My bag is due for replacement, and Sandra Bullock’s from Two Week’s Notice looks pretty nifty.
Category: Personal
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Question: How do you find motivation?
We all have times when finding the motivation to do certain things is a little hard. It might be exercise, housework, schoolwork, or other things.
How do you find motivation to keep going with your activity of choice if the inspiration is lacking?
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Want(ed): Sofa
When my sister M and I first talked about moving in together, there was a lot of planning prior to the actual moving. A lot of the time was spent discussing how we were going to decorate the place.One of the things we agreed on was that we wanted a comfortable sofa. I watched Death At A Funeral
and fell in love with the style of the love seat in the movie.
I sent the screen cap to M, and commented that this was the kind of thing I liked.
M’s response: I’d really prefer if we could avoid the coffin. Oh, and I’m really not a fan of the pillows, featuring dogs.
When the time came, we test sat every couch at IKEA. And we ended with Ektorp, in stripy blue. (When M moved out, I upgraded to the light brown in the picture, and M ended up with a dark blue sort. The stripes was a compromise.)
Honestly, it doesn’t look *that* different from the Death at a Funeral one, does it?
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Want: Umbrella
Summer hasn’t happened much in my part of Norway. As usual, it has been wet and fairly cold. And the umbrellas have been out in full force already.But for autumn, I like the design of this umbrella from Stormy Weather. It looks like fun, and a bit different than all the umbrellas that I already have – one in each bag, one in the car, and one at the office… Yes, it rains a lot here.
I probably won’t get this exact one, but it helps to have an idea in my head as I look around in my local shops. (And, with the windy weather we have here, $40 is a bit too much to spend on an umbrella… Sadly.
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Life has begun to return to normal
Albeit slowly.
It was a shock the first time I turned on the television after the attacks at Utøya and in Oslo 22. July – and noticed that the programme did not cover those attacks. I think it was the Wednesday after.
Life goes on, even for the television channels, who emptied all their programming selections that weekend in order to cover the tragedy.
For those of us who weren’t hit directly, life goes on quicker than those who were there, who lost someone or who know someone who lost someone close to them. Regardless of that, it is still incomprehensible that this would happen in little Norway.
The funerals started just before the weekend, and will likely keep going for a bit. I think the coverage from those make it seem more real than the pictures from a bombed out Oslo.
A national day of mourning has been declared for later in August, and the start of the campaigning for the election has been postponed.
But at some point, the municipal elections this autumn will come – and though the political parties have mentioned that they’re getting more members after this – time will tell if the plea for more democracy will be effective come September, as people are getting back to normal.
We can say what kind of Norway we want to have after the disaster, but allegedly it takes 21 days to form or break a habit, and we’ve not passed that mark yet. Time will tell.
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Why dementia is extra bad in these situations
My grandmother has dementia. It runs in the family. Her mother had it. Her mother’s father, allegedly, had it. (I’m choosing to take the positive here that my grandmother didn’t start getting bad at remembering things until she was 86.)
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Update from Oslo
Cripes.
A press conference states that 7 are dead in Oslo – but that the buildings haven’t been searched extensively, so those numbers may rise.
Currently 84 are dead at the Youth Camp at Utøya, but they’re searching the lake around the island with divers, etc. so those numbers may rise.
In a country with around five milion people, that’s a whole lot of people.
They’ve caught a 32 year old, right wing, Christian fundamentalist, Norwegian, whose only twitter message from a couple of days ago state «One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100 000 who have only interests.» He was the shooter, and they have charged him in connection with the bombings as well.
Horror doesn’t always come from outside.
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Oslo today
Just to let everyone know, I am fine – and am not in the Oslo area at all. No one in my circle of friends/family appear to be in the area and be injured. (The brother of someone I know, who is rather high up in the Labour Youth Party and who would normally be at the camp at Utøya where people were shot at, was actually in London on summer holidays instead.)
I find the news of the bombing and subsequent shooting in Oslo scary and sad, and while I don’t often agree with the PM and the reigning parties, I do find his words in this case, worthy, poignant, and just right.
“This evening, and tonight, we will take care of each other. Give each other comfort and talk together. Tomorrow, we shall show the world that the Norwegian democracy will become stronger. We will find the guilty. But the most important tonight is to save lives and show care.”
They have caught a guy – a 32 year old, ethnical Norwegian, and speculations are currently going as to whether he’s a crazy army vet, recruit of a fundamentalist organization, etc. And whether or not he is working alone.
Currently, there are 7 dead from the bombing in Oslo, and 10 severely injured. The numbers from the shooting at the Youth Camp was 10 dead, but there has been an acknowledgement that these numbers will rise as they comb through the area more finely.
There was a Twitter/Facebook campaign going on to get people to donate blood. Two hours afterwards, the news had to go out and ask people to stop coming in to donate as the hospitals couldn’t handle all the donations. Things like that give me hope for society, when it seems like things are going very wrong, like today.
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Cucumbers
In these cucumber-scary times, the best thing is growing my own.
