Worth a try, this week it’s fill in the blanks:

1. When I sing, I sound like a person who can’t really.
2. April is my favorite month of the year.
3. I’ve always wanted to improve my writing skills.
4. It’s Monday morning, and the first thing that goes through my mind is I wish it were Sunday. Or, even better, Friday.
5. My favorite day of the week is Friday because there’s a whole long weekend ahead.
6. I used to/currently collect books
7. At the end of a work day/school day, the first thing I want to do is strip. The first thing I do when I get home is strip. No, really. It’s usually followed by putting on a t-shirt and pyjama-bottoms, but this depends on the temperature and whether I have company or not.
8. I really look forward to Christmas because it’s my favorite holiday. (Well, Christmas is my favourite holiday, but at the moment I’m really looking forward to Easter – Christmas seems a long way away.)
9. When I need some down-time, I usually lie flat out on the couch with a good book.
10. I plan to travel to most places in the world someday. Ok, for the sake of the argument; the far East.

Obviously.

I found another meme, monthly this time, which might be interesting in so far as it’s been a long time since I wrote any poetry. It’s called Poetic Voices and this month’s challenge is to write a grossblank. I shall have a go, I think, but got a bit hung up on the definition of the grossblank – as written by the “inventor” and quoted on Poetic Voices:

It’s very simple: 12 lines of 12 syllables each, iambic pentameter, unrhymed, any format.

“Iambic pentameter”, of course, comes tripping off the tongue if you’ve been working with the sonnet form, but that’s not really an excuse – “penta” means “five”, “iambic” feet are two syllables long (short-long) “iambic pentameter” is therefore 2×5=10 syllables. It’s pretty basic. The form’s inventor, to give him credit, gets it right in the first attempt at the top of the page (“It’s blank verse, but with 12 syllables per line instead of ten. Twelve lines, iambic meter, unrhymed, any format” – my emphasis), the description I quote is obviously a typo, but why does Poetic Voices blithely quote it?

This little rant was brought to you by Little Voices™. Don’t mind me.

Looking for a replacement for the Monday Mission (I try to limit the weekly memes, but I’m now down to only the Friday Five which seems to me to be overdoing the limiting) I found one called Monday Madness, which suits me fine. Here are this week’s questions:

1. Do you use any slang words on a regular basis?
Probably, but not that I’m aware of, really. I sometimes catch myself saying “like” in places where one really shouldn’t. Not every, like, sentence, but nevertheless in, like, the wrong place syntactically.

2. Is there any one slang word that really bothers you when you hear others use it?
“Like” used in places where one really shouldn’t.

3. Do you have a favorite slang word?
Uhm. No. I don’t think so. I like using some of the Norwegian slang words for “cool” (“Fett”, “Konge” etc.) in an “ironic” sort of way sometimes.

4. What are your thoughts on adding slang words to the dictionary?
Since the dictionary is supposed to define the language “as is” rather than “as we’d ideally like it to be” (“we” being the academics who compile dictionaries), I think adding slang is part of the package. I also think slang needs some milage before it ought to be added, though, it certainly needs to appear in print in “permanent” publications, for example, as the only real need for defining obsolete words in a dictionary is in case people come across them when reading old printed matter (and slang is rather prone to becoming obsolete quite quickly).

In case you didn’t know, I’ll be 30 on 10 April (please feel free to buy me stuff). 30 is such a nice, round number, and besides, it’s kind of a big deal in Norway – it’s the age by which you really should be married, according to tradition. Hence I’m planning to celebrate in a big way, a bigger way than usual. Deciding on how has been a bit tricky. There are several things to consider: How much money can I afford to spend? How much money can I expect the guests to spend? How many people can participate? What would the people I most want to see enjoy doing? What would I enjoy?

The latter, for example, pretty much ruled out the “huge party at suitable venue” option, as I tend to prefer parties where it’s actually possible to talk to everyone. I considered other options, one of which was a mini-cruise from Oslo to Kiel with Colorline, but that ended up (as I’d expected) being rather too pricy. The more I deliberated, the more I felt that the ideal thing would be to find a cottage to rent somewhere within reasonable travelling distance from Oslo and with enough space for the most indispensable people.

And then I found this: Frykdalsstugan 3. Perfect in every which way. We can even go “fyrhjulsåking” (some sort of go-cart-like car thingys). And they’ve got somewhere to celebrate Saturday night where they can even provide food.

So that’s where we’re going (8-12 April). Wanna come?

