It seems so easy…

I’m reading the paper with all these articles about how we should not allow Syria to torture and kill people. We should not assist any dictatorship with any tools to suppress their people, we should do all we can to make sure the world is free.

But the world is not that black and white, is it? The freedom fighters today might me the dictators of tomorrow. The dictators of today were sometimes the liberators of yesterday.

We didn’t know then and we don’t know now. And once the collaboration has started it is not that easy to break.

We sit here in north of Europe, pretty safe and comfortable. It is easy to write articles about how the world should be and what we are doing wrong, but what do we really know?

Next time you want to save the world, please provide a project plan, and don’t forget the milestones and deadlines!

Come to think of it…

It might be worth to start-up the non-alcoholic challenge again as well, but with a tweak. I mean, September is coming up, one of the most boring months of the year. I started a new course at uni, and in the beginning there is always plenty of energy and ambition so it is better to focus. I also have my work cut out for me at work, so guessing there will be quite some time spent there, that should make the non-alcoholic challenge easier.

The tweak will be this though;

I will be allowed alcohol one day of the week, if I want to that is.

If there is one thing I know, it is that if you completely forbid something, you will want it. So I just have to make sure that I choose my one day wisely.

September 2011 the (almost) alcohol free month! Anyone wants to join me?

The New Project

Since I now have completed my Race For Africa, I feel that it is time for a new project. I have several on-going at all times, one being the Fish n’ Chips mission but that is something that is ongoing without a determined end day, as there can always be new places added to the list as well as re-visits to previous places. And one of the reasons behind putting my projects on the blog is to ensure that I actually complete them, thus I need one with an end in sight.

This Monday, my university course Classical Horror, started, and I’m now considering making a Blog Project out of this, just to make sure that this time I complete the class and really sit the exam at the end. The reservation would be how fun it would be to read a blog about me studying, reading books and writing assignments…at the same time that would be a challenge as well, write so that people want to read.

I guess it has been decided then, the Classical Horror Project is on!

Another morning on the train…

A good morning on the train, yes my body is hurting a bit but as the geek has been saying since the pain started; it is good pain.

I’m a bit late into work today, due to a quick visit to the doc just to make sure that the eardrum has grown back together after this Friday adventure, it had.

Now I’m about to eat my brekkie 🙂

Think we have a good day ahead of us…

I freaking f*cking did it!!

Today was the day, and I did it! It was a cold, grey, rainy day and on top of that I had a cold, I spent the day walking up and down the stairs at work being out of breath wondering how on earth the race would go tonight.

It is a bit unlike me to dress the same as I don’t know how many other people, but since they were nice enough to give me this (horrible color) pretty t-shirt, why not, I figured that for once I might as well just be a part of the masses. There is even a video of me in the pit warming up with the I don’t know how many other people. That is a video that shouldn’t make the time of day at any point though…

The reason there is pictures of me from this race, is because one of my friends actually braved the Tuesday night and bad weather to cheer me on at both start and finish, including holding on to my stuff while I was running.

I started out slow, trying to keep my own pace and I say I think I managed it, since I managed to jog the whole time, not a single time did I stop to walk (no need to mention the people who pretty much walked the same speed as I was jogging).

Once I reached the goal (in super rapid pace according to this picture and the friend that was watching (according to him)) I grabbed the promised goody-bag and  then we left.

It was nice to see that the goody-bag was nothing more than expected…full of random stuff that you do not really need. And I am still trying to figure out the choice of color, who knows next year it might be a color that I like…

 

 

 

How to finish of an evening like this? Well, me being me, I proudly walked through town and into a bar in my turquoise t-shirt and number tag on, just to show the world that I did run, and to sit in a bar with the outfit on drinking a beer.

Once the first beer was sipped I changed out of the shirt and into proper warm sweaters.

I have to say that I am very proud of myself for running the race, completing it over expectation after the last week with a cold, and that I for once completed a project that I started. As previously mentioned, I am very good at starting projects but not as good at finishing them. By running this race I did not only run a race for the first time in a long time, I also completed a project, showing myself that I can. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the support of the donations to my little cause. Each and every donation made me want to run a little bit faster and a little bit more. So thank you all of you for helping!

