Cathedrals

Like many others, I've been shocked and upset by yesterday's fire in Notre Dame cathedral. I visit Paris often, really like both Paris and Notre Dame, and have been inside the cathedral many times, and climbed the towers a few times, but I still regretted every time I was there and didn't go inside. Last night in my FB feed, groups and real life there were many people who regretted that they visited Paris but haven't been inside even once, or were just planning to visit Paris for the first time this year.

Here is for them, and for the rest of us who are sorely missing the cathedral now:

During the WWI Reims Cathedral was bombed and then burned down, and look at it now! Yes, it took about 20 years to restore, but it is there again, and it's awesome. Notre Dame will get there. I'll miss it until then, but it'll get there.

In the meanwhile, while you are visiting Paris:

Look at it now! Reims Cathedral, I mean. It's beautiful, and it's within a day trip from Paris. Chartres Cathedral is also within a day trip, and even better (matter of taste, of course). Amiens. Beauvais, weird and badly built, but still beautiful and awesome. Saint-Denis, within the Paris public transportation and the oldest Gothic church in France. Bourges, if you have time for more than a day trip. Go see Sainte Chapelle, if you are not into day trips. Saint Eustache. Saint Germain De Pres.

They won't replace Notre Dame, but please remember that Notre Dame, even if restored to a great condition in reasonable time, won't replace them either. They are worth a visit in their own right.

The Great Infidel Holiday is upon us again

Merry Christmas!

Back from the US

Back from Florida and Boston and NYC. Should really visit there more often. Yes, even Florida.

For the first time ever didn't go anywhere at all in Boston, just spent my time seeing people, and still didn't see everybody I wanted to see.

This was my first time in Florida, and it was quite lovely, much better than expected. They have sandy beaches, and warm sea, and little lizards, and iguanas, and weird-looking turtles, and weird-looking birds, and flying fish.

Like almost any American I occasionally have some grievances against the federal government, but I could never imagine that I'd add "they hid all the crocodiles and alligators in Florida" to the list. But they did. We didn't get to visit Everglades or see any crocodiles at all.

Realized I actually like beaches quite a lot as long as there is no hot yellow thing in the sky.

Wish I could have taken some pictures of the flying fish, but they absolutely refused to pose in midair.

Should take young people more seriously

When I was young, I was very annoyed when older people treated young people as someone who just doesn't know anything about life yet. Now I noticed doing so myself. Last week I was arguing with a 25-year-old guy and I noticed myself thinking "just wait till you grow up, silly child".

And then I thought about it some more, and realized that my 25-year-old self, and probably even my 18-year-old self, would have immediately recognized that the guy was not a silly child who needed to grow up, but an absolute moron who would remain so for the rest of his life.

I don't mean that there aren't any things that one learns through age and experience - there certainly are, and some perfectly intelligent young people just haven't learned them yet, but it appears that the one thing that I unlearned with age is the ability to easily distinguish between immature and mind-bogglingly stupid. Should practice more.

(And to anyone else with whom I have argued last week: if you are reading this and know me in person, this is not about you.)

Relaxation day

Took it fairly easy today. Went for a walk in town and saw the weird yellow thing in the sky that everyone had been talking about. Went to the gym. Got a takeout from Dong Bei Hu   Bought a bottle of BenRiach (15 year old Pedro Ximenez Sherry wood finish). Watched Starks and Lannisters perform various violent acts on each other (for those who don't know, these are characters in the Song of Ice and Fire, and not my neighbors or suchlike, although there is one lady in our building whom I can well imagine in the Kingsguard).

Lately I'd been having a feeling that I am just sitting at home, not working, not being sociable, etc. Which is really weird, because it has absolutely nothing to do with reality. Last Saturday I just kept thinking "why am I sitting at home", and reminding myself that I was actually not.

Oh well. I usually interpret all the weird psychological phenomena as "I need a vacation". And vacation is coming. And winter, I hope, is going.

Feel like I need to write something about Anjem Choudary. I will as soon as I manage to say something printable or at least legal.

Hurricane

"Get up, get up! There is a hurricane here, and tanks in Moscow!"

One of my eyes opened, registered the time on the clock - 6 - and closed again. My brain, partly awakened by the assault, tried to process the information. The hurricane was the only understandable thing. It was expected to make the landfall in New England today, although it was not entirely clear what I was supposed to do about it at 6 am. Tanks, what tanks?

