As my current job as The Stig has brought on a bleeding ulcer, two concussions, four broken ribs, fifteen and a half broken and/or dislocated fingers, one stubbed big toe, as well as a moderate to severe case of prune-like skin due to excessive amounts of time spent in the water, I have decided to seek a less stressful job, and am henceforth applying for a position as a field agent in Torchwood.

I am an Earthborn human of the female persuasion. While I was born in 1987, I have, on several occasions, experienced temporal displacements in the time-space continuum, my physical age is now indeterminable. A Doctor has assured me the difference is of little physical consequence, and that there is a chance of further displacement taking place, which may solve the age-problem.

The temporal displacements have given me varied experience in dealing with terrifying and dangerous situations. I can safely say I have gone where no man has gone before (though I suspect I have been able to go there as I am no man), and I have had the pleasure to meet, and learn from, Big Damn Heroes. I have hyperspace experience, but my strength lies in flying casual. Despite being accustomed to trouble and aiming to misbehave, I believe there are situations where it’s not necessary to shoot first. I have seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I’ve heard the people sing, and learned about life, the universe and everything. I’ve taken great care in the naming of cats, which is a difficult matter.

A prolonged stay in Arkham gave me the opportunity to attend a class the Miskantonic University, where I had the pleasure to attend “How to avoid being killed by creatures 101” over the summer. I have since fled from, avoided, captured and sometimes killed, a multitude of creatures, including (but not limited to) Daleks, weevils, darkspawn, orcs, dire wolves, zombie nazis, zombie cheerleaders, zombie super-soldiers, zombie hobos, zombie bakers, headless monks, zombie superheroes, resurrected mummies in varying states of decomposition, giant rolling boulders (not a living thing, but I still ran from it), zombie ghosts, dementors, regular ghosts, vampires, toasters, werewolves, and on one occasion, I ran like a bat out of heck from a hobo mummy possessed by the ghost of a half-vampire baker whose zombie body followed close behind.

I was once offered a meal of Soylent Green and cake. Unfortunately, the cake was a lie. I am capable of thinking outside the box, a trait that have been useful when I have found myself trapped inside one. Rats in the walls don’t bother me, neither does speaking ravens. I have died and been resuscitated, and have seen several friends and colleagues gone through the same. I have danced with the devil in the pale moonlight. Once, I lost a cheerleader, but through cooperation between several skilled groups and individuals, the world was saved from a monkey-uprising. I know kung fu, and take my drinks stirred, not shaken. Despite having to face harrowing and often horrific circumstances, I generally manage to keep a bright outlook on life. My personal motto is that no one can take the sky from me.

I enjoy hiking, and have been on every continent. I have gone swimming beneath the Reichenbach Falls, walked along Elm Street, found a polar bear on a tropical island and slept at Camp Crystal Lake. Unfortunately, all this travel sometimes leaves me discombobulated. When leaving for a voyage to the center of the Earth, I got the train stations mixed up, and ended up on platform nine and three-quarters on King’s Cross when I was supposed to take the 4:50 from Paddington. These are rare circumstances, however, and I feel my experience with alien and supernatural creatures makes up for my inability to read a map. I have found that on many occasions, my companions and I have gone where we needs maps even less than we need roads.

For obvious reasons, giving references will prove difficult, if not impossible. However, I trust you have your ways of acquiring such information. I will eagerly await your reply.

Disclaimer: This is meant as an informal exercise in writing an application
for employment, and is a parody. The things I reference belong
to the respective owners of the intellectual property.

It’s not that my life has been incredibly dull or anything like that over the last few months, though it did seems to consist more of essay writing and reading about subjects than anything else, but I simply haven’t had the motivation to write. It didn’t help that my tendonitis is still alive and well (and do I ever wish it wasn’t so, dear readers).

I just finished up what should have been the last semester of my bachelor’s degree in archaeology, but I failed a few finals I will have to retake to be approved. I’m also toying with the possibility of retaking a few subjects I originally planned on leaving dead after choosing other subjects in their place. If nothing else, to say I took Ancient Greek will be worth it just to see the look on people’s faces. This semester, I had the unfathomable joy of having ten finals, a result of previous failed classes and a non-functional arm during the last semester, and I wish that on no one. I’m planning on taking things a bit more gently this time. Depending on the amount of finals, I may split them up and take them over the next two semesters.

