Sing something to enter the Christmas Carol Competition!

* * *

I called Sundsvall this morning. This may have undone me somewhat. I called the phone that was my phone two years ago. I could hear my old apartment in the background there. I could hear Sundsvall and... I'm a bit shook up from this now. And I need to make a few more calls that way. And on Saturday, I will be there. As much as I'm looking forward to this trip... I'm quite scared now. I remember leaving Sundsvall, sitting on the bus (because we missed the train) and watching the landscape of my area swoosh past until it was no longer Norrland. And usually I get emotional amnesia (can't remember how something felt) pretty quickly once the thing is over, but I still remember how it felt to sit on that bus.

And now I will go back there, and then leave again. I might come back a zombie, just so you know.

Bending over backwards on the internet is quite unpleasant.

In the past whoknowshowlongtime I have signed into my Paypal to figure out how to add an account from a different country (you can't), created a new PayPal account, forgot to do my name properly on that one so I had to reactivate my yahoo email account and create yet another PayPal account, closed the previous one, and am now currently in the process of changing the email into the proper one. What have I learnt in this arduous process? Nothing, except that Hotmail > Yahoo, since with Yahoo you have to pay for a premium account if you want forwarding, Hotmail's forwarding is free. Yahoo also has a PitA habit of throwing a giant ad of "UPGRADE NOW!" at your face when you try to get to your inbox. You know how you get to your inbox when it does that? You actually have to click "I will upgrade now" before you get in. There is no "no thanks" link, nothing. You actually have to click yes, and then it just takes you to your inbox like nothing happened. Frankly I think that is morally wrong.

And why am I going through these digital acrobatics? To book a flight. I couldn't use my mum's visa because they said "we'll be needing to look at that visa card when you check in." -_- No you won't, since I won't be bringing it with me. Lufthansa, you have fail. RyanAir, why hast thou forsaken me? ;_;

My mum actually suggested that I get a visa card. I dunno about that, that's basically about debt. I'm not into debt, I want to live debt-free. So I'unno, since I do need it with the air travel stuff (which I do quite often after all) and I seem to have no moral gripes about using other people's debt cards... >_> So maybe I'll have to bend and get a credit card. :/

Of all days this all had to go down today. :/ Today I wanted to sit, have a quiet evening and listen to podcasts and make Christmas cards. Instead I'm messing around with money.

My browser just destroyed my life. -_- I use the "open all windows from last session" thing every morning to get back to where I was before closing the puter, and today when I did that, it opened one tab. -_- Son of a... I tried looking in history what all the cool tabs I had open might have been, but it's pretty messed up in there. I need a new system. Esp. for keeping tabs where I am in Thisisn'thappiness. For now I've kind of sorted my Top Sites to be an emergency way to open the tabs, but... Buh. It also keeps doing this weird crashing thing, where things go all black, then when you wiggle your mouse over it or highlight everything, they come back. But the blackness spreads to all the tabs like a plague. So incredibly frustrating >.<

In better news (for Silvie), I has an idea for a tumblog. So I might get one. :D

I'm going to still be having this cold when I fly to Sweden, aren't I? >.< Thank goodness it is a very short flight. But still, flying with a head cold is awful.

Long and boring wall of text. Feel free to skip.

