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.

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!

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.

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.

The Day Before Departure

I have been escaping my Travel Fever most of the day by wandering around a sunbathed Oslo. Spring is truly here! In the collage of our day above I've even included a picture of myself wearing the blue, stripy dress Mum and I found while searching for treasure a while ago.

I can't believe we're leaving tomorrow!

Prince Charming's home!

After spending 10 days in France Prince Charming finally came home today. When I got home from work he was making me dinner. And he'd brought wonderful gifts. He truly is Prince Charming! *sigh*

Spring in Oslo

The weather was really good today. I didn't take any photos while wandering the streets this afternoon doing different errands but I'll post a few I took last week. On the walk to the van in the morning I decided to show you a little bit of Oslo. The result you saw above.

PS. The money spending shopping monstre has escaped quite a few times the last few weeks. I'll update you on the wonders and horrors of that some other time.

No pictures today...

I was planning on posting photos from spring time in Oslo today but Blogger won't cooperate and upload my photos. It'll come later!

So for now you can look at Agathe's great outfit (so easy and so cool!) over at stylebytes.net.

Pickpockets suck!

A few weekends ago a pickpocket stole my MP3 player on my way home from work. It was suddenly gone and I've looked every likely and unlikely place. It has evaporated. So I have reported it stolen to the Police. Today I received both the confirmation letter on the report and the letter saying the case is closed due to lack of evidence. I'm sending the confirmation on the report to my insurance company as my home and / or travel insurance will cover theft on the way to work / school. Can't remember which but I have both in the same insurance company so I'll find out.



What else arrived in the mail today was my new MP3 players. I actually went ahead and ordered two. The one pictured below is the exact same as the stolen one. A Creative V Plus 8 GB. I'm very happy with it and didn't want anything else. It's small and it's easy. 8 GB is enough for me since it was only half full when it was stolen. The web shop I ordered it from also had Creative Zen Stones 1 GB on sale for only NOK 199,- ($ 40 with the crummy exchange rate on USD these days). It's so small and lightweight i thought I'd bring it to Nepal. It's pictured above. And since it's cheap it doesn't matter if I loose it, break it or it gets stolen while I'm away.

20 meters in 2 hours

This is the tale of how I spent 2 hours to go 20 meters today. Well, strictly I drove and walked way longer than 20 meters. But you'll see what I mean.

17:45: I have dropped some stuff off with the Workplace Van since my colleague broke his leg the other day. 20 meters back in the One Way street is my building. Easy to get home? I don't think so!

I was very illegaly parked to unload the boxes and paranoid about the traffic officer I saw two blocks back coming our way. I pulled out into the street, thinking "Now I just have to find a parking space and I'm home." That was the trouble - finding a space. Driving around my block I realized they had reserved all the spaces around the neighbour block for a movie set shooting inside the abandoned school I live next to. I'm sure it'll be developed into fancy apartments when they're done. Anyway, I started to extended my search realizing that the rest of my neighbourhood had temporary signs up, saying No Parking Tuesday from 18:00 to 07:00 due to street sweeping. They do this every spring. The few spaces left were full long ago and the streets were full of cars looking for a space to park in. Everybody had to move their cars at 6 pm, ie. now!

I then came to think of my boyfriends car, parked 8 blocks from our building (nearest free 24 hour street parking). A lot of the streets in the area had temporary No Parking signs up. I started panicking. They were going to tow the Ford and I had promised to look after it! Stuck in the van with no parking in sight, I started sweating. I decided to go home, park the van illegaly on a reserved spot belonging to an office building across the street and go move the Ford, hopefully in time. It was now 18:10. I had to go home to pick up the Ford car keys anyway and the dread of driving over to check on it with no place to leave the van was too much. I had to get rid of the van and walk over. It was either a ticket or being towed. Easy choice.

Walking the 8 blocks was a nigtmare of anxiety. What if they had just towed it? What if I was too late? I had my boyfriend on the phone from France to pinpoint the car's location so I could get to it as fast as possible. Luckily, when I got there, the temporary signs on that exact street stated No Parking Thursday 18:00 - 07:00. In other words, I have to go move it on Thursday. Crisis avoided for today.

When I got back to the van I hadn't gotten a ticket. I was almost disappointed because now I'd have to move it to avoid getting one. Not that I wished for one, after having awokened to a parking ticket on the darned thing this morning. Darned movie set!

I decided to drive over to my colleague to drop off the charger for his phone, as promised. I parked there, on the first legal space I could find. The only legal space I could find, actually. It took me 25 minutes to walk home. I could have taken the tram but wanted to stop for food on the way, so the walking was my choice. No complaining there.

When I got home, there was a free legal space on the other side of the street. It was now 19:45.

An Eventful Sunday

Photo found at Jupiterimages.com

It's already been a very eventful Sunday. Prince Charming left for France at 6 o'clock this morning. He's off for 12 days bouldering and I sure will miss him. I can't go since I'm taking all of May off to go to Nepal. Around lunch I got a phone call telling my my colleague at work broke his ankle last night. So I went to see him at the hospital. He's himself, although a bleaker version. Poor guy.

Picture found at Jupiterimages.com in the Old Visuals Everett Collection.

When I got home I delivered my tax report. Looks like I'll get a little bit back and not have to pay any extra tax, so that's good.

Picture found here.

Sunday in the City

Starting out the day with tidying up in the basement. Now everything's neat and organized in boxes reading "ski" or "cycling". I feel like we are good people, doing things we should do. We've even photographed the lot to document our belongings.

Following that, we strolled down in the rain to the new Opera being built here in Oslo. It's a very impressing and beautiful building. I can't wait for it to open so we can go inside and have a look around. The band "Seigmen" are playing there but it is of course sold out. A great band reunioning in the new Opera, now that would be an experience!

To finish a good day off, we had burgers at Harvey's and saw "Sweeney Todd". Tim Burton, Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter never disappoints!

The Irony of Life

Photo found here.

After having visited my physician on Wednesday I felt pretty good. Everything was normal and I felt one step closer to the departure to Nepal in May. The next day I woke with my left eye red and sore. So today I had to spend another half a day, including 1,5 hours in the waiting room to get a prescription for my eye infection. I can't believe I got it the day AFTER having visited the Doctor! Now, if that's not the irony of life, then I don't know.

Murphy's Law

Tomorrow we're going to Western Norway for a two-night tent trip. Or - that was the plan. I have of course managed to catch a cold. So typical that I'm now on the couch with fever and a runny nose. Climing the stairs feels hard. AARGH! It's SO annoying that I always fall sick during vacations. We're leaving tomorrow anyway to stay with my parents. So if I can't move from the sofa at least Prince Charming and Y can go skiing and get something out of the Easter Weekend.


Happy Easter!

Spring Sun of Past Times

The sun was lovely again today. I had to stay indoors to work. In other words not very good photo material so I'm posting a picture taken two years ago. The feeling of the sun finally warming is just great. Pictured above is FM relaxing at a crag in Sweden.

Spring Sun

My parent's oldest dog's enjoying the Spring Sun. He's nearly 13 years old and almost deaf. But he still seems to enjoy his life and shows no signs of being in pain. When they let him run freely he shoots off like he always has. After 50 meters he can't keep the speed up and acts as if that was a surprise to him him every time. This autumn he attended a week long hunting trip for grouse with my Dad and their other dog. She's 10 years old and only marginally fitter than him. He's old but there's no reason to put him down since he's not suffering. Here he's resting his head on the railing of the balcony. He loves standing there, watching over his kingdom.