I made a somewhat impolite and highly figurative suggestion as to where my mother could shove the tanks. The suggestion was disregarded, and I was pulled out of bed and into the pile of clothes on the floor.

Figuring that there was no chance of going back to sleep under the circumstances, I crawled into my parents' bedroom and curled up in front of the TV. The parents were trying to talk over the TV, turning up the volume in order to hear what was being said, and then talking even louder in order to hear each other.

There were indeed tanks in Moscow in the Red Square, and it sure didn't look like a military parade. Some government dudes whom I'd never heard about before had declared the state of emergency and seized the power, or were trying to.

Every once in a while either ourselves or the TV cut to the local news. Rhode Island and Connecticut had also declared the state of emergency in expectation of the hurricane landfall, and Massachusetts was about to follow suit. People were being evacuated on Cape Cod and all over the coastline.

Every once in a while the TV would show some people who had actually gone to Cape Cod to watch the hurricane and appeared to have quite a good time at the beach. For a moment I considered driving up there, but the huge car line on the Sagamore bridge (in the wrong direction, to be sure, but what goes to Cape Cod must come back) and the perspective of being disemboweled by my mother made me think better of it.

At some point my parents left for work, promising to be back by noon, and I wondered why they bothered. I stayed with the TV, watching the tanks and the hurricane. It occurred to me that the tanks didn't feel particularly close to home. Not that I didn't care - I certainly cared just as must as about Tiananmen Square and the fall of the Berlin wall - but it was just an important but distant historical event, which I could watch on TV while being quite certain that if those tanks fire on the crowd they won't hit anyone I really care about.

Argh! Suddenly I realized that Tanya's brother was due to arrive in two days. From Moscow. And could be in that crowd right now. And they could close the borders. For many years, like they've done before. Probably already have.

I figured I'd better call Tanya. She never read a newspaper, watched news on TV or in general followed the current events in any way, and was probably the only person in New England who hadn't heard about the hurricane. (Which was a bit ironic considering that she is nowadays, among other things, an award-winning journalist.) Waking her up at 8:30 was cruel, but I figured the earlier she knows, the better.

She was already awake, having just arrived home from some party. As I told her the news she considered telling me that this is a really bad joke, but then she realized that I am not a person who jokes about such things at 8 in the morning. Or indeed jokes about anything at 8 in the morning.

We were interrupted by a wail worthy of a whole regiment of banshees. "Oh shit," said Tanya. "Mom was listening. I'll calm her down and call you later in the afternoon."

I drove to the supermarket, figuring that this emergency calls for ample supplies of salmon cream cheese and crackers, and came back home in front of the TV.

By noon the winds were already high, the tanks were still in Moscow, either the hurricane watchers on Cape Cod or the people filming them had found some shelter, and my parents came home.

"We need to take shelter," said my father.
"We are in the kitchen," I pointed out.
"That's not enough. What if a tree flies in the window?"

There were some branches of trees already flying outside, but such an event seemed a bit unlikely. As we considered the probabilities, my father grabbed all the food in the fridge and ran to the basement, screaming for us to follow him. For the next couple of hours we were having a picnic in the basement and berating him for cheap sensationalism and a tendency to panic.

By 4 or 5 the wind subsided a bit. Tanya called me. "Come if you can," she said. "Be warned that my mom is naked and standing on her head." Anya called me too, relating the story of how she went out and got blown away. Anya is a very small person, who at the time was also extremely thin, and unfortunately fond of big clothes. She went out in a big skirt, a big jacket and with an umbrella, and almost got blown away like Mary Poppins. She managed to grab on the the building, kissed her umbrella good-bye and decided to remain home for the duration.

When Tanya opened the door she repeated her warning. "My mom is naked and standing on her head." I don't mind nudity, and "standing on one's head" is a normal Russian  expression for making a lot of noise, but when I came in I was confronted with Polina who was actually naked, and standing on her head in the most literal way.

"Hi, how are you?", I said, all the time thinking about the proper etiquette for talking to a naked person - mother of a friend - standing on their head. The obvious problem here is that when they are standing on their head, and you are not, you are pretty much talking to their genitals.

"How the fuck do you think I am!" wailed Polina. "I am never gonna see my son again!"
"You can't know that," I said, hoping for the better. "He might not be the first person they'd be interested in."
"They are interested in everyone!"

