Zimena

I've done quite a few things since the last time I posted anything here. Most, I don't have a confirmation or a response to yet, but it still counts as trying to do new things.

* My hometown will be one of the cities to host the Tall Ships Races this Summer. I've now applied to be one of the volunteers for the event, which most likely means being on the info stand, pointing out where things are in town, handing out info materials and such. It's just for three days, but it sounds very exciting, and also a great chance to practice my foreign languages, as there will be a lot of people from other countries there.

* Remember the Summer Camp I went on last year? I've applied for that again this year. There are more groups/activities to choose from this time around, but my first choice was to be on the group that will be learning Norwegian Sign Language for a week. I'm a complete beginner at it, but it sounds exciting to learn more about how sign language works, and how it differs from spoken language.

* The Manchester trip for the Tour Championship snooker is only nine days away. I'm very excited about it, but also starting to feel a little nervous. My nerves are mostly about the travelling, and managing to do everything I need to do prior to leaving. Once I'm actually there, and everything has gone according to plan with getting there, I'm sure it's going to be magical.

Snooker-wise, this event has only the 12 best players of the current season competing. That means I was nervous about Mark even qualifying for it for a while, but his qualification has looked safe since he won the Welsh Open in February. The last three qualifiers for the event were confirmed earlier this week.

Speaking of that... this week's snooker - the Players Championship in Telford - isn't much fun from my point of view. Mark lost vs Neil Robertson yesterday. I can't even be angry, because Neil was playing really well, and Mark wasn't taking his chances. But still, there's the fact that I'm annoyed with Neil this season, for winning against Mark twice, and for winning the English Open when Wu Yize almost managed an insane fightback, and I was very much rooting for Wu that day. So, I'm not really as happy about Neil doing well this season as I would have been in the past, when I used to like him more. As if it wasn't bad enough that Mark lost, a few other matches have also gone in the opposite way of what I had preferred, so this tournament is very welcome to just end now. The fallback joy for me would be if Judd Trump wins it, but really - it's a minor thing compared to many others.

I'm hoping for more joy for those I love in Manchester, when I'm going to be there in person!

* This is an election year here, and they're looking for people to be on the organisational team on election day. I've actually put in an application for that, but I have no expectations whatsoever about being picked for that. They said in the info about the position that they wanted people from all sorts of backgrounds, wanted to focus on diversity on the organisational team etc, but I think you have a higher chance of being picked if you're actually involved in politics locally, which I'm definitely not.

* Finally, something about my computer: I've set up the I3 window manager, which now works kind of how I want it to work. Of course there are always things to tweak, but most of the commonly used shortcuts now make sense to me, and I can use it without getting massively annoyed constantly.

There are still a couple of things I haven't managed to figure out, though. Like, why does the cursor suddenly go tiny in some apps? Unsure, but it seems to be specific to flatpak apps. Also, how do you set scaling in i3? None of the workarounds I've seen for this seem to do anything, and i3 just seems to inherit the 200% scaling that is set in the gnome desktop that I hardly ever use. In KDE, I've set the scale to 185%, which makes things work sensibly for my screen. But there's no setting like that in I3.

That's all for today!

I know I still have one or two posts to write from the Leicester trip, but I've been putting it off because the next part is so emotional to me. There is so much I want to write, but it feels a bit overwhelming to start that post. I'll see if I can get to it during the days between Christmas and New Year, though.

Anyway, something else now. I've been seeing quite a few "2024 roundup" posts during the last couple of days, especially on Twitter. I quite like that idea this year, so here's mine - the things I count as my highlights and/or achievements of the year.

In 2024, I...

* Travelled to the UK by myself, and went to the Snooker Shootout in Leicester.
* Went on a queer Summer camp for a week.
* Had a proper, paid Summer job.
* Signed up for, and physically attended all lessons of, a self-development course in Identity and Communication.
* Saw Bruce Springsteen in concert at Wembley Stadium in London.

I believe these must the main events of the year for me. Interestingly, they're all from the second half of the year. Does that mean that July-December is a better time of the year than January-June, from my point of view? I don't know about that, but I do know that autumn is my favourite season. Not that the list above reflects that either, as much of this happened either during the Summer or very recently.