First proper freeze of the year. Couldn't have happened on a worse night >.< Let's see: I was asked to work on my day off. It was not just papers to the people who want them but also had to deliver ads to people who don't yet subscribe to a newspaper, which makes it take an hour longer, and there already is a situation where apparently the taxi station has lately been very unhappy with their paper coming constantly too late (I haven't been on my route in the centrum in two weeks but have been teaching downtown to some kid, and then for reasons absolutely beyond me I've been taught the HH route and I friggin' hate it) since the guy who does my route when I'm not there is just... kind slow and dumb >_> So knowing that there are unhappy customers at the end of the route was making me nervous, and I really would have wanted to be on time for them and not being given the chance was really pissing me off (you can imagine an iippo going up and down stairwells in the middle of the night, delivering papers and junk mail and fuming as she does :P) But since I haven't been in the centrum route in such a long time I couldn't do it from memory since things keep changing with the list (cancellations, new subscriptions etc) so having to check the list all friggin' time takes time too. And then! The kid I taught how to do downtown was at work and he took my bike! >.< The bikes are kept in a garage, so as I come to work this morning I see him go in the garage right before me, and I meet him as he is coming out. And I look at his bike and say "you took the bike I usually ride". And he did a little laugh and said "huh, did I?" and went on. What I meant, you sob, was "give my bike pleasethankyou." Y'see, the post bikes are all the same, more or less. And the one I ride is in no way better than any other bike. But it's the one I'm used to. It's handbrake is a little loose, the frame thingie that you use to leave it standing behaves in a certain way. And the way it feels is... This is what I'm used to. It is all the same to you, you little *insert pejorative term for young male* since you are not used to any of the bikes yet, you do not notice the small subtle differences. It makes a difference to me, since going on the slippery roads today with a bike that was not the one that I was used to was really friggin' scary. I was terrified out of my wits during every bit of biking I had to do this morning. Which isn't good since I was also terrified all the way through the past two nights in HH with my trainer, because it is effing pitch black out there and I do not know where I'm going. *is very unhappy with company faffing with people's routes* Just let me do my centrum and nothing else - frack, I'll even do it for six days a week, all you need is to find me a replacement on Sundays, just give me the other day off in money, or stick it on my Sweden trip so I won't have so many days off without pay, just... don't make me go out to other routes :/

All of this did make me think about the nature of fear and dread (y'see, falling over on your bike isn't that terrible, I've had it happen before, no big deal - it's the accelerated heart rate and the anticipation of falling that makes it so unbearable); how fear turns into other emotions like anger (hello Yoda) in some strange attempt of covering up the real reason for being upset; the irrationality of it all. Yet for all my cool insights I was not able to convince myself to not be so scared and just do my job like I always have. :/ This will all get better when not being able to trust the ground under your feet becomes a given - it's just this transition stage that causes all the stress. Soon I'll be used to slippery roads. And that punk won't be taking my bike anymore! D: If he tries again I'll ask him nicely "please can't I just have it, it's the one I'm used to, you go get used to some other bike" and if he's a twat I'll just start coming to work earlier than he does. It's not like I sleep well at midnight anymore anyway, I might as well start waking up earlier so snoozing in the morning after work won't be so bad >_>

I was so exhausted when I got home (at 8am! D: ) that I just read a bit and then cuddled/spooned with my dog on the floor until all of a sudden it was almost 10am. >_> My doggie is very warm <3 What is it about fur that just is so... adorable and lovely? ^_^ How can a fuzzy creature just steal your heart like that? :3

Tomorrow will be better. It is troll night which means that every household in town is delivered a newspaper, and since they know that this takes effing forever, they split the centrum route between two people (me and my slow off-day replacement), so I am absolutely positive that the taxi station's paper will be on time tomorrow.

http://www.davidpietrusza.com/great-radio-hoax.html

This makes my heart ache. </3 Sure, my view of Woollcott is coloured by the fact that I know him through the person who most loved him, but even if I knew him like his many enemies did I'm pretty sure i would think this was a nasty prank.

Interesting note: Minnie and Susan are both names of the women in Harpo's life (his mother and his wife - though in all fairness I think he wasn't married to Susan by 1935... May have been, I'm not sure).

(You may deduct from this that I am once again totally engrossed in the Harpo Marx universe that takes over my life ever so often: I'm reading Harpo Speaks! and watching Marx Bros. movies day in and day out, I've ordered a book by Harpo's son from Amazon, I'm scouring the internets for Woollcott etc...)

I have to do an add-on that the poultry podcast ended with a story about a man who farms geese in Spain in a way that makes foie gras without inhumane treatment of the birds (and if you know anything about foie gras - I didn't - you know that this is a sheer impossibility).

