hello homeland

I arrived at the Faroe Islands today. my grandparents drove me around for a bit, since the weather was is very nice indeed - 12 degrees in the shadow, woo! get outta here and take your bathing suit with you! this shot is the view from my aunts in-law's house. I am seriously glad to be back on the islands though very tired right now. I am only one hour behind Danish time, but it feels like much more. blah-blah, so okay, yeah, expect more nature shots the next few weeks. now I'm going to read until I pass out. xo - out! 20:44.

new boy

this week I'm spending time with these two guys in Århus; my step dad, Lars, and my brand-new two month old baby brother, Jonas. it's pretty lovely. Jonas is seriously cute and smiling more than he's crying, especially when I'm close by, which makes me so very happy. tonight I'm going to hit the town (yeah!) with some friends from way back when. Århus is known for all its white pride inhabitants, so I hope my guides will steer around those places.

wow. my brain is more than tired, because I have been working at this computer since 9 am. okay, now this post is over, I really better get something more done before I am off.

two too much

monday: spaghetti arms

today I decided to go out for a long walk, but the continuing rain and general indecision discouraged me and so I decided to stay in after all. exciting, I know. being bored, home alone and tired of being so goddamned lazy, I found this 55 minutes long exercise DVD (mostly yoga and Pilates exercises) of my mother's, stuck it in the C-drive and got ready on the purple yoga mat in my over-sized relax-on-the-couch pants and Barn Owl tee. I was killing it, it felt so good, I could totally do it, of course I could! --- 24 minutes later I could barely get up from the floor, and after a few minutes of staring at the ceiling I scrambled my way into the nearest chair. I felt like dying and my legs were shaking. oh so embarrassing, even if it's just me who's here to witness it. right now it's been about an hour since my collapse and I still can't raise my arms properly. I'm not even kidding, it's really hard just lifting my hands above table-height and reaching the keyboard. I'm going to try and see if I can't smoke a cigarette, and if I can't I'll just cry myself to sleep. or actually, not true, I might just end up watching more documentaries on my new favorite site, documentaryheaven.com, like I did last night and a great part of today. it's almost like getting a new best friend that never sleeps and always has something to tell you or make you think about.

and now it really is time for a cigarette.

pre-sleep thoughts

if I remember, I try to bring my notebook with me when I go to sleep, because I always have the stupidest or most brilliant thoughts ever when I try to fall asleep and, always forgetting everything all the time, have of course forgotten everything when I wake up again... so, last night I remembered bringing it with me and since I lay awake for 5 hours straight before falling asleep, the stupid thoughts were not few and a lot of ink was used in the darkness. here's a little extract:

if I were to marry a vegetable, it would definitely be a leek. tall, layered and with beautiful hair. tasty. the best man would have to be a Jerusalem artichoke since it so complements the leek, but, superficial as I am, I would never choose it alone because of the way it looks. I guess I would have to have a brides maid or two, but I haven't thought of those yet.

sometimes I wonder how I even learned how to breathe.

may the fourth be with you

yesterday a cantaloupe made me cry.

I knifed it open, got one look at its nasty insides, ran away and spontaneously cried my face off behind my pink pillow. thank god I don't live alone, I would never have been able to walk back into the kitchen. maybe I should explain: I have this phobia of holes and/or unnatural (or natural, just disgusting looking) voids in food stuffs, wood, stone... whatever, I haven't looked too deep into it (pun intended) since it makes my skin crawl with invisible piss ants. in one of my bravest moments, though, I looked it up online and it appears that the name of this phobia is trypophobia (and yes, it is a real phobia, I can (and will not) testify to that).

