Ramblings
I love living in this apartment. The windows of our ninth floor living room look out on the city and the fjord below, and just now as I was sitting with my computer at the dining table, someone started sending up fireworks somewhere to the south and east of us. It was one of those unexpected moments of beauty that I treasure for the way they can change make me think of something else for a little while.
I was supposed to be at the cinema tonight to see Watchmen with leisha_camden , but since I got sick I'm spending the night home alone, since the boyfriend is at a party. I'm self-medicating with tea, the boyfriend's whisky, chocolate and a cinnamon scone, so I guess life is as good as it gets in this kind of situation. (I feel quite the martyr in fact, since I managed to stay away from the boyfriend's Talisker Destiller's Edition - it's so, so good, but deserves better treatment than being used as cold medication.)
What started out as a swollen throat and nasty headache yesterday has now developed into a fullblown cold, complete with watering eyes and a runny nose. I hate it; most of all because I don't have the time to be sick - I'm leaving for the US in two weeks, and before that I have a paper to write for the conference I'm attending, a reading group to prepare for, a big family gathering, a seminar presentation, plus I need new shoes for the Arizona climate, etc. etc. You get the idea. But of course there is nothing for it but to stay at home until I get well; these colds have a tendency to linger longer if I overexert myself too early.
And after all, a lot of the travel preparations are already done. Plane tickets are long since bought, I have booked a place to stay in Arizona and I have a valid passport and travel insurance. I am staying two days in Chicago on my way home, and I have researched which hotel I want ot stay at there, though I haven't booked it yet. I also need to fill out the ESTA form (Electronic System for Travel Authorization) to get me into US territory, but when I have that in place, I've done all the essential stuff. Apart from the d***ed conference paper, of course.
Over on flickr I have started working on the Monthly Scavenger Hunt for March. The list is pretty tough, so I have a feeling I won't be able to finish this month, but it's still fun. The list is as follows:
1. public servant
2. surrounded
3. pale
4. folklore
5. shadows
6. (re)animate
7. thwack
8. groan
9. midnight
10. stagger
11. claustrophobia
12. magic
13. fright
14. dug-up
15. fido
16. ritual
17. shovel
18. dirt / mud
19. cricket bat (or baseball bat)
20. undead
The photo of the candle further up is my submission for fido, which is Italian for 'faithful, loyal', from Latin fidus - 'trustworthy, loyal, steadfast'. I have two other photos done so far, undead, for which I took a photo of some of my favourite vampire fiction and wrote a little about it, and surrounded, where I experimented more with a shallow field of focus and took a photo of some new growth on my newly acquired house plants. I have some ideas for the rest, but some are going to be very tough - the only option I see for cricket bat / baseball bat, for instance, is to sneak into a sports store with my camera. For folklore I plan to go take a photo of Gamle Aker kirke, a beautiful twelfth-century church in the city centre. My grandmother, who worked for a while as a guide in Oslo, told me a legend about the church when I was a kid which I never forgot. There used to be a silver mine beneath the church, and the legend has it that the church rests on pillars that stand in the middle of a silver lake, where silver swans are swimming. (Wikipedia speaks of gold pillars and golden ducks, but I'm going to stick with my grandmother's silver.)
Finally I wanted to share a video I've been listening to on and off for the whole evening - a beautiful rendition of Nightwish' Sleeping Sun with Anette.
Click to view