I really liked Polina from the first sight, when she found me in her home at 3 am (I was giving Tanya a ride and she asked me in for tea) and opened the conversation with "Are you real? I thought you were a hallucination." I answered that yes, in fact I am real, but if she prefers to continue considering me a hallucination she can certainly do so. We got along pretty well after that.

I wished I could say something to reassure Polina, but she was beyond reassuring, and at some point said that we could leave her in peace and go buy some potatoes. Minding Anya's experience, we left umbrellas at home and went on a potato quest. The wind was howling but there were no more trees flying.

When my parents picked me up at Tanya's and we got home I was looking forward to watching the news again, but suddenly the lights went out, both inside and outside, and apparently in the whole area. It's amazing how dark it is without the city lights.

"Shit!" screamed my father. "The fish sticks are gonna melt!"
"Good riddance," mom and I thought simultaneously, and added out loud: "Leave them in the freezer, they's survive till morning."
"No! We gotta cook them!"

For the next hour or so I was holding up candles - did I mention how much I hate candles - and fantasizing about where to stick them along with the fish sticks, while my father was frying those fish sticks and expressing grave concern about their eventual fate.

The concern was not misplaced - by the morning the fish sticks had mysteriously disappeared.

Tanya's brother Borya arrived safely two days later, with his wife, two children, and a perpetually constipated dachshund named Max.

A health advice to self

Some years ago I tried to measure my blood pressure during an orgasm. I was at it for a couple of days, but my fine scientific experiment failed, partly because I was too preoccupied with the matter at hand to concentrate on the measurement, but mostly because a blood pressure measurement takes longer than an orgasm and I was not quite sure what kind of timing to aim for.

In any case I failed to notice any difference between my blood pressure during an orgasm and otherwise.

Recently I have repeated the experiment to see if my blood pressure rises while reading Russian newspapers. And damn, it does. Seriously. By 10 points or so. 15, if the author is a Finnish docent.

Oh well, I know what to do. Won't even be hard, since I only read it when something interesting (like Zavgorodnyaya case) is happening. Probably shouldn't read it anyway, it's much more annoying than Russian forums, and not half as entertaining.

Lovely Thursday

8:30: Alarm clock. Blaah!

8:31: What is this horrible stench?

8:32: Surely could not have farted like that? Human farts don't usually smell of burned rubber, even if one drank a really weird beer last night.

8:33: Did the coffee factory nearby accidentally roast rubber instead of coffee?

8:34: OMG! Something is on fire!

8:35: Whatever it is, it's not inside my apartment or within my field of vision when I stick my head out of the window. Maybe should have a cup of tea and a shower.

10:30: At work. Reading emails. Turns out the smokers in the staircase B managed to set fire to the balcony. The fire was put out by the personal effort of Eeva from the board of our asunto-osakeyhtiö, and now Eeva is calling a board meeting to decide on summary executions... I mean, banning smoking on staircase balconies. Yay! I was totally for the ban from my day one in the board, and that was 5 years ago.

10:40: Bugger. One of the backend interfaces doesn't work and I have no idea what's wrong with it.

10:50: The evil coffee machine from yesterday is still there.

13:30: Gotta go to the customer's office. On the way there managed to express some social paranoia to the coworker. I don't think that the conversation is much enjoyed by either party but I feel better. Should've done this 6 months ago, I suppose.

14:00: The customer appears to actually like the application. I am still bothered by the non-working interface.

15:00: Back to the office. The coffee machine is still evil. The interface too. Give up on the interface, do some other work that needs to be done.

17:30: The interface did not work because of a typo in the namespace. Now I really feel silly.

18:00: Argh, argh, it's so late and I have stuff to be done before 9!

19:15: At home with the car (the car is actually outside, not in the apartment). Realizing that the monitor that I was gonna take to sortti-asema arose from the dead.

19:30: Gotta get to Anu's and Wouter's place. Kinda out of gas, though. Where is the gas station, where?

19:55: Fuck. You can't drive through Tapiola center anymore. Gotta find an alternate route.

20:15: Where the hell am I? Where? This is Tapiola's other, mysterious dimension.

20:20: They are throwing out WHAT? My car needs another dimension to fit all that in. Good thing the monitor arose from the dead and is not in the car.

20:25: Managed to fit the monster table in.

20:29: The last chair doesn't fit in in any dimension.

20:30: Violent disassembly of the chair. Violence is a solution to many problems.

20:40: Finally found a gas station. Hurrah!

