Home again :)

My summer holiday is now officially over, and I'm back home in my apartment. The dreaded busride turned out to be quite nice this time. Not really sure what's happened, but I guess the bus routes have been changed or something, because now I only had to change buses once, and not in one of the places it used to be. And all my luggage was still with me! Yay :) Here's a better picture of all my stuff (the previous one was taken with my phone):

Because of the weight, that black bag and the big suitcase are now ready for the scrapyard... Oh, by the way, more than half of that pile is YARN! Some stuffing and finished amis as well, but mostly yarn :) I guess you can imagine Dung Beetle getting tangled up in all that, with the Velcro on her legs! She'd stick to everything and frizzle up my yarn... So I solved the problem by putting her in a plastic bag. Not the most pleasant picture! But I can assure you she survived the trip and is now happily reunited with her dung ball :)

Bollan, Glyptodon and I were all very happy to come home, but I think Piggen and the kids were just as excited! They couldn't wait to show the family pictures and tell all the stories of their summer adventures :) (I will tell you all about it in a later post, I promise!)

Yesterday I got a lot of things done, but I'm still working on my CV and I haven't applied for any jobs yet... So many details to include! I don't even have all my records of school and previous jobs, so I'm not sure what to do about that... Looked all over the apartment today, but can't find them :( But at least I got to buy math and biology books yesterday. The biology book is so cute! It has a honey bee on the cover, because the book is called Bi 1, which is short for 'biology', but it's also a pun on the Norwegian word for 'bee' ("bi", even though "bie" is most common these days), plus the ring around the '1' sort of makes it read 'bio'. Very clever on so many levels. I think if I'd been high school age I would be embarrased for the people making this book, grownups weren't supposed to have humor back then :p Almost finished reading the first chapter already, and I love it! This is definitely what I want to do :)

Tomorrow I'll go out and talk to some councellor about jobs and financial support, because I won't get payed for the last week of work until the middle of September. That's a long time without food! Well... if my blog doesn't get updated in a while (within a week or two, I think - you can survive for a long time as long as you have something to drink!), I'll propably have starved to death or something :p

Bags are packed...

And I'm sort of ready to go home to my apartment. But only sort of. I hate traveling alone, especially by bus. Have tons of luggage and I have to change buses two or three times. Always worried I won't get everything with me, or that someone else will take my bags :/ They are locked and tagged, but still... And then the buses are so crowded this time of year, all the students coming to town at the beginning of the semester. At least I'll have things to pass the time on the ten-hour bus ride. Tatting shuttles wound with thread for a new project, yarn  & stuffing to make some Bug legs, and best of all, my new laptop has batteries to last at least six hours of music and movies :D Perhaps I even get to sleep some of the way, that will shorten the trip a lot.

But, when I finally get there with my 30+ kilos of stuff, I have to drag it with me virtually uphill all the way from the bus (can't afford a taxi on a Sunday), and the forcasts say it will be 24 degrees C and bright sunshine! Whew, think I'm going to die... At least Bollan and Glyptodon are anxious to go! Wish I could be carried home in a bag, too :) (Um, you know what I mean!)

When I get home I need to put together a proper CV and start applying for jobs. Really scary stuff. Worried I can only get crappy jobs, or that I won't be able to do the ones I do get. Maybe I can't find anything at all and end up on welfare or something... I know I can probably get a job as a cleaning lady fairly easily,  but I'm not sure if I want to have that as my first option. The cleaning itself is not that bad, but I've become allergic to the gloves that are used :( I've tried wearing cottong gloves inside the latex ones, but that only helps a little... 

Plus I'm no longer a university student. Was going to take a year off anyway when I couldn't begin a Master in Arabic this fall, but now I've decided to give up on languages & linguistics pretty much for good. It's all very exciting, and I'm pretty good at learning new languages, but I've come to realize that I'll never find a job with an education like that. I wouldn't survive as a teacher, getting a PhD also includes teaching and stuff, and that's pretty much all there is as far as I can see right now...