This weekend has been so nice!

Yesterday (Saturday), I had a friend for visit for a couple of hours. I had not seen her for a good while, so it was nice to just have her here and sit and talk for a while. In fact, we agreed that she'd come over a couple of days ago, and I wasn't sure then that I had made the right choice because I was also going somewhere in the evening. But I'm so, so glad she were here, and she's one of those people I'm grateful that I get to have in my life. She has a beautiful Border Collie dog, too, and I always love to be around animals. Well, cats and dogs, at least - not sure about every other kind of animal that I have no experience with.

Anyway, we had a lovely few hours together.

Then, in the evening I went to see my favourite Norwegian band live! They're called Hellbillies, and this link goes to a clip from their current tour, though not from the exact concert I've been to. The song here is one of their most famous ones, and it's actually a cover version, though I suspect the majority of Norwegians don't know that. We're very familiar with this song, but not really with the original (Hal Ketchum: "Past The Point Of Rescue").

Anyway, the concert was absolutely fantastic! They're amazing live, and they have so much great music! I've actually wanted to see them live for several years, but somehow it never worked out when they've played in my town before. I'm still on a sort of emotional high from having seen them, finally... and I'll be honest and admit that I also have a sort of eternal crush on the lead singer, Aslag Haugen. He's getting older now, of course, but to me he was always beautiful in a rough kind of way that I very much like.

I got shy during their signing session after the show, though, so I ended up not buying any merchandise or getting his signature. I feel a bit silly for that now, but in that moment it felt right to just not try. Maybe next time. Because there will be a next time, I'm certain of that!

Anyway, I went to the concert with my cousin and his wife, and they came home with me for a couple of hours after it, too. We had pizza and talked about the music and the show for a bit, and it was really nice. But especially after the other visit earlier in the day, too, I was well and truly peopled out when I went to bed yesterday.

Then, today has been nice, too. One friend came by just to talk, but she was tired and didn't want to come inside. We stood for a good while talking just outside, though. The fact that I suddenly have friends who come by randomly, just for a chat, will never stop feeling completely surreal to me. For most of my life, all the important people in my life have been either family, or friends living too far away for this type of "quick hellos" to be a thing we could even do. I never really had good friends in my immediate surroundings, but now I do, and it's something that makes me very, very happy.

Other than that, I've also managed to sell an old mobile phone that was in a drawer here. I cleaned it up and reset it, and put it up for sale a few days ago. The guy who eventually bought it turned out to be someone I vaguely know, too, so he was suddenly willing to pay nearly the price I had asked, instead of bargaining endlessly. That made me happy, as I had initially set the asking price a bit higher than what I had expected to get. A lot of people buying used stuff like to bargain, so... :)

Snooker also came with a very beautiful surprise this weekend: Ding Junhui won his first tournament since 2019, and I might have blinked away tears for him at the end there. He defeated Chris Wakelin 10-7 in the International Championship final, and he had his family around him for the trophy presentation. There were some very adorable moments with his daughter especially. Maybe he used to mean more to me than he does now, but I still really like him, and this was such a fantastic moment!

Finally, something a bit unexpected: I've finally started reading my tarot books. I got two different ones some time ago - one of them was a Christmas gift last year, the other one I bought for myself. Along with that, I also somehow ended up reading a bit about witchcraft (though not so much about Wicca, yet) online, and I'm finding that I want to know more. I found a whole list of resources via some subreddits, so I have a lot of stuff to read. Some part of me definitely struggles with the interest in this as I grew up Christian, and always had that as a natural foundation in life. I've never been very active with religious-related things, but still, it's always been there, always been part of how I think about things. While I don't find the interest in tarot to be directly at odds with it, the topics I'm now researching by extension might be, and that makes my interest in them challenging to some extent. For now I've decided to keep reading, though, and I'll see how it feels from there. Knowledge, in itself, isn't a bad thing, I think.

So, yesterday's snooker was partly very nice (thanks, Ronnie!) and partly very painful (because Mark lost 3-5 to Neil). I must admit that it took me a few hours to get over the painful match (I love Mark very intensely right now), but I also had a friend over to watch Ronnie's match with me in the evening, so I had to refocus because of him. We ended up having a very nice evening together - not only because of the match, though.