I have not remained in Trondheim, however. I have moved to my home-town, Porsgrunn, and am now residing with my mother. And I suppose honesty will be the best policy. I love the woman, but we drive each other nuts, and I am thus looking for any excuse to get out as soon as possible. Despite my general distaste for mental hospitals, I did at one point during the last two weeks seriously consider admitting myself, which says something. If anyone are thinking I shouldn’t joke about that, I assure you I am not. My dislike for those places won out in the end, though, and I have resolved to attempt to stay sane, even if the chemicals in my brain have been less cooperative than usual lately. I won’t go into the details, suffice to say that my recent decision to monitor my mood-swings is beginning to make me nervous.

I think getting a job will help a lot. And I am looking, but the summer is a bad time to find anything, and those I do find which I qualify for, I rarely hear back from. It’s frustrating, when you never even get a polite “the position is now filled” message. Honestly, though, getting kind of used to it. I’m still waiting for replies on some of the jobs I applied for before last summer. Can my application writing skills be that horrible? Perhaps, but I doubt it. I fear employers simply don’t care, or that I may have fallen through the net. Considering how many different jobs I have applied to, though, i think it’s the first, and the thought that some crusty old bastard can’t even be bothered sending out a generic mail informing applicants that the job has been taken, makes me weep for humanity.

My mother suggested knitting and selling what I made until I get something else. While I feel I’m skilled enough to sell at least some things, I doubt my arm will cooperate long enough. Part of me is actually tempted to knit anyway, and simply watch her expression when the inflammation in my tendon injures something that can’t be fixed, but that’s the same part of me that usually have bad ideas which ends up giving me more trouble than they’re worth, so I am refusing to listen to it. I would really love to begin knitting again, though.

Despite the stress of finding a job and my petty, five-year old mentality when it comes to my mother, life is fairly good. Granted, most of the things I want to do demand money, which I don’t have, and that sucks. But I’m cleaning out my room, which has been needed for years. I’m not the kind of person who is averse to quite large amounts of clutter, but my mother is, and hence she is constantly telling me to clean my room (which is strange to write when you’re in your 20′s). We seem to have two different concepts of what that entails, however. While I thought of a simple tidying up, she was thinking along the lines of a spring-cleaning. I started one of those shortly after arriving home, and I must admit, I’m still at it. Asthma and a room that hasn’t been dusted for more than a year does not go well together. At least I’ve gotten the bookshelves and parts of the closet cleaned, which was sorely needed. I’m aiming for the desk next, but I’ve no idea what to do with half the crap on it. I’m planning for some hard work on cleaning this weekend, in the hopes of surprising my mother when she returns from a short trip with my aunt. Of course, enjoying the time alone is also tempting, but I really don’t want to go through the inevitable explosion if she comes home to find the house in the same state as she left it in. Yeah, it’s not bad, but I want to at least vacuum the apartment and clean up the hairball the cat just threw up.

Yes, we do have a new cat. In fact, we got him a mere six weeks after putting the poor, sick Iris to sleep, which felt weird, but I think it’s helped mom a lot. I loathe for her to be lonesome. When an acquaintance told us she had kittens, we went to visit them, and mom fell in love with the tiny tomcat, which she promptly named Oskar. We brought him home a few weeks later, and he’s lived with us for a year, so far. He’s kept in the apartment, as we live by a very busy road, but we decided to try him on a leash, and we walk him five times a week or more by now. People stare, but I prefer that over having him killed by a car.  Besides, it’s good training for when I get a couple of Irish Wolfhounds, who most certainly will draw stares when they’re grown and roughly the size of a small horse.

The thing that is by far the most frustrating after moving home, is that I’ve hardly written a word. It’s not writer’s block, not in the traditional sense. The ideas still come, stories are still being told, but I haven’t the energy, or the time, to get it written down. While I know I’ve things to do that will inevitably cut into my writing time for now, I can honestly put some of the responsibility of that on my mother, who despite having raised me and lived with me all my life, apparently can’t see when I’m in deep concentration, and interrupts me because she wants me to fetch an ash tray from the kitchen. How I wish I made that reason up, but I’m not. Of course, she doesn’t send me out for just ashtrays, and sometimes, she has a good reason for why she’s not going, herself, but that’s beside the point. My point here is that it’s impossible  to keep on a single line of thought when you’re interrupted every five minutes to do something. So far, as I’ve not really got all that much to write, I haven’t confronted her about it, but once my room is clean and I’ve gotten into a daily routine again, it will be brought up. If need be, i will enforce writing time with the door closed and listening to music with my headphones on so I can be in peace, because not writing is driving me mental.

