Imaginary time capsule

Back in Bergen again - where I discovered a commode in the shower and the wires and bits of the water heater coiled up on the the bathroom floor. Not entirely certain what's going on there.

Now that I'm back to my regular life - and computer - again I feel like there've been so many things I've neglected to write about this December. Just look at all the things I've done:

- Finished all of The Wire, which I feel I should have written A WHOLE LOT about, because it is probably the best TV series I've ever watched. Top quality. It's this damn-nigh perfect entity - which is why I've never been able to write much about it, because I can't pick it apart and latch onto specific things to fangirl about, like I do with my other shows. All the characters are complex and flawed, ALL of them do both wonderful deeds and despicable ones, the stories are spellbinding but never gimmicky. The Wire is just... amazing television.

- Listened to Tiny's upcoming baby's heartbeat. Well it - she - is already a baby but she haven't made her world debut yet, you see. I accompanied Tiny to her check-up, and the doctor listened with one of those doppler things and I... spontaneously started crying. I mean - I know my sister's eight months pregnant and I've felt the baby kick and hiccup and everything, and I'm not a very sentimental person, but hearing those heartbeats I got shockingly emotional all of a sudden.

- Celebrated the most ethical and environmnentally friendly Christmas yet, by replacing the usual "I don't know what to give you so here's some silly knick-knack I found in a store two days ago that we both know you'll never use" with Fair Trade digestibles. Well Tiny did, and I latched on. Didn't recieve any complaints, and that vanilla fudge was excellent.

- Cut Linni's back claws all by myself. Linni, who'll lash out the moment anybody tries to hold her or otherwise contain her. Linni, who's perpetually nervous about anybody touching her paws. And yet I managed to do it all in one evening while we we're both lounging on mum's sofa, and she never hissed or bolted. So now Linni can walk on hardwood floors without that click-click-click noise.

In fact when we moved Linni to mum's place I was worried that facing mum's two resident cats would make Linni withdraw and hide like she did at the shelter, but once again my cat showed off how adaptable she really is. She respected Missi, the elderly no-nonsense cat, and vigorously played with Luna, the young off-the-wall mischevious one. Here's a photo Luna and Linni at a rare quiet moment:


Good holiday overall!

Another day, another bunch of job applications sent off. That paranoid moment when you fear that employers disregard your application because you've got an unusual name and they might think you're some dirty furriner. I mean, that might not be the issue with me at all - I've got a pretty "safe" Germanic and English name anyway. I still take care to point out on my résumé that Norwegian is my native language though, just in case.

But anyway, that's me fretting as usual. I take heart, if I don't find anything very soon I'll go back to retail or the grocery store, and I'll keep sending applications for other jobs.

So anyway; Last night I did my last shift at the cat shelter. It was a melancholy goodbye. The official explanation is that my new non-student life means I've got less time and resources to do volunteer work, and that's certainly true, but I can't deny that me and the organization no longer seem to see eye-to-eye on certain practical and political matters.

Over the course of the summer (while I've been away) there have been run-ins with the police, a lot of bad publicity in the local press, and I don't think my superiors have handled the matter in a good way. I know everything they've done, they've done with the best of intentions - to help abused animals, and I'm not saying we shouldn't fight for them, tooth and claw; But I believe there are better ways to do it, I don't think civil disobedience, breaking the law, and inhabiting every damaging animal activist stereotype out there will help our cause in the long run. Now my boss has to pay a hefty fine; that's money that could have been spent on food and spaying and medicines, and now it won't because my boss wanted to make a point. Not to mention the money contributors we've lost because "we're just some fundamentalist animal activist whackjobs after all".

Let me move on to my usual rant here: ( Why blaming the police really doesn't help )

See? I still care about important things. Politics, even. That doesn't change. It's just that writing about comics or TV shows is much kinder on my blood pressure and RAGE METER.

I'm now at my dad's in Eidsvoll, where the moose (meese?) are thick on the ground (saw a mother with its calf yesterday), British drama's on the telly and I've had a stroke of genius concerning my forgotten eye mask (solution: Wide, soft hairband!).

Visited the vet today - not with Linni as you'd think, but with an adolescent black half-Persian called Iben H. (it's sort of a pun on the Norwegian word for "ebony" you see) who's suffering terribly from a urinary tract infection. Iben belongs to dad and Kari, so while dad was at work I acted as chauffeur. He - Iben, not dad - got more antibiotics so hopefully things are going to get sorted out promptly.

Tomorrow we head for the family cabin for the weekend. Two days without a proper toilet is usually weighed up for with a beautiful view of the river and lovely barbecuing. Catch you on the flipside.

I travel over the mountains again tomorrow - the usual seven or eight hours by train from one side of the country (Bergen, my home) to the other (the Oslo area, my family). I must have made that trip a dozen times by now, but this is going to be the first time I do it with a stressed-out cat among my luggage. Since Linni's not aware of the impending ordeal I'm fretting for the both of us. I'll be armed with soft towels and Feliway spray and salmon treats. At least I learned from our recent trip to the vet that she's quick to settle in the carrier, she doesn't wail or try to break out, but it's not going to be an easy time for her.

But that's something to worry about tomorrow morning. First I need to clean this place (well I don't need to but it makes the return a little bit more pleasant) and pack my things.

And before that I'm going to have pizza and watch History of the World Part 1.

Lately there's been an overabundance of spiders in my room.

Of course, usually I regard one spider as an overabundance, but when I come over another spider every few days I guess I need to recalibrate. Four years of living on my own has made me a bit braver when it comes to spider hunting but they still make my skin crawl beyond words.

But apparently there's an odd kind of arthropod-related insanity that comes with owning a cat.