So, about this friend, I haven't talked about him that much in my journal before. We first got to know each other in my former workplace, more than 20 years ago. Only, we didn't really make friends then, we just... knew who each other were, since that time. Our friendship only started about a year and a half ago, when I started attending an exercise group he was already part of. That group is also part of a local activity centre, where I've also become more active since I first joined the group.

Anyway, he's blind, so most of our other friends don't really understand how he is able to enjoy following snooker with me, as it's such a very visual sport. I suppose I also do not truly understand what he gets out of it, but I try to explain a bit about the game and which possibilities are on the table when we watch things. Plus, he picks up on what the commentators are saying, and on my emotional state really well. It seems to me that part of his enjoyment of it is the intensity, the emotional side of things. It's obviously hard for him to appreciate the shots individually - and things change too fast for me to explain these nuances to him while watching a match. Either way, we see each other fairly often, and talk on the phone even more often, so you should know about him now.

Maybe I should start calling people by initial in my journal, like I've seen some of you do. If so, I might make a separate post about who's who soon. But as for this guy, let's call him C.

So, the match finished in... I guess about 90 minutes, so around 8:30pm or something? But he still stayed until past 11pm, so that probably tells you that we had a nice evening together. (Also, before you ask, we are friends and nothing more. He has a girlfriend, HG, who is also a friend of mine, too.)

Then, this morning I was already out at 8:30, because they're starting up a new Morning Dance group at the activity centre. This idea started as a joke between me and a couple of other women back before the summer, and now it's actually being set up. Because I was part of the group that first came up with the idea, I felt that it was important to be there for the first session. It's very informal - we put some music on, and we dance however we feel like. The main point is just to move about and to enjoy the music - it's not a "class" in the sense that the aim is to "practice" specific skills. It was also fun for me to get spun around a couple of times, because with the new active wheelchair that I got a few weeks back, that is now a possibility - whereas it would have been a lot harder to dance in my old one, because was so much heavier to move.

Either way, I stayed at the centre for a little while after the dancing, just to talk with people and be around them for a bit. Went back home when I started to feel like I'd had my fill of social interactions for a while, because I'm still kind of shy and might feel a bit awkward around people, even though I'm working on it, and it's "better" than it used to be.

Now I'm about to go out with my cousin, because we're going to look at the new Google Pixel 9 XL phones that got released recently. I'm looking forward to it, and let's be honest - I find those phones very interesting, and I'd love to buy one. I'm not sure I can justify buying a new phone, though, as my current one still works (apart from being a massive battery eater), and it's only 2 years old. I start putting aside money for a phone soon after getting a new one, though, so I have the money... and there's some resell value in my old one, too. But still - buy a phone? Now? Can I? I need to think it through. But I can definitely look... right?

Happy Day of Knowledge, everyone!

For the last few years, I've had a "Back to School" project with gobstastic. The idea is to learn something new, get into some good habits and generally try to maintain a difference between weekdays and weekends, the way we did while we were still in school or Uni. What we want to do for our "school" is up to each of us individually - we're not doing the same things.

Here are my goals for this year:

- Learn Chinese from Chineseclass101 - at least 1 lesson a day on weekdays, weekends off unless I feel inspired.
- Do lesson notes, and/or study PDFs/flashcards/any task that isn't an actual lesson, every weekday.
- Weight training 2x/week.
- Get back into Postcrossing.
- Crochet practice 3x/week
- Try to fix my sleep pattern (over time, at least. It doesn't feel realistic right now.)

You know that feeling when you want to go to bed, but you have great music on? And then you're just going to listen to one more song?

... and suddenly you've been sitting by the computer for a couple of hours.

As for today's great music, it's Japanese Azrael. Still them. I still cannot get enough of this amazingness.

It's been four days since mom's funeral.

Other things are dying as well, such as the flowers I got from aunt and cousins when they got the news that she passed.

I can't really say how I feel in the middle of everything. There's always sudden memories, thoughts, something someone says... and that just seems to trigger the sadness anew.

