's not to like?!
While it's not cool to be missing the family Christmas get-together in England for a second year in a row, the fact that we could be there as recently as this autumn meant that it didn't feel as bad. Plus the upsides of a quiet holiday at home are definitely growing on us :).
Spent quite a bit of time watching films, for a change a lot of Marvel and DC stuff we'd generally steered clear of or just hadn't managed to catch in the cinemas for some reason or other. The Star Wars sequel trilogy was finally watched in full. With mostly meh-ish responses. The second Spiderman (Far from Home) and the first Venom were generally hilarious. Captain Marvel and Black Widow less so, but still generally enjoyable.
And then there was the DC stuff :|. I think there can be no doubt that the Marvel stuff just makes for more enjoyable film watching :D. The DC films are all so dark and broody. OK, maybe it's just the Snyder ones. We decided to watch the marathon Justice League: Snyder Cut which was a bag of laughs (not!) but did seem to at least follow through with most of the subplots and such. In some ways the two Wonder Woman films and Aquaman were ones I enjoyed the most.
The two films that I watched and thought, now this is stuff I really want to talk about, though, were Tenet and Dune. What an awesome pair of films! For completely different reasons I guess. But both left me with a definite sense of awe, pleasure at having watched them, and thoughts, questions and a sense of wanting more! Not something I've experienced often lately. To be honest, I really want to go back and watch Tenet once more. I was definitely reminded of the magic of Inception (rather than the bit of a let down that Interstellar was for me). Whereas with Dune I was left wondering (again) why I hadn't picked up the books yet, despite having crossed paths with the series several times in the past.
Speaking of books, I finally finished The View from the Cheap Seats! Some five years after I bought my copy, in the end :). And loved it! I think I just generally love the way Gaiman writes. Anything, novels, comics, short stories, introductions, afterwords, speeches... Speaking of the introduction (to other people's books), as I mentioned last time, some of them I found rather compelling! To the point where I've actually decided to base my upcoming book club suggestions entirely on books the introductions of which are to be found in The View from the Cheap Seats :).
Continuing on the Gaiman theme, I also got hold of his Eternals work and MorrorMask. The former I loved! The latter, I'm not sure. MirrorMask gets a couple of entries in ...Cheap Seats, and the feeling I am left with overall is that it's probably best experienced as a film. Which is what it was made as first. Who knows. But with Eternals, it was very much in the classic Gaiman mould. Great story, amazing characters, and a sense of action despite, as he says afterwards, lots of characters just standing around and talking :D
In between, I also managed to read the book club book of the month! Once I finally got it! This has to be the longest it's taken Adlibris to deliver me a book! Near about five weeks since I ordered it, when they'd claimed two to start with :|. Anyhow, Zealot, when it did arrive, was an odd read. I mean, the blurb wasn't really in keeping with the book itself I thought, in a good way.
The flow of the book overall felt very jumpy. A lot of events referenced and cross-referenced in apparently random order. Added to the very non-linear way in which time flows in terms of what is being talked about, it can make for a pretty confusing read. In the end the overarching feeling I was left with was that at least the author seemed clear and open that this was their view on things and that in the end, faith is really a matter of personal choice. Or at least it should be. But I suppose that's just my take on the matter.
Hmm, this is kinda turning into a longish post :). And I haven't even done the usual look back on the year yet! I suppose the lazy and generally inaccurate way of dealing with that would be to say something like, oh well, not much really happened this year :P. Even on a personal level that would be entirely untrue.
We did manage the one trip abroad. And that was definitely a blessing. Up until a couple of years ago, many people didn't think too much about having family spread out across different countries or continents I suppose (or maybe that's just me). Taking somewhat for granted the ability to be able to just go see folks when one felt like it. I suppose gratuitous international travel may never be the same again. But there's something to be said for people being able to see new places and people. Experiencing new things, cultures, ways of life. Hopefully there'll remain some way to sensibly do that going forward.
I'm glad cycling was back on the menu this year! With some short trips and some long. I hope we'll continue to use this as a way to see more of Norway in the coming year. But first, I would really really love to have a cross-country season that's anything close to what we had this year :). I mean, what's the point of living in Norway if you can't go cross-country skiing right? :D I kid of course (well, maybe only partly).
