I'm not dead!

I'm back in Cyberspace, baby! It's been quiet in this corner of the web for a while. Inspiration has not been a commodity. I've been a total couch potato (at least nearly) for two weeks as Prince Charming was climbing in Sardinia while I had to work. Bummer. Today we had some quality time out running together. Neither of us are avid runners but I enjoy spending time with him to such and extent that I didn't mind running. Actually, I've traditionally been running more often than he has. But now! Maybe this is the start of a new and better life - again?!?

Bohuslän, Sweden

M photographing Ø on Umulius (7+). Photo by me.

Ø sends Birgers Börst (6+). Photo by LMV

M sends Muffins (7-). Photo by LMV.

Ø sends Adrenaline (7). Photo by LMV.

Ø sends Adrenaline (7). Photo by LMV.

It's been a while since I posted anything now. Sorry for that.

Here's pictures from our weekend in Sweden just now. Climbing are Ø and M. The grades quoted are Swedish. Enjoy!

Decorating a bedroom wall

The Glamorous Librarian wanted ideas for decorating a wall in her bedroom, so I thought I'd give some examples here. I decorated my livingroom wall with a giant sticker over a year ago and am quite happy with the result. What's great about these vinyl stickers is that you can take it down when you're bored of it, and it won't leave a mark (they claim - mine's still up)! Just remember to be thorough when you put it up so that all the little parts stay in place. Some of the small parts (like the grass) at the bottom of my design have started letting go. But the small bits higher up are still ok so I guess I was a bit sloppy at first. All the designs below are from http://www.veggpynt.no/:

This is what's decorating the wall above my couch (to the right hand side to make a more interesting space):

For a bedroom a simpler design might be the way to go:

Or maybe something funny?:

I like these two guys:

Or maybe filling the whole space with wall posters? Like a wall paper, but then not:

Being a librarian, why not sleep next to books that won't fall off their shelves?

Tosca

When Prince Charming suggested to go see the opera Tosca being played outdoors, at Oscarsborg Fortress, I was a bit surprised. Not that him wanting to go to the opera surprised me - I just hadn't considered seeing an opera an option. I don't know why, I don't hate opera or anything like it. On the other hand, I didn't love it either. I had never been to see an opera before and didn't have much of a relationship with it at all. But I thought it was a splendid idea, and off we went.

Oscarsborg Fortress - photo found here.

The experience was very rewarding, and I thoroughly enjoyed the play. Can't say much about the singing apart from it being very impressive since I don't know anything about opera. I don't think I'll start listening to opera in the car or anything, but I'd like to see more operas in the future. Since I haven't seen any, the ending is a surprise too... But first we'll introduce ourselves to the world of ballet, I think. I hope there's still tickets available for The Nutcracker in December.

Sirens And Us

Went to Øya Klubb-natt yesterday at Parkteatret and saw three bands I hadn't seen before. I was the most impressed with Sirens And Us who I've been told have only played together for four months! It was so tight and professional and VERY VERY good. I'm definetly going to keep an eye out for these guys!

Earring Day!

Today is my first day with real earrings since I was about 12! That's 16 years without, folks! After six weeks of wearing little gold studs today I'm wearing black rose studs, similar to the blue ones pictured above. All the earrings pictured above I ordered from Forever 21 last week and I can't wait for them to arrive!!! I've displayed all the earrings I've purchased over the last six weeks on the wall so I can enjoy the sight of them every day.

Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!

Batman - Oh Yes!

Poster found at http://www.filmweb.no/

We saw Batman - The Dark Knight yesterday. And it was great, just great! I've always loved super heroes but now it's actually also a VERY good movie. Go see it! And if you haven't seen Batman Begins yet, see that one first. This is actually one of the very few sequels that's better than the first movie in the series. The only other example I can think of is Terminator 2. I'm so seeing this one again!

After Work Picnic

I took Prince Charming for a picnic by the waterside yesterday. We played cards (I won 4 times!), had sandwiches, cold beer, cookies and espresso. It was a lovely evening.

More photos from Nepal

As promised a long time ago, here's more photos from our Nepal Trek.

My Favourite Place On Earth

Romsdalen is the best place I know. You can hike, climb, ski, kayak, boulder or do anything else you can think of when it comes to outdoorsy stuff. But I'm not really ready to leave the city yet and relocate. Maybe in 3-4 years? I'd love a summer house though. To afford one I'd have to win the lottery. And I'm trying real hard to do just that. Once a week, every week. I can't believe I didn't win this Saturday either!

Vacation Weather!