And as has become the norm since some time early last fall, my arm is once again dictating the length of the entry. Hopefully, my next entry will be soon and of a less complaining nature than this one. Until next time, dear readers.

I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.

- Isaac Asimov

On the bright side, I’ve read a lot. A lot. The book I want to mention here is the amazing I am not a serial killer by Dan Wells. This is a book that might end up on my list of favourite books. That list only has two books as of yet, so that would be quite a feat. I am not a serial killer is about a sociopathic fifteen year old, John Wayne Cleaver, who helps his mother out in the funeral parlour she runs after he’s done with school. John is obsessed with serial killers, but is also aware that as a sociopath, it’s possible he’ll one day become one himself. To avoid that, John has set a strict set of rules to live by. One day, a dead body turns up in the quiet town he lives in. Then another. And another. It soon becomes obvious that there’s a serial killer on the loose, and John finds that he’s uniquely equipped to hunt this monster. But to do that, he may have to unleash the monster within himself…

I can’t really explain why I like I am not a serial killer without creeping people seriously out, so here it goes. I identify with the main character. For one, I am also obsessed with serial killers. Heck, I first picked up the book because it had the words “serial” and “killer” in the title. Also, I was fifteen years old once, and spent a lot of that time being a social outcast and telling myself killing people with the contents of my pencil-case and/or classroom wouldn’t make any difference. But enough about high school. The difference between John and me, is that I am not a sociopath (I dislike hurting anything alive with the exception of fish I’ve fished and want to eat) and my mother does not run a funeral parlour and embalm people in the basement, although that would have been awesome. And there’s no serial killings in my home town, but that’s nitpicking, honestly.

I recommend I am not a serial killer to pretty much anyone. Despite being the first published book of the author, it’s very well written, something you can’t say about all first books. The characters are believable, the town came to life as I read, it’s well paced and I couldn’t put the book down until I’d finished it. It’s a book that reminds me why I read, not just because I want to, but because it’s fun. I’ve not been able to get my hands on the next two books in the trilogy yet, but when I can afford to, I will get them as quickly as humanly possible.

And now my elbow’s starting to do that “I’m going to fall off soon” hurty thing, so I’m going to end it here. But I’m back.

Quote of the day:

“Being an author is like being in charge of your own personal insane asylum.”
– Graycie Harmon

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire in thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art?
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand, and what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb, make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

– by William Blake

This was a few years back, and I’ve gotten a few more badges to pin on since then, pagan, gamer and steampunk being a few of them. And it leads me to wonder. Just where does being different stop? I’m pretty sure I’m closing in on a niche so narrow it has standing space for one (though if you go enough into detail, wouldn’t everyone be like that?). I’m not trying to complain. Even less to boast. It’s just the way I feel. I’m comfortable with who and what I am, but it’s definitely not normal. I don’t even know what normal is.

Some people make parameters. Everything within two extremes is normal, everything else isn’t. A lot of things I took for granted turned out to be things other people didn’t experience. Apparently, beepers have extreme ups and downs in mood even before the onset of the BP. Apparently, a lot of people don’t use their feet to pick up things on the floor. Apparently, five year olds usually don’t spend their time wondering what happens when you die, and whether God exists. Eleven year olds don’t usually write about violent deaths and dismemberment for school assignments (and come to think of it, teachers usually consider that a warning sign that all is not well). People don’t usually perceive music, or sound in general, as movement as well as sound. Who’d have thunk.

What I’m trying to say, is that the term ‘normal’ is to me what color is to a blind person or music is to someone deaf. I know it exists, but I can’t understand it. I know I function within enough social standards to be normal at best, but mostly eccentric or weird, creepy at worst. When I’m standing in line at the grocery store, there’s not a big sign above me warning people I’m not like them. Unless I’m manic, in which case my singing, incessant chatter or quiet dancing tells people everything they need to know. Mainly, “something’s up with her”. Don’t pretend you didn’t send me that look, I did notice it.