20:45: No way we are gonna make it from Tapiola to Konala in 15 minutes.

20:55: Made it with the whole 5 minutes to spare.

21:00: But where does the paint go?

21:05: Hurrah! Made it out of the sortti-asema, and the monster table is gone.

21:06: Oh no we didn't. What's this gate and why is it closed?

21:07: AAARRGGHHH! Gonna spend all the night in the wilderness of Konala without any dinner!

21:08: Found a guy to open the gate.

22:00: On my street. Now where is hell is a parking space?

22:20: Here we go.

22:21: Does it always have to start raining as soon as I get out of the car?

22:22: IRC, a glass of vinho verde, a cup of tea and the remains of a snail risotto improve the mood substantially. The car is safely parked and has gas in it, the interface works, the customer seems pleased, the monitor seems alive, my friends are rid of the monster table, we are finally gonna ban smoking on staircase balconies, and tomorrow is another day. (A much better one, as it turned out.)

I guess this qualifies as an outdoor sport...

My grandma always used to say "everyone else is a normal person, but something always happens to you!"

I remembered her words on a number of occasions, most recently fifteen minutes ago, when I was running around my roof underdressed, barefoot and with a fishing rod.

It's not my fault, really. The upstairs' neighbor dropped his towel on my roof, I promised to get it, and the fishing rod that my Israeli relatives left in my place last summer came in very handy (also for self-defensive anti-bird violence), but why do those things always happen to me?

Don't use fake email addresses, people

Before you use a fake email address, even one that sounds fake, such as foobar at somepopularprovider.com, stop for a moment and consider that that address might belong to a living, breathing, malicious person with a penchant for practical jokes.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone!

Will I ever get all the glitter out of my... well, everything?

The evil electricians, part X

Thursday: A guy from the construction company calls me and tells me that they are gonna come next week and Fix Everything - am I gonna be home? I ask him when. He says that they are gonna be at Tero's place Monday at 8 and gonna call me Monday morning and come sometime on Monday.

Monday:

9:30: An electricity inspector comes and inspects electricity. He thinks that all the wiring of all three ceiling lamps should be replaced and some wiring added in the kitchen.

10:00: Where are the electricians?

10:30: Where the fuck are the electricians?

11:00: Where the fuck are the electricians?

11:30: Where the fuck are the fucking electricians? Gonna rape them with a Cristmas tree if they show up.

12:00: The plan to rape them with a Christmas tree fails for two logistical reasons: 1) no electricians, and 2) no Christmas tree.

12:30: The plan to find them by phone also fails, for one logistical reason: no electricians.

13:00: The plan to find somebody by phone succeeds. Somebody (the same somebody who called me on Thursday) says they have been in the building. I say this doesn't help much. He says they are gonna be here the first thing Tuesday morning at 8.

13:07: I bugger off to work.

19:30: I am back from work with a vague feeling that I should move my stuff out of their way. The problem is that their way is pretty much everywhere.

Tuesday:

0:00: Bugger all. Gotta bugger off to bed. Didn't get any sleep last night.

1:00: Woke up to a nightmare about the electricians.

2:00: Woke up to another nightmare about the electricians.

7:30: Woke up to the alarm clock. Considered beating the electricians over the head with it.

8:00: Shower, pants and tea all located. Waiting for the electricians.

8:30: Where the hell are the electricians?

8:55: The doorbell! Hurrah!

A colorful character walks in and stares at my ceiling in a "what the fuck way".

Me: Are you an electrician?
Him: No, I am a painter.
Me: Huh? Öööö...
Him: Supposed to paint over their work...
Me: Can't paint the holes...
Him: That would take special skills... but where are they?
Me: Wondered about it myself...
Him: I'll call them.

With that the Picasso disappeared and was never heard from again.

9:20: Called the somebody again.

Me: They were supposed to be there at 8 and didn't show up!
Somebody: A painter was there.
Me: I know.
Somebody: Did he get the keys?
Me: No. Don't you have the keys?
Somebody: We sorta do...
Me: Gonna leave the security lock open.
Somebody: They are gonna be there eventually.

10:15: Finally at work.

10:17: The phone rings.