And then from another source I learnt that there is a cheese cave under Bleaker St. in New York. Totally doing an east coast trip in 2013: the island of Neshobe in Lake Bomoseen, Viking, Avaz, and then the Cheese Cave and other essentials in NYC :P

So if I didn't love This American Life before (and I did, believe you me), I do now, after learning that they have an annual tradition: around this time of year they do a Poultry Slam, where every story is about birds (chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese...) So for Heaven's sakes, go listen to this thing! http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/452/poultry-slam-2011 I know I'm going to go back in their archives and listen to the previous years' slams... This year you will find the chicken that testified in a death row case, the terror turkey of Martha's Vineyard and who knows what else, since I haven't finished the episode yet.

The reason I came here mid ThisAmLife is this: http://theracket.net/ I just couldn't go another second without sharing this with you. It looks so interesting. Nothing else there than small promo snippets so far, so in case you are a boring person, you can just wait til January 2012 when I'll rave about it again if it turns out to be as cool as it looks.

Conditioner kept hair tangle-free for one day (which was Sunday when my hair was mostly kept on a bun and I didn't go to work, so that might have been why it didn't tangle that day...), and today it was back to its normal state of "early stages of natural dreads" :/ Maybe I should just let it turn into natural dreads. Or maybe I should get dreads to end the problem. Then again, if I just chopped the mop and gave the hair to Little Princesses like I intend to, none of this would be a problem, and I would save on shampoo.

I'm slowly realising that I should probably get an iPod to listen to podcasts while I deliver papers. Just a cheap old one from eBay or something. Because in one night I could listen to three ThisAmLife's (like I'd ever have that many new ones at a time), or two Everything Creatives, or six Classic Speeches, or heck, get through an entire Tate Event recording in one playing, or even get a move on with some of those Radio 3 Arts and Entertainment things (I like to pretend that I listen to R3, but let's face it: I've listened to one of those and it was... not as interesting as some of my other ones so they've been low on the priority). Heck, I could even get back to Kermode! Yes, this investment seems wise indeed.

I'm giving up on TV. I learnt that there was a movie on tonight that sounded kind of interesting (though it sounded so interesting that I can't even remember what it was called... >_> A romantic comedy of some kind). So a bit before the appointed time I go to turn on the television. Channel 5, I recalled, it was on, so I pressed the number five. I ended up on a channel that was not Channel 5. So I figured the numbers were just messed up, and decided to just flick through until I hit Channel 5, whichever number it resided under. It didn't exist. So I reckoned "oh boo, it must be one of those stupid channels that you have to have some special gadget to see" and gave up. Then I checked online. Turned out is is actually called The Voice. I went "ahh, I have that" and went to re-flick through the channels. But The Voice didn't have a picture. So I thought maybe I'll just make the digiwhatsit search for the channels and it'll work, since I've had Voice showing here before. No such luck, and since it was like 15 minutes after the start time of the movie, I just gave up and decided to draw secret santa all night while listening to podcasts instead.

Also today a girl I don't actually know at all that well, and her fiance whom I had never met, (plus the missionaries who are my friends) came over here to put the girl's stuff in my attic for two years as she prepares to go on her mission. I'd seen her cry-for-assistance Facebook status update ("halp I need place for my stuff for two years!") and I said "I have an attic" (then consulted my parents to make sure it was cool). All the time leading up to this I kept getting questions from everyone: who is she, where is she going, when is she going, where is she going to stay, where does she live now, how much stuff is there, does she eat fish, what's her last name (I had a senior moment and couldn't even remember her last name)... And I just wanted to explain "you clearly don't understand what mormonism is about. She is a sister from church. She expressed a need and I felt that I would be able to be of assistance. That is the extent of my information, that is all I need to go on, why do you need more? And heck, she'll eat fish if you serve it. If she doesn't, she can just eat bread -_-"

I also spent a long time this morning untangling knots from my hair. This is newsworthy because my hair is uber-silky, it never knots, not ever. So something's changing and I probably should start using conditioner. I have never used conditioner (because I hate silky hair feel, it feels like really really thin razors and it kind of looks wet and greasy even when it's clean, and conditioner makes the effect even worse), I don't know how it's done.

