Moopad.com (beta)

Today the summer seems to leave southern Norway; and it was almost not here in the first place! We have had about  days of 20 to 25 degrees Celsius, which is enough for Norwegians to throw off (almost) all clothing and leave work an hour early. Tomorrow will bring rain; that's our destiny here on the western coast, and while positive thinking might help us dealing with the grey and cold weather, Lisa, it sure will not bring more sun and heat.

Mai-Helen has started to climb out of her bed. The bed is a...I don't know the english word.... but... a bit more than one meter tall and with wooden bars...I hope you understand what I mean. One evening, we heard a "thump" and rushed to her room; pretty sure she had knocked herself unconscious while falling out of the bed. As we rushed ino her room, she was standing on her feet, perfectly alright, holding her favourite cloth and sucking her thumb. Very cute, looking very innocent and surprised and we had a good laugh about it. After this we secretly watched her through the opening of the door, and she climbs out of the bed with perfect control. The last week has been rough, as she has not wanted to go to sleep, but instead just climbs out of the bed as soon as we have left the room. This has been a serious test for our patience, and we have failed on a couple occasions and talked to her in a quite angry way; which she understands very well, and has caused some crying, but it also seems it has helped her to understand that there is a limit for our patience with er getting out of bed all the time; today she fell asleep nicely without any troubles.

One evening last week I went down to the room to check on her, and I almost paniced when I saw that she was not in her bed... and the room looked empty! After a few seconds I could breathe more easily, as I heard some noise from the closet, and I went to get Mari so that we could go "find" her hiding place together. When we arrived back in the room, however, Mai-Helen had gotten out of the closet, and Mari suddenly spotted something brown on her foot....... right....there were pooh all over her foot and the beddings which she had been playing with....a lot of fun doing all the cleaning there I have to say. Can (not) be recommended... Seems her diapers had gotten out of their proper position probably when she climbed out of her bed... 

Well... now it is too late on a Friday evening for me to get into a debate about religion, free will and other fundamental aspects of life, which I from the blogs here understand have been the subjects in some of your last comments, although it would be interesting for me to comment them. IT will have to be another day, though. I am so tired, as I  have been alone with the  kids this evening; Mari has went on atrip to a cottage about an hour's drive from here together with some of her co-workers; all women. Needless to say, I am happy I am home.... hehe... as the level of noise from 8 women alone after a glass or two with red wine is simply not bearable.... ;and now....zzzzzzzzzzzz

After today I will have one week off, and I am really looking forward to it! Although it might be a stressfull week, it will still be off from work! During the weekend, I hope to get just a little bit closer to finish the work with the last room on our top floor. On Monday we will travel to Kristiansand (about 250 kilometers~160 miles) and stay two days in a zoo/amusement park there; ,hopefulle the weather will be nice, although the forecast is very uncertain. Mari will have to work the rest of the week, so I will be alone with the kids (oh my!), a job which it seems Mari is better at, no matter how hard I try. But I guess I manage ok the taking-care-of-the-kids-part; it is just the cleaning and dishwashing and washing clothes simultaneously I am not very good at! This ability must be X-linked in a recessive way; I am sure of it! One day the gene will be found to prove it!  

I wish you all a great weekend!

Today Mari went to work at 7.30. I stayed in bed until Mai-Helen started to first sing a bit to herself and then obviously getting a bit impatient waiting for dad to come and pick her up. I glanced out of the window... and everything was white.....it was snowing heavily... and the temperature was close to the freezing point. And yesterday we were actually doing some barbeque in the sun.....(although it was not really warm...) Crazy... So today is a typical indoor-day. Now it has started to rain again, and t he snow will probably be gone by tomorrow...luckily! So it seems we still have to wait for spring here..... It is not so uncommon with this kind of weather here... but nevertheless disappointing!!

As Mari is working I have a lot of chores to do, and as she is returning in about an hour or so.....I'd better get at it!..... have a hopefully warmer Sunday than I am having!!!

Although the title of this blog actually pretty much says it all, I guess I'd better elaborate a little bit.

