Testing time!

Lately I've been answering dozens and dozens of questions about my personality for different personality tests on the net. I thought I'd put some of that stuff here, so you can all decide whether I'm like those results or not... :)

Here's a LotR character test, which is one of the better ones I've come across. Result:

You scored as Gandalf. This wise, old mage is loyal and brave. He is known for his counsel and advice to his friends and allies during tough times. "All you have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to you." Gandalf 81% Samwise 63% Aragorn 50% Arwen 44% Eowyn 38% Pippin 31% Frodo 31% Faramir 19% Gollum 6% Which LOTR character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

(Wow, I can't even begin to tell how impressed I am of myself for actually getting that image on this page!)

Then I took a science fiction character test. And the result...

A venerated sage with vast power and knowledge, you gently guide forces around you while serving as a champion of the light.

Judge me by my size, do you? And well you should not - for my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life greets it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us, and binds us. Luminescent beings are we, not this crude matter! You must feel the Force around you, everywhere.

Hmm, a pattern do I see here?

Well, I was bound to get a different kind of result (not an old wise geezer, that is) when I took the Jung Typology Test, but then again, I turned out to be type ENFJ, which is described as either an educative mentor or teacher. So an old wise geezer it is, then. Here and here are some of the more thorough explanations of what I supposedly am. And here is a short explanation on the meaning of the single characteristics, if the idea of the test is not familiar to you.

I do recognise myself from all of these, but sometimes I can't help but feeling I'm not that wise at all and that all my counselling is just about as garbled as Yoda's mutterings in general. But I try, and that probably is why I get these kinds of results. I guess there's some truth to them, after all. At least the Typology thingie.

So there I am. The bare necessities of me. (Nah, there's more to the package for sure, but the tests are fun way to spend extra time I don't actually have...)

And to the top of it all, go and get yourselves an elf name and a hobbit name. As an elf I'd be known as Nessa Ancalimë (very pretty, I think) and were I to be a wee hobbit lass, I'd be Ruby Knotwise of Michel Delving. Very appropriate, since my favorite gemstone is the ruby. :)

Moving pictures

Well, well. I seem to keep myself very busy somehow and feel like I've neglected the Pool. Time to do something about it.

On Tuesday the nominations for the Oscars were announced. Surprisingly the Phantom of the Opera -spectacle didn't get a nomination for best costume design. Instead, it got nominated in categories like best cinematography and some other smaller categories. What surprised me was the nomination of Troy for the costume Oscar. I did love the blue pieces of fabric the guys were wearing, but were they worth an Oscar? Well, I suppose they may have been. We'll see in February.

I haven't seen any of the "big" movies yet. Scorcese's The Aviator premiers today in Turku, if I don't remember wrong. I think I'd like to see it. I don't know if I'm that interested in Million Dollar Baby, but Closer I'd definitely like to see, even though it's not on the Best picture list. And most definitely I'd like to see Johnny Depp in Finding Neverland. Sideways seems like a good piece of entertainment, too. Lots of movies to wait for. Nice.

Oh, oh, oh! While surfing the Oscar nominations, I bumped into a very interesting piece of information. Stellan Skarsgård has been cast as William "Bootstrap" Turner for Pirates of the Caribbean 2! Interesting choice, I'd say. Empire has the story. I can't wait for that particular movie, if it was to premier tomorrow it wouldn't be too soon. I so hope they get as funny a script for this sequel as the original had. Ought to be loads and loads of brilliant fun and gorgeous men... (krhm)

At this point I need to change the topic, otherwise I'm going to begin ranting and raving (as Kaisa once so kindly put it) about certain actors and their excellent qualities... For instance, I'm positively sure that the character of Will Turner Junior (*swoon*) needs a long lost big brother who'd be perfectly cast if a certain Welsh swashbuckler (*SWOON*) would get the role. Hmm, who is it again that is writing the script for this and how do I contact them? :)

Actually, I think I'm going to wrap this up for now, because I need to go and "take my car for a walk". Temperatures have been freezing this week, which has meant a lot of familiar problems for me. Getting in the car is an adventure in itself and to melt the poor thing down at least a bit, I need to drive it to a parking hall of one of the supermarkets. And then lazily shop around for at least 30 minutes... :)

I'll be around. :)

Slippery when white

Yikes. Snow came, was ploughed flat and became a clear sheet of slippery winter fun. Which was demonstrated to me most efficiently yesterday, when my car showed me a completely new trick. It took me for a very interesting round-trip.

