The march of seasons brings colour back into the world, albeit slowly

It's nearly May! And finally I get to a point where it's not just a feeling any more that this year has been going on for a while :). Maybe that came out too cryptic, so to recap: Year 2024 starts. At utterly crazy pace. After a week I'm left feeling like this must be more than just one week, surely, surely it's been at least a month since the Christmas break. No dice. Fast forward a few months, and the feeling is finally starting to ease. Microscopically.

So, April then! It's kinda been threatening to turn into an early and bright spring every now and then. There was an amazingly sunny week with temperatures soaring into the mid teens (°C) that made everyone feel all hopeful and what not, and then snow. Like, snow that stuck around for another week or so! Crazy! 

Now it feels like summer might actually be around the corner. No great surprises right? 17th of May is almost upon us! And with it the season of short weeks where almost every week has a public holiday. And have I got plans for any of them? Currently, zip. Nada. But maybe that's a good thing.

Big news though!! After five years of trying, pleading, coaxing etc. we finally, finally have an entry into the Holmenkollstafetten with Kezzler this year!!! (What does this odd word signify you ask? Only the world's largest relay race! And something I really enjoyed being part of for five years with my previous employer :).)

To prepare, I've actually been out running. Once :P. It'll be fine, the point is not how fast we run, it's that we participate, together. At least that's what I've been trying to drum into my colleagues :). We'll see. It's not like I'm going into this fully cold though, we did get going with cycling. A few 20km ish rides in the hopeful spring sunshine...

Maybe that's what we'll do during the May holidays. Or read. Which is what I've been doing a fair bit of the last month. After what's felt like a few months off almost. It's not like I hadn't been reading at all, but it was more of a background thing, something to fill in the odd quiet moment.

Then I got wind of The Murderbot Diaries. But I am getting ahead of myself. First, I did go ahead and finish reading Fight Club. And to be honest, the thing I enjoyed the most was actually the afterword. It was super interesting to read how Palahniuk experienced the dissonance of what he wanted the book to be and what the story had turned into. I've considered if I'd like to watch the film again at some point soon, mainly to see how it compares. I'm currently undecided.

Was it a powerful statement of a book? Certainly. Did I enjoy reading it? Not really, certainly not large parts of it. Although the narrative style was unique and the perspective does shed light on life in ways that makes one think. Also, how well does it translate thirty years later?

So to get over it, I did what I often do, turned to graphic novels :). This time I dipped into the Earth One world again, with three volumes of Superman: Earth One. Again, quite a cool take on the classic. I feel like Zack Snyder may have taken some inspiration from some of the storylines? Who knows. They were nice enjoyable reads, and got me out of spending too much time digging too far into Durdenverse. (Or was it to stop Durdenverse digging too deep into my mind?...)

So, I've gotten into the habit of talking books, films and such with colleagues over lunch. Actually this is not a new habit. I just feel like we do this more often these days. And this is how I got pointed towards Murderbot. I also discovered that our local library has copies of all seven (yes, seven) books in the series! So I picked up the first three to give it a go. The books are more novellas than full size novels, so really, it wasn't as great an undertaking as it might sound :). 

One Saturday. That was it, I absolutely raced through the three books and was left desperately wanting more! It's such a fun series to read! The premise isn't wild, pretty classic sci-fi: augmented human / humanized robot decides it's had enough of just following boring rules and starts actually thinking for itself. Fun ensues :). Well, there's fun and fun, this is kinda more in the space-western genre with liberal doses of commentary on modern society. The great thing is that it never gets preachy.

The problem is that Exit Strategy (aka book 4) is currently in someone else's hands. This is the one downside of libraries, you've gotto share. Which is good, because, you know, over consumption, over production, un-sustainable use of natural resources and energy, end of human race and all that. But given that the reading itch was raging, I had to find some alternatives. Which is where, oddly enough, a library comes in handy :D. 

I found Becky Chambers. Specifically one of her non-series offerings: To Be Taught, If Fortunate. It was a lot more cerebral. One has to read a little bit more closely to follow the details. There's more flair, certainly. But the author's opinions seem to be bursting out through the seams of the story :|. Which is a shame, because the world building really is quite exquisite. Although here I mean literally the physical building of planets and moons and such...

To hedge my bets, I'd also acquired some fantasy from the library, the much celebrated Robin Hobb, who I've never read. I thought I'd start with Assassin's Apprentice and take it from there :). Although I have still got half a book to go through before I can lay my hands on it. 

