But I guess it is, there’s a Monday Mission, anyway.

1. In my work Outlook inbox, I have 343 unread email messages. Most of them are newsletters I’ve subscribed to but not had time to read. It is a bit intimidating at this point, and I am tempted to delete them all and start fresh. But I am that way in many things, relationships, art projects, and more. Have you even just totally trashed something you were working on because it wasn’t going the way you wanted? What happened? Did you start over again? Was it
better?

In one of my mail folders I have 2492 unread messages, and that’s just one mailing list. I regularly trash a large amount of them, and only dip in to read the occasional one. I don’t want to unsubscribe, though.

I don’t think I’ve ever completely trashed something I was working on, though. Actually, that’s not entirely true, I have scrapped large chunks of code that weren’t working and started coding from a fresh angle, and that tends to be a good idea.

2. My friend was contacted out of the blue by someone from High School at his work e-mail. He wondered how someone found him and I told him to try putting his own name in Google.com to see what happens. Have you ever contacted an old friend out of the blue over the internet? How did it go? Have any old friends or lovers ever contacted you? Did it flatter you or freak you out?

I’ve tried to locate people I’ve lost touch with due to too many moves and not enough Christmas-card sending, but haven’t been all that successful (it helps if people have unusual names, the people in question didn’t). I was contacted pretty much out of the blue by an old pen-pal who’d found me on ICQ, and I was pleased to hear from him again, he used to write some good letters. The contact sort of petered out again, though. With e-mail there’s less of the obligation of “I had a letter from you, now it’s my turn to write” and therefore it’s a lot easier to just never get around to sending a message, somehow.

3. I am the forgetful type. I need lists. I need notes. Oddly, I’ve found if I write something down to remember it, the mere act of writing makes me remember it and I seldom ever refer back to the paper again. What is the most important thing that you have ever forgotten? Did it have any negative results? How did it all turn out?

What is the most important thing I have ever forgotten? Hm. I can’t really think of anything “important”. I once forgot to go to a concert I had a ticket for, which annoyed me greatly, both because I wanted to see the concert and because the ticket was obviously a waste of money seeing as I didn’t use it, but it didn’t have any consequences beyond that.

4. In America, we are currently suffering through an overdose of “reality” programs on television. Survivor, Fear Factor, The Amazing Race, Big Brother, The Bachelor and so on. Which of the “reality” television programs do you think you would have a chance at winning? Why? Would you ever actually consider signing up for one? Have you?

(Not only in America…) I might do alright in one of the survivor type things, I’m stubborn enough. I’d guess I probably don’t have the physical strength for some of the tasks, though, not that I really know what it is they get up to, I avoid reality shows like the plague. The only “reality” shows I watch are things like Idol/Fame Academy, and I would certainly have no chance at winning those.

And I’d never sign up.

5. Do you allow commenting on your blog? Why? Have you ever considered removing/adding that function? What was one of the worst situations you’ve found yourself in due to blog comments?

I like comments. I haven’t attracted any nasty ones yet, only some very weird ones. I don’t think I’d ever remove the function, I’d probably just laugh at any flamers anyway, so they’d be quite likely to give up trying to bug me.

6. Have you found any cool shareware/freeware applications/scripts/tools recently? Yeah? Tell me more!

Editpad is my new favourite text editor. That’s kinda cool. Other than that, Movable Type, of course, but that’s hardly a surprise, is it? (I LOVE MT!)

7. I’ve mentioned it here before, but one of my favorite terms I’ve heard a Minster use was when he refereed to a “pet sin.” Which is when you live your life right for the most part, but you have this one secret thing, this one bad thing that you do that is wrong for you to do, that you won’t give up, even though you know you should (and sometime criticize others for doing). Now I am not asking to know what it is, but do you have a “pet sin?” When did it start? Are you trying to give it up, or are you just reconciled to the fact that you will always have it? Would anyone think less of you if they knew about it?

Procrastination is hardly a sin, is it? I can’t think of anything else that I do that I really shouldn’t, certainly not anything I do in secret.

Mission accomplished. I’ve been out rollerblading. And how. It was fun, and, I suspect, good for me (judging from the way my muscles are registering their protest at being woken up and made to work). Linda knew this route that she’s gone round a couple of times before, so we thought we might as well do that one (the drawback to setting off at random is that there is no telling what the state of the roads is going to be like, and decent paving is pretty essential). I’ve amused myself with scanning maps to show you the route, so you can all go “Wow!” or “Pft, that’s nothing!” depending on your inclination. We set off from Linda’s, marked 1, and made our way along the pink line. When we got to the point marked 2, we agreed that it would be pretty much a waste of time for me to go the rest of the way back down to Linda’s, so we split up. At that point I was on a roll (literally) so I thought I’d just go on a little further, a few more blocks or so, before I changed to sandals and got the bus home. Well, I obviously ended up blading all the way home, where I arrived with my face a nice lobstery shade – and cursed the stairs all the way up.

Now for the monday mission, and then that second coat of paint for the table, and I will feel very smug indeed.