And of course, the time and place…I have to say that I am darned pleased with my self…imagine what I could do without a cold!

And hey, you know what; it’s not too late for a small contribution…

http://www.betternow.org/en/project/carolina

D-day is here! Or should I say R-day?

It is finally here, race day! The day that I have been training for, giving my heart and soul to..hmm, maybe I shouldn’t go that far.

It’s cold and windy outside, I have an annoying cold that wont let go, so how the actual running will go tonight, that I don’t know. I happen to be the only one left of the original four that was going to run the race, and all these nice people have donated to Unicef because I am running this race, so I will get around the track doesn’t matter if I have to crawl on all four!

First I have to get trough this day…can’t say it has started very good, that mean it can only get better which is a good thing for tonight!

Oops

You want to be careful with what you ask for, you never know what you might find! This is just two examples of the questions in a search engine that will lead you to my blog…

I blame it on the phone!

I make all this food, and the food looks good and taste good in real life. I take a picture to put on here to show the world my amazing food…and it looks weird! I am blaming it on my phone that obviously do not take good enough pictures. I will not take any responsibility for not charging the batteries on my kind of proper camera that would make it a better experience for you guys!

Some people might get a bit disapointed now, as they have already read  this post and now I am updating it afterwards. But I am guessing that they migh survive.

The thing on the picture above is a Chili. Not even close to the yummy looking thing that Miss Legal usually manage to cook when at her place. But it was good enough, I think, but I have a cold, so I have to trust Miss Legal when she says it tasted good. The amazing thing about this Chili, is that it is made on things that I had at home. Me, myself is pretty impressed with the fact that I managed to pull it of without a trip to the grocery store. Not sure Miss Legal was as impressed though…

The Irish Rover – Fish n’ Chips

Yesterday it was finally time for Fish n’ Chips again, it’s been way to long but apparently my life came in the way. I should have made this update last night when arriving home, this unfortunately happened to be a little bit late and I was way to “tired” to feel that I could write anything that would make any sense today, so here it is with one days delay (lets just hope that I remember all the important bits);

This week the hunt for the best Fish n’ Chips that Copenhagen has to offer took us to the Irish Pub very suitably called The Irish Rover. Fellow judges this week were the always present Mr Grumpy as well as Da Teacher, the rest of the semi-regulars seemed to be busy with things like vacation and being home sick.

The one thing that happens when you hang out with a teacher, is that, well she is a teacher, spelling mistakes are quickly discovered and pointed out. I do not think that she deducted any points from the food even though the word for fries is misspelled in the Danish menu. Not to worry, for all you non-danish speakers, this Irish Pub do have their menu in english as well, and in that one the word chips is correctly spelled.

Mr Grumpy was of course late as usual, the first thing he does when he finally arrives is to walk inside (yes, these Vikings were sitting outside eating yesterday) buy a beer, come back out sit down and say;

“The beer is bloody expensive!”

After that he says hi, and urges us to order the food even if he is not hungry, since he will not purchase another beer at this bar (for you who wonder, a pint is 50 Danish money). To make him happy, which me and Da Teacher always aim to, we order the food, babble away having a nice time and then got out food. To be honest I do not remember if the food took so long that I wondered if the food would be coming soon. If I didn’t then the food didn’t take to long, if I did, then order before you are hungry enough to want your food straight away.

The fish was today served with chips (not wedges), tartar sauce (or something pretending to be) and peas (de-frosted rather than fresh), and a chunk of lemon. Since the menu didn’t contain this information, Mr Grumpy was kind enough to as, and the fish today was Haddock. He also thought that the biggest chunk of fish should be served to the man, but we all know that in the end it doesn’t matter, since he can eat what we little women do not finish.

Not sure it is a very suitable fish n’ chip fish, since it pretty much crumbled when you started to cut into it. We were lucky that it wasn’t take-away fish as that would have been impossible to eat. The batter was also a sad sight this time, a very thin layer, crunchy but to thin. It also seemed like they forgot to put one part of the fish into the fryer, since the tails had a slightly different color than the rest of the fish.

Mr Grumpy was happy though (guess that is what you call an oxymoron) when identifying vinegar on the table, points of for not being served in a bottle. Who can resist pink little plastic packages of vinegar though? There were also the Tartar sauce, I was under the impression that Tartar sauce was not supposed to be that sour but it was better than no tartare sauce at all.