Sometimes I'm able to focus on other things and be happy for a while, and then I suddenly worry that I'm not hurting and grieving in the right way. Eh.

So many weird thoughts right now.

But also, I have to admit that some things were also beautiful during these days. The funeral itself was a beautiful ceremony, but of course it's also the most painful thing to go through at this time.

Then, after it, I went with three of my cousins to have a meal in a restaurant (I didn't want to do a bigger family gathering, as that just feels more painful). Being with only those people - these cousins were the ones who were always closest to me (one of them especially, but the others as well) - felt much better to me.

I also stayed that night at one of those cousins' place, and that was also a good thing, I think.

***

I've been home for a few days, though - trying to do normal things, or escaping said "normal things" and less pleasant moods by going for walks around the area where I live. I live only a few streets from the seaside, so yesterday I went to sit at the beach for a while. A little away from the sandy area where people are sunbathing, true, but still.... close enough to see both that and the beach/sea quite close by.

Today it has been raining heavily, though, so I stayed indoors. Got some housework done, mended a pair of trousers that I've been meaning to mend since forever... and also played for a while on the Nintendo Switch. I only stopped that because an error occurred that kicked me out of my Fall Guys game even though I had already qualified for the next round. That annoyed me, so I'm leaving the gaming until tomorrow, now.

Also, in other news... I have an Amazon Prime account now. I had been meaning to get a service like that, but I kept wondering if it's worth it for someone like me - someone who doesn't get into series or movies easily, though I can still enjoy some of them if I'm in the right mood. Getting Prime before the price increase seemed like a good idea, so here I am.

The first thing I started watching on there is Paper Girls... and I'm kind of hooked right now. I've seen four episodes so far, and I'm looking forward to the next one/next ones already.

I kind of like solving crossword puzzles, but I'm not very good at it. There's this magazine that does a yearly competition here, though, and it was always kinda a family thing to participate in, ever since I was little. I remember my mom and aunts working together on those puzzles, and when I started to learn how to look up words in books, I helped with the search, too. Back then, it was often a case of "reading the dictionary" to look for words that fit the clues and the letters we had available, but all of this is of course different now that there are sites that allow searching by word structure/available letters.

Either way, when I started actively participating in the competition myself, it was because there used to be a few coded crosswords (as in that thing in which every letter is substituted with a number, and the task is mainly to find out which numbers correspond to which letters) in the competition each year. Mom was never much into those, so we used to get the finished version via one of my aunts instead. Then, one year when I was in my teens, aunt called and was frustrated because she couldn't get started on the coded crossword of that year, and so I decided to have a look at it and see if I could figure it out. As it turned out, I solved it before aunt did in that year, and since then I've been doing the coded crosswords every year, even though I only help out with searching out answers for the more "regular" (find synonyms to clues) kind of puzzle.

So... I just finished the coded crossword for this year's competition. There used to be like three or four such puzzles every year, but nowadays there's only one - everything else for the competition is the regular kind instead.

I wasn't sure I'd be able to do it this year, because I felt like it took me so long to find the first words. Then, of course, once you have the most common letters in place, coded crosswords get progressively easier, because more and more letters are "known" and correct as you go along.

The word I found that finally got me on track to solve the puzzle? KNOCKOUT. (This is actually a very helpful word in this type of puzzle, because the letter C is very uncommon in Norwegian, so if you get it, you can basically "check" that it's logically correct if there are very few other instances of its number in the puzzle. Also, getting vowels in place also helps a lot, and this one gave both O and U.)

Either way, it's done now. There's one more week of the competition left, so we'll see how much of it we'll be able to finish.

Also, before you ask - no, we're not good enough to win anything, but you can get a sort of certificate if you manage to solve the first few rounds - nowadays only two puzzles in each round, but used to be three when I was younger, I think. In the old days, "solving" a round meant having all the words of all the puzzles correct, but nowadays you only need a few specific letters in each puzzle to be correct. Either way, getting the certificate used to be a goal for many years, but the closest we ever got under the old system was getting a letter from the organisers with a "thank you for cleverly solving almost everything correctly, but you had a few misspellings, hence we cannot award a certificate this year". (A couple of the misspellings from that year are still kinda legendary in our family. Let's say, I'll never misspell the Finnish town of LAHTI ever again.) After the system was changed, we got the certificate a few times, but it's not quite as impressive as if we had managed under the stricter rules.