So, I've come up with a new plan. Since I'll be working for a year now anyway, I can just as well spend the time doing something useful, like studying! :p I've decided that if I go back to the university I'll study biology. To qualify for that I need to take some math and/or biology classes at high school level. I sent in an application to a school which has adult classes in the afternoon, but they were all full, so my only option is to try doing this by myself. Signed up for an exam in math and the beginning course in biology, and we'll see how it goes. Off to buy books tomorrow, and hopefully I get to spend most of next week reading biology :) 

Well, time to have some breakfast before I go! Ugh...

Work, work & apologies

First I'd like to apologize to my readers and commenters for being really bad at responding to your nice comments the past weeks. I know it sounds like I'm lazy, but I just haven't had much energy for keeping up with my "online life" lately because of my job. Jobs, actually. Plural... I've been cleaning the town hall five days a week the past three weeks, and last week I also had the job of cleaning the town's public toilets & showers. That's not really much, just a couple hours twice a week, but it's still something I have to do after I finish my other job. Right now there isn't a lot of people working at the town hall because of vacations, so I use less time than I normally would, which is great, because I don't think I could manage to stay there for five hours every day. I guess this can sound like a piece of cake to some, but I'm not used to working this hard, and when I get home I just crash on the couch and can't really do anything for hours. Of course, my crafting really suffers because of this. I don't get much crocheting done during the week, creating patterns just takes too much energy and effort :( I sure hope I get used to living like this really soon, because if my creativity has to go, then... well, it's not the life I want :/

It's now almost half past eleven and it's time to go to bed, I start work at eight tomorrow morning. My final week in this job, and then I'll have some time off before I begin looking for a new one. Hopefully a more comfortable one, but beggars can't be choosers, so I guess I'll take more or less whatever I can get (within reasonable distance from where I live since I don't drive)... Anyway, once again I apologize for not replying to comments and stuff. Don't think that I ignore them, I really do appreciate all the nice comments I get! Thanks, and good night :)

Shiny new things :)

First of all, I got my new laptop today! So far I'm very happy with it, it has Windows 7 and everything :D No more Vista for me, yay! It's so tiny, it's pretty much the right size for Bollan! Perfect for posting her little tweets :)

Sorry for the bad photo quality, I took the picture with my phone, which isn't exactly brand new any more... But it has bluetooth, and so does my computer, so I can finally transfer all the pictures from my phone :) I've been wanting to do that for a long time!

Second, I also got new shoes today :D I started training for my new job this morning (the job I'm supposed to have this summer, the other one was just a substitute thing), and after almost five hours of walking and standing and cleaning things my feet hurt so bad I can hardly walk :/ It's especially bad under the heel and the part behind the big toe. My right big toe has been numb for days, I think I've been walking on a nerve or something... I thought I'd get over it from the week at the other job, because I'm not used to that much walking after seven years as a lazy student, but it's only gotten worse, so today I finally gave in and decided to get some more comfortable shoes. The ones I have are not at all uncomfortable - I think they are the best shoes I've ever had, but the soles are not very soft, so I guess that's bad... Anyway, I just wanted to post the picture of my new shoes beside my new laptop - to give you an idea of how tiny it is (or how large my feet are!), and again I apologize for the quality:

Before the big day

I am absolutely exhausted! I've been at work the last three days (scrubbing walls, doors, windows, floors, tables & chairs etc. at a school - kids are dirty creatures!), and today I've been preparing for the market/fair tomorrow. Well, "preparing"... We were supposed to rehearse the play (for the first time!) until we got it right (we are few people with many roles, and there's a lot of making stuff up as we go - there's a storyteller with no script, so it's never the same twice), but of course that didn't happen. We did the play once, and then we were going to get the sound system up before we did it again. That took about four hours... In the end it got so late before we could start again that people had to leave, and the whole thing became pretty amputated and somewhat half-hearted :/ Hope we have time for another rehearsal tomorrow morning, with full cast and a working sound thingy...

I still need to make a list of my things/prices and price tags for the items/boxes. I have no idea what kind of table I'll get, or even where I'll sit - outside or in a tent. Right now I feel pretty disheartened (is that the right word?) by the whole thing, like I never want to do this again... I'm so tired and grumpy I don't even want to be around myself :( My feet hurt from all the walking and standing and I think I have a fever...

*sigh* Don't know when I get home to my mother's tomorrow night, and I have to work on Monday (more cleaning), but I promise to tell you how it all went when I have time and feel a little more awake :)