Snusmumriken

I ended up going down to the (open when other doctors are closed)-doctor today. They listened to me talking, and me breathing and me coughing, - and followed it all up with an x-ray. And i came out some hours later with a weeks sick leave and a bottle of morphinous cough syrup.

I have to spend tomorrow deciding whether or not i’ll use said sick leave. I’ll call the university on tuesday, since tomorrow is some weird christian holiday where everything is closed.

The day i started this weeklong exam, I had a throat ache. “Oh well” I thought. “I have a good immune system. I’ll be fine tomorrow.” Yesterday I had a runny nose, a throatache and a fever. I blamed the summer that was happening outdoors when I was indoors trying to write. Today I have a throatache, a fever, a nose running over with blood-stained snot (it’s pretty revolting) and i’m coughing up crusty substances. Oh. And whenever I breath it sounds like someone are playing a flute or something.

I don’t approve of this.

What happened to the good old “drinking tea, havimg my exams, feeling like i’m able to do a good job”. It’s not present in this exam at least.

High up on my list of “stuff i don’t really need and therefore probably don’t want, but which still is awsome” is this Pig speaker and radio. Unfortunately I can’t come up with a situation where i’ve needed to play low music outdoors.

Now. I’m living on the westside of oslo. I live in a shared appartment in a functionalistic living block from 1930. It’s nice. It’s got lots of lovely stuff that i’ve always wanted. A dishwasher. A lift. A bathtub. A waste-something (Søppelsjakt). But i’ve always had lots of plans for my hypothetical future home, and whenever spring comes and the sun is heating up the concrete of the building. Whenever the 7th floor turns tropic, - i start looking for alternatives. Here are some of my alltime probably never gonna happen - favourites.

Caravan
For some reason, i’ve always wanted to live in a caravan. Not the “stand in one place” variety, but rather the german kind that moves around. Not the “behind a car”-kind, but the “this is a car”-kind. I’ve been looking at ads every spring and autumn for quite a few years now, but it hasn’t happened yet, although there are affordable ones out these. The problem is parking and electricity. Renting parkingspaces are pretty damned expensive, and I fear I would be rather afraid of the dark whenever I ended up in the woods.

Eco villages and hobbit living.
I’ve been looking at different eco villages ever since i learned what it was some years ago. There are several in Norway: lofoten and Hurdal. Most seem to be extremely family oriented, which I guess is nice for the families, and alot sadder for the random single person looking for a nice farming community. I guess one of the awsomest eco villages around is the danish eco-manor Svanholm. It looks to be awsomely collectively run with common kitchen, kinder garden, farmwork, and even cars, all of which appeals to my inner communist - besides it’s basically self supplied. The backside is the very high “joining in” fee. It does look pretty damned tempting though. Another extremely awsome looking one is the village of Lammas in wales. The houses are of the “build it yourself from stuff you find and recycled materials”-kind. A nice example is this house right here. It really makes me want to become a hobbit. The problem is of course that I’m no farmer, and I don’t know if I really want to become one. Still I’ve been looking at all the cheap norwegian farms around in norway, that are empty and which wants people to buy them… and it would mean that I would be able to hold goats and make cheese. I’ve always wanted to hold goats.

Eco domea
Eco villages aside: at one point I want to build my own house. Partly because it would make me feel very manly, partly because there are so many cool ways to build. One of my alltime favourites, even cooler than building a big campsite out of discarded moelven barracks, is the eco domes. There are building plans and stuff on the website I linked to. In norway one would need to build a basement and so on before erecting the actual domes, but they are indeed really nifty looking. I’m dying to make the awsomest house in the world.

But returning to reality… i’m making a second batch of improved wheat and chickpea bread, and I’m being a good girl and writing my exams. Functionalistic living blocks from the 30’s aren’t half bad. Although they, unlike both the hobbit houses and the eco-domes, don’t look like they’re fetched from a Thore Hansen illustration.

I’ve received my exam tasks and I’m to write about prostitution. I’m happy. It was the part of hte curriculum I found the most interesting anyway. I won’t say more about it, or people would think I was cheating.

On another note, one of my fellow pilgrims back in hte summer of 2004, has scanned images and put our very thorough pilgrim diary online. I’m only in for a bit more than half the trip, but it’s worth a look anyway.

I’m really hungry for another trip of this kind. I wonder if i’ll find travel partners for the summer of 09, or if we’re talking compostella, the spring of 010.

1. If you image google “worst” you’ll get some pretty nasty images.

2. If you make flour with more besan (chickpea) flour than wheat, you’ll get a bread that not only tastes of peas, but which also has a strange texture. If you refuse to throw away food, it will also mean that you’ll have slightly weird food to eat for a long time. Thank god it’s a small bread! I need to retry and make a better one next time.

3. If you have write at home and hold a lecture about it - exams. The band you have been wanting to see live for more than five years, but haven’t been able to, because they just play in really small and remote places of sweden will come to sarpsborg without you being able to go.

I thought I should make corn bread. Someone made corn bread for some new years eve party once, and I remembered it as tasty. I browsed for recipes online, and most of the ones i found were rather weird, and had tons of sugar and butter in them, which struck me as weird seeing as i didn’t remember the thing as very sweet at all. I ended up cutting away half of the sugar and most of the butter, ending up with:

1/2 cup Sugar
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup whole milk
2 eggs
1tbsp butter
1/2 tsp salt

In a kettle and whipped it a bit over low heat until it thickened, and then stirred in

1 cup yellow maize flour
1 cup wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda

And fried it in the oven. Tastes nice, but still alot more sweet and cake-like than i remembered. Americans: how do you usually make this?

Guess I’ll be freesing the rest to prevent myself from eating it all. I’ve always liked the taste of cake that’s thawed on the toaster.

I’m coming to handling the whole exam mess now, i think. I hope. I’m sitting in the kitchen and I’m writing as if my fingers are on speed. The real exams start on wednesday. Wish me luck.