Tuesday was the last day of work for me this week, as Thursday to Monday are days off for all because of the easter holidays, and as I took wednesday off (my birthday). Luckily I have the possibility to control my own working hours, within reason and as long as it sums up to at least 7,5 hours a day (pluss lunch), so at 11 am I went to join Mari for her ultrasound investigation. She was 18 weeks pregnant on Tueday and we were looking forward to knowing if we are expecting a girl or a boy. Of course I know that it can sometimes be difficult to visualize the anatomical part in question, and that there will often be some  uncertainty involved. FIrst and most important; everything looked ok with the baby as far as it is possible to see with the ultrasound. After having checked the body and organs the doctor went on to confirm that his measurements fitted perfectly with the term-date that we have calculated; September 6th, and then went on to check the gender. He said: "Look, there you can see; it is a girl!" Then Mari, who has felt that it is probably a boy, said: "Oh, so it seems my feeling was wrong.". Then, the doctor, maybe having some experiences with female intuition (or whatever it is) from the past, suddenly looked a bit uncertain and said: "Hmm, wait.... I am not sure after all...." And then he went on, trying to find a good angle with the ultrasound-probe for about 10 more minutes. However, it seemed like the baby has already developed a certain shyness, as he or she managed to hide the section we were trying to grasp a glimpse of through the rest of the investigation. So we ended up booking another ultrasound session in about to months; then it should be easier to find... Actually, it is not really important for me to know the sex of the baby before it is born; I just think it is nice to "talk" to the baby; maybe even use name, if we will have one at that time, and to start relating to the person who will appear one day.

WEll, to avoid this getting waaaaay too long, I will try to keep it shorter. I turned 35 Wednesday, and I have to say I really do not like it, although of course it DOES beat the alternative with more than a horse-length (to use a measurement which you americans probably can relate too... hehe). I didn't celebrate it much, but Mari's sisters and brother stopped by to have some rib marinated in vietnamese style with noodles. REally good! My own sister and brothers were not in town, and they are sometimes louse to remember birthdays. My youngest brother actually didn't remember it at all. My oldest brother hadn't called me at 9 pm. His girlfriend is in France with her sister, and sent me an SMS, congratulating me. Then I decided to do an experiment; I sent her an SMS saying something like: "Thank you for remembering me; which not so many else did!" then I started counting seconds, and before three minutes had passed, my brother was on the line..... hahaha.... What should we have done without the wives and girlfriends to keep the control in our lives??

Yesterday we went to see my grandmom, but I have written a bit about that elsewhere, so I just skip on to today. I went for my first time to a golf-course today. I have hit some golfballs inside a sporting facility here and I have always known I would like golf, as I do like precision-sports, but I have never gotten around to try it before now. It was fun, but of course a lot more difficult that it seems, and even more difficult than I had imagined. To sum it up;  I didn't get a hole-in-one. Not even a hole-in-four....Sigh..I have a long way to go. And I had actually thought that the spring had arrived, but as I was trying the driving range, suddenly it started to snow..... Luckily it was not enough to make it a white day, but still.... The weather here is unpredictable....

The rest of the easter will be spent calmy at home. The weather forecast is bad, so I probably will not do any mountain trip skiing with Timmy. It will have to wait. I could however, maybe finish the work on the last of the three rooms here on the second floor of our house...I hope I find t he energy....Can I borrow some, Lisa?  I will also try to make it to church Sunday, as I try to go to church at least one of the easter holy days.

Well, that was all from me, and for those of you who have not fallen asleep by now; have a great weekend from us here in Norway.

HI again!

I just suddenly felt the urge to comment on some part of your daily life which for a standardized European seems rather peculiar and not very logic at all. Why don't you follow the simple metric system?

