"hippy-mamma"-modus

Why, oh why has no one told me about the wonders of lentils before?! There has been a spate of articles about veganism in both Morgenbladet and Folkevett (the two periodicals we subscribe to right now), which were quite timely. Over the past six months or so we've been trying conscientiously to change our eating habits for the better. We're not out to go full vegan, or even really full vegetarian, but we are definitely interested in introducing more vegetarian and vegan recipes into our regular cycle. Folkevett ran a recipe for red lentil stew that they got off of www.vegetar.com, and since it was really simple I gave it a try. Aren't these red lentils pretty? I took the picture with the macro lens on my camera, but I'm bad at judging whether it's actually in focus or not.

Wow! The stew was de-lish! The actual recipe was mysteriously missing some main points, so I ended up winging it. Here's what I did:

1.  Sauté 1 onion (diced), two crushed garlic cloves, and a chunk of grated ginger in olive oil until soft
2.  Add 1/2 teaspoon tumeric, 2-3 tablespoons of something tomato-y (I used sauce), 5 dl (about 2 cups) of water, 1 cube of vegetable stock, about half a small zucchini chopped, and 250 g red lentils
3.  Simmer for about 30 minutes (I ended up adding 3 dl of water more about half way through)
4. serve

Can't get much easier that that, and it was hands down the best thing I've made in months. I will probably cut the vegetable stock cube in half the next time, as it was a bit on the salty side.

Right before we left for vacation I bought Camilla Jensen's Bønner og linser. I still haven't cracked into it and made anything yet, but I'm eager to do so. Here's a peek:

I'm hoping that there will be lots of no-meat dishes in here that will be super healthy and tasty.

Today the book I desperately need for my conference paper finally arrived at the library. I did a slap dash job of going through it and banging out the last paragraph I needed for the paper. I now have a complete draft that I can in a pinch present as is, though I still think it needs quite a bit of work before Wednesday morning (gulp) when I'm scheduled to present. There are two major weak points, but I'm pretty sure the rest is good.

Still knitting away happily on the garter section of Multnomah. Here's a progress shot:

I can see why people like knitting with variegated yarn. I still think it's ugly as sin, but the process of watching the colors change is fascinating, I must admit. I'll have to use this as consolation knitting; I just finished Den orolige mannen and the ending is so incredibly sad. Sniff. I wasn't quite prepared for it, even though Mankell gives tons of hints along the way (I see now, in retrospect). It makes me want to curl up in a little ball and mourn for...well, I'm not exactly sure for what, but mourn for something.

Suppe og søvnløshet

Whoops, up at 3:30 am for the third time in a row this week. Apparently I can only sleep 6 hours straight, so going to be early isn't a good idea for me.

I went to Aftenposten's website and was excited to see a recipe for Tom Kah Gai soup, probably my all-time favorite soup. Excited that is until I read the recipe. It was nothing like the soup I love--no coconut milk, no mushrooms, no chili. Luckily, I wasn't the only outraged reader, and one of the commentors provided a link to this much more authentic recipe. Hmm. I wonder how much of this I can get in Oslo?

Over on the Simple Living Network discussion boards (where I have recently started participating again after a long hiatus) there is a discussion about why people in the US fear "socialism." It is so ridiculous it makes me want to spit. In the first place, there is a huge amount of confusion about what socialism actually is. Then there appears to be a willful disregard for any kind of nuance: no one will acknowledge that countries like Canada or Norway are actually social democracies, not totalitarian socialist states. No one will acknowledge that it its the totalitarianism, not the socialism per se that was the source of the atrocities committed in the name of socialism in the 20th century. The same old arguments that nothing innovative comes out of a socialist country were trotted out (that may be true, but innovations have certainly come from social democratic countries. Nokia any one?). When I brought up Norway as an example of a well-functioning social democracy there was radio silence except for one "yeah but Norway's oil-rich". Okay, fine, drop Norway and look at Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Canada, or why not the UK, France, or Germany for that matter. But no, the discussion turns back to the "promise" of capitalism--while completely erasing the socialist modifications of "pure" capitalism that even the US implemented. The "promise" of capitalism appears to be a gospel truth. No acknowledgment in the discussion of my point that capitalism is predicated on the impossible paradox of constant growth in a closed system (the earth and its resources). Gaaah. Why do I even try. Nope, socialism equals a gun pointed at your head forcing you to share your wealth with those who don't deserve it, according to a surprisingly large proportion of the self-proclaimed simple living folks. How sad.

Likevekt

Ahh. That's better. I dug out the wacky Gotland variegated singles I bought in Sweden last fall, and sort of on the spur of the moment decided to start knitting Multnomah, a free pattern from a Portland-based (hence the name) knitter. It is mostly garter stitch with an easy feather-and-fan lace border. I'm knitting two strands together, as I don't really like the excessively long color repeats. I really love the green in this yarn, but this is turning out to be very much a brown shawl. I can live with that, I think.

[knitting-jargon ahead--beware!] I'm thinking of doing a picot bind off at the end. I saw a couple versions with that on Ravelry, and I think it improves the design. I'm also KTBL-ing on the YOs, as I don't like the big holes along the ridge (the five center stitches) of the shawl in the original pattern. And I'll go up to the alternate higher number of stitches provided by the designer, as I fear I have way more of this yarn than I need to finish the shawl, even knitting double. She lists the following on her project page:

• 7 F&F repeats: Knit garter st section to 265 sts, then start feather and fan border.
• 8 F&F repeats: Knit garter st section to 301 sts, then start feather and fan border.
• 9 F&F repeats: Knit garter st section to 337 sts, then start feather and fan border.
• 10 F&F repeats: Knit garter st section to 373 sts, then start feather and fan border.

And now, it's back to Wallander for the rest of the evening...

Frustrert frue

Good gracious. I am so cranky right now. I could just about bite off my own toe out of sheer irritation. I can't remember the last time I was this disgruntled with the world. I think that I am, ahem, entering the early phases of becoming a woman of a certain age, and today the whole hormone thing just really snuck up on me.

For starters, I ordered the wrong 1925 edition of Bjerregaard's Fjeldeventyret from the library, so I couldn't get any work done on my conference paper today. To make matters worse, my other solace in life beside academic work (my knitting) is in a bad place. Witness the following:

1. I tried picking up 153 stitches along one side of Bridgewater and ended up with 162. I am now paralyzed on that project with no idea what went wrong.
2. My lost crochet hook means I can't console myself with making a simple dishrag right now.
3. My brown tweed aran WIP feels too daunting to pick up. I would have to hunch over the pattern and really concentrate to get back into it. 
4. I thought the solution to my woes would be to wind the Shetlandsuld into balls. Winding is mindless and fun on my ball winder, except that the one color that was in a skein turned out to be pure evil. I had to break it four times because it got so incredibly tangled (and mind you I am usually very good at untangling yarn). I was not happy, and was on the verge of either screaming or crying, but managed to contain my frustration. 
5. Meanwhile, as I was looking at the Shetlandsuld colors I bought and the fair isle pattern I was hoping to work from, I started to suspect that there are some pretty significant weaknesses in the combination. I'm not at all sure the colors will work, and then what am I supposed to do? Buy more yarn? Find another pattern? Maybe just make Estonian mittens? I don't know, but it's too overwhelming to contemplate.

I'm off to crawl under the duvet with Den orolige mannen and escape into the world of Kurt Wallander and Soviet era submarines, and hope for a better day tomorrow...

Dejligt

How lovely to be home after a very full week of vacation! Here's what we did:

Day 1: Drove from Nesodden to Larvik, where we took the dