There hasn’t been much Christmas feeling this year because of the lack of snow. Screw you global warming! Even so, Christmas eve was cozy enough. It was spent with my parents, uncle, cousin and her girlfriend. For Christmas dinner we had potatoes, pork ribs, meat balls of various kinds, white sausage and sauerkraut, amongst other things. Got some $300 worth of gift certificates, some clothing, vodka, chocolate. The best gift was from my love however, thank you.

On Tuesday, two days later, I went to this Christmas gathering at my friend Steve’s apartment for some catching up and drinking. Initially I wasn’t too keen on going as I thought there would be a butt load of people there, but only 10 or so people turned up so it was alright. Except for this annoying friend of a friend someone brought that ruined the mood, he was one of those know-it-all types. Of course, Grandiosa was served (it’s not Christmas without it!) and beer was drunk. I ended up leaving pretty early though, the beer was doing nothing for me and my contempt for the annoying guy grew greater later into the night.

Yesterday I helped my cousin and her girlfriend to move to a new place in the city, which ended up being roughly 6 hours work of carrying and loading packages, straining my back beyond belief. 2 years back when I was working in the civil service I once tried to lift something way too heavy for my own good and ended up messing up my back, and it has never been the same since. I don’t notice it at all on a day-to-day basis, but when I lift something a bit too heavy the pain comes back right out of nowhere. I woke up feeling pretty sore today to say the least.

Endless amount of interesting reading material on Wikipedia’s Unusual Articles page. Thanks j-sim :*

Holy fuck. I just cut my hair for the first time in 4 years. Needless to say, it was pretty long. I love having long hair, but when it reaches your lower back, it starts to get really annoying and it comes in the way all the freaking time. I cut it to about 10-15cm below the shoulders. It feels so unbelieveably weird. I’m used to combing my fingers through my hair, but now when I do that, it’s like a part of me is missing. It’s going to take some time getting used to, that’s for sure.

I admit it. I LOVE Big Macs. You can tell me about how dry, greasy or crappy they are endlessly, you can rave about how the best burger in the world is from Uncle Jebediah’s Steakhouse, I don’t care. Big Macs are my favorite burgers in the world.

Specifically, they are best when you order them plain, without any shitty salad, tomatoes and dressing on them, just the buns and the meat. You then take it apart layer for layer, and put a 3×3 row of fries between each single layer. Enjoy!

Illustration for the hard of learning provided.

I just finished reading the fifth installment in the Artemis Fowl series today; The Lost Colony. The series is mainly aimed at kids as far as I know, but I still can’t help but to thoroughly enjoy it. I’ve loved every single book in the series so far, they are a very easy read and it’s those type of books where you get pretty engulfed in the action and just want to keep on reading. Like the previous books in the series, it didn’t take me too long to finish this one either.

If you’re not too familiar with these books, Artemis Fowl is a wealthy teenage genius who mixes himself up with the world of fairies, gnomes, trolls and imps in his search for power and gold. It’s a sort of Harry Potter light, but it’s not really fair to compare them, as they deal with very different things and their premises are not the same. Artemis Fowl is a bit more light weight in the language, and also contains a bit more tongue in cheek humour, which is totally delightful.

In book five, Artemis gets involved with the destruction of a (you guessed it) colony, where imps-cum-demons live, only waiting to slay the human population. Luckily he gets helps from the fairy police and his friend-slash-bodyguard as usual. This time he also runs into a worthy opponent wanting to get ahold of one of the demons who are being randomly transported to earth as a result of their colony’s impending destruction.

Enjoyable read, as usual from Artemis Fowl.

This last week I have been reading Sophie’s World (Sofies Verden) by Jostein Gaarder. One of his earlier books, The Solitaire Mystery (Kabalmysteriet), is one of my all time favorite books, so I figured I should read this one as well, which is his most famous novel.

It’s basically an introduction to philosophy, wrapped in a novel. Sophie, a 15 year old girl, has an encounter with a middle aged man who starts writing her mysterious notes relating to philosophy and essentially makes her his pupil, as he takes her through the history of philosophy throughout the world, up until the 20th century. As events unfold, Sophie starts questioning life and her existence, something which is only further fueled when she gets mixed up into strange events concerning a seemingly non-existent girl in another world.