This month's book club book is a memoire. That of Miriam Margolyes, This Much is True. I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting, or if there was anything particular I was expecting, but overall I'm enjoying reading the book. To be honest, I was not that familiar with the author. She seems to go to some lengths to let people know that there will be no filter, and indeed there seems to be none. Which has it's upsides and downsides.

I do find some of the passages quite thought provoking. She shares her reflections candidly, not trying to make sure she comes out in necessarily a good light always. There are some other elements which maybe I didn't strictly need to know, or can fully understand. As a fellow book club member mentioned, there are parts of it you probably only really get if you were familiar with Oxford in the '60s and so on. I am looking forward to the discussion next week :).

So that was rather a lot of book chat, and I'm eager to delve into more new territory in the coming weeks. But I'm mainly rather looking forward to some proper early summer weather. Not necessarily to do much more in than just enjoy the warmth of the sun on my face without the wind freezing it :). One lives in hope.

PS. The parents have their Norwegian visas!! *Massive excitement*

Of travelling ceiling lamps, lost electricity meters and slushy snow

Recency bias is a thing. I mean, I know for a fact that I've definitely felt run off my feet during most of March, yet, having had a nice and very relaxed Easter break for most of the last week, I'm feeling closer to chill than I have done at any point this year. Yeah, crazy! Well, that's how it feels anyway.

But yes, it has been very nice to be able to kinda slow down. Took the first couple of days to just sleep in really! And since then it's been more about pottering about the flat, sorting a few more things out. To be honest, after the initial spurt and the visitors, there hasn't been that much headspace to do all that much really. Although it must be said, getting used to a move takes time, so it's probably for the best that we didn't try and do too many things too soon.

The internet's working properly though!! Yay! And it took most of three months, but we finally have all our ducks in a row when it comes to transferring over all the bits and pieces from the previous owners. We think. How boring does that sound?! :D. I feel like there's nothing that makes you feel more like an adult (in all the mostly boring/blah ways) than owning a place.

So why didn't it feel this way the last time around? Hmm. Food for thought. I wonder if it had something to do with the fact that at that point I was also trying to adjust to landlubber life after nearly a decade of offshore rotations? Adulting has many faces. Mostly though, it seems to be about figuring out that the adults never really had anything figured out anyway. Hurray!

On to the more mundane (or exciting, depending..) matters of weather and such, spring is definitely on the way. In that wet, damp and somewhat miserable way it has sometimes when the snow disappears more from getting washed away while the world stays enveloped in fog, rather than getting melted away in the more exciting company of blue skies and sunshine! But hey, the crocuses are trying to put in an appearance, so I'm not necessarily complaining. 

Somehow I'm not unhappy at all to see the back of the snow at this point. Maybe it's because we did manage to get in one more day of some pretty fun cross country skiing. And even an afternoon of snowboarding! But the cross country first.

Got invited to a weekend away to Blefjell with some acquaintances, so we get there Friday evening and settle in. All of Saturday is basically a blizzard blowing outside, the likes of one I've never seen before! Once the winds abated and the clear skies came out, there was a bit of work to be done to dig the cars out :/.

The Sunday was just amazing weather though! So we made the most of it :).

Then later the same week, we had a Winter Day with work, which involved carting our choice of snow shredding equipment to work and heading off the Tryvann Winterpark at lunchtime! The rest of the day was spent enjoying some of the very slopes where I took my first very shaky steps on a snowboard sixteen years ago!! Time does fly.

So that was most of the excitement, but I've also been reading a little bit! Richard Osman's latest was entertaining enough, if not spectacular. Although, I did have a very enjoyable time on the train to work one day, so much so that a fellow passenger had to sneak a peek at what I was reading to see what was making me shake quite so much while I tried to stifle my laughter :).

After that I decided to try some more Norwegian, but this time took the easy way out with Batman: Earth One. Norwegian translations of which are to be found in our local library :). Quite an interesting take on Gotham's finest. I mean, weird, but kinda novel!

While I was at the library, also decided to pick up a copy of Fight Club. Why? Not entirely sure. I guess it had something to do with the fact that the staff had decided to stick it on the recommended shelf? I'd watched the film, maybe a couple of times, but nearly twenty years ago and was left suitably dazed/shocked. The book though, is entirely at another level.

One interesting thing was to try and keep my knowledge of the protagonist/Tylor Durden relationship from messing too much with the reading experience. But then I'd see sentences like this:

"I know this because Tyler knows this."

Anyway. I think I got a bit creeped out by some of it. The satire is very very dark for my taste. But then again, was that really unexpected? So now the book's just sitting there on the living room table, waiting for me to pick it up again. I think I'd like to finish it. We'll see.