I was driving home from school, that is to say home as in mom&dad's, and it was plain obvious that the road was as slick as it can get. I drove very carefully to an intersection, saw that further away on my left was a taxi (a van) coming towards the same intersection, but it was so far away that I decided to take my right turn before it had crossed it. I was most definitely not driving fast at all, I think I was driving on second gear (means at the most about 40km/h with my car) but thought I'd make it just fine. The trick was, however, that I was turning uphill and needed enough steady speed to clear the little hill. I already once got stuck in the middle of it earlier in the winter, so I was determined to crawl it up slow and secure.

Sounds easy enough, right? Just a wee bit of speed, take a turn and just a wee bit more speed to clear the hill. Right. Add to the equation a car with the motor in the back (yep, my car) and the result is a nice 180 degree turn. There was nothing I could do. In a few seconds I just noticed I was heading the wrong way on the wrong side of the road and the before mentioned taxi right in front of me. Interesting. Luckily both I and the taxi driver had been driving slowly, so I was able to stop my car from spinning even more and the taxi driver was able to pass me safely. I hadn't even had time to get scared or anything, so I just drove over to the other side of the intersection, did a u-turn and on the second try I managed to get back on my way to see mom.

A complaint then. Where the hell was the sand from that intersection? Whoever had ploughed the snow away must've realised that by doing that the remains of the snow would be packed flat and become nothing but effectively a clear sheet of ice. Not all of us have four-wheel-drive cars... Luckily I do know my car pretty well by now and can operate it in winter conditions also, but this was the first time ever I couldn't do a thing. Aren't I lucky this happened in Nousiainen around noon, when there's hardly any traffic even though it was the biggest intersection in the center of the town.

Ok, so I'm just fine and so is the car and everyone else. Enough of that. I'm just waiting for spring now... :)

Satu invited me to her place for a few glasses of wine yesterday. We sat and talked almost 4 hours, which was very nice. Satu had a lot of stories to tell from her trip to Goa. How I wish I could afford to travel somewhere. My dream is to go to New Zealand for a few weeks, or maybe a month. Means that I'll have to save up at least 5000 euros, since the flights alone cost about 3000 euros... One has to have dreams, even if it'll take some time to make them come true. In the meanwhile I booked a cruise to Stockholm and back for me and Satu. Not quite the exotic destination I'm dreaming about, especially since we'll stay in the boat when it's in Stockholm... :) But we'll have a nice dinner and a few drinks, spend some time in the night club and so on - that's a nice way to spend a weekend, too.

Next week marks the beginning of serious hard work on my thesis. I plan to write the whole background chapter as soon as possible, preferably within about a week and a half. Keep your fingers crossed! I'll try to stay motivated and concentrated in return. But now I'll go and read some fantastic fantasy in the form of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. It's been a delightful novel so far and I have great expectations of the whole.

Ta ta.

Who would've known?

I was feeling very nostalgic today at work. Not because I'm working at my old high school - I've gotten over that already for the most part. This time the feeling was at least tripled, because of what I had to teach.

I have two groups of seniors who are taking the same course. It's a prep course for the final examinations (or matriculation examination, as the fancy term goes) in Finnish. It means that the kids write two-three essays during the course and in addition they practice punctuation, different styles of writing, and analyze different kinds of sources etc. A whole lot of work and lot's of stuff to go through.

Today, with the first group, we read a short story and three essays written about it. One of the essays just happens to be written by a guy who I went to that exact same school to, all those years ago. He was one of my best friends in high school (not to mention I had a huge crush on him for about 4 years...) and I was feeling really odd (in a very positive way, though) discussing the essay with the students. Mom said she's usually mentioned that the essay was written by a former student from this school, so I felt like I could mention it too. (The essay, along with the others, is published in a course workbook and sold nationwide, so it's not that obvious that one of the texts would be written in Nousiainen.) I did even mention that the writer is an old classmate of mine. That's as far as I could go on that road...