First let us take your gallon which you all seem to be so upset about the price of.... What IS a gallon really?... and how was it defined?.....The word seems to come from the latin "galleta" meaning wine jug....... I can't even start to grasp the logic of it... just read this part from the  history yourselves....:

In the Roman period the term gallon was used to represent the general idea a capacity or volume of material, and seemed to have been applied to both wet and dry measures. The earliest official attempt to standardize the gallon was during the thirteenth century when Edward I set a standard of eight pounds of wheat; but gallons with eight pounds dry weight (Avoirdupois) and others with eight pounds liquid (Troy weight) coexisted with others that seemed to meet no particular standard at all. In 1707, during the reign of Queen Anne, a new standard was written. The English established a Wine Gallon, which was also called the Queen Anne gallon and was defined to be 221 c.c. and was about the size of the traditional wine gallon in England. This is the size of the US Gallon to this day. A beer gallon also had become more or less standardized by tradition at ten pounds of beer (or ale). This was very close to the dry weight of wheat in the same container and in 1824 the English established a liquid measure, the Imperial Gallon with a capacity to hold 10 pounds (Avoirdupois) of distilled water . Because this was after the US became independent of Great Britain, the two countries have since had different units for a liquid gallon. The US liquid gallon holds about 8.3 pounds of water. The "dry gallon" is seldom used in the US.

Well.. if you now have managed to read your way through this, let us go on to other measures. Let us start with some little thing; the "inch", which is more or less 2.54 cm. Where does the inch come from? In English it seems to originate from the latin word "uncia" meaning "one twelfth part". So then it should be one twelfth of a foot, which is locig, but then; how long is a foot, and more inteerestingly, who's foot was it? I mean, I have a rather small foot, and I know many people with larger feet than me! And I am sure that all Americans don't have the sami size of a foot.  And if we are talking about an average sized foot; who measured it? And how?

Now, going on to the yard; I do have a small yard outside my house, but it sure is bigger than three feet! And reading about the origin of the word doesn't give much insight into the logic either; "One source says that the inch was at one time defined in terms of the yard, itself supposedly defined as the distance between Henry I of England's nose and his thumb."

And what about "a square-foot". I have never seen a foot which look like a square...

So I am going on to the "ounce", which is a small unit; I have seen some ounces in nature-documentaries, and they sure are not "an ounce small"!! And twelve ounces should be a pound? First; a pound is a little British coin; second it is also a place for cattle. I get really frustrated with this, almost wish I could pound the wall!

And so the "acre" I just let the encyclopedia speak for itself:

Need I say more?

I am back home and just wanted to give you a small taste of winter-Norway.

We left WEdnesday, although the weatherforecast was not very good. The main valley we had to drive through on our way was open, but very windy, and a couple of places I didn't even see 10 meters because of the drifting snow. AS we arrived at the cottage, the wind was around 20 meters per second, which is at the limit of storm, and I carried all the things against the wind 100 meters up to the cottage in 50 centimeters of snow. Fair to say I was rather tired when we had everything inside. Mari and her sister ar enot very big (5 feet) and had enough carrying themselves up against the wind! Arriving inside we found out that the water had frozen. Luckily there are about 15 cottages connected to the same well, and one of the owners of one of the other cottages were there and located the spot where the pipes had frozen, and by midnight we had running water again. Yesterday the weather was about the same; on the limit of storm, and very dense drifting snow; hence impossible to do much outside. WE just went outside about one hour to have some fun in the snow; then the kids were cold and had to go inside. Then at lunch time the electiricity disappeared. Maybe we are quite spoiled, but I do like to have electricity when in the mountains with a 15 months old girl. I drove to a nearby small shop and found out that the main power line had fallen down due to the wind and the upper valley was completely without electricity. So at least we had a very cosy evening with candle lights and steaks made on the stove. Of course we had rice with the steaks..... the compromise one has to do when together with an asian.... haha...

The electricity was back during the night, but this morning the weather was even worse, and the forecast said that some heavy snow was on the way. the kids were tired of being inside, so we took a quick decision and drove back home today. The first 10 miles were horrible, with really heavy drifting snow. Several places I had to stop the car and wait for the wind to calm, before I had enough vision to continue, just praying that the cars coming in the opposite direction would have the wisdom to also stop the car and not drive the road on memory. After the first ten miles, however, the conditions got a bit better, and we arrived home safely.

"This was the worst winter vacation ever!", said Timmy, and I guess it pretty much sums it up, at least from the kids' perspective. Myself I can enjoy being inside a cosy cottage during a storm, but now, after the drive home, I think what is in order is a solid thank you-prayer, that both cars got down safely today.

Now I have to go to eat dinner; lasagna; seems we are going for Italian tonight.

Have a nice weekend all!