Lovely lovely AC

Yay, another early to work post. I seem to be doing a lot of them.

As I am sitting here my back is getting blasted with cold air. It is absolutely fantastic. It is cold and lovely and nothing like the bone crushing heat outside. I am working on some somewhat important stuff so that is good. I really don't think my brain would function if it was any warmer.

On the writing front I am enjoying myself greatly. I did not write yesterday and that felt weird. Which I take as a very good sign. I got three plot bunnies running around my head, one for a decent story that will be the sequel (though pre-quel might be a better word) to Savin' Me and two fanfic bunnies. Always fun right? Since may I have written over 6 000 words on the Savin' Me fic and that I count as very good. I generally have problems making things longer than 500-600 words. And now I have 10 times that. And plot for another 6 000. Which is very good as one of my goals is to make that fic 10K words long.

Back to work...

So now, I am in Bass 102. I have half an hour left of my first shift here. I have one question left on my discrete homework and then the proofs. But I am really not in a working mood. I can only do so many questions on sets in one go before I get bored and do mistakes. It is not due until Tuesday anyway so I'll finish it tomorrow. When I am done with work I'll go and grab a shower, make coffee and read We. I should also do my reading for Math class tomorrow, yes I have two math classes, joy...
When I came to work I discovered that the class room was locked. So I got hold of Pub Safety and they got the TA for cs 101 (I think) and she said that her class room as not open either. So I think it is Judy who have not told whoever she needs to tell.
Yesterday I went to Deadlands as a player. My character have a bit too many plans, most of them are more than slightly dangerous. This can't end well, but ah well. It has been so long since I have played this kind of character. For Bunny's reference, she reminds me a bit of Val. She actually have a back story too. And I think I am going to email it to the GMs, if nothing else it will give them a laugh and who knows... In other LARP news. laiv.org is still down (the server crashed horribly and we might have lost everything ) it is odd. laiv.org was one of my main contacts with home and now that is its gone I feel very cut off.
I think that is all for now, as I am packing up and going home for a shower...

Creative

"Looking beyond the embers of bridges glowing behind us
To a glimpse of how green it was on the other side
Steps taken forwards but sleepwalking back again
Dragged by the force of some inner tide

At a higher altitude with flag unfuried
We reached the dizzy heights of that dreamed of world

Eneumbered forever by desire and ambition
Theres a hunger still unsatisfied
Our weary eyes still stray to the horizon
Though down this road we've been so many time"
-High Hopes by Pink Floyd (though I prefer the Nightwish version.)

Work was fun today, had an amazing 10 people (only 8 paying though), two of them French actually. Which means the museum made 240 NOK (42 USD), which is about half of what they pay to keep me there today. Talk about throwing away money. Not that I complain. I love my job. Today I read through a short story Bunny wanted my opinion on, it is only a first draft and I am looking forward to see what she does with it. I also listened to Dragon's Landing, I quite like their new segment 'pimp my campaign'. It is really good for coming up with ideas for games. Also they talked about getting inspiration from songs (Episode 82, if you are wondering). Personally I think one great band for roleplaying ideas is Nightwish. I have once heard their music described as epic, and I agree. Songs like the Wayfarer, Over the Hills and far Away, and the Riddler, have all inspired D&D campaigns for me. But thanks to Buns and her story, which I am pretty sure originated in a rpg session, I have gotten some inspiration to do some writing myself. Probably game related, I have some ideas that could be fun, based on my Hong Kong Shadowrun game. For those of you who knows the characters, what I am thinking is Neculai's capture and training. But I might also do some Ning and Wu (NPC no-one has met yet). Both of which means I'll get some training in writing action. Which can only be good, right?
In Shadowrun related stuff, I have an idea for a series of photos. The grand idea: Shadowrun. A dark and gritty world in 2070, where magic have come back and elvs, dwarfs, orks and trolls walk among us. The Wikipedia article (see above link) have a pretty good overview. For this I am going to need models, I am going to need character ideas, I am going to need costume ideas. I have some of the two last. I don't want to take pictures of runners only, but also Johnsons, deals being made, maybe action shots, whatever comes to mind really. Wanna help out? Drop me a line, either a comment, on my facebook, or email me. I'll be forever grateful for help, and when I am grateful there is chocolate. Other than that I can promise a free print for models, if I ever decide to have the stuff printed, that is a general rule I have for model work.