In a society where fitting in is paramount, being different is confusing, painful, amazing and delightful. And after being told to try harder to be like everyone else, there comes a time when you just don’t bother any more. Even when you sometimes wish you could be just a bit like everyone else, just for a moment. And some people would probably trade pain, humiliation and anger they sometimes feel with a life with the edges sanded a bit down. Not me, though. Part of it is my “might as well be me” mentality. Part of it is that I love observing people. But mostly just because I’m actually proud to be me. No matter what people think.

I think my point here was supposed to be that there is no “normal”, but I’m not exactly sure how well I got that point out there. But it’s late, or early, depending on how you view it, so I’ll be off to bed, and let you think a bit.

Quote of the day:
“Is it nice not being me? It must be so relaxing.”
- Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock  (the BBC series)

To ponder little workmanships
In crayon or in wool,
With “This was last her fingers did,”
Industrious until

The thimble weighed too heavy,
the stitches stopped themselves,
And then ‘t was put among the dust
Upon the closet shelves.

A book I have, a friend gave,
Whose pencil, here and there,
Had notched the place that pleased him,–
At rest his fingers are.

Now, when I read, I read not,
For interrupting tears
Obliterate the etchings
Too costly for repairs.

- by Emily Dickinson

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

- by Jenny Joseph

It wasn’t a complete surprise, as the cat has been acting increasingly irrational and violent over the last two weeks, but I hadn’t expected it to happen before I was done for the day. But there it was, an otherwise healthy cat being put down because she suddenly and without warning went feral, and still tried to attack after eating cat food spiked with Valium. The pills had been issued by a vet, in case you are looking strangely at me (or the screen) right now, and mom did try a couple of treatments that only worked for a few days, so it wasn’t like we gave up. Neither the vet or his assistant, who raises cats, had seen anything like it before, and they could see a marked increase in aggression from the last visit a few days ago, when she was a complete angel, despite being scared silly. But the assistant had heard of one similar case, where another female cat went into heat too often and then went feral, like ours, and after being put down, it turned out she had a massive brain tumor. Mom didn’t ask for an autopsy, but the vet said there was nothing else that could have been done, and nothing we did that made her like that. The assistant, the cat breeder, even told mom that she wished everyone were good owners like her, and that if mom ever wanted another cat, to give her a call. I don’t think mom will get another cat any time soon, but it was nice to get the offer.

Apart from reading and writing school stuff for the last few months, I’ve had a field trip to the island Hitra, which was a nice change from sitting in classrooms. You have to be pretty fed up with classrooms to enjoy digging in mud while it’s raining, snowing, hailing or all three at the same time, but I enjoy doing physical work, and lugging buckets of mud and dirt around, or emptying wheelbarrows, that’s not something I mind. If I can lift the wheelbarrow, that is, otherwise I’ll just end up leaving the contents everywhere they’re not supposed to be.  That didn’t happen, because I know when I can’t lift something, and I’m not going to try when I know it’ll end badly. And the weather aside, the most annoying thing we faced was food of the unidentifiable kind.

Yesterday was spent being up way too late for being right before another final, but it was worth it, as I spent the night watching the Eurovision Song Contest. While I’m normally not interested beyond seeing who won and where Norway ended up, this year Norway was the host country, as we won last year, and the Norwegian artist went to the same high school as me. Since one of the teachers at that school loved getting people with any talents to perform in the monthly auditorium show, I’ve heard him sing a LOT, and he has a voice worthy of recognition. He’s one of two people whose voice has given me shivers (in a good way) during O Holy Night. And I’ve heard a lot of people sing that song.

Germany won, which was nice for them, and the singer was shocked and thrilled to win, which was great to see. When they just take it in stride, it’s not so fun. But she did manage to sing the song again at the end without her voice breaking, which is a thing a lot of winners fail to do.

I’ll be moving next weekend, once I’m done with the finals. Quite looking forward to that. I’ve moved a lot in my life, on average living just over two years in each place, and never living somewhere longer than six. Some people I’ve spoken with seems to think that sounds strange, but I can’t really imagine living all my life in one place. Of course, the places I lived in during my childhood are mostly within a metric mile of each other, and most of the moving was before I even started school, so it’s not like I uprooted my life completely every time I moved. I’ve only ever felt like I did once. But my point was, I enjoy moving. Not so much that packing process or the relocation of stuff process or the unpacking of stuff process, which is basically everything moving is, but I still enjoy moving. Going to a new place. Living there. Getting to know the area. Since I’m moving about a kilometer as the crow flies, it won’t really feel much like moving this time.