Voice on the tv: Frank Sinatra – New York, New York (he has momentarily drowned out J-Lo and LL who’ve been singing “Oh, my pride is all that I have – Pride is what you had, baby, not what you have” or whatever it is they sing (that’s what I hear) in my head all day and have been driving me mad)

My mission for this weekend was to glue the kitchen table and, if possible, paint it. Well, it’s in one piece now and has had one coat of paint, so I’m reasonably confident that I will achieve my goal. Which is a good thing, I guess. Other goals for the weekend included a long, pleasant picnic yesterday as a means to avoid hearing anything about the football game (“the football game” was Denmark vs. Norway and the papers been full of it for weeks, it seems, making all us sane people heartily sick of the whole thing). That was successful, too, meaning the picnic was indeed both pleasant and long and I have no idea who won the game.

I have just settled another mission for tomorrow (which, this weekend being Pentecost, is a holiday in Norway), in addition to giving the table another coat of paint. I’m going rollerblading with Linda. It’s got to be two years at least since I last wore the rolleblades, so this could be interesting. Some exercise will do me good, I suspect, and blading is fun, so that’s a good start.

On a completely different note: I have just been watching Justin Timberlake on MTV, trying to figure out why people like the guy. I really can’t see it. Honestly. I try, but fail. I think he’s boring at best, creepy at worst. The music’s uninteresting. And the way he goes on about Britney Spears is, frankly, just pathetic. It might have been sweet if he’d chosen someone slightly more interesting to be heartbroken over, but as it is it really is just pathetic.

Voice in my head: Kathy (Singing in the Rain) – “All I do the whole day through is dream of you” (you know, that bit where she jumps out of the cake)

You know how I said I thought I could sort of spread Harry out so that I’d finish Goblet just before the 21st? Ha ha. I just finished it now. A whopping 4 days after I started (I mean, I have been trying to space it out…), with two weeks to go until the planned date.

Well, ok, change of plan. This one might be a bit unrealistic, too, except in the other extreme. See, on the 30th I’m leaving for Ireland with Linda. And I really want to reread Ulysses before we go. Three weeks… Well, there’s another hitch. It (by which I mean my copy, the nice penguin one with notes at the back, I’m not going to pretend that notes aren’t helpful) is in Bergen. My brother’s got it. He’s said he’ll bring it when he comes. On the 15th. Which leaves me two weeks. In the middle of which I’m supposed to sail to Bergen. And, oh, maybe go to work a bit, to…

I figure I’ll start on Portrait of the Artist, and see how we go from there. I’m also itching to reread About a Boy all of a sudden, so evenings like this one are to be appreciated. After a brief but taxing karate session (both our normal practices were cancelled this week, as there was some sort of huge thing going on at the fitness center, and as our grading is next Friday (please cross fingers and anything else you feel is appropriate) we were allowed to join in on the session for the intermediate “belts”) I had a whole delicious evening all to myself. So I finished Goblet and watched Parky (partly simultaneously) and now I am considering going to bed. My head’s swimming just a tad.

Voice in my head: Carly Simon – You’re so Vain

You can generally tell when my life gets a tad too busy from the fact that the posts here are either far between or all “Q&A” (such as the Friday Five) – or both. Sorry, folks, it will pass.

Voice in my head: Prefab Sprout – (If You don’t Love me) I will Know

The Friday Five goes all mushy, too, this week. What’s with all the mushyness? I feel an attack of cynicsm coming on.

1. How many times have you truly been in love?
Zip. Zero. Zilch. (I have believed myself to be, obviously.)

2. What was/is so great about the person you love(d) the most?
Uhm. See 1.

3. What qualities should a significant other have?
(In order of importance, roughly, though order is probably irrelevant as I’m not really interested unless he has all of these:) A sense of humor, which means, most importantly, the ability to laugh at oneself. Intelligence. Honesty. Curiosity. An interesting library (is that a quality, I wonder?). Imagination. Empathy. Maturity, including the maturity to not be “grown-up” all the time. A sense of adventure. Self-confidence.

4. Have you ever broken someone’s heart?
Well, how would I know? I never speak to people “afterwards”. No one’s jumped off a bridge on my account, yet. Not that I’ve heard of, anyway.

5. If there was one thing you could teach people about love, what would it be?
It’s hard to find.

…get the hang of Thursdays.

1. You know something about your company that very few other people do, something that, shortly, will drive the stock price way down. So happens your folks invested in your company, because you said it was a cool place to work. Do you let them know before the public finds out?

Probably. Though the chance of me having any idea of what’s happening to the stock price of the company I work for is unlikely to the point of laughable.

2. Your neighbor is getting rid of junk, and you spot something he’s putting out on the curb as a collectable that could probably fetch a few hundred dollars on eBay. Do you tell him? Or do you sneak it out of their trash late at night?

Depends on the neighbour. Unless He/she is also a friend I’d consider it fair play to make use of the discovery myself. Though I’d probably just go over and ask if I could have it, rather than sneak out at night. Give him/her a fair chance of reconsidering, I mean.

3. Where does your ethical obligation to intellectual honesty and openness to differing viewpoints end, and your need to shut off lunatic opinions of an annoying co-worker because they’re driving you batty begin? And does politeness factor into this equation?

I’m pretty good at ignoring lunatic opinons, actually. People can basically drone on for ages and I’ll just get on with whatever I think is the best solution. If the lunatic opinion comes from someone in charge, it’s a different problem altogether, of course.