But to ask the students what they thought about the text and discuss the writer's choices while I couldn't help but think about the personality of my friend and the good times we had in school... One of the most curious situations I've ever been in. And tomorrow it's the same thing with the other group.

If someone had told me back in 1993, when I sat in that exact same classroom listening to our Finnish teacher talk about Boccaccio's classical short stories and about how to analyze short prose, that I'd be on the other side of the same teacher's desk one day, teaching a bunch of kids how to write witty and insightful essays about literature, I would've thought it ridicilous. If that someone would've told me I'd be teaching the stuff using an essay written by him as an example of an excellent essay, I would've died laughing on the floor. Not because I would've had any doubts of his ability to write genious essays, but because I would've thought the image of the overall situation hilarious.

I suppose the Earth has turned many enough times for this to happen. I had to write a short email to this friend of mine and tell him about this. I haven't heard from him in a year or so, but I hope he'll share my amusement. The world is a funny place.

A sphere of light in the sky

An odd display of light presented itself today. It was round and so bright that it hurt to look at it. There was something familiar about it though... oh wait, I think we used to have something called the sun visit the sky every once and a while sometime last spring. Could it really have been it? I wonder... And the color of the sky, I think it was called blue? Very beautiful. Made the day seem a lot longer. I think I could get used to it.

Not much else going on here. Or actually there is a lot going on, mostly work related and time consuming. Ergo not so frequent updates in my blog. (Sorry, Robert!) I'm getting back to all my old routines of driving back and forth to Parainen and Lieto once a week, planning Finnish lessons for the students in Nousiainen and so on.

Mom's sick leave is going to continue at least for a week and I'm going to be responsible for some extra arrangements at the school. There'll be an examination in communications' skills for the students on the 25th and as the second person evaluating the participants I'm going to have to see to it that all the preparations are made. It's actually quite nice to have something extra to do, gives me a sense of purpose. I'm not saying that the teaching itself would be somehow not rewarding, but this is something extra. As a substitute teacher I usually feel like a forlorn dustball in the corner. Nobody really pays any attention to it, unless it rolls into plain view. Then there's a certain curiosity, which is quickly forgotten when people realise it's just a dustball. That's me in any other school. But now I actually get to feel like a real teacher with special responsibilities! ;) That's fun.

You know how there's always a first time for everything? I had one of those first times this week. (I'll have none of that, you dirty minds, you!) I had never been stopped by the police on the road before. I've been driving for almost ten years and I've never had to blow into an alcometer. There was a police patrol stopping everyone to check for dui's when I drove home from Parainen on Wednesday. Whee, what fun. :) Needless to say, I was cleared and driving away from the scene within about ten seconds. Most definitely not dui. (I know, I have no life and this was downright pathetic, but hey, my life, my sad stories...)

Oh well, I'm going to go and act more like the sad spinster that I am - I'm going to watch Return of the King with the actors' commentary on. Ought to be fun. I'll have a cup of de-caf tea on the side. I think I'll try to stay awake for about a half of the movie. I'll spare the rest for a lonely Saturday night... We live in exciting times. At least I do. Sometimes. I think. Bye now. :)

Turning down money and other peculiarities of my recent life

I'm probably at the moment living the most frustrating period of my life. I've got no regular income, but I still can't work as much as I'm asked to, since I really, really have to finish my studies and graduate, dammit! Which then means I have to turn down quite nice offers of work and at the same time quite nice pay checks. *sigh*

In the last two days I've had to say no to two job offers for a month's substitute teaching in two different schools. Partly because I'm not sure how long I'm needed in Nousiainen (whether mom will get to work next Monday or not, that's the unanswered question at the moment) and partly because the rest of this month has to involve some serious research, writing and studying. Oh well. It's only money...

This past weekend was an interesting one. I was invited to a birthday party in Uusikaupunki and sure I went, even though I didn't get to borrow dad's nice car. It was, after all a dear friend who was turning thirty-somet... oops, 25, I mean. I didn't know anyone at the party but Heli, since naturally most of her friends are from Uusikaupunki and I'm not. During the evening, however, I found out that the world around here is very small. One of the girls there was a classmate of my brother's ex-girlfriend and knew therefore things about my brother she didn't tell me. (Need to know basis, I suppose, and I didn't need to know...) One girl there knows my exact namesake, who probably gets quite a bit of my emails, when my friends try to guess my email address at the University. Besides knowing the other Johanna, this girl also knew my friend Kaisa. Then there was a guy, who had lived in the same apartment building as I, some five years ago. This is also why he knew a person who is a friend of my mom & dad's. Very funny, this closer-than-six-degrees-of-separation-thingy. Small circles and so on.

