all things me

Sauna is an amazing thing: you may go in there worked up about something or worried, and come out calm and — more importantly — in your right mind again.

For instance, yesterday I was feeling furious at my bank because they paid an instalment of my apartment two months early. I thought, of course, that I’m losing money in interests because I’m starting to pay them now instead of two months later.

Then I went to the sauna (today).

Now I’m thinking, what difference does it actually make if I’m paying for this particular instalment + its interest for x number of months starting now instead of x number of months starting a bit later. I’m still feeling a hint of uncertainty, but logically thinking it doesn’t make much of a difference (the interest rate does change annually but it affects the situation only marginally).

This “enlightenment” has happened so many times that I sometimes feel stupid when I realise I’ve been worrying about something for no reason.

Whenever I read (except on-the-go) I try and stop between chapters or, if there are no chapters, at some sort of distinctive gap between the paragraphs. Even when I’m reading on-the-go I take care to finish the paragraph I’m reading — or even better, the page.

Last night I wasn’t feeling very tired around 11 pm so I decided to read the book I currently carry in my handbag: The Traveller by John Twelve Hawks. It’s a really really good book (at least so far); and it has short chapters. Whenever I finished a chapter I flipped forward to see where the next one ended. “Only 4 pages, I can read that!” I just couldn’t stop. Luckily this was a work night because otherwise I could’ve — and would’ve — kept reading.

I just read that The Traveller is the first book in a trilogy. Wonderful! I’ve been a little worried about what to read next because I’ve read all of King’s published novels (except Duma Key that was published yesterday; it’ll take 2-3 days for it to reach Finland, I hear) and I haven’t found a new author whose books to read obsessively. I wrote to the library suggesting they should purchase a copy of the next JXIIH book, The Dark River. It was published last summer but still isn’t in the collection!

This John Twelve Hawks is quite interesting, actually. I’ve never read books by an author who keeps their identity secret. (I read Richard Bachman books after I had learned he’s Stephen King.)

At work all the women seem to stop ageing at 25 so today I had my very first “25th” birthday. I bought some candy for people at work (we do that..).

Not much special about today, though. I did get a nice water boiler for a present and some money from my grandparents. I’m either going to buy some kitchenware (pots and pans) or Duma Key by Stephen King (published on Jan 22!).

I just took part in Pizero‘s theme contest. When I was reading the post I thought, “I’ll take part if I get to be number 42.” And what do you know, the last comment was number 41. Of course I have to try my luck!

I remember thinking about something to write on my way to the train station this morning but now I can’t remember what it was.

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1.5 hours
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I’m thinking of making a flower for decoration.

… a little later …

Here’s the finished hat (colour is more realistic in this one — maybe because the colour correction had the black as reference point):

The flower is attached with a safety pin so I can move it around.

The scarf is 202 cm (approx. 6 ft 7 in) long now — I don’t know when to stop.

Crocheting has been such fun (much more fun than Sudoku or mobile phone games) that I ended up buying some yarn for a hat. I’ve had the same hat for probably over 10 years and I haven’t found a new one to replace it. All the hats I get or buy are too tight or itchy. Now I found the most wonderful yarn:

It feels so soft! Now I have to buy a bigger crocheting hook.

It’s soon December 24th when we get our Christmas presents (Santa travels around Finland first because he lives here). I wish you all a Merry Christmas!!!

A small leftover ball of yarn had been bugging me for a long time. Remember, I knit some socks almost two years ago. In addition to the ankle-high socks and almost-knee-high socks, I ended up making a proper knee-high socks. (They didn’t all come from the same ball of yarn.)

Knitting always leaves annoying leftovers. The socks left quite a large amount of yarn so I wanted to make something from it. I’m not very good at knitting and it hurts my hands so I decided I would crochet this time. And because I wanted the ‘something’ to be something I could do while watching tv, it couldn’t be very sophisticated. Hence, I started a scarf. I tried to look for a nice pattern but I couldn’t find any (link tips warmly welcomed!) so I had to improvise. It’s not pretty but it’s something to kill time with.

Last night, I ran out of yarn (as you can see; I used the last bits to make a couple of tassels)

Now to the donor part. Today I went looking for more yarn to finish my unfinished scarf (this is obviously a vicious cycle). I went to two big stores — nothing! There were all kinds of nice colours, and I almost bought one nice fluffy red ball of yarn (or two), but not the mixed purple/pink I need.