And I do believe I have nothing more to add for the moment, so I’ll be leaving and most likely getting some proper sleep before the big final tomorrow. Oh, the excitement.

Yes, that was sarcasm.

The day started out well enough, and stayed being well enough until I went to buy something to eat in a break. The building the archaeology department has classes in is from the 1400′s, or somewhere around that, and it has solid window shutters, as thick as my hand, over a couple of the windows. You can probably see where I’m going with this one. Trying to hurry, we decided to follow the wall, where there was a small stripe of snow free ground. When I walk, I look down, because I trip a lot and I’m used to walking in the forest where there are roots and rocks and other things that like to be in the way for your feet. Suddenly, my knees folded, and I found myself sitting in a huge pile of snow, wondering what the hell had just happened. That answer came all by itself as my head began to hurt. A lot. I had walked straight into one of these heavy wooden shutters, hitting my head right where my bangs start. Heh, bangs. Excuse the pun. I still can’t really remember what happened, I just have a vague memory of something against my head, and my neck twisting in a strange way, then I was sitting in a pile of snow, grabbing a fistful of snow. There was something important about grabbing that snow, but as I regained my senses, the reason for that escaped me. Another thing that escaped were a lot of colorful curses. I did manage to go get the food, and stick around for another 45 minutes of class before I threw in the towel and left, my head not pleased with me. I went home, threw down a couple of painkillers, and continued packing, since I would be flying home later that evening. My headache was nearly gone when I boarded the plane, which was a good thing, since I hit me head in the overhead luggage compartment. That got a string of curses from me. The plane was delayed by half an hour, so as I hurried towards the exit at the airport, I saw the shuttle bus to the train station leaving. Cue another string of curses, as well as an hour long wait for the next bus. And after finally getting home, inhaling some food and a fretful night’s sleep, I discovered I had forgotten the power cord to my laptop. The laptop I am writing my final on. Fucking hell.

But repeated hitting my head against things, missing the bus and forgetting the power cord aside, it’s good to be home. My cat, well, the cat, has not acted like I’m an intruder, which is nice. After two days of rest, my head has gotten a lot better, though it still hurts a bit now and then, and I have dizzy spells. That probably says mild concussion. However, I’ve had a worse one before, courtesy of the lacking humor of my ninth grade classmates, and this one is not that bad. Which means it’s very minor. Also, I do have a stationary computer, though it’s eight years old and has crashed once while I wrote this, which will suffice to write my final on. I just need to be a bit nice to him, he doesn’t like it when things get hectic. A bit strange writing on  QWERTY keyboard, though. I use the DVORAK.

Today marks the 30-year anniversary of the worst accident in Norwegian oil history, the Kielland accident, where an oil rig, the Alexander L. Kielland (named after the author), capsized during a storm, killing 123 people. There’s been a lot of improvements in the field since then, one direct consequence was a new type of lifeboats being constructed, but the accident still stands as a testament to the heavy price that was paid for Norway’s current oil-based wealth. Another price paid was the health of the deep-sea divers that made the offshore drilling possible. When they worked, no one knew the long-term effects on their health, and they have fought for compensation for ruined lives for years. Many of them ended their own lives. Those left have been given compensation by now, but I do wonder, what kind of price can you put on a life?

I’ve just finished another wristwatmer, the first of a pair. I knitted it pretty quickly, since I stayed away from the computer until my head had calmed down. I need something to keep my fingers busy with, otherwise they get up to no good. I’ve knitted a pair of these before, following the pattern I found online, but on the second pair, I’ve made a few changes just to see how it works out. It’s not like I haven’t improvised while knitting before. When knitting Jayne’s hat, from the Firefly TV show, I just figured out how many stitches I needed to cast on for an adult head, then winged it from there. On the wristwarmers, I’m pretty happy with the changes, though I’ll likely go even further on the next pair, since I see what would have looked better while doing these. Not that I don’t like them. I like the last pair, too. I simply see how I can do thing differently. And I want to do that. The only thing that annoys me is that once you’ve made one of two, the other has to be identical. Otherwise, I would become very frustrated. I like symmetry. Once I’ve got the new pair done, I’ll post a picture for you viewing pleasure, readers.

Quote of the day:
“May I take your bird back to camp as my prisoner?”
 - Dug, from Pixar’s Up