Like last night when a particularly nasty spider - the kind that seems to have way too many joints in each leg - crawled over my foot. I recoiled, reached out to grab a magazine to squash it with, but then I reconsidered. I shouted for Linni who was sleeping in the kitchen, and to my great delight she came running (I was so proud of the fact that she responds to her name - then today I experimented by shouting "Yogurt! Yogurt!" in the same tone of voice and she still came running. Oh well.)

I tapped my fingers on the floor to get her attention, and then I flicked at the spider to send it running. I deliberately touched a spider, okay. That was when I realized that owning a cat seems to have altered me in some fundamental way. But at least Linni got five minutes' entertainment out of it - though I kept my eye peeled to ensure she didn't lose track of it. She's not exactly the Great Calico Hunter.

Yesterday was one of the most pleasant days I've had in months, which is sort of incredible considering I spent most of the day working on my archeology paper about viking ship technology (the conclusion was AW HELL YEAH VIKINGS).

I went to the second hands-on archeology seminar which was a treat because my favourite thing about taking archeology is the Touching Really Old Stuff bit, and I got to touch a lot really old stuff, like viking age dice and shoes and pipes and toys. And because this seminar was held at the Bryggen Museum I took care to go look at my favourite stick in the world - a little piece of wood with carvings depicting a viking fleet disappearing into the distance, drawn a few hundred years before the laws of perspective where figured out (Conclusion: AW HELL YEAH VIKINGS).

And all is well here at home. Here, let me bore you with yet another picture of Linni.


We have discovered the Blanket of Calmness so things are going great. When positioned on the Blanket of Calmness things that are normally terribly frightening lose their edge, like people walking in the corridor, or cuddling with your new owner. Even if the Blanket of Calmness inexplicably moves to new places, like the middle of your new owner's bed, that's also okay.

Now I'm off to travel to new and scary places and try to locate a scratching post. Somewhere in Sandsli, I believe.

(I apologize in advance if this journal turns into LINNI CENTRAL this week, but A) It's preferable to "ANGST ANGST EXAM ANGST", and B) I want to keep some sort of log in the beginning so I can really keep tabs on the progress we're making.)

Today I realized that Linni is essentially me in cat form: Very nervous, overreacts to the slightest changes in the status quo, wary of strangers, but mellow in the company of the few people she trusts. (I realize I've just described 90 % of all cats but Linni is all those things and then some.) Apart from her fondness of fish we are essentially identical.

Anyway, log of sorts:

As for me, the scratches and bruises I got yesterday capturing her at the shelter are healing nicely.

As for Linni, ( cut for those who are easily bored by crazy cat-lady talk )

The biggest surprise by far came when I woke up in the middle of the night and realized Linni was lying in my bed! Well, at the foot end obviously, and she didn't stay long, but I didn't think she'd approach me like that for weeks yet.

She also seems to calm down when I've got music or a movie on (which isn't surprising as there's always a radio playing at the shelter), so I put on the radio before I went out to buy groceries. Returned to find I'd just subjected her to two hours of Graham Norton, hope that wasn't too traumatizing for her.

My dear dear sister Tiny has been in hospital and removed the screws in her leg from when she broke it two years ago. Although we've agreed it's a relief that Magneto can no longer use her leg to do evil deeds, I thought I'd make a little cheer-up entry specifically for Tiny.

YO TINY, LOOK OVER HERE.

Let's see what we've got here... Oh, we've got your Richard Hammonds and your Olivers!



( TTAO: Things Tiny Approve Of )

That's it. Get better sooooon sis!



(And if you should not be a blood relation of mine and still enjoy something in this post feel free to join in on the squeeing.)

Case: There's an old geezer in Bergen who brags about hurting cats who walks on his property. Today my bosses at the shelter posted about it on facebook. People are understandably upset, but the variety of ways they react to it is driving me crazy:

A) Sharing the man's telephone number, urging people to call him and "try to reason with him" (I'm not entirely certain that's what they're actually going to do when they call).

B) Accusing him of being a pedophile (?)

C) Saying "No reason to go to the police, they never take these things seriously anyway." (One of my BOSSES said this. WHAT.)

D) Going "If anybody hurt my Felix I'd kill them!"

D) Telling off anybody who suggests that any of the above might not be the wisest courses of action.

I'm just - argh! Of course I think it's horrible, of course I hate this man, and of course a little voice in the back of my head is suggesting to let Anonymous go get him, or throw a brick through his window or something. It's just - I don't want our wonderful organization to turn into... whatever this is. People are so disillusioned with the police the majority just whine about it and go about their daily business, while the rest turn into prank callers. What is wrong with this picture?

And here I am, whining about it, because I don't know what to do either. At last the police has been notified, but other than that...?

If the newspapers pick up on this thing (somebody's called a major national newspaper) I desperately hope they focus on what ridiculous animal welfare laws we have in Norway (for one, do you know which department's in charge of animal services? The Food Safety Authority! No, seriously. And do you know when it actually became AGAINST THE LAW to have sex with animals in Norway? Last. year.) and bring it to people's attention, complete with the system taking care of this man... Not "Hohoho look at all these crazy cat ladies, they burned a guy's house down! Animal organizations are idiotic herp derp" or something.

I guess the case is on hold till Monday...

Churchill's home again! Oh hi there honey, it's lovely to have you back again!

If you need reminding, Churchill is my laptop. He committed hara-kiri some time before the summer and it's only due to Kari and her heroic efforts he's back home here again, complete with a new brain (hard drive) and a... I can't think of an organic parallel to a keyboard.

So! Now I'm on a laptop that isn't completely rubbish, I can do the sort of things that you normally take for granted. Like not worrying about the space button falling off, or being able to transfer photos from my camera and onto the computer!

Yes, so here's a backlog of pictures I would probably have presented earlier, if I'd had the opportunity.

( KITTENS. And some other stuff )