Today is my last day at work before my vacation. I have next week off - feels great! We have been wondering where to go because we want to go to the mountains but the weather forecast has been depressing. The weather is great now, though! I just received an SMS from Prince Charming telling me to check the forecast for Romsdalen (where the Summer House of My Dreams is located too!). The weather seems very unstable these days as the forecast changes all the time. But it promises great weather now - so off we go tomorrow morning. We spent last night packing our camping and climbing gear. But first there's Oslo Live tonight. We'll see Clutch amongst others at this festival tonight. What a great way to start the vacation!

Summer house of my dreams

Photos from Finn.no

Prince Charming and I looked through real estate ads for houses in our favourite mountainous area of Norway. We can't afford a summer house so it's just dreaming. Something like this would be perfect! An old house with a view, situated somewhere quiet in Romsdalen. This one has only got cold water installed, though. It would be so nice to have a summer house like this for the first years and then when we feel grown up and ready to leave the city we could move there. We'd have to have the plumbing re-done, though. I'd just paint the walls white and keep a lot of the old furniture. A summer house should have old furniture, I think. Something very modern would feel wrong in a house like this. Or maybe a mix when we move there full time. But we can't afford it and it would be too much work and hazzle to maintain a house so far away from Oslo. I'm still dreaming, though...

Happy Birthday, JP!

Photo by his wife, I think.

JP's birthday was yesterday - we'll keep the age to ourselves, but it was a "round day". We had a great time, drinking champagne and munching our way through Colombian delicassies and birthday cakes. The photo is from our trip together in October to Indian Creek, Utah.

I sadly discovered that my Bottega Venetta Intreccatio copy peep toe pumps were a size too big. I couldn't walk without my heel popping up from the shoe. So I gave them away to someone with slightly bigger feet than me. I loved those shoes! Below you can see what Bottega Veneta's signature vowen leather looks like - Intreccatio.

Photo from Net-A-Porter

Me

If you're wondering what I look like, here's a photo of me and my lamb Ulle Krulle Jon Andrè.

An Lifechanging Event

Six days ago, I had my ears pierced. To me, this is an lifechanging event. That sounds a bit over the top but it's actually true. I had my ears pierced once before, at the age of six, I think. When I was twelve I had developed an allergy to Nickel so bad I had to stop wearing earrings alltogether. I would react to anything - gold, silver, surgical steel. My friend Y, whom I went to Nepal with had the same problem but had her ears pierced again two years ago, very successfully. The girl who did my ears this time even said gold bought from a Fine Jewellers can have traces of Nickel. So if you're very sensitive only wear "medical steel" (supposedly even purer than "surgical steel"), titan and plastic. I'm planning to buy plastic hangers from Panduro and a few titan hangers so I can replace the ones originally on the earrings. Since what you desperately want is what you can't have, I've longed for earrings for years and years. I've felt handicapped since for no party can I adorn my earlobes with beautiful, dangly thingies. And now I'm free! I'm planning on becoming the Imelda Marcos of earrings. My collection got off to a good start today with the Sales going on - I got the five pairs pictured above with a 75% discount. And I even found some plastic covers or tubes that you can slide over the stud of stud earrings to make them safe. Now there's only five weeks and one day until I can replace the little ones...

Travel Diary

Photo by Ylva

My travel buddy, Y, has started publishing a Travel Diary from our trip to Nepal. You can go read it here. Unfortunately for you people who are not Scandinavian, it's in Swedish. The captions to the photos are in English however. And she has posted a LOT of photos. So it's worth checking out anyway!

Lack of glamour?

I wish there were more glamorous occasions in my life so that I could justify these Chloè peep toe pumps. Yes, they are on sale at Net-A-Porter but they're still £ 195. And I can't find any knock offs!

Happy Happy Music!

Yes!

Update:

I see now how it might seem strange to call this song "a happy song" after having watched the video. I actually hadn't seen the video before. A few years ago I used to attend "Dance Aerobic" sessions and this was the all time favourie of one of the instructors. That's why it is a happy song to me, and always will be. When I hear it I start smiling and I feel like dancing.

Until today when I heard it played on the radio I didn't even know it was Yes!. So although it seems like a strange coincidence that Nina mentioned Yes! as one of the things she likes the other day, it actually is!

Here you can see the another version by Max Graham vs Yes! I believe this must be the version played by my former aerobics instructor.

Redecorating Prince Charming?