Just now (as I came from the sauna and put on the knee-high socks because they match my pyjamas) I realised I could sacrifice the almost-knee-high socks which I never wear anyway because they’re overstretched.

So, now I’m going to go watch Prison Break, cut open some knots, and take the socks apart. Let’s see how far I get with their help.

On Thursday, December 6, we spent our independence day in rain which washed away the little snow we still had left.

We also had our office Christmas party this week at a casino. We ate posh: raw fish (yuck!), duck (odd and quite fatty) with a side dish of mushrooms (bleurgh) in a salad. The dessert was depressingly small but at least it tasted alright (only ‘alright’, not delicious). There was a music show by an a cappella band called Fork which was amazing! They ended with Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody — sent shivers down my spine. I was quite disappointed that neither of their albums has that song (and the little snippets I heard didn’t sound as well-sung as during the show).

Because Thursday was a day off I took also Friday off (“summer” vacation). I travelled to my grandparents and on Friday Grandma and I went shopping. I bought a calendar for my godson, I found a nice red shirt which Grandma bought me for Christmas, and I also found something for my penpal Katrina (not going to say what in case she reads this ). Today (i.e. Saturday even though the post’s timestamp is Sunday) we went to Iittala where there are several design shops and a factory shop. Grandma has bought me pieces of the Teema collection and now I got 6 white dinner plates. I also found a nice lasagne pan. I was looking for a black platter (or anything black, really, because they are discontinuing the colour) but there was none! I’ll have to check out the shops in Helsinki before it’s too late. Grandma hasn’t wanted to buy me black dishes because she thinks it’s too gloomy a colour. I hope they’ll take purple into their range some day…

I also bought quite a lot of chocolate for Xmas at Kultasuklaa (sorry, no English page there) and licorice-flavoured honey at Hunaja-aitta. I don’t know how I’m going to use the honey but there’s no hurry (expiration date in the fall of 2009). They said it goes with ice cream and even porridge (I’m thinking about pancakes, too…).

Grandpa wanted to buy me a brooch at a shop that sold Aarikka products (surprisingly, I couldn’t find the brooch I eventually chose in that site’s catalogue…). I got a red “safety pin” where there are a few wooden beads and a snow flake. Quite seasonal, but I think it goes nicely with my black winter attire.

(I know, lots of product/company names but they’re Finnish and some of them are small shops, so I’m not ashamed.)

I went to see Stephen King’s 1408 on Saturday. I don’t particularly like John Cusack but he was good in this — playing a man going crazy inside a hotel room. The movie had its scary parts; there was a woman sitting next to me and my sister who screamed and jumped on her seat. Annoying. At first I was worried about the hordes of teenagers that filled the theatre but the most noisy and obnoxious people turned out to be the oldest of the bunch. The woman was accompanied by a man — a tall, wide, black-clothed, long-haired giant — who said after the movie, “That wasn’t scary at all! The scary horror movies are much better!” I thought, “scary horror movies? Which are those?”

I also did some shopping: a couple of Christmas presents (gets harder every year to think of presents for everyone) and I also found two shirts.

Quite lovely I must say. I’m saving the purple one for our office Christmas party (“festive dress”), then I can start wearing it on normal workdays.

Today at work we had a brief phone conference with a project manager in our other office. When one of the guys heard who was at the other end of the phone line, his eyes lit up, speech quickened and he leaned forward on his seat. The others chuckled that “we got his attention now.”

I wish I had that kind of an effect on someone.

Waking up is not so hard to do after all.

This morning I had to wake up at 5:30 am (we had to leave for a faraway meeting). That is really early for me; even 6:30 when I normally wake up (or 6:43 more accurately) is really early for me. I tried to be the good girl and went to bed at 11 pm but what good did it do: after playing some mobile sudoku, remembering I’d forgotten to set a timer for that night’s Lost episode, I was still up after 12 am — leaving barely 5 hours of sleep.

But, I jumped up at 5:30 and, really, only the first 3-5 seconds were difficult. The biggest problem is how do I stay up for the rest of the day. (Luckily, I don’t really have to, I got off work early.)

You know, it’s probably like a sugar rush: you quickly get high but then you crash suddenly.