I've only ever met one other person who suffers from this phobia, and she grew up on the Faroe Islands as well; it may well be that it stems from here - back in the day people ate lots of whale flesh, lots more than they do now, anyway (damn mercury), and when holes started to appear in the flesh, it was rotting and could make you sick or make you die if you ate it. so maybe it's a survival gene passed on to me from my island dwelling ancestors, who were deathly afraid of eating decaying whale. a gene which now paralyzes me in fragile, embarrassing moments that no one else seems to understand.

another explanation may be that once, when I was about 5, we'd baked my all time favorite cocoa cake. it was summer time, we were at the beach, and the cake was resting on top of the oven with a dishcloth over it. after beaching and sanding and sunning, I ran into the kitchen to eat a much anticipated and well earned piece of cocoa cake. I cut it open (my mom might have done this, but I don't remember it that way), stared in disbelief and started crying - it was crawling with ants! every air hole, and even the dishcloth, was alive with ants collecting sweet stuff for their precious winged queen. you could not tell which was crumb and which was ant; everything in that casserole was hustling and bustling about in a sickening way. it was a crippling experience, if not for me, then for the cocoa cake recipe; I didn't make or eat that cake ever since, apart from about three or four months ago when my mom decided trying it out again, almost 20 years later, and it was not a success. I didn't think about the ants, though, it just didn't taste good anymore.

overanalyzing

... is what I'm doing these days.

what a bird

eye contact was made with one of the pigeons today. looks real cozy with all those fluffy feathers. aw.

damage is a bird

right outside our window this huge tree stands and everyday, right about the time I get home from school, the sun shines right into our living room, blinding me, but the tree sucks up most of the light. it's really cozy to be able to look straight in between the branches and seeing all the pigeons and the magpies nesting (separately, I suppose, or maybe the magpies eat the pigeons's food and babies, I don't know... in any case, the show must go on).

I've been way off today since my sleeping has been really messed up lately, to the degree where I started getting dizzy, hallucinating and a sense of falling over during the day, because I couldn't fall asleep at all for about three days. I blame it on my neighbors - I may or may not write a post about my dissatisfying apartment circumstances later - but who knows, maybe I've just caught a mild case of vertigo.

well, as written above, today has been weird, but at least I've had some sleep the last few nights. one good example is when I was watching TV before, this Danish home improvement show came on, one where the person receiving the improvement didn't ask for it, but still acts happy and everyone's hugging and laughing in the sun. yeah, anyway, while all the people destroyed, rebuilt and sew pillows, I was on the verge of tears for the longest time until ... it actually happened: my eyes overflowed with water and it spilled onto my cheeks. what the f! I don't think lack of sleep could be the sole actor in this madness; I've been tired before, but not to this loony-lonely-lady-degree, so I admitted to myself that I must be overflowing with hormonal feelings as well as salty eye water. nice! five minutes later I felt fine and got the urge to smoke a cigarette due to a stop-smoking-and-chew-gum-instead ad and boiled some water for my rarely touched caffeinated orange tea to go with it. I must not fall asleep before tonight at at least 22.30 o'clock, even though I really, really want to! sigh.

on paper again

I filled out my first page of the year, it feels like it's been years since I did that. sometimes it's a good challenge to just fill out a piece of paper with something, anything, because it gives a sense of accomplishment and makes you (me) want to do more and more. it's in a brand new book with rounded edges, dividing stringy-thing and strap-around band, all in brown, I love it.

look up

taken almost exactly a year ago on a photography mission for school. back then I had no idea that all the people in the last shot would soon become my friends. aw! aren't they beautiful? the current weather is pretty much the same now as it was then... cold and icy and... am I really talking about the weather? okay, time to go.

top 25 tv series 2011

I made a top 25 list of TV series. the rules are simple: any TV series goes, no matter what year or genre, except from talk shows. I've tried imagining: what if there was a new episode of something, anything, what would I like to see first? for the most part I've tried including the quality of the seasons in my final verdict; Weeds, for example, didn't make the final top 25 because of the sucky last seasons.

I have to admit that I forgot a few shows on the list, but I spent so much time on it already so it'll have to do. haven't really tried making a list like this before, but man, it's hard. drove myself a little crazy for a moment. it actually turned out to be a top 43 in the end, but I also tried listing all the TV shows I could think of, and that might not be as interesting as the ones higher up... but here it is, the liiist, tadaa:

01	Fringe
02	Game of Thrones
03	Breaking Bad
04	Six Feet Under
05	Carnivàle
06	Twin Peaks
07	Parks and Recreation
08	Frasier
09	True Blood
10	The Sopranos
11	Freaks and Geeks
12	Seinfeld
13	Black Books
14	South Park
15	Bored to Death
16	The Simpsons
17	The Prisoner (1967)
18	Skins (UK)
19	Peep Show
20	Louie
21	Sherlock
22	Futurama
23	Scrubs
24	The Office (UK)
25	The Adventures of Tintin (1992)

it is gonna be a while before I make another one of these! perhaps until next year. or when the mood strikes me...