The electrician: We are here and we can't get in!
Me: Don't you have the keys?
The electrician: None of them work, the housing company doesn't have your keys.
Me (making a mental note to disembowel whoever lost my keys and make them pay for the lock replacement - not necessarily in this order): I can be there in half an hour.
The electrician: That's too late! I can't just wait for you! Can't we set up a time later in the afternoon?
Me: Sure, whatever, just tell me when.
The electrician: Sometime after 16?
Another electrician in the background: Are you talking to Vera?
The first electrician: Yes.
The other electrician in the background: Wrong apartment, she lives downstairs.
The first electrician (to me): Oops, forget it.

The great flood saga continues...

Friday, 18:00: Three wise men and a disgruntled Virgin Mary. OK, I would be even more disgruntled if I were a Middle Eastern girl with a newborn baby wondering how to explain to her family and friends that she is still a virgin in the face of rather overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

The three wise men totally look like movie characters. The builder (aka "wall-breaker") looks like a smaller and more comical version of Victor Le Nettoyeur, the plumber looks like a British gentleman, and the electrician looks so ancient that I keep wanting to ask him what he'd done for a living before the electricity was invented. He is incredibly grumpy, too.

18:30: The ill-tempered electrician informs me that the morning plumber is still in the hospital, that all such accidents are reported to the electric safety officials and that they would surely like to see me and my apartment.

The builder wonders what the fuck, and does that wire in front of his nose still have electricity in it? It sure does. They try to find out experimentally what each of the fuses and switches do in spite of the fact that I know pretty well what they do, and am trying to tell them. What the fuck?

18:45: After 15 minutes of trying they figure out what I kept telling them from the very beginning, namely that all the lights in the apartment are on one single fuse. What the fuck, wonders the builder. The electrician explains that the system is ancient, and look who is talking!

18:50: the electrician decided to rip the lamp switch out of the wall, and now it's his turn to ask what the fuck. Apparently I have illegal wiring in my wall. The good thing is that I have an alibi: it was put in before I was born, in the sixties, and was illegal back then, too. The electrician swears profusely about the fucking Estonians, and occasionally apologizes to the ladies present (which are, apparently, me, a least if you use the word "lady" loosely enough). I find it weird, because there wasn't a lot of Estonians here in the sixties, and besides the electrician should probably be apologizing to the builder, who appears to be an Estonian (fucking or otherwise).

19:00: The three wise men decided to break the ceiling.

19:30: Now there is a huge hole in what's left from the ceiling, and still no source of leakage uncovered. The three wise men want to get into Tero's apartment but don't have a key.

Negotiations ensue. I tell Tero that they want to get in. Tero tells me that he is out for the evening, and what the fuck, the superintendent and the humidity measuring guy told him that the leak is definitely not in his apartment. I tell the same to the three wise men. The three wise men are convinced that the leak is in Tero's apartment, and have a unanimous opinion as to where the humidity measuring guy can insert his humidity measuring device.

20:00: The three wise men decide to continue at 10 in the morning. They go home, and leave me some scary-looking tools. I run to the store for cleaning supplies. The apartment is a concrete-covered ruin.

21:00: One can actually walk in the apartment with a fear of a major foot injury. And I sort of have a toilet. Which doesn't flush.

21:10: Ville and Leena come over and take me outside to eat, which is nice.

Saturday, 03:00: Fuck, it's raining again!

03:30: Shit, I can't breathe! Gotta open the window.

07:00: Brr!

08:00: BRRRRR!!!!!!

09:00: Antihistamines, pseudoephedrine, salbutamol and a glass of calvados - the breakfast of a true lady. Hyvin menee...

10:00: No three wise men yet.

10:30: Where the fuck are the three wise men?

11:00: Judging from the horrible sounds, apparently they are upstairs.

11:30: The builder came to get his tools.

12:00: The horrible sounds continue, I keep expecting the builder to fall through my ceiling.

13:30: Hurrah! The hole in the pipe has been located, and it is in Tero's apartment.

14:00: The wise men leave until Monday. I have a working toilet again, which is nice. Tero doesn't. My apartment is cold and the air is unpleasant.

Monday: The plumber(s) came and fixed the pipe. Now Tero can use his bathroom too and it's not raining in my place. Happy happy joy joy!

I still have huge holes in the wall and the ceiling, and no light in the hall. Tero has an even bigger hole in the floor. But hey, the new pipe!

Tuesday: Situation unchanged, gonna be fixed real soon now.

Disaster

22:40: Back home from nice beers with coworkers! Whee!

00:20: What the hell is that sound?

00:21: Shit, it's raining!

00:22: Shit, it's raining inside!

00:23: Shit, the rain is brown! Shit?

