J comes to town

I just realized that we still had not posted about J coming and visiting! Well, she came for two weeks for work and we were able to have some time visiting!

Unfortunately, I don't have pics for everything, but it'll be close.

After J and her co-workers arrived, I met them at their hotel and then we went downtown. The idea was to keep them awake and busy. So we did our best. We first took them to Cafe Sting where they sell wine by the kilogram; then we went to Alf & Werner and basically had the place to ourselves; we finished up the night at Tango where we had some fish and chips. The Saturday was spent running errands and shopping. We had lunch at Delizia which used to be another restaurant and Delizia itself used to be a gelatto place. Sunday we had a nice long lunch at Food Story in the Norwegian Sunday "brunch" tradition. The funny thing about brunch in Norway is that it is not at brunch-time (which would be between breakfast and lunch) and it does not contain breakfast items. It's more like "linner" but that would probably be lost on a lot of people. Brunch in Norwegian is brunsj, but the equivalent of linner would be liddag or maybe lundag. But I digress.

One evening during the week, J and her co-workers fought a horrendous traffic jam. What normally should have taken 20 minutes to get back to the hotel took over 1.5 hours. There was some very terrible accident. Austin and I waited gratiously at Kontoret. We were going to have dinner at Sjøhuset. It's an interesting history. Basically, Sjøhuset is now a restaurant but it used to be a shipping warehouse. Kontoret (which means The Office) was literally the office of the warehouse. The pictures from that night weren't very good because I was not using the flash. So you can settle for the food photos which were not so dark.

This is what lutefisk looks like. It's the white stuff on the right side of the plate. I tried some. It's very tasteless.

This was some fish and vegetable dish. I forget exactly.

I'm sure we went out once more in the week? On Friday, J came and spent the night and we had a nice healthy homemade dinner. Then on Saturday, we got up early and flew to Oslo.

Austin and I getting dinner ready.

J and I in front of the sleds. We went from Frognerseten to Midstuen on the Korketrekkeren. There's a restaurant there too. It's great fun. You ride the sled down about 10-15 minutes and then take the train back up. We did this a few times then headed back into the city.

Austin and J in front of the Royal Palace in Oslo. I'm not kidding.

The rest of Saturday was spent walking about, eating, drinking, then resting, then walking, eating, drinking.

On Sunday, we visited some museums. Here is the Ra II (I think). I knew nothing about it beforehand. It was very cool. It was a successful attempt at making a boat from papyrus. The museum also had the Kon-Tiki which the museum is named after. That was very interesting as well. Its purpose was to show that people could have sailed from South America to the Easter Islands very early.

Then we went to the Fram Museum. The Fram is a boat that was involved in many polar (both North and South) expeditions. The boat is inside!

We were even able to tour about the boat! Here I am on a gangplank(?).

Austin as a polar explorer.

For all the Oslo photos, go here.


Sunday late in the evening we flew back to Stavanger. Then the week went on by. Austin had his birthday. Janet wished for snow, which she got. Here's a photo from the University. We had dinner at our favorite place, Amici. There was no lack of laughter and good times.

Then on Friday we had our last dinner together in Stavanger at Mexico, where Austin was in the limelight for his food choices. How often does he check his cholesterol and does he really eat salad at lunch? Then we took some of J's co-workers to Dickens and then Cementen (a lovely place).

Cooking Group

As you can see, there's been a few things that have been keeping me busy and I have some time to kill right now at work.

Austin and I have attend a cooking group through the Red Cross in Stavanger. The people who were active have either moved (like Not the Cook Sharon and Reka) or just don't have the time anymore like N. We really enjoyed it with the monthly meetings. So, the cooking group was at risk of dissolving! I decided after talking it over with N that I would take over the organization of it.

So far, I've only actually helped organize one night. I have 3 more set up so it should get us through April. Probably May-August there will be a break because of holidays and people on vacation. I'm not sure. I'll have to talk with people about it.

The first evening, N helped me and I have a few photos. We learned to make dumplings, Asian-style noodles, and apple pie!

Three delicious apple pies! (The important food item.)

The dining room nicely set. Sometimes we get this room and I like it because it's cozier.

Working in theater

I've become involved in an amateur theater group, called BATS. I've just been helping out backstage with set creation and scene changes during the play. I'm not actually acting because that would require quite a lot more effort (rehearsals, learning lines) on my part that I'm just frankly not willing to do. I've only just started too.

Last September, I helped with my first play! It was an encore performance of a panto of 1001 Arabian Nights for the Stavanger Humor Festival. It was fun. This is how The Dame got his name. He was supposed to be a different character altogether but the guy who was supposed to play that part got stuck on a rig offshore. It was really hats off to The Dame for memorizing all of his lines in less than a week. But that is his story, not mine.

I enjoyed it enough that I volunteered to help with the next production - a panto of Sleeping Beauty. This one was just performed at the beginning of February with 5 performances! My main pride of the the show was my stack of plates and the bell I painted.