Well, there's one more day of the break left before getting chucked back out into the churn and bustle of the world. To be honest, not looking forward to it. Maybe I just need a longer break. Don't we all though?

Is this too early to be wishing for spring?

Not that I want to wish any of this year away. Despite the extra day, February felt brutally short :/. Although, while my abiding feeling about it, a bit like with January, is that it was incredibly busy with not a moment to catch my breath, that's probably, mostly, proximity bias :). I mean, this last week's been a bit crazy, but there've definitely been some quieter bits.

For instance, there was that Saturday evening when I went cross country skiing with my brother-in-law. It was snowing somewhat softly to start with. The woods were slowly darkening with dusk and it felt like we had the whole world to ourselves. Of course, that was in the midst of a weekend when I went skiing four times, and by the time we were getting back to the car the snow was practically driving horizontally into our eyes :D.

So, we've had our first visitors in the new place! Always best with family, particularly family you get along well with, to try out new things, like how easily can six adults and a nine month old fit in the apartment you moved into a couple of weeks earlier :D. The answer is, very happily, I'm glad to report!

And yes, we went skiing, sometimes all together, sometimes in smaller groups. It was a good thing too, the snow was nice and fresh, and it was nice to have an excuse to really make good use of it. Since then, there's neither been the time, nor the weather really. It's been above 0°C most of the month, and raining :(. Well, such is life.

I did get back to reading a bit more. In fact, I'm really chuffed that I managed to read a whole book in Norwegian! The book club book for the month was At Risk. But it wasn't available in English from the library. Or rather, someone had already borrowed the English copy. I noticed, however, that there was one available in Norwegian, and more or less as an experiment, decided to get it.

So, it happens to be the debut novel of former MI5 spymaster Stella Rimington, who I'd never heard of before, to be honest. And it's a spy novel :). The first of a whole series apparently. As far as debut novels go, I guess it was fine. I mean, this was no Slow Horses, but neither was it a difficult read, or annoying in any particular way.

That doesn't really sound like a roaring review does it? I suppose the main thing I found was that reading fiction in Norwegian, and fiction translated from English at that, reminded me of reading books borrowed from the library at school, nearly thirty-odd years ago :). There was a sense that I was probably missing some details, but at the same time, I was definitely getting the gist of the story and plot just fine :). Or some version of it at least!

Since then I've moved on to The Last Devil to Die, the fourth instalment of the Thursday Murder Club series. So far, I feel it's taking me a little bit more effort to get into. Possibly because of the significant gap since I read books one to three back to back :). Still good fun though!

Right, now if only the remaining stuff around the apartment would just fix itself, some new snow just show up so we can go skiing some more, and I could feel just a little bit less run off my feet, everything would be just perfect :D.

PS: Those new cross country skiing boots are just amaaaaaazing!!! :)

Changes! Changes!

Man! 2024 feels like it's been going for absolutely ages! By the end of the first week I was already feeling like we were at least two or three weeks in, and I know for a fact that I've not been alone in thinking this :). It's been good though!

Coming back from the UK on the evening of New Year's Day, we faced record amounts of snow! Like literally amounts of snow on the ground around our neighbourhood I've never seen before! Luckily some friendly neighbour(s) had cleared enough of a way for us to wade home without much trouble!

Perfect skiing conditions right?! Indeed! And we did manage to go out once the first week. Since then, not even once.

With the move looming, and much to do - cleaning up the floors, walls and ceiling, plastering, painting, getting skirting boards fitted, not to mention packing... the list of tasks felt endless, the time short. Yet somehow, with a lot of help from friends, we managed to move in to the new apartment a week and a half ago!

Still feels crazy, but I have to say I'm really getting used to the new place already :D. Good sign right? I certainly think so! I mean, there's loads and loads to get sorted. Plus we kinda have to wait till the spring before the garden stuff can even begin to get excavated from under the absolutely monumental amounts of snow that we've seen this January!

Unfortunately the weather's turned quite unpredictable and generally warmer and wetter since the move, so the temptation to rush off on our skis hasn't been pressing :). (Or fortunately, if you account for the fact that it only changed after we'd moved!) 

Hopefully things will cool down a bit before long though, and we'll get to make some more use of the snow. I mean, I did decide I'd had enough of my feet freezing, and bought a brand new pair of x-country boots, so, really hope to be able to use them this season :).