00:24: Gotta wake up Tero, the neighbor upstairs. Tero! TEEEROO! Open the door!

00:26: Shit, do I have a bucket? Do they sell buckets in 24-hour Alepa?

00:28: Bucket located and installed under the rain.

00:30: Calling Tero. Still no response. Left a message. Tero, Tero, why hast thou forsaken me and possibly a fair amount of water as well?

00:33: Calling the maintenance guy. He sounds as drunk as, well, me, and I can't really blame him. They are gonna be here in half an hour. Maybe.

00:37: Hurrah, Tero woke up and called me! No water anywhere in his apartment though.

00:40: Tero is here and looking pessimistic. We are wondering what the fuck.

00:45: Tero goes back home to sleep, asks to be awakened when the maintenance guy comes.

01:05: The maintenance guy (not the one who answered the phone but another, sober one) naturally comes right when I am in the toilet. Pulling the pants up and running to open the door. He stands for a while looking at the ceiling and wondering what the fuck.

01:10: The maintenance guys goes and gets Tero. They stand for a while looking at the ceiling and wondering what the fuck.

01:11: More water coming out of the ceiling lamp. We are wondering what the fuck.

01:12: The water comes out from the same hole as the lamp's cables. What the fuck?

01:13: I figure it might be a good idea to turn off the lamp.

01:14: The maintenance guy figures it might be a good idea to summon a real plumber.

01:15: Tero figures it might be a good idea to go to bed while he still can.

01:16: Shit! Now I have water coming out of two places, and only one bucket.

01:20: An Ikea bag does work as a bucket, and pretty well in fact.

01:40: The plumber arrives, looks at the ceiling and says "what the fuck?"

01:41: The plumber puts his hand in the lamp cable hole and says "ouch".

01:42: The plumber turns off all the electricity.

01:43: Being alone at night in total darkness with two plumbers is not nearly as much fun as porn movies say.

01:50: The plumbers wake up Tero again.

01:55: Much turning off and on the water and flushing ensues.

02:00: They dismantle parts of the ceiling, and keep wondering what the fuck.

02:10: The electricity is back on.

02:45: They are gone. They promise to come back in the morning and tell me that the rain will stop for the night. The whole staircase is out of water and toilets don't work. Nice surprise for everyone in the morning.

07-something: Someone is in the apartment. I wake up jump out of my room naked. A plumber screams "eek" and disappears.

08-something: There is a whole bunch of them, and they are all saying "what the fuck". I alternate between trying to sleep and trying to look decent, failing at both.

10:15: The superintendent calls and asks me to stay home, he'll be here in two hours.

11:00: Most plumbers ran away, one remains.

11:30: The plumber sticks his hand into the wel lamp cable hole, gets a shock and falls off the ladder, screaming. I say "what the fuck".

12:00: The plumber needs to go to a hospital, tells me he'll be back and not to piss in the toilet.

13:00: parts of the ceiling fall off.

14:00: The superintendent shows up and starts running around, waving his hands, screaming "what the fuck" and flushing everyone's toilets. He keeps at it for an hour. He finds that the right toilet belongs to the 4th floor neighbor, and now it really starts to rain. The plumber is still in the hospital.

16:00: The superintendent come back with a humidity measuring guy. The guy says that the whole wall between the hall and the toilet is fucked, what the fuck. They invite a wall-breaker. I have to empty a bookcase.

17:00: The wall-breaker arrives and starts breaking the wall. He totally looks like he'd escaped from some gangster movie.

To be continued...

I still ain't dead

It's been a while, I know. All kind of life has been happening to me, including Android, Pacific ocean, bear country, canyons, fucking huge trees ("fucking" is an adverb here, not a verb, in case you are wondering), San Francisco, mysterious mists, Hearst Castle, Boston, seals, relatives, whiskey, Numb3rs, the latest Pratchett and the newest Ubuntu.

I didn't even have time and evergy to say something snarky about the natural death of Anwar al-Awlaki and the trial of his disciple, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. I am all out of snark at the moment. Seriously, when the guy sets his balls on fire in pursuit of 72 virgins, what can you possibly say to top that? I guess al-Awlaki neglected to inform him that the 72 virgins in question are in fact the bearded men currently in detention in Colorado Supermax.