aaargh

for once in my life I can actually feel that it's Friday the 13th...

beware of (the rest of) today! here's some creepy stuff.

mr. brown from cincinatti

I love short stories and sci-fi, so when I discovered author Fredric Brown I was very happy. while browsing and killing time online, I stumbled upon a short-short story, "Knock", that really intrigued me. it is part of a short story, which is still very, very short. check it out here. it's so fortunate that I own a Kindle, because there's an amazing site, gutenberg.org, where you can download free e-books in 4 different formats and start reading within minutes. there're only books by deceased authors, and the collection as a whole is quite good.

"The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door..."

oh, the horror! goosebumps! it's amazing that two so short sentences can contain so much. I've now read about 5 of Brown's short-shorties, and still have a few shorties left. yay and hooray for Project Gutenberg! he uses the same themes over and over again (Mars, Martians, Earth, humans living in space, etc) and after reading a few I was in the zone. his old school writing totally relaxes my brain.

but now my brain is too tired for anything that involves thinking independently, so I will eat noodles with eggs and watch whatever on TV.

monday evening

after one of the best first-day-of-school-days I've ever had, it's perfect to tune in on the TV and they're showing Fantastic Mr. Fox. I can't really say much about it, other than I love watching it. it's so cute and funny. check it out if you like puppets, talking animals and quirky dialogues.

wow: I'm so tired I can't think straight! or anything at all.

since this post has nothing much else to offer than nothing, here's a 3-year-old photo of me "kissing" everybody.

nordic memories: fixed

on November 29th I wrote about some memories in a post called nordic memories. this post is a correction.

I wrote about my great grandmothers' childhood, but apparently my brain doesn't remember everything equally well, because the incident happened to my great grandfather and not great grandmother. whoops...

expanding the story: the city where this happened is called Skarð and has been abandoned ever since it was depopulated. my mother told me that once in a while there are planned trips to the bygd, so descendants of the people who once lived there can see the ruins and get some kind of closure. I'd very much like to go there sometime, but it won't be for a while. I'm going to the Faroe Islands this summer, but those days are filled up with birthdays and parties, and I doubt that anyone will agree, or have the time, to go on this somewhat bleak journey with me. someday I'll have to go, though, since the family history fascinates me.

reading while it's raining

almost done reading King's Dreamcatcher on my Kindle, for which I haven't really had time during the holidays, so it's neat being able to just read and nothing else (apart from eating chocolate cookies).

my Christmas was one of the loveliest in a long time, and I think it has something to do with my state of mind; less weary and somehow more aware. my mother outdid herself with the Christmas dinner and just being at home was so cozy. we drank gin/tonics and red wine, and I was so full all the time that I didn't eat more than a single caramel, which is really weird for me. for dinner two days later I made the best goddamned leek pie I've ever eaten - felt so proud and full.

the days in between Christmas and New Year's were spent in Århus, in Lars' new two-storey apartment, with great food and homemade Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream. his girlfriend is 5 months pregnant with my new baby brother, so we drank wine on her behalf and smoked our cigarettes outside (she's a high school teacher, so she loves her wine/tobacco). we talked about names for the baby and no one agreed on any names, so I'll just keep my fingers crossed and hope he's not a Brian.

New Year's Eve was spent at Tine and Simon's place on Amager, and I had such a good time. it was my first time meeting some of their friends, so at first I felt so, so awkward. I think everyone felt a little bit awkward, but somehow everything is less awkward when someone points out how awkward it really is. after that both funny, sad and inappropriate topics were discussed until about 4 am. Hugh from England had studied something or other called Norse Languages or something like it and Hiroko from L.A. is married to a Dane, so the conversation switched between Danish and English a whole lot. Hiroko and David have just moved to Copenhagen from Fanø, and I'm pretty sure Hugh also lives here, so hopefully I'll get to see them all again soon. Tine has some photos of the evening over on MusicIsMySecret.

oh well, yes. now I'm going to eat some frikadeller with my mother's homemade pickled beets on rye bread and read Dreamcatcher. have a nice Wednesday.