The party turned out to be one of those that continues well into the night. I hadn't prepared for a night out, so I was a bit surprised to hear we'd be heading into the questionable night life (question being: is there any?) of Uusikaupunki. Apparently there are about three bars and the one we went to is the dancing bar / night club at the local hotel. When I saw it'd cost 8 euros to get in, I was quite taken aback. It doesn't cost that much even in the better night clubs in Turku and I was a bit reluctant to admit that a night in this particular club would ever be worth that much. Well, before I had time to recover from my shock, Heli had already paid me in. (Thanks, sweetie!) So in we went, I a heap of scepticism, the rest of the group quite happy and excited. I went and got me a drink of icewater (it was for free, heh) and settled down for a night of feeling superior (very typical native Turku trait) and, unfortunately, very old. (They weren't very strict with the age limit, it seemed. Some of the kids couldn't have been more than 16 years of age...)

However, the night turned out to be a lot of fun, I have to admit. I hadn't been out and about dancing in ages, and a relatively roomy dance floor was like a magnet to me. Besides, as it turned out, the scenery was very nice. Very nice indeed. :) You see, Uusikaupunki is a town with a fairly good basketball team, as I've understood it. They even have some American players reinforcing the team. Some of these guys were having a night out, as well. *swoon* A very tall, handsome and dark young man caught my eye immediately. :) I remained "ever watchful", because there were some pathetic little blondies surrounding him and his friend, who was equally tall and American, but not as handsome... But gosh, what a piece of eye candy that other guy was. *grin*

The downside of the partying (we weren't back at Heli's before 5 a.m.) was the fact that I'm still tired! Probably mostly because I slept very poorly for the few hours I managed to even try to sleep. Which was because some of Heli's friends came suddenly to visit in the wee hours when I was all ready to go to bed. Since Heli and the guys that came in stayed up, listening to music and discussing loudly (the guys were loud, because they weren't exactly sober) the sofa that was supposed to be my bed for the night was obviously very taken. Heli was kind enough to let me sleep in her bed, but all that noice in a strange place resulted in a very tired person. So I'm still catching up...

It's been nice to return to Nousiainen to teach for a week (or possibly two). The seniors know me already and I don't have to waste any time building up my credibility. I worked that in already in October and November. And with the younger students, they're taking a course I taught in the fall already to another group, so I don't have to spend all my time planning lessons. Very nice. Tomorrow I have the easiest day of the week. I go in for exactly 45 minutes in the afternoon! It'll take me a longer time to drive back and forth to Nousiainen than teach that class...

Tomorrow the dance classes in Parainen (and on Thursday in Lieto) begin again after a glorious month's break. I have zero motivation. I haven't done anything towards planning new choreographies or anything else, for that matter. I just wish it'd be April soon and I'd be free... Hopefully the ladies will cheer me up with their energy, since I for sure have none left to spare.

Which brings to mind, I'm hungry. I need to go and eat something. Something healthy and light, that is. :)

Walk Like A Penguin

How I hate this wet winter weather, however easier the handling of my car is when it's not freezing. A few days ago we had a delightful layer of sleet on the ground. It fell from the sky in horizontal lines, curiously enough. Then it sort of froze over and after that it rained a bit and then some. Result: me walking like a penguin around town. It's so darned slippery that I just have to wobble ahead in order not to fall and break my skull. Oh, and as a result of all the penguining around my muscles are sore. Although some of that may be the result of the visit I payed to the gym the other day. :)

Ok, enough of the weather. Time to talk about nice ways to spend time not walking like a penguin in the rain. That's right, movies. All-around nice way to spend time sitting down, also when it's not raining.

I went to see Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera last night. I hate to admit it but I hadn't seen any version of it before and my expectations were kind of high. I'd seen some marvellous pictures of the movie production and the trailer was just plain amazing in all it's glitter and glam.

