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.

So.. bad imagery, foul tasting bread and not seeing mimikry when they’re finally here. Hurrah.

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.

The world is a confusing place. One week ago. I’m sure it was a week ago, I was out drinking beer with random people at the pub. It was a nice evening, and as I walked home, I had this nice, fuzzy feeling in my tummy. When I walked home, I noted that the moon was a narrow narrow sickle. It thought it was pretty, and looked at it while I walked home.

Last night when I was on my way home from my yoga lesson, happy because I had been standing on my head and hands for the first time in my life, and in some sort of a relaxed trance because of all the yogaing, I noticed that it was almost full. Or.. you know… gibbous.

It had skipped a week. How can the moon skip a week? It’s very very confusing.

And btw. I still want these shoes. They look like shoes one has when one is little. Where can I find them?

(If you haven’t seen the films “The breakfast club” and “Ratatouille”, there are some spoilers. Picked them because they are good examples, and because they are films “everyone” has seen)

This is not me being one of those artsy, voluntarily depressed types, - rather it’s me being a bit hard to fool. I can’t go from arguing with someone, to becoming friends with them, have a cosy chat and a cup of tea ten minutes later. I don’t work like that. And if someone yell at me, I will remain a) sad and guilt ridden for days, if I felt they had a reason for yelling. Or b) Be angry and annoyed for days, if the yelling was uncalled for. My mood don’t change that quickly. My character don’t change that quickly either, and judging from experiences, that goes for other people aswell. Mean and selfish people don’t stop being mean and selfish in an hour. There aren’t any lightbulb moments where they suddenly realise the error of their ways, and suddenly become nice and fluffy. If they say “I can change”, they most probably can’t.

Take for instance the film “Ratatouille”. In theory it should be my favourite film ever. I like rats. I like cooking. Set in France, and with more than a touch of the american dream it actually should be the perfect companion for a rainy afternoon. And I watched it and was happy and all furry inside until the film reached it’s negative climax 2/3 into the film, and the little rat’s human friend took all the honor for the little rat’s work. And the little rat’s face showed the kind of disappointment that includes a whole world falling apart. They reached the ideal happy ending 30 minutes after that. Did it feel cramped? Oh yes. Did it seem reasonable that the big human friend got all nice again, after being mean and bigheaded 30 minutes earlier? No way. Saying you’re sorry don’t make you a nice person. Still hanging with the bad person doesn’t make a happy ending.

And what about “the breakfast club”. It’s slower than ratatoulle allright, - the film actually stops just before the negative climax happens, but it’s luring somewhere in the shadows. The concept is gathering people who, - partly because of personality, but also because of high-school structures don’t get along. The viewer knows that the characters are all going to become friends sometime in the course of the film, but in a wider context it’s really improbable that it’s going to last. And it happens. They bond. They become friends. And when facing the society again, they swear to always be friends. And protect eachother. After knowing eachother for a few hours. The ending is fluffy and sweet, and gives me this rancid aftertaste. Cause the negative climax is coming. Within a week. Some of them will handle the fall, and some will fall badly. Three hours on a Saturday morning can’t fight a life full of impressions. Saying sorry don’t make you a nice person. Returning to the world and all it’s mean structures doesn’t make a happy ending.

I guess the people who call me a pessimist has a point. But it happens rather often that we go out of the cinema, - me stating that it’s the most tragic tale of all time. The other people saying that the film was “almost too happy”.

(where i guess i could have used my fathers nor in the sofa-computer…)

I’m babysitting my part-time-siblings in Fredrikstad, and they are sleeping. It’s a Saturday night, and I really don’t want to work, so I tried to find something funnier. “The internet!” I thought. “The internet has all kinds of fun things!“

I’ve been trying to guess my way into the family wireless connection for an hour. I should give up, but every ten minutes my mind flash back onto “I should ask my fellow Maskerade-players about our relationships” (interlude where I try to find the secret internet code, and where I fail.) I give up, I start reading about guilds and male bonding in early modern europe, and suddenly think that “I should check if they have that book about early modern masculinity in the library” (interlude where I try to find the secret internet code, and where I fail.) I derail, and think I should do yoga “I wonder how the downloading of the crappy yoga videos are going” I ask myself: (interlude where I try to find the secret internet code, and where I fail.)

I’ve been trying to guess my way into “Speider” (boyscouts), “Bandidos-fredrikstad”, “hack-net” and “Rwanda”. What kind of world is this, where hack-net is unhackable and bandidos have an awsome internet connection that’s for bandidos members only?

Nevermind all the times it’s stopped working. Of course that too is bloody annoying, but the worst part is how sensitive windows vista is. I tried to amend it by installing xp, but the harddisk actually broke after a day or so, and I gave it up. Everytime i’ve installed programs that require restarting of the computer, makes the computer go completely insane. As a result, I have no iso reader, for instance, which makes it remarkable hard to download computer games.

Today one of my classmates had uploaded a textfile in an unknown file format. I downloaded open office, hoping that would be able to read the file (it wasn’t). Of course, when I started the computer in class, it (as usual) refused to start, not even in security mode. It took half the lecture to actually be able to start the computer.

Although heavy; Although insane; Although completely without a battery; - the old computer was my friend. This one, however, is constantly trying to get the best of me.