Anyway, here is my "what I did on vacation":

- Spent 21 days in the US.
- Saw 16 relatives. This was overwhelming but nice, because somehow we forgot to inform the one really obnoxious relative of our arrival. I sincerely hope she doesn't read this.
- Saw an apple dog in an Chicago airport. I shit you not: they had a dog sniffing out apples and a customs officer with a huge bag confiscating them from evildoers. Hope the customs officers baked themselves a huge apple pie.
- Took a lot of pictures. All of them here.
- Realized that the altitude of 2 kilometers and a sinus infection do not combine well.
- Drove all over the bear country and didn't see a single bear. Which is good, because I'd have to wash my pants afterwards. Saw quite a lot of deer, blue birds, seals, and a couple of zebras.
- Saw a demonstration of naked men in San Francisco.

Some observations:

- The Pacific ocean is big, cold and wet. I am totally sticking with Atlantic for any beach vacations. Or at least the Asian side of the Pacific.
- There are seals everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Check out my pictures from the Santa Cruz wharf. They also had a critter that looked a bit like a pterodactyl, but hopefully wasn't.
- Californians keep their clouds on the sea and on the ground, instead of letting them float in the sky like normal people.
- Daly City is a mysterous cold place where visibility is always zero and the sun never shines and there is thick fog everywhere. I think Cthulhu lives there right near the Hellmouth or something...
- Pluot is a good, good fruit, and I want them here.
- Sequoias are pretty big. In fact all the other trees in sequoia forests are huge too.
- San Joaquin valley is poor, desolate, dried-out and full of posters saying whom they are gonna vote out of office during the next election. Pelosi, Boxer and Costa are the "favorites". Except that Pelosi isn't in their district.
- Tioga road in Yosemite turned out to be a most interesting place, even though at first it didn't look that way.

Giants live in the north beyond the Wall in Westeros, and in Kappahl, too

Went shopping yesterday (all my summer shirts in one day, yay!) and saw a skirt in Kappahl. Quite a lovely skirt, actually, even though I don't wear them. Except that it was about 30 cm. too long for me.

Now, I am not sure whether there exist any women over two meters tall, but I am quite sure I'd never seen any in Kappahl.

Dear giantess who comes there to buy skirts! If you decide to purchase the enormously long black one, can you please send me a picture of yourself in it. I just wanna see it.

Shopping

Sorry for repeating the last sentence of the previous post: people who say that shopping doesn't make you happy just don't shop in the right kind of places. It's easy to make it fun.

For example: buying extra memory just to cheer yourself up: good shopping. Dragging your ass to H&M to replace your favorite jeans, just to find out that they are sold out: bad shopping.

Anyway, bought some stuff lately:

- 8G of memory. Hurrah! Hurrah! Finally! Resulted in much hand-waving and replacing a 32-bit kernel with a 64-bit one.
- HTC Desire. Cannot be classified as fun shopping, because I had to replace the phone that was dying of old age, but a nice new (I bought it used but it's fairly new) toy nevertheless.
- Samsung Galaxy Tab, also used. Even more fun than I expected, and very convenient.
- A LED water tap. Took me 5 years to realize that a leaking tap can be replaced with a new one. Go me!
- A big collection of Cthulhu stories, Kindle edition (the Galaxy Tab caused me to start using Kindle),
- An air purifier (my current one is more ancient than Cthulhu).

Next one planned: an actual Kindle device.

And most of all: The Dance with Dragons, the fifth book in the Song of Ice and Fire. Only 4 weeks left!

Life

I have noticed that when I have plans to write something I don't usually write anything else until I do. Probably should fix that and try to write things in the order in which they come to mind, not in the order planned.

Not so much new in life, at least not the stuff that I can talk about without endangering other people privacy, or our NDA. (For the curious: if I were to talk about the stuff that I am leaving out, you would probably find it boring anyway.)

The summer has started, and it's short and not very snowy, as befits a Finnish summer. Had a weekend full of parties, beers, picnics, and the best bachelor party ever (Kikka's). The mood is sunny even though the weather is somewhat rainy.

Been shopping for fun, too. People who say that shopping doesn't make you happy just don't shop in the right kind of places.

For promotion of virtue and destruction of vice

Me: "Well, I stand on the opposite side of this issue, but..."
The guy: "What do you mean, opposite side? I am for equality and justice!"

After that I could only smile and bite my tongue to avoid saying things like "and I am for our new overlords and their cute little tentacles".

I am back

I am back from China, and still alive.

China is big and beautiful and full of Chinese people. More details later.