The glitter and glam didn't fail me, oh no. If this movie doesn't get at least a nomination for the best costume design Oscar, I'm going to be very disappointed. I was once again convinced that long cloaks and capes should be worn nowadays, too. I was so born in the wrong century!

And the jewellery! Ohmigod. The ever-so-famous Swarowsky Crystals were a big part of the costuming and staging. First of all, the huge crystal chandelier hanging from the Opera House's ceiling. According to the Making of -book it weighed so much that they had to make an extra reinforced roof to the studio to hold the thing. No wonder. But gosh, the piece looked absolutely gorgeous. Just the kind of Grand Glamour one would expect from a turn-of-the-previous-century Opera House. *sigh*

The leading lady's (Christine, played by Emmy Rossum) first grand gown is, as far as I can tell, a remake of the Empress Sissi's magnificent white gown in that famous painting of her. All the way to the jewelled flowers in Christine's hair. I could do nothing but gawk. Me want that pretty dress too!

All in all, however, I think I had my expectations a bit too high for this one. Not that I didn't like the movie, but it didn't move me like I thought it would. Of the characters I think the supreme diva La Carlotta (played by Minnie Driver) was the one I enjoyed the most. Minnie Driver made her a perfectly over the top character, which was exactly what the diva was supposed to be. Fun and outrageous. (And oh dear me what a voice!)

Christine was, naturally, a beautiful and delicate little creature, the Phantom was a dark, strong and agile man and the viscount was handsome and noble. Sounds like a cast of perfection (especially considering the fact that they did all sing their own parts), but something was lacking. Maybe it was the conflict in the facial expressions and the singing. I'm sure the actors were at least pretending to be singing when the scenes were filmed, but the final sounds were no doubt recorded later. So the result is a singing Christine who doesn't look like an opera singer singing from the top of her lungs. Which is a pity, because somehow this small detail does affect the whole picture. When there's practically no dialogue in the movie but the singing, the emotions and the power behind such beautiful performances would've deserved to be shown more clearly.

Nevertheless, the movie is well worth seeing and listening. (Oh, the shivers in my spine when the Phantom's theme was played...)

Last night was also the night of the monthly sf-fandom meeting ("mafia") and I decided to drop by the Pub Bremer on my way home to see if there still was someone I knew. Well, sure enough there was quite a crowd of local sf-people still loitering around and chitchatting about all things mundane, fantastic and in between. I ended up sitting at the pub for about three more hours and came home at midnight. A nice way to end the holiday season.

Bling bling!

That's what you need to have any respect at all. Bling bling. This is what I've learned from my new favorite tv-show. A show I got addicted to in less than two episodes. A show that I wouldn't hesitate to participate in, not for a second. I'd be pleading to be included in this reality show.

MTV has this utterly cool program called Pimp My Ride. Absolutely pure bling bling all the way through. There's this rapper, Xzibit, hosting it and the point of the whole thing is to take people's unbelievably crappy cars and fix them up real good. A new paintjob, new tires, butt-kicking audio and other equipment, new interiors and as much of outrageous detailing the guys can hook you up with within two days of work.

Do you see why I'm all for a show like this? Shouldn't be that difficult to decipher...

Last night the last episode of PMR during MTV's "Pimp and Diva Weekend" showed a really glittering transformation. This girl had an old Ford Mustang, which was in a sorry state indeed. She ended up with a raspberry-colored car with a golden (yes, that's right) top on it (the car was a convertible), a gear stick studded with little fake diamonds and, get this, a bubble blowing thingie as a second exhaust pipe! Oh, and the finishing touches made to the paint job were painted with golden glittery paint applied through lace, which means she now has golden lace patterns on her car. In addition she got a photo booth in her car (meaning a digicamera and a printer in the passengers side), absolutely amazing dvd-cd-mp3-player with the appropriate woofers and such... The things these guys put into the cars are just unbelievable. One guy got an aquarium built in the back seat of his car. With two living goldfish in it. (Poor little fish though, I'm sure they didn't last for long in that tiny tank sealed into the backseat of a teenage guys car...)