I suppose one thing with moving not many people focus on is the place one is leaving behind. Somehow, that part hasn't quite sunk in. As I said, there's a bunch of stuff left, mostly garden/summer things, the bikes, the summer wheels... things that we couldn't finish sorting through. Going back to pick up or drop off things, or water the plants, brings back the sense of "we're back"...

I guess I've been thinking a lot recently about the nature of things. Things begin, then grow, dwindle and end. We seem to automatically assume that the first two are good and the last two are not. Which is not necessarily the truth, life consists of all these things. Finding a way to embrace them is probably important. 

Things change, change for the better doesn't necessarily make everything that came before bad :). All to say that I've really appreciated the nearly eleven years spent in the old flat, and looking forward to the new :).

In between yesterday and tomorrow

So for the first time in a few years, it's time for a post from the phone :-). Mainly because it's the end of the year and we're not actually going to be home till the new year! So here I am, sitting by a stunningly crackling log fire and a prettily lit Christmas tree, typing into my phone :-D.

We're back in the UK for the Christmas holidays. Which still feels like a bit of a special treat even a couple of years on from Covid. Although, by the sounds of it the no longer so novel coronavirus doesn't seem to be ready to head off quietly just yet. Luckily, barring the cold at the end of November, we've managed to avoid further respiratory drama.

It's been a relatively quiet holiday time this year. Which I've rather appreciated. It's true of most years, but feels particularly the case this time around, this feeling that the year has just rushed past. Spring feels at once hardly any time ago and at the same time so far away that I can hardly remember the details from our long awaited India trip.

The cross-country skiing was really good this year though! With some longer trips as the daylight hours got longer helping me feel like I was getting back to really stretching myself on the skiis rather than just trundling along :-). Which came in quite handy once we started cycling! The first downhill skiing weekend in many years also feels like a highlight worth mentioning. Maybe it'll be nice to do some more of that this time around.

I think in many ways one of the highlights of the year was the cycling! We managed to more or less consistently cycle throughout the snow-less months, all the way from April to October!! And out of the various cycling adventures, the most utterly crazy one was obviously the 400km North Sea cycle in May :-). A bit like the Hallingdal and Numedal cycle in 2020, it continues to feel a bit surreal that we actually managed to do it!

But the fact that we ended up cycling three times as much as we drove in the summer was less down to that one trip and more down to the fact that afterwards, we kept going out on the bikes almost every week, not least all the trips to and from work :-). Hopefully that's something I'll keep doing next year! It's a good feeling, the distance getting easier, finding a level of fitness I'd missed...

On the travel front it was a bit of a mixed bag, the most I've travelled for work in years, but also a fair bit to visit family and friends! India was a highlight, as were the weeks in Bath in the autumn and of course the trip to Jordan more recently.

No post these days is really complete without a little bit about the books :-). The Culture series, of course was a highlight, although most of that I read last year except for the last book. What followed, now that I look back, seems to have been a heady mix of book club books, graphic novels and Middle Earth! And genuinely, it's been really fantastic!

All the Brian K Vaughan stuff was slightly weird, but gripping, Monstress was definitely eye opening and fresh. And then Gaiman was, well, Gaiman :-). But the most fun I had immersing myself into books this year was reading Tolkien! Sometimes the old stuff is the best stuff!

On a more immediate note, I have actually started reading again. The book club book for this month, The Girl with the Louding Voice, was an interesting one. I had very little idea as to what to expect and I have to say,  found it generally engaging. The writing is quite nice, particularly the evolving English as the story progresses. It will be interesting to see how the different members of the club made of the overall story.

I then decided to start on next month's book, one None of this is True, which is rather a different kettle of fish. I don't like thriller types that are trying to be oh so clever :-|. They annoy me. And I find myself trying to get through this one as quickly as I can so that I can return it to the library before the return date. Turns out someone else actually wants it, 'cos I can't actually extend the date any more...

The biggest deal of course was the new apartment! And it's properly official, now that we've got the keys and everything :-). Hopefully the moving will be as painless as everything else has been up to this point :-). I guess that one is definitely the beginning of a hopefully long journey.

So, as I often do in such situations, I went hunting for my post from when I got the keys for our old apartment (which is only old as a contrast to the new one at the moment, seeing how we haven't actually moved yet). I genuinely think, if someone had told me at that point that I'd live there for ten and a half years, I'd not have believed them! I mean, up until that point in my life, I'd never lived anywhere for that long at a stretch :-). Just goes to show, one really doesn't know what's around the next corner in life.

I guess that's as good a place as any to call it a day/month/year. Looking back and appreciating much of what has been, looking forward in hope for the things to come :-).

PS. This one also has a bright red door :-D.