Either way, everyone who gets the certificate then gets sent a set of harder puzzles that need to be solved in a very short time, and then a champion is determined from that. We never truly cared about this part, though. We still try only for the certificate, and we have no hopes or goals beyond that.

Either way, the coded crossword is done... and you got a long story around that.

It's official: I'M GOING TO MOVE TO MY OWN APARTMENT!!!

After more than two years of flat-hunting, and nine months of paperworks, assessments, rejections, written complaints and endless amounts of waiting in between all those things, it's finally decided:

The council have decided to take my health situation into account, and allow me to move to a wheelchair-accessible flat on my own. In effect, this means that I will pay my rent to the council, instead of having to find an accessible flat on my own (as we all know, this has been a pretty hard task!).

I still don't know exactly what the flat will be like, or even exactly where it is - there are a few possible buildings that I know of. I have, however, mentioned which one I'd prefer (both because it's close to the town centre, and because it's the most conveniently accessible one), and when I got the message about my application being granted today, the lady who called also said that she was aware of my preferences, so it seems positive, at least...

But, right now, the most important thing is that I know I'm going to be able to move to my own place. Even though I won't know any definite info about the actual apartment until about three weeks from now, they said I could start preparing the move already now, as it could happen soon after getting the definite info.

I'm still a bit speechless and shocked, and I don't even know where to start with packing my stuff or even choosing what kind of stuff HAS TO come with me to the new place immediately, but most likely the next few weeks will be madly busy and crazy.

Today has been such a long day. First, because we had to go for a service/inspection of the car in the morning. They said that it would take some 2-3 hours. Then, after that, we went to Vennesla to look at another flat - this is one I've been looking at on and off online already, but this is the first time I was actually inside.

Seriously, there is so much nice stuff about this place. It's fairly big, at a good price. And it's near the town centre, but not in the middle of the main street. Also, it has an "extra" room, which I immediately envisioned as an office. Plus, there's a storage room downstairs that belongs to the apartment, so we don't need to have absolutely everything we own IN the apartment (nice place for keeping Christmas stuff or summer/outdoor furniture, and various other things). Oh, and I need to mention the bathroom, because it's almost perfect right from the beginning - something I haven't seen in any of the other flats I've looked at up to now.

Then, the negatives? Parking space might be a problem, though I'm going to get that checked in more detail. And the area around the entrance to the building is a little bit steep, so I'd have to learn how to deal with that, how to safely open the door if I'm carrying something etc. But I think this is something that can be learned - it's just about practice and finding the right technique.

Also, there are things to do with the flat itself, because it feels kind of dark and "heavy" to be in there now. I think much of that comes down to the fact that the previous owners were old people who had not bothered to install proper light sources, so even with lights on, it still felt too dark. Also, the walls are grey, greyish blue, orange, brown etc. Basically, it's "colourful" but not at all bright, and this adds to the "heaviness", definitely. I love coloured walls, it's not that, but not these colours. Oh, and let's not forget that the previous owners must have had all sorts of things on the walls, because there are gazillions of little holes everywhere - from screws, presumably. Finally, the electrical sockets on the wall look mostly very old, and are often in strange places. (There's a report on the electrical system as a whole, though - that's in good condition, with new automatic fuses and all - it's just the sockets that look meh).

I'm a little bit worried that the heaviness I felt from being in there also has to do with the indoor climate? I can't tell just from being in there for half an hour, unfortunately. But I need to find a way to check that if the parking issue gets sorted somehow.

In short - there are many things I loved about this place. Still, I'm insecure about it even if all my doubts could be sorted. Moving is just such a big decision, and I don't know if I'll ever feel ready to leave the place that has been my home for my whole life. Even if I look at another place and find it lovely; even if it has so much of what I think of as important.... I'm still scared that it won't feel like home if I move there?!

So many thoughts, so much confusion....

One part of me wants to move out like.... yesterday. The other part of me won't be ready, ever.