semi-outdoorsy

I bought a new sleeping bag and a new, fancy-schmancy sleeping mat while I was up on Svalbard, mainly bevause I didn't have any except for an old worn sleeping bag of my brothers from the seventies or eighties. And because I kinda of like buying things. At least Svalbard taught me that it is wiser to buy useful stuff rather than just pretty stuff, even though you can wear pretty stuff too. I never been one to buy ornate figurines or anything.

....Anyway, since I bought the bag and mat, I've slept outside, in a tent, once. And twice inside, on the floor. I'm trying to become more outdoorsy (more on that later) but old habits die hard. So tonight at least I am sleeping outside on my balcony. Roofed balcony. It's gonna rain tonight, but luckily the wind'll be blowing from behind the balcony area.

It's a comfortable, though not very summery 10 degrees celsius outside. Good night.

 I won't have any trees around me but at least I'll have my little lilac bush besides me.

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.

Five cm under the surface

Went for a wee bicycle trip yesterday, trying to be adventurous, failing, but it was a nice trip anyway. The weather was okay, I got to know the island a bit better.

I was told that the path you see in front of the bike was actually the main car road on the island fifty or so years ago. Now, this tells me that if the human race was to die out because we fucked everything up, nature would relatively quickly grow everywhere, hiding the mess, then continental drift would sink what needs to be sunk and bury the rest.


Also, I bought myself a waterproof camera not too long ago. I found myself a little tidal pond where things grew and two shrimps lived. The colours turned out quite nicely, but those bloody shrimps just wouldn't keep still for the camera! Either they kept swimming into the camera, coming to close, or they just swam away under a rock. Didn't really help that they're colourless either. Hence, the shrimps are a bit blurry. The plant-thingys look alright though. Sometimes. Enjoy!

     Friggin shrimp...

ok. fuck. right, let's update.

Seriously, can someone tell me how to get a routine to stick? It's not just about blogging more often than once a year, I'm generally shite at making routines stick for more than a week at a time.

Anyway, I've left Svalbard, back on the mainland, had a couple of weeks in northern Norway doing geological fieldwork, aka going for hikes and getting paid for it. The plan is to make posts for the rest of the whole Svalbard thing, the geology thing, the thing I'm doing now, which is holidays at the summer cabin, all the bloody crocheting I've done last six months, the fact that I've watched six, yes six, seasons of Dexter during the last three weeks, also the first season of Girls, brilliant series that one, love it, but man! I'm having Dexter abstinences, it's really fucking hard going from several episodes a day to nothing, nothing! Fucking hell, that is one sexy serial killer, the catharsis when he sticks his knife in (yeah, no euphemisms here...), well.

Listening to A Hazy Shade of Winter for the sixth time in a row now, been picking and choosing pictures all night, but for this time all you'll get is what I had for dessert: Ice cream and strawberries and coffee. The strawberries had started to mould on the counter. Yum yum.

More coming tomorrow! I promise, I think...

Easter - part III

It's the middle of the night, the sun is shining just outside my window here in Longyearbyen on Svalbard, and apparently theres a solar eclipse going on at this very moment, but only 9 percent or so is being eclipsed so I can't really be bothered to stick my head out the window to have a look.

So, easter, part III. Well, hum, so, we stopped by Paulabreen (Paula glacier) on our way to the east coast, or rather, we stopped on the sea ice in front of the glacier.

Paulabreen is a surge-type glacier, that is a glacier that every now and then decides to move forward really fast, and then quiet down again. Wikipedia can tell you more.
Anyway, Paulabreen surged 600-700 years ago, ending up with its glacier front 25 km further out than today. But, Skobreen (Sko glacier), which terminates into the side of Paulabreen, surged in, ehm, 2005, or around there, pushing on Paulabreen, making the front of Paulabreen move forward up to 10 metres a day for over a year. This whole business makes the glacier become massively crevassed and nasty and beautiful, none of which you can see from the pictures below. But it is nice and eerily blue.

Amanda demonstrating how to perform glacier/sea ice yoga in a scooter suit and -helmet, and still looking good!

Ice, ice, baby. Mind you, I haven't tweeked the colours in these upcoming icepics (haha! did you get it?) at all. The ice was actually this amazingly blue.

Oh! And all around on the sea ice you could see little black spots appearing and disappearing and reappearing. These were ringed seals, coming up for breath and trying not to be eaten by polar bears. Well, I didn't bring much of a zoom lens, so the pics below are already heavily cropped, but at least you can see it's a seal-like animal.

Intermezzo

As I am the undefeated queen of procrastination, here's a bit of randomness while I spend some more time doing things other than revising for exams. And it's not like my procrastinations are useless anyway. I have cleaned my boots, hoovered, made three litres of vegetable soup and played three rounds of Carcasonne. A perfectly ok Saturday. Outside it's snowing, has been all day.

In my head, everything can be fixed by a cup of tea. Seriously, everything.

from Little Doodles by Kate Wilson

 I was web-window shopping here the other day and came across this little set of sportstop and -shorts at H&M and my goodness how I want it! I never wear short shorts, but I still want it. But, 2012 is a partial shop-stop year, so no gold underwear today.

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.