Photo found here

It's amazing how you spend a big sum of money at IKEA without flinching. Those guys are good at getting your money out of your wallet! Anyway. My reason for going there after work yesterday was, among other things, getting some boxes for storing Prince Charming's CD's. He has a LOT of CD's . The CD-book-case-thing is full and there are CD's floating everywhere in his (now ours) bookcase too. So I thought it's time to get things organized. We don't have a lot of space in the apartment so freeing a shelf or two would be great. And it would look better. Got 8 of these at IKEA and thought they would take care of the CD's not fitting into the CD-bookcase.

Photo from IKEA

We started out sorting the A's and B's and then the C's and D's. After a few filing errors from my side (Like filing Alanis Morrisette under A, but not Tori Amos) we quickly had one box of A's , two boxes of B's, one box of C's, two boxes of D's, one box of E and F and one box of "Various Artists"-CD's. The CD-bookcase was still full and there were still CD's covering the floor and floating about in the bookcase. He obviously had more CD's than I thought. We'll have to get some more boxes and another shelf for my (now ours) (IKEA) bookshelf.

In the middle of this process I asked myself - am I redecorating Prince Charming? Changing him like we girls have a tendency of doing? So I asked him:

"Am I changing you by making you alphabetize your music collection?"

PC: "Yes"

Me: "But aren't you enjoying finding all those CD's you forgot you had or thought you'd lost?"

PC: "Yes, but that's not what you asked me."

He played me the recordings of his old band, including a song he made. And made a point out of playing me a record I hadn't heard from each letter as we were sorting that particular letter. So we had a pretty good time. I just hope I don't change him into someone I don't want anymore.

Perfect for a rainy Sunday!

The weather forecast Saturday night said it was going to rain the whole day from 10 am on Sunday. So we got up late and fixed little things in the house until noon. Still no rain. We checked the weather forecast again and now the rain was postponed until 5 pm and onwards. Even though we left the house late we got to climb a little bit. I got to do my usual testpiece at Fetsund. I guess I'm not THAT out of shape, since I got up it on the first try. It's fun to see progress after discovering how rusty I was. It did start raining after we had climbed two routes but Prince Charming tried an overhanging project so we stayed at the crag for a while still. Prince Charming hanging up in the wall and I belaying him on a Gri Gri (a device for securing / belaying the climber) munching down Norwegian strawberries. No offense, but strawberries doesn't taste as good anywhere else. It's got something to do with our climate that grows them slowly.

After a very quick frozen pizza and a shower we went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Scull. Fun to see Harrison Ford as Indy again although I think it was the poorest of the Indiana Jones films. I enjoyed myself, though, and it wasn't a waste of time.

Back on track...

...or a least starting the track again. I've started rock climbing again after very close to no climbing since October last year. My skills and moves and last but by no means least my psyche are very rusty. Today was my fourth time this summer and I feel like I'm at least starting to get back into it. The first time I toproped not even 10 meters on a too hard route before it started to rain. Second go I toproped one route and came only half way on the second one that was too hard. Third time went better with two completed routes - one lead and one on toprope. And today I sent a route known as an easy classic crack climb on gear (Pinus 5+, Fjell) - sceared as hell and hyperventilating toward the top. But I did it!

Prince Charming also had a good day. He sent a project he has wanted to do for years (Fenriss 7+, Fjell). This route was also a gear climb. I'm so proud of him! A friend of us got his camera out for the occasion so I'll even post a photo of it when I get my hands on one. The photo above is from last summer at a crag called Hellerud.

Staying in shape

Photo found at Running Past Vintage Photos

Wednesday I convinced Prince Charming to go running with me. I'm not an avid runner but I try to stay in shape by periodically running a couple a times a week, mostly in summer. I thought I should be able to keep up with him after having spent five weeks at high altitude. I must have been born with extremely small lungs. Not only did he outrun me easily, as usual. A really fat guy kept up with us up the steep hill. Demotivating? You can say so.

The good part is Prince Charming's promised to go running together again. If it's wet outside tomorrow we'll go, as long as it's not raining.

Rollercoasters

Photo found here

On Sunday we went out to the local amusementpark Tusenfryd to ride rollercoasters. It's a pleasure when you discover it's just as much fun as when you were a kid. If you haven't taken a rollercoaster for a while, now's the time!

Foo Fighters!

For my birthdayy Prince Charming gave me tickets to see the Foo Fighters concert on June 12th in Oslo. What a great present! The tickets were sold out one hour after they were released so he planned it for months.

The concert was great! The Foo Fighters played for two hours and we got to hear all their hits. I had a real good time, grooving for the whole of the show.

This natural spectacular is just fitting on my birthday! The video I recorded in Chituan in South Nepal.

Finally some photos

Here are the few first photos from Nepal, as promised. More will come. I have over 1000 photos and I think Y has almost as many. Hopefully we'll be able to put together a good album.