Here's photographic proof!

I am here with Rob and Kathrine talking about some part of the set or play, I'm sure. That's Austin and my kitchen trolley by the way. You've seen it before but you may not have realized it.

And here I am before a performance with all the props. See the stack of plates on the table.

There are more photos and more people who were involved, but I don't have any other photos at the moment. It was a good time indeed.

Lessons learned.

Yes, I learned more than one lesson tonight.

But I won't go into them all.

Just the one that is supremely embarrassing.

I've been working backstage on a play (yes, a play, and I will blog about this). There was a little party tonight. I drove to the play and then to the party. Then I decided to have some wine. So I needed to leave my car. Norway has a no drinking and driving policy. Not even one drink. I went with The Dame back to his place for more socializing before going home. It wasn't all that late that the party ended. After a bit of chatting and bitching and chatting and sharing British vs American intelligent and entertaining radio shows, we decided it was time to call a cab.

The cab came about 45 minutes later, give or take.

I got in the cab with the borrowed cash from The Dame because I don't have a proper Norwegian credit card and the taxis don't take debit card (What century are they in?). We were not more than 1 minute from my place when I realized...Oh shit! I don't have the house key!

In my mind, I started racing through my options.

A. Sleep in the entry until Austin comes home around 10am from his trip to India and he can let me in.

A is vetoed because that's silly and it's cold as ice in the entry of the house. It's snow covered and at least -3C outside. No heating in the entry. No one else has a key. I can hardly knock on a neighbor's door to call the landlord to let me in.

B. Call The Dame and ask for help.

B is momentarily vetoed because I forgot my cell phone.

C. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

D. Go back to The Dame's house. We'll think of something even if it means sleeping on his couch and then going to the car in the morning.

Where is my car?

I tell the taxi driver to just go back to where he picked me up. Then I say, no go to Storhaug, the general area where my car is. Mind you, Storhaug is a maze and I'm not exactly sure where my car is but I think I could probably find it. The taxi driver asks if we should call the number back because he has The Dame's number from the original call. (It's kind of brilliant actually.)

Then I call The Dame. Where is my car? And he tells me that he has to call me back. So he looks it up, calls back, and I tell the driver. (We are doing this all on the taxi driver's cell phone!) Luckily, the driver only needs the first few letters of the street and he can figure it out. So we go racing back to my car. Meanwhile, I tell him I only have so much cash and is it okay? Because it could be that actually and most likely I have just less than the fare. He says okay. We go back to my car.

There it is!!! I am jumping out of the taxi before he even comes to a complete stop. I am in such a completely embarrassed state that I can't even begin to describe. I get the key and off we race to my place. I keep apologizing because I'm really taking up more of his time and fares. But he says, "Oh! It's okay. People forget their airplane tickets, passports, and things all the time. No problem." It makes me feel a little better.

But I got home. I know where my car is. And I learned to not leave my house keys in the car. Leave them in my purse or in my pocket!!!!

And it turns out that Austin's flight has been rerouted and he won't be home until much later then expected. Good thing I didn't decide to sleep in the entry.

Furthermore...The Dame and I were complaining about how expensive taxis are in Stavanger. Yes, the taxis are expensive, but to feel so safe in the situation and that I wasn't going to be fleeced, it was a very nice thing indeed.

Training in an Icy Land

We had a fairly good amount of snow last Thursday...Austin's birthday...a granted wish of J. And then it snowed on Friday. Day time temperatures got up just enough to melt some snow but then temperatures dropped to freeze again. So on Sunday, after two late nights without good sleep, Austin and I were to go on a 20 km training walk.

We tried.

Honest.

Even though we were both really tired and just wanted to be in our pjs and play with the new tablet. First, we took Cooba, the dog we are sitting, for a small walk. And it was a good thing because we decided we needed the ice runners. Despite what Amazon says about the spectacularness, the front grips make their way up and so you only have spikes on your heel. So because this was happening multiple times in only a few minutes from leaving, we decided to head to Stokkavatnet. The trail around the lake is about 8 km. I thought we could do a couple laps. Well, that was icy too! We couldn't get into any kind of rhythm and work up speed because there was all kinds of ice! I am a little wary of spending too much time on the ice walking because I don't want to slip and hurt myself and not be able to do the walk. So, we ended up going back home. All in all we walked 2.5 km. Not quite 20. So, I spent 1.5 hours on our elliptical machine watching The Godfather. The movie really made it more bareable, but it was still sooooo booring. It was a good workout. My shoulders are a little sore. They should be fine tomorrow.

So why are we training? Along with 3 others, I am going to walk 100 km in 30 hours around the Yorkshire Dales. Austin is going to be on the support team which means he will help the others on the support team to have our break areas ready at the checkpoints and he may walk with us to give us some motivation! It will be exciting! You can donate here for Oxfam.

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