I've discovered a wonderful thing: the Internet! :D Or more specifically, extremely specific weather forecasts for a specific place (my town) that tells temperature, rain, and the little weather pictures for the next three days in six hour installments. So here I am, ready to go to bed before work tonight, and I can look "okay the temperature will be about that at 2am and that other thing around 8pm", which tells me exactly the fork of temperature (as well as the rain situation and the little picture thingies) at the time I'll be working, so I can deduct whether there will be dark ice, what kind of mitten-glove combination I ought to take, and so forth.

I also found cool YouTube channels with long-ish (hour/hour-and-a-half) documentaries that are just kind of cool. Watched two today ("Brother Born Again" which was so intimate that it was uncomfortable, plus, y'know, born-agains are a little scary >_> Though he wasn't too scary... And "Google Me" which was a guy's cool project and yah, cool) while knitting bunnies.

The internet can be so useful, but it's just too much. There are too many ways it can be useful, how will I ever use them all? ;_; I feel like a moron in the limited way I use the internet. Like, conceptually I understand that the internet can be used for anything, for everything, but my brain has serious troubles understanding what anything or everything are. :/ In other words, I has a dumb.

http://thisisnthappiness.com/post/13489422338/ride-home

That is all.

Today I did Christmas shopping. :D My parents had a very difficult time understanding the concept that I wanted to bike to town to look at stuff in shops. "But what do you need?" "Nothing as such..." "What are you going to get then?" "...y'know, stuff..." I am willing to think that this may have been a lost-in-translation kind of moment. Perhaps "to go to town" doesn't convey the same idea of leisurely walking around and seeing if you find something in Finnish as it does in English.


In other news, there's a fierce wind/storm thingie here. It blew my post bike over this morning. Which was really bad, the wind grabbed the papers that fell out instantly and just ripped them down the street and there was nothing that could be done about that. It was interesting, since the post bike has this metal frame around the front wheel, and you move the bike slightly backwards to set it to rest on this very sturdy frame. Then when you want to start moving again, you push forward and the frame pops up with its spring and off you go. What the wind did was that it caught on the big floppy plastic covers for the paper boxes (so there's one box on each side at the back, and one at the front) and they were like sails. The bike rolled forward and got off the frame, manage to move a few tentative inches and then toppled. While I was three steps away at someone's mailbox. So very frustrating. I had like a second panic of "there, it's all over now, might as well just-" and then I caught myself and started picking up the papers that the wind hadn't managed to destroy, then called the boss back at the depo to bring me some extras so I won't run out mid-route. So I got going again, met him on the next street where I'd told him I was (because I can't read >_>) and that was that.

This was a night of much learning. Practical things -wise, I learnt that one should park headwind, or uphill. The floppy cover-thingies need to be mushed on top of the papers inside the box instead of letting them rest there covering the papers (they have velcro to strap them down, but velcro is defenceless against this strong a wind) and overall it may be good practice to not cut open all the stacks of papers right at the start of the route. It might also be a good idea to keep a wedge in your pocket in case there is no good way to park headwind or uphill. It was also curious to notice how calm and, in fact cheerful, I was about the whole thing. Of course I would like to think I'm cool and calm under pressure and stress, but I think it's actually true. Calling the boss person (with whom I get along quite marvelously nowadays actually, I've had to call him for help so many times (and I never need any help when he has a day off... :P) and I've been helpful to him too) I was pretty "heh, my bike just fell over so uhh, could you drop some papers to me?" and I was kind of laughing about it when he got there too. In the start when I needed to get a grip and start picking the papers up, I kind of almost tried to make myself cry or feel sorry for myself, but it just didn't come. o.O
(Bonus story related to being cool under bad stuff: when I got transferred out of Sundsvall on the mission, we missed the train. And it was pretty bad since there was railworks, so there was very few trains. And I remember we had to park far from the train station, had to drag luggage and we saw the train pull away. And there was that heart sinking thing, and my comp was not one to hold back her feelings, so she raged and railed, and I just led us inside the station and called the secretaries, who handle the travel arrangements, and was really patient and thankful and loving on the phone with poor stressed out elder A. He sorted it all out while I kept, with curt replies, my steaming/boiling companion from doing anything stupid. Then when we were on our way, I was thinking about the situation how well I handled it, how very... leader-like. So I had a small moment to ponder about how I'd grown and what I'd learnt during my stay in Sundsvall, as I watched Norrland roll past and left it behind... :C )

I miss Sundsvall so ridiculously much right now. To the point that I put a screenshot from a webcam in S-vall as my computer desktop background...

This is going to replace Google, yo. http://coudal.com/ez/

http://thisisnthappiness.com/post/32333621/chopshop-bauldoff Identify the robots from silhouettes.

Hey people who know physics and chemistry and stuff. Here's something that has bugged me forever: I had an exam once many moons ago in physics/chem, and you had to illustrate with these line-letter things of what is going on in the atom/molecule level. Like, how water is made you have H-O-H (which looks a little like a tie fighter...) and there was a question of what happens when something burns (I think it was carbon) and I swear nobody ever explained what is going on there, let alone how to draw it (I think I just drew flames around the C or something... >_> ) and I mentioned to the teacher after the exam that I have no idea what happens when something is on fire, but she never explained it later either (is it oxygen that has something to do with it?) So here's a good spot for someone to fix a hole in my education. Please? :/

Texts interconnect, texts that have different ages, but they come together in a meaningful way, linearly somehow, in the timeline of life. This is something that could very well drive a person crazy, and has (no, not me). And I would have a very difficult time with it were it not that I believe in a greater narrative, that there is an ultimate author to the story of my life. Or perhaps not believing in coincidences is the definition of the madness. That definition is after all completely up to the environment/society to define¹. But as for me, seeing the dots and connecting them and believing with reason that someone put those dots there for me to connect, is not insanity.

The example that spurred this: I listened to a recording of a symposium from the Tate, about artist as myth maker. It was held in conjunction with the big exhibition of Gauguin. There was much discussion about him and other artists who paint/represent themselves in art as Christ. I listened to this and wondered, had a bit of a problem with it as you might well imagine. Didn't understand. The next day I watched a film called Så som i Himmelen (As It Is in Heaven), which a friend of mine sold me alongside with a bunch of clothes that she was going to take to the fleamarket². The film is about a world-renown violinst/conductor who has a breakdown and moves back to his home village in Norrland. And it really is a wonderful film and has a lot of the things that I love (Swedish, Norrland, choir music, Christian symbolism galore, with hidden truths of the restoration strewn³ about), but it also made a very clear and completely non-problematic depiction of artist-as-saviour all the way through the film. So the penny dropped many a times when watching. (The third connected text is obviously the Bible/BoM.)

Have a look at the main song from the film http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y765gdd3rEc Gabriella's Song. (English subs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxmgkxRrpZE&feature=related )

1. Also something from a podcast today. There is this wonderful radio programme called Aristoteleen kantapää (Aristotle's Heel) that is all about language, every week they share language flops that people have sent in that they've heard in the news, as well as interviewing someone about something language related. And in this programme they interviewed a linguist who had studied discourses of schizophrenics, and this is something he mentioned. 
2. This was really magical. I was over there with some other people, and as we were about to leave, she asked me if I'd be interested in a coat, because it's exactly the kind of coat that would be perfect for me. The other people were in a hurry but I wasn't, so I hung back and she showed me everything she was going to take to the fleamarket. And I got some really epic things that are really very perfectly me :3
3. What is the core word of strewn? How do I say to... (strewn)?

I am my mother's Christmas card machine. But this year's cards are kind of awesome and really quick and easy to do :D And it makes me feel all Christmassy to be making them. Plus I get to send some of them to my people too. One of these might be my entry for the Christmas contest :3

I just realised that there is "other" in "mother" *mind does trippy things*
^{Horror-movie tagline: "putting the 'other' back in 'mother'..." In the poster, a homely figure of a woman in silhouette against an unnaturally bright doorway. Title of the movie: hmm... can't think of one.}

In the paper today there was a column about Estonians in Finland, how they are the big invisible minority. And even the Basic Finns don't seem to be very anti-Estonian-immigrant, despite their "Finland for Finns" nonsense. But of course, Estonians look like us and learn to speak Finnish really quickly since the languages are similar, and the Basic Finns aren't anti-immigration, they're just racists (if you look different, you need to leave is basically what they mean). Anyway, BF bashing aside >_> The end of the article invited readers to email the author and tell of their experiences of coming across Estonians around here. Now I haven't, I must admit, not since primary school where a girl in my class was Estonian, and she just had an exceptionally pretty name and that was about as strange as she got. But I did email him with a snippet that I thought was interesting. When my first missionary companion came to visit here from California, we biked to my job the bookstore. And she noticed construction sites on the way there, and said how strange she finds it that there are white people working there. In California it is only non-white, mostly mexicans, who work that kind of job. Later I mentioned this to my dad, and he said that if you went close enough to listen to them, you'd find that they're not Finns who work in construction, they are Estonians etc... I thought this was really interesting.

*goes back to listening to narrowcasting and drawing Christmas cards and knitting and sewing bunnies*

Yesterday night I went to Helsinki on the train for a church young people thinger, and came back on the bus. And the bus driver was an angel. :3 I had to change buses in Karhula to get to where I live, and before the bus left Helsinki the driver came by my seat and said "the uhh, schedule is really tight here, just so you know, we are a regular route (aka he has to stop more) driving to a schedule of an express, so I make no promises of getting you to your connecting bus, but I will try my best." I assured him that it's okay and that I understood, and that if I had to wait for the later bus (they go once an hour >.<) in Karhula, that would be okay. The drive was long and dark so I nodded in and out of consciousness. And the last time I woke up was when the driver said "we're in Karhula, and the bus to Hamina is standing right next to us. Do you have any bags in the luggage compartment? :)" And I just jumped up and thanked him about a million times, and skipped to the other bus. The trip went exactly as it said on the time tables, I was off the last bus at exactly the right time, and before the clock had finished striking midnight, I was home. So I didn't turn into a pumpkin. :P I just want to thank that bus driver some how for being such a saving angel. :3

Then there's this http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/06/07/100607taco_talk_mead which basically in its conclusion says exactly what I think about my education. If you can't be bothered to read the whole thing, read the end (two last paragraphs). I dunno if it resonated with me so much because I carry mail and am way over-educated for this work or what, but it has of late really bugged me when people keep thinking education -> means to get rich, and that education is only worth something if it makes money to you and the society. During my days of unemployment and looking for work I have never once regretted studying art, even though it means that there are no jobs that match my education, and when there is the competition for those positions is tough.

I am actually kind of rejecting the idea of working in my field of education. This view is not far from my views on religious leaders: the mormon ecclesiastical leaders are all volunteers and none are paid for the work they do for the church (bishops, stake presidents, auxiliary leaders, missionaries, heck even the prophets and apostles only get expenses covered) and this is because the work is too sacred. In Sweden when we had a rough day I often said that no one could pay me enough to be a missionary. But because I did it for free, it was worth it. In a similar sense, I value my creative work too much, to put a price on it would not work for me. But with delivering newspapers, it is worth it. When it really sucks - when it rains and I make a mistake and the bike falls over and my shoe starts to leak and my foot gets wet and I'm already late - I think of the fact that this is honest work and I am getting an honest pay for my effort and that these doors and mailboxes represent people who are paying for this service, customers, and it is my professional duty to deliver (harharpun).

In this week's This american Life episode So Crazy It Just Might Work the second act is about a gay mormon. It's a really awesome story (not just because it's about a mormon but as a story it's just... cool), and the first act about curing cancer with sound is pretty darn cool too. Guys, I really love this radio show, and so that's why you should give it a listen:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/450/so-crazy-it-just-might-work

Now I go to sleep. It is 5 pm, and people who get up at 1:30 am go to bed now.

New boots are here! <3 <3 And they are exactly right. Now, the next little while my feet will cry, ache and hurt a lot, as I train them and these new boots to become inseparable. :3 And I can also retire my old boots. They have served me so incredibly well. It's like, they deserve a shrine. They took me from Coventry to Leicester, and from Solihull to Coventry. They took me all over Sweden. They were church boots and forest boots at the same time, they were a conversation starter, and heck, they just overall ruled. Now I am sure that this new pair of boots will do perfectly fine in taking this role and filling the spot (since they are pretty much identical :P) but I will miss these epic boots a lot. *sigh*

This also means that I am only waiting for the mail arrival of the interrail ticket, and Poptarty goodness from USA. :)

This morning at work I trained another person to do the same paper route that I do (he'd cover for my days off). I was waiting for him to do the stuff, and was sat on my bike. My legs touch the ground from the seat of my bike if I stretch them straigth. So I picked up both my feet at the same time, while clutching the handbrake, and tried to balance on the bike without moving. It of course would start to lean on either direction in less than a second, and I'd stretch my legs and catch the fall, then rinse and repeat (other things I did while waiting for my colleague was to quote Hamlet, sing in my head and at one point there was a most exquisite lehtikuusi that I stroked the branches of to make the dry needles fall off it).

I started to think how this is like life. Keeping a bicycle balanced is not difficult at all, yet you can make it difficult by clutching the handbrake. If you simply let go and maybe push off a little to get you going, you can quite easily not only stay upright on the bicycle but also get to places. What is the handbrake that you are clutching that stops you from rolling forward and from keeping in balance? What are the things you need to do to pedal the bike to keep it going?

http://www.matdolphin.com/play/all/one-plain-one-fancy/
One plain, one fancy. Really cool stuff. I want to submit, but I don't yet know what... Shall see.

In the August 9th 2011 'New Yorker Out Loud' podcast they interviewed a video game voice actor (Jennifer Hale from Mass Effect), and it's awesome and I think some of you might like to hear that. She does really nice grunts :) It's not very long, like 13 minutes or so...
http://www.newyorker.com/online/2011/08/15/110815on_audio_bissell

Oh and this is one of the most beautiful things I have seen in a while:
http://www.plan59.com/xmas/xmas030.htm

I maded a bunny!

I've come to the realisation that my English after-school club would be way more fun and overall better if I wasn't paid to do it, if I was just doing it as a community volunteer type of thing. I don't know why, but there's just something... irksome about the money-side of it all. But with the paper job the money is the best incentive.

There's a little girl in there who is a little... detrimental to the overall class environment. She is really negative ("no, let's not do that") and mouthy about it, she's really bossy and loud about that, and she influences the other little girl who is her "best friend" to behave in a not nice way too :/ She wasn't in the very first class that I held, and it was much nicer.

I'm going to bake pulla (cinnamon rolls) with the missionaries on Saturday. No, that is not an euphemism, and yes I mean it, that I will bake. Yes, me. Yes, bake. In the kitchen, that's right. It's going to be a Finnish culture thing for District meeting. Being in district meeting with six elders might break my heart though, just in time for me to heal from it before my Sweden trip which will for sure break my heart again (the heart break comes from the not being a missionary anymore and missing being one and missing the mission).