Gear bonanza

I ended up going slightly bananas while shopping today. I had the oppurtunity to use a 25% discount on everything and anything at this sportsshop today, and I used it alright. Bought a bunch of outdoor gear. Oh! How I love acquiring new  (or used) gear!

 Right, so in the picture above we have:

• Trangia 24-TET cookware set
• 2 cans of Primus Power Gas
• Primus ExpressStove Titan
• a sami knife
• winter tent pegs from Helsport, 31cm long
• Bula waterproof gloves
• Iris Merinowool longjohns and longsleeved polo
• The North Face base camp duffelbag 72L
• X-socks Carving Ultralight

 I have neved owned a proper little stove before, really looking forward to trying it out this weekend. Yay!

 What kind of stuff do you love shopping for?

How to get into my trousers

Now that I've got your attention, the subject here is how I will get into my trousers. I have a lot of them, but unfortunately most of them have become too tight on me the last couple of years. Since I don't have the money to buy an entire new wardrobe of trousers and dresses, I have decided to eat less and move more. Mostly move more. And eat less sweets.

Therefore, from now on, there will be sporadic updates of what I've done of exercise, since I have seen this be done on several other blogs, and I have also signed up for a spinning-thing at my gym, where, if you go spinning 24 times before December 9th, you have the chance of winning a bike. I already have a bike, but I like winning stuff. And this bike is nicer than my bike. It's nice to have a concrete goal, that's what everyone says anyway.

So far, I have spun (?) 4 times. Only 20 to go. I meant to go today but I had forgotten that I had signed up for a talk about a south pole expedition, which, btw, was very interesting.

Nuff talk, here's the past two weeks:

colour code:
grey: nothin' done
blue: a proper workout
green: some movement

What's your goal this fall? Or do you have a goal with a longer timescale?

Yellow

I’ve got a thing for yellow now a days. And green and pink; yellow and green and pink. It all feels very summery and feminine and kinda nice.

 

Bought some work out clothes to try and motivate myself to go to the gym, and hey! It worked! I went the same day to a dance class and shook my arse and my tits ‘til they were sagging twice as much as they normally do, wearing that pink top on the pic above.

Easter - part II

It's Norway's national day today, I've walked in the parade, I've eaten cake and hot dogs and I've slept for four hours this afternoon. At this moment don't really know where to put myself, but I found some wine in the kitchen, and I'm just going to end up in front of my laptop ayway, so let's blog.

Easter part II, right. The following pics are from the beginning of easter when me and three others snow scootered to a UNIS student cabin close to Svea, one of the two Norwegian coal mines on Svalbard.

I can never decide whether the story of a picture should be under or over it. Any opinions?

Let's put text above for now.
So, this is Niklas,hacking up coal into smaller pieces that we could actually get to light up.

The cabin. No water, no electricity. Going for a piss in the night was interesting. Rifle over shoulder, long jons and down jacket, carefully looking around for polar bears when peeing.

Oh, and that mountain in the middle on the pic below, called Aspelintoppen, that's where we skied the next day. Didn't get all the way to the top though. It's about 1200 m high, we wen't up to about 900 m or so.

 Old, windblown polar bear tracks on the side of the mountain. From a mum and cub.

As far up as we went this. Mind you the last bit took forever! And my stamina is non-existant compared to everyone else on this arcipelago. I was so tired as we were to go down again, and the snow was hard packed, I lost my grip and ended up sliding sideways/backwards/forwards down half the mountain before I finally managed to stop. Felt like scary stuff at the time of sliding. Though got away with only some scratches on my skis. I need to learn how to ski better. I'm getting there mind you.

Anyway, back down on the sea ice we found this! That wasn't there when we went up. Fresh blood, like three metres of smudged blood.

And tracks! Polar bear tracks! No bear though. Anyway, it would have been a non-hungry bear which, naturally, makes them slightly less dangerous than hungry bears. Or so I would guess.

 Drove a bit further, and what did we find?

 Half chewed baby seal!

Lastly, scooters, skies, (relativelly) flat sea ice = Katja on skies behind scooter. Think she got up to 50 or 60 km/h. I'm sitting behind Amanda on the other scooter with the camera going click click click click click click having no idea of what I'm actually aiming at.

Winter in retrospect

Several posts were planned months ago, but I'm lazy, at times. Skiing is however a vital part of winter, both cross-country and downhill. I suck at both compared to most Norwegians, but I'm brilliant compared to most Brits.

 All four pics above from cross country skiing. Pic below: Just managed to get off the t-hook lift, ready to set off down hill on my carving skiis with my right-legged tibia in pain. I had just had a rather nasty fall. But notice my cool Oakley goggles and Fjällräven anorak. Yes, don't I look dashing!

Running motivation

Going for a run? Start out with...

...to warm up your mind while getting dressed and doing a little dance while going out the door.

Next, for the warm up (do include some spinning and jumping and dancing here as well):




 In the words of Freddie Mercury: "I'm a sex machine ready to reload". That's a quote from the song above btw. Use that as a motivation phrase while running if you like ;)

Moving on. Closing up on the steep hills there's need for something slightly more malicious.



By this time I'm usually knackered anyway, hence it doesn't matter what song I put on. The rest of the run fluctuates between runner's high and runner's despair until I get home and feel grrrrreat! (Other Prodigy-songs are good for running also...)

The upcoming travel to London is quite the motivation in itself. I did a little googling on the girls I'll be working along with and it seems they're all about two (to three) dress sizes smaller than me, i.e. they're what society calles models (or as I call anyone who is taller and thinner than me: skinny bitches). More on the subject of skinny bitches later. Toodles!

Sunday pursuits

On Sunday I went skiing with Lena. She was the fastest uphill, I was the fastest downhill. That's Lena in the pic and me behind the camera using any excuse to catch my breath. I'm a winter's child, bad stamina won't stop me putting on my skis.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear oh me what a bad blogger I am....

December 1st today, haven't visited my own blog since October. Feck. I see I've been sent an award by Ingrid Riddervold (Again, this happened in October. Again, feck.) and her lovely blogalicious. Now this is a girl who can sew! (Damn her, jealous) Aaaanyhow, I'm supposed to now say seven things about myself. Ok

 1. I like rocks. And minerals. I find them interesting. So interesting I plan to make a career out of them.
 2. Squash is fun. Especially with people like him, her and her.
 3. Flea markets are the best.
 4. I'm a slave to the television, or more specifically to tv-series downloaded from the magnificent webalicious. Examples would be Gossip Girl, House M.D, QI, Mad Men, Sex and the City, True Blood
 5. My favourite animal is rabbit (and hare).

source

6. My hero is Roald Amundsen, first man on the south-pole, though I sometimes wonder if I'm a reincarnation of Robert F. Scott in terms of not-so-wise decision making.
7. Fashion baby!

Okay, sending the award to Sir Bob, challenging him to write the answers in a post that is shorter than the Paleozoic era, for once.

See you in another two months....