"Wir waren namenlos
Wir haben einen Namen
Waren wortlos
Die Worte kamen
Etwas sanglos
Sind wir immer noch
Dafür nicht klanglos
Das hört man doch
Wir sind nicht fehlerlos
Nur etwas haltlos
Ihr werdet lautlos
Uns nie los"
-Los by Rammstein

Los is one of my favorite songs by Rammstein, together with Mein Teil, Ohne Dich, Ich Will and Du Hast (and yes, for me it has always been 'you have' (du hast) not 'you hate' (du hasst)...) But that is mainly beside the point. I like Rammstein, and listen to them quite a lot, but not at work, for one very simple reason, the majority of the people who come speak German, and many are old people. Now a song like Rein Raus or Keine Lust would not be appriciated. Not to mention that a lot of people are also families with kids, and they are not really kid's songs. So I generally don't play Rammstein at work, but yesterday was a nice sunny day and I was laying on the lawn, solving Sudoku and had actually brought the iPod speakers and was listening to music loudly, so loud that I didn't hear the car stop and the people enter the museum, they came in the back for some odd reason as well, and I only saw them when they came out. A few minutes earlier I had been half way through Wolt ihr das Bett in Flammen sehen before I registered what it was and switched to Dimmu (yeah, I know, way better...), then I saw them and went in to get the money and answer any questions they have. I thought I was about to go the color of a tomato when I heard the guy say "Wir müssen betalen, ja?", my answer: "Um....Ja....Viel Dank". The only thing that saved me was that the guy was an obvious metal fan, so I guess it was not too bad. In other German related news, I am on page two of Der Herr der Ringe. I am reading loud to myself, and it is actually tiring to read, but it was the same way with English in the beginning so I have my hopes up. I am also working on getting my speaking skills and listening comprehension up, and am listen to this podcast, I think it is a pretty ok podcast. And so far I have found that I can follow his talking quite easily. Seems like what I need is a conversation partner, so I can just speak.
Went to see Harry Potter 5 yesterday, was ok, I think that was because I didn't have high hopes. I tend not to when I go see a movie adapation of a book, ever since the first Harry Potter movie I have talked myself down before going in, which means that I don't get so disapointed. My dad however, who have not read he book, said the movie was hard to understand and jumpy. And I can see why. I however found it quite pleasant, might have something to so with the large amounts of Gary Oldman (I never realized how good looking the guy is), Jason Isaacs (drool), and Tom Felton (hey, let's stop this stupid Harry thing and make a Draco movie). I also enjoyed watching Alan Rickman, I love the character of Snape. And Davon Murray's accent. Why am I really studying in the US? I could have gone to Great Brittan. I even got into University of New Castle upon Tyne, and University of Edinburgh. I could have been working on getting a cool Scottish or New Castle accent. Why? Oh, oh yeah, wanna go to MiT for grad school, had forgotten that...*Smile*
We had shrimps for dinner today. The South Norwegian way. Just cold boiled shrimp, on white bread with majonaise and lemon squeezed on top. I love this, so insanely good and so summer. I am quite good at peeling shrimp actually. No I am going to go and check if there is more coffee

Why?

As I was at work today, I started thinking about something.