The first half of the novel went rather slowly, consisting mostly of facts and with very little progression of the actual story. The second half of the book was a much more enjoyable read however. It certainly makes you think twice about life in some way or another. Still, it doesn’t even come close to the joy that is The Solitaire Mystery, which is at least twice as awesome in my opinion.

As stated in the previous entry, I finally feel like I should do something about my life, for real. At least give it a try.

The last days I’ve checked out a few options about doing some online courses to graduate and get my high school diploma. Meaning I could eventually get into a university if I should ever want to (at this point I have no desire to do so). Maybe feel like less of a loser and a moron.

The courses seems to pretty steeply priced, at least compared to my economy at this point. But I figured I’d just start off by buying the necessary books and study on my own, and perhaps signing up for an exam or two if I feel I understand everything. I like the idea of studying in my own pace and doing the exams whenever I want to.

In order to get my diploma, I need to do these courses: Norwegian, English, Natural Science, Sociology, Newer History and Math. All which amounts to more or less 3 years worth of schooling. I’m not quite sure yet what sort of time period I should give myself to complete everything. I only had the money right now to buy one book, which is one of the two newer history books, about global history. If everything goes OK, I’m thinking that I can sign up for the exam this next spring. Then perhaps I’ll have bought a few more books and can sign up for a few more exams the next winter.

I think the hardest part will be the math and natural science courses, but I think I might be able to get myself ready for the exams the spring after this one and have everything finished. Perhaps it’s aiming a bit high, but oh well. I can just redo exams if I fail at anything after all.

I’ve wanted to write this entry for a few days now, but I hadn’t quite found the words yet. Plus, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to share this with everybody just yet. In a way I feel a bit silly saying this, but I realized that I shouldn’t, because it’s very much a real thing.

So here’s what’s happened: I’ve fallen in love with somebody for the first time in my life… over the internet. Until now I’ve been one of those people who thought that falling in love with someone over the internet was a bit silly and hard to believe. How can you fall in love with someone you haven’t even met? Talking to someone, meeting them and then falling in love: quite understandable. But not even meeting them?

Well my perception of that changed rather quickly. I’ve talked to a few girls over the years, and have indeed been taken by someone at several occasions, but it has never amounted to anything more than that.

Then about a month ago I started talking to this girl named Lauren. She is 20 years old and lives in the Philippines, 9700km away from me. We hit it off pretty quickly and it all went downhill from there (in the most positive way mind you). She is super intelligent, funny, beautiful beyond belief, and generally just totally out of my league. It all went so unbelievably fast, suddenly she said she was in love with me. It left me confused, flustered and completely stunned. It took me a day or two to sort my feelings out, but I realized I was in love with her as well.

Never having been in love before, I’ve always wondered if love was just a word people “automatically” used in relationships, if they really mean it, or whether it really was a true feeling you got. Would I ever recognize this feeling? How would I know if I truly was in love with someone?

I didn’t have to wonder too long, because out of nowhere my head was filled with feelings I’ve never felt before, it was like a constant rush of adrenaline. There was no question that I was indeed in love with this girl, she has filled me with previously unknown emotions and I’ve never felt happier in my entire life. It’s like eating vanilla ice cream all your life in ignorance, then suddenly discovering that you can cover it with this magical caramel sauce.

She has made me appreciate life a lot more, and for once in my life, I actually feel like doing something about it and be a better person (pardon the clichè).

I’m trying to be realistic about it all and not get my hopes up too much, but there is no point being pessimistic about something like this. At this point I’m totally dedicated and commited to her and I don’t want anybody else, even if she’s not my girlfriend or anything like that just yet.

For those who does not know, I’ve been planning a trip to Japan for a while now, and I’m hoping to realise the dream of mine to go there some time next year. I asked her to come with me. If the feelings are still the same in the future, then I’m hoping to meet her there and see if anything comes out of it.

When you don’t have access to your own computer, along with all your media files, Pandora and the Last.fm player are lifesavers. I have never really fully appreciated them until these last few days. Discovered some great new songs and artists, hence I should probably remind myself to keep using these when I get back to my own computer.