Channel 4 has done a 100 greatest musicals survey. I’ve seen 41 of the hundred, which makes me think. It makes me think, specifically, in no particular order:

– Holy-moly, have I really seen that many musicals?
– I really need to see more musicals!
– I’m sure there are some missing (like Saturday Night Fever)
– Why have I still not seen Hedwig and Dancer in the Dark when I’ve been meaning to for ages?
– I want to see Annie again
– people actually liked Bugsy Malone?
– people actually liked Bugsy Malone better than Nightmare Before Christmas (!), High Society (!!), The Jungle Book (!!!) (!!!!!! and so on)

Via Tinka. To find out which of the musicals I have seen, read more…
Read More

The bloggies are back. Go nominate!

my true love gave to me – hm, let’s see… – 7 yellow-and-red tulips. For various reasons I never got them home last night, so they are currently gracing my desk at work, which is quite cheering – and besides, I’ll see more of them that way.

On a completely different note, it’s the 12th day of Christmas today and so I must remember to take down the advent star and put away the other Christmas decorations. Oh, and remove the Christmassy links at the top of the page here.

Voice in my head: Someone, though not Roger Whittaker, singing Streets of London

The last Monday Mission ever. We wave a fond goodbye.

1. In the last week, what happened that made you feel loved beyond your wildest dreams? [ from MM 1.0]
Beyond my wildest dreams? Do you have any idea of how wild my dreams are? Ok, sorry, will be serious and answer, hm, that M followed up on his promise to play nursemaid to me this weekend despite the fact that he was quite as ill as I was. (I’d decided to declare myself an invalid for the weekend to see if 48 hours with my feet up would help the remaining nagging pains in my legs. As it turned out, we both ended up with sore throats and colds anyway.)

2. What was the last audio CD you paid money for? [ from MM 1.3]
I bought Åge Alexandersen’s “Eldorado” and a “Best of…” second hand on Friday. The last new audio CD I paid for was, hm, a Christmas compilation album some time in December.

3. Has someone you know ever told you they had a terminal illness? What was it like for you when you found out. How did that change your relationship with them? [ from MM 2.45]
Yes. No one very close, though. It made me sad, obviously, but only in a somewhat detached way (more of a “How terrible for his family” than any regrets on my own part). I tend to try and treat people decently and fairly whatever the situation and not change my attitude based on what I know about them (I tend to assume there are probably things I don’t know), but I guess I was probably a little more patient and careful in what I said to him after I found out.

4. Do you have an accent? Are there any phrases or words you say that tip folks that you aren’t from around these parts? [ from MM 2.38]
Yes and no. When I speak English, my accent has been described as “mid-atlantic” and people have a hard time placing me. Everyone can tell that I’m not “from around these parts”, but they can’t figure out where I’m from either. In Norwegian I have a dialect of sorts, but it’s so mixed up that all people can normally tell is that I’m from eastern Norway somewhere, except when I speak to people with a heavy dialect when it can get quite easy to place me in Hedemark due to the odd phrases and pronounciations that crop up (this is more obvious when the person I talk to also has a heavy Hedemark-dialect, but any heavy dialect tends to make me exaggerate mine).

5. What’s the difference between being a Father, and being a Daddy? [ from MM 3.25]
In so far as there is a difference (which really depends on which word you’ve grown up using), I tend to use “pappa” (daddy) when speaking to my father directly or when I talk about him in general – it’s what I’ve been used to calling him growing up. I tend to use “far” (father) only in situations where I’m (in the subtext) stressing the biological/social relationship. So it’ll be “pappa ringte” (“dad phoned”), but “faren min jobber for NINA” (“my father works at NINA”).

6. What is the most recent thing guilt has motivated you to do? [ from MM 2.50]
Tricky. I would have preferred to go to Trondheim for Christmas with M rather than spending it at my grandparents, but I’m not sure “guilt” is the correct description of my motivation in not doing what I wanted – “a sense of obligation” is nearer the mark.

7. How do you feel about tips and tipping? Do you feel obligated to tip even if your service is bad because you know the servers don’t get paid much? If you’ve ever relied on tips for your income, how do you feel when you don’t get any? [This is a new one, had to throw in at least one more hot topic before I sign off]
The system in Norway is somewhat different, because the people who serve you actually do get paid a proper wage. It’s still customary to tip, though, to some extent, but only yesterday I was wishing that there was a more definite system. I tend to tip somewhere around 10% in restaurants unless the service was really bad, but because the servers aren’t dependent on tips to get by a lot of people simply don’t tip at all, which means that even if I refrain from giving a tip because the service was bad, there is no guarantee that the server will take it to heart – most likely they’ll just dismiss me as one of those people who don’t leave tips.

Friday Five on a Monday:

What one thing are you most looking forward to . . .

1. …today?
Seeing A this evening – and finding out what the “lots of news here” referred to.

2. …over the next week?
The whisky society meeting Wednesday night.

3. …this year?
Both of the planned trips to Scotland (for the Speyside festivals, end of April and end of September) and my 30th birthday.

4. …over the next five years?
Getting up to stuff with M.

5. …for the rest of your life?
Living it. Oh, and spending it with M.