Why don't people put their dishes away properly? I work in dishes during brunch on weekends. We have a system where you are supposed to put the glasses in one rack, the cups in another, silver ware in another, give the dishes to me and out the garbage in the bin. Now before I start my rant properly, I would just like to say that this only applies to a small number of the people eating in Cutter/Ziskind, maybe 10 to 20 out of the 150-200 people eating there. Some people refuse to do this, which means that I have to do this on top of the rest of my job, which is to get the racks into the washing machine, wash dishes and was the serving plates and some of the kitchen utensils. Why don't they do this? I can understand that they don't do it in the few seconds while I am changing racks, but the rest of the time? This is not tehworst however, most people look me in the eye and smile, they recognise I am there, most even say thanks, and some even "How are you", but some people don't look at me and when I tell them "Glasses go there, and silver go there" they look at me like I insulted them. This was even worse during family weekend. Am I beneath them because I work doing dishes? I know it is no because I have to work for my pocket money, because many of these people work themselvs. Aslo people come in with their dishes late, like three minutes before my shift is over, I need to have my end of the dishwasher clean before I leave so by comming late these people make sure that I can't leave on time. And I also have homework to do, meetings to go to, and stuff like that. Again, this was worse during family weekend, and honestly people, I also had family here during family weekend and would like to spend time with them...

So people, we might work jobs/shifts you wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, but we are also people and deserve some respect..

I hate Poached Egg.

I work in the dining hall in my house. 8 hours a week, five and a half of these are spent doing dishes. I mainly work in the weekends, when the staff wants to be nice and make stuff we like. Many people like poached egg. Have you ever tried cleaning 400 bowls of poached egg? Unlike most of the food we serve, poached egg sticks to the bowls really well, and if you don't clean it properly the steam in the dishwasher bake them unto the plates so it is really hard to get of. Every single bowl have to scrubed before it can go through the washer. Now this would not be that bad if it hadn't been for the fact that scrubing them properly takes forever, and in that forever I get a huge pile of plates and glasses and the like. I have stoped eating poached egg (they are rather good actually) because they are so damn hard to clean.

I went larping yesterday, so much fun. And now I am avoiding going back to my room to clean it. I don't like cleaning my room...

Weekend. Haircut and first day of work comming up.

Yesterday was nice, after one and a half year I finally got a haircut. It was needed, big time. I also went to the village BBQ. I don't know if we are allowed to call ourselvs a village though, we're about 60 people, most of them old as hell. But it was nice anyway.
Today have been a nice, easy day. I've started cleaning my room and that's it. Very easy. Tomorrow I am going to start my real job this summer though, museum guide. 4 hours and I am 400 NOK richer, I get a wage rise because I am over 18 this year. 3 weeks of that and I am closer to my plan of going to Hong Kong next summer (which by the way Thomas is spelled Hongkong in Norwegian (No kidding, it is) For those of you that do not understand this, Thomas nearly killed me once I spelled HK the Norwegian way). I might have the money for the ticket and maybe, maybe some spending money. Hehe, anyway my mom said I could borrow the rest from them and pay them back by working next summer too. All work and no p(l)ay makes Jack a dull boy. Now I have to return to cleaning my room and find my home work underneath my clothes...

TIGERS!!!!

Yesterday I was in my 'local' (well, it is about 70-80 km from where I live) zoo. Haven't been there for years, and one of the new things they have got is tigers (Big cats are nor normal in Norway, these are the only ones in the contry). Anybody who know half of my love for tigers can guess how exited I was. And they were utter beautiful, so careless, so in charge.
But I was in the zoo with my moms ( and for the occation mine) job, my mom is a teacher and one of the classes she works with are people with certain 'problems' (There are only two of them, both are blind, one has cancer on his brain and the other one has a syndrom that makes her age very quikly (I do not remember it's name), she is 20 and apear to be 80) . And that day made me realise two things, how much we really need our sence of sight and how lucky I am to have mine perfectly fine. I am lucky enough to be the only one in my family without glasses, and I don't need them (yet, my genes point the other way though), but as long as I have some sence of sight I'll be happy. This is quite directly linked with the tigers: one of the reasons I like tigers so much is that they are so beautiful, the whole way they look. That is the way I feel about a lot of things, fullmoon, flowers, art, people, I appriciate beauty (why is another and longer story) and not being able to veiw beauty seems like hell to me. Some times I think I am more lucky than I know or deserve.