I'm not saying I'd want an aquarium in my car, because I don't. How do you think the tank (or the fish) would take the freezing temperatures in the winter? Snap, crackle and pop, most likely. And I'm not even going to try to guess what I'd do with a Playstation2 in the backseat. I'd much rather play at home where it's nice and warm, which it's not in my car, about 9 months a year... So most of the fixing up done in the program is definitely for Californian surroundings only, not to be applied anywhere north of a certain latitude. That latitude being at least half a globe south from Turku...

Me and my friends did come up with a few interesting add-ons that could be built into my car, though. We decided the car should be properly named Skoda Scorchio after all-around flame throwers would've been added. They have, in the real show, built such things into some cars and roasted marshmallows then in the flames. I would mostly need the flames in the front though and not in the back. It'd be handy to melt away all the ice and the snow in the wintertime. Most handy. Unfortunately flame throwers are illegal as car accessories in Finland. What are the legislators thinking??

Most of all I'd love my car to have a new paintjob. For real. At the moment it's a beautiful matt burgundy. I do love the color otherwise, but the word matt is the key. My car only shines when it's raining. Last summer I actually noticed that the paint is coming off, when I washed the thing. The sponge I used was pretty in pink after I was done washing the poor vehicle.

New seats too, please. These are literally crumbling away, thanks to the sun shining through the windows in the summer and the fabric losing the battle of durability. And they squeek like excited little (or medium sized) animals. And the audio systems, please, I'd love to have a cd-player installed!

After all this would've been done, I'd have a few pictures taken of everything (preferably also me looking devastatingly cool in my pearly cameleon-colored car) and when that was done, I'd sell the darling immediately. With a darned good price tag on it, too. And then I'd go to the car dealer and buy myself a newer car with less bling bling in it. Boring, but less likely to be stolen from the parkinglot.

So please, please MTV, pimp my ride!

Topics of the day

There was a short article in the local newspaper today about teaching creationism vs. evolutionary theory in the public schools in the United States. After George W. won the elections there has been, once again, a wave of upset conservatist Christians complaining that evolution shouldn't be taught in schools, since obviously the Grand Canyon was created in the great flood (the one with Noah and all sorts of animals in twos) and not by the waters of the Colorado river. The laws separating church and school are evil, no doubt.

Honestly, I can't believe what a backward way of thinking that is. We live in a world where science has been able to provide us with serious proofs for their theories (which, in my opinion, still could leave room for a deity of some sort to meddle in all of it, if you'd like to think so) and where the birth process of religious texts is better understood. It's so unbelievably difficult for me to understand how such texts could possibly be taken for the literal truth in today's world. Sure, if that's the way your brain works, that's fine, but mine just can't comprehend. And to feed that literal interpretation of the creation to high school kids, that's just ridiculous. Already religion is way too often the reason for wars and restlessness around the world. We don't need more conservatist Christians running the States in the future, thankyouverymuch. Or any kind of religious fanatics (or conservatists) running any other state either, for that matter.

Talking of religion and science, by the way, it was exactly the theme of Dan Brown's novel Angels and Demons. I think that the book was very entertaining and yet provided quite interesting questions for pondering. Fun thing about the book was that in the beginning of the story a scientist (both a priest and a physicist) discovers a way to provide scientific proof that the Big Bang was "ignited" by God and gets killed because of it. Murdered, because he had a theory that could've put together science and religion without a glitch. (Well, I suppose there was that tiny glitch after all...) I wonder what would happen if a theory of that sort would eventually pop up in the real world.

Dan Brown then brings to my mind another interesting theme that has been "in" lately. The Templars, the Freemasons and the fascinating conspiracy theories. I'm beginning to thing I should've chosen the Templars as the topic of my thesis instead of the more boring Order of Malta, or the Hospitallers, as they are also known. No rumours of vast treasures and world rule there. How dull. Yet, I can't help thinking that which of the Orders born almost simultaneously is still working all around the world? Yep, the one I'm doing my research on. And you know, they received quite a bit of Templar wealth when the other order was destroyed... Ah, I got a bit sidetracked there. I was going to mention that I saw the movie National Treasure last night.