The chips were not very crispy, and could have done with some more time in the fryer. Not sure this would have helped them as according to Da Teacher, the fryer needed to be changed as the chips got their color from the fryer rather than being fried. Think that she might have to elaborate on that story herself as I did not take notes when she explained how this worked.

All in all, we can determine that this is not the best fish n’ chips in Copenhagen. But it was a nice evening, probably one of the last where the meal can take place outdoors. And the service was good, especially if you compare with a few of the previous places we have been to. For you who missed out on those stories you can find them here and of course  there is The Ranking.

The stolen bike(s)

On Friday night when I arrived home sometime around midnight, I found that my beloved red bike was no longer parked outside the train station. Not only did I have to walk (all) the way home, but then I have to find the paperwork for the bike, report it stolen to the police and then last but not least, call the damn insurance company.

I do belive that they are not at all happy with me, because with this bike (and the two that got stolen last year) they have actually had to pay me more money than I have paid them. Amazing! did not realize it was possible. This might be one of the reason that the lady that took my call was a tad rude on the phone, that, and maybe the fact that I realized that I forgot to claim one of the bikes from last year so she had to take that claim as well.

It is a sad process that they have, you can not find the form you need to claim your money on their webpage, no you have to call them and give them all the information (same information that you put in the police report). Once this is done she tells me that she will send a mail with the claim, and I then assume that it’s just something that I have to print and sign, I mean, I did give her all information over the phone, but no!!!! I have to fill it all out again, by hand! I mean, she sent me a pdf that can not be filled out on the computer, I’ll bet they will delay the payment because they can’t read my handwriting.

And talking about delaying payments, the insurance company have a policy that you can’t claim the bike straight away, noooo, you have to wait 30 days since “Bikes do turn up sometimes you know”. That made me think, none of my bikes have been returned to me even though they have special safety markings, and I don’t think that any of my friends have either (well Da Teacher has apparently, she told me yesterday when I was bitching about this exact thing).

So now I am curios, how many bikes are actually returned to their owners after being stolen? Poll time people!

And hep…there was dinner today as well!

The wallet diet works!

I just have to mention it!

I was mailing something as a favor for a friend and it was to big to go into the mailbox. This meant that I had to go and drop it of at the grocery store. On my way home from work, hungry and feeling deadly sorry for myself due to the cold, the grocery store is a death trap.

But since the wallet was at home together with my cash and plastic, I could enter and depart from the store without any unnecessary purchases, amazing.

The Jar

Today I really wanted to go for a run, I feel I haven’t put enough in it lately. But of course I am now coming down with a cold. My throat hurts, my head hurts and I keep sneezing.

Instead I spent the night counting up the Jar Money (after doing something one might call laundrying money). For you how haven’t read previous post on how the money jar came about, you can read it here or just get the short re-cap. I was at a party, the party got out of hand, I came home with a big jar full of money. Sad part is that not all money in the jar is actually worth something. But I have sorted them all out and counted up the ones that are worth something, or I don’t have to pay more than they are worth to exchange into local currency.

The coins that I can not use I will not let go to waste. On Friday I will go flying and on  airports the usually have those big bins where you can drop your money for charity. It won’t go towards my collection, but it is the finally destination that counts in the long run.

Now I’m only hoping that this cold will be a short one, otherwise I will have to walk the race next week and that is not acceptable at all.

And yes, I almost forgot, the total count of the money I can use, donated by Vincent and Friends at his party on Saturday night, are as follows;

Swedish Crowns 422,00
Danish Crowns 39,00

Possible usable coins;

Euros 10,02
Pounds
USD 2,48
Norwegian Crowns 21,50

What I am doing for the possible ones are trying to get my friends to”purchase” them of me. For example the euro ones are all the “brown” coins, the small ones that you can’t really exchange here but are fully usable in euro countries. The same with the dollars and the pounds. So we will see what the Money Jar actually end up donating in a few days.

And hey, don’t forget, it’s not too late to give a little something yourself;

http://www.betternow.org/en/project/carolina

Things are growing…

I am amazed and surprised, but things are growing and I haven’t manage to kill it yet!