An entertaining flick, at times quite flawed though. Like for example in the beginning, where the story of the treasure is told. It was supposedly found by the knights of the first crusades (ergo, that'll mean the 11th and 12th centuries for the most part) who then decided to call themselves the Knights Templar. Quite ok so far, because for the story to be interesting, there really has to be a treasure of some sort. But then the story goes on and it claims something like "Over the next century the knights took the treasure away from Europe to America." This is where I had to arch a brow. The Templars found America? In the 13th century? Sailing over the sea in the kinds of ships that weren't used until 2-300 years later? Interesting. At least they had the sense of labelling the movie "action comedy"...

As I've said before, I'm all for the freedom of the artist (in this case the director and script-writer) to bend the truth, but basic math wouldn't be too much to ask for, would it? But oh well, maybe they just had to get the treasure over the Atlantic before the Order was destroyed, which was before America was found - unless of course you count the vikings in - and that's why the wording of the story was a bit awry. Maybe that's it. Or better yet, maybe I just misheard the wording... In any case, I think National Treasure was a fun way to spend an evening. Switch your brain into off-position and if nothing else, go see Sean Bean as a baddie. He's so much better looking than Nicolas Cage... ;) And since I liked the story in the Da Vinci Code better, I hope they make a fun movie out of that one, too. This one seemed like it had been put together in a hurry just to beat the Code to the box office. We'll see.

Tomorrow it's back to the routines of normal life. There's the thesis to be written and quite some people to contact in order to advance that project, there's a magazine to edit, there are a few choreographies to do, there's weight to be lost, people to meet and places to go... Sounds like 2005 is going to be busy as heck, but then again, I can't very well just sit on my bum all the time. I'd be bored out of my mind. That's the problem with being me, in a nutshell. (Not me in the nutshell, but the problem...) Jeesh. About time to, metaphorically speaking, shut up. :)

A Better New Year to All

Happy New Year, folks. May it turn out to be better than the one before, if possible. I certainly wish for a few turns for the better, although my last year was fairly good and fun most of the time.

What will I remember from last year? Let's see. I'll most definitely remember the Fantasy Feast we organized this summer, for a multitude of reasons. Interesting people, lots of archery (a darned big bruise to prove it, too) and canoeing in the middle of the night, gazing at the shooting stars and the moon. Just to mention a few of the highlights.

I'll remember this as the year my old high school best friend, Kirsi, had her firstborn daughter, Amanda. Kirsi used to complain she'd never find herself a man and that she'd die a lonely spinster. Well, that just shows how you never know. All the best to Kirsi, Matti and little Amanda.

Same goes naturally to all of the babies of 2004 and their parents in my circle of friends. Quite a bunch of you already. (I'm really becoming an oddity...)

I'll remember 2004 as hopefully the last year when I had to work on a pitifully low pay in the summer. I'll settle for merely low pay this year... Although it was an experience not likely to happen again, to work at the history departments archives - never have I been so happy the summer was quite rainy! Mummified in the cellar level of the building, leafing through letters and photos of which some were over a hundred years old, I didn't get to see much of the sun during the summer months.

What else was there? Jeesh, what did I do for a year? Studied, worked, had marvellous times with my friends, wrote my first ever fanfics (don't ask!) and still didn't learn to say no to all who want me in some kind of "important post" in some society or group. This was the way my days passed last year, quite calmly in the old usual ways. Which is good.

For this year I wish a bit more action. I hope to finish my thesis and graduate (awful lot of work to do to achieve that, but I'll have to try). That's the first one. Secondly I'd really like to meet some guy, who isn't a selfish lout, a boring geek or in any other way wrong for me. But if it doesn't happen, I'll settle for my darlings Ioan, Orli and Viggo. ;) (Of whom my friends wrote nice things on my car windows last night when we went out to see the fireworks - thanks a bunch, now I may actually have to wash the car to get rid of the evidence!) Which means there are a few interesting movies coming this way...

There. I do think I need to go and clean up the rest of the mess from last nights party. My plans of inviting just a few friends over ballooned into a bit bigger crowd of ten guests plus me. Plenty of food (this time a moderate amount of everything), a few drinks and lots of fun discussions. Not the wildest party you could imagine, but I enjoyed it a lot. Thanks, guys, for coming. But I do need to say something to you all...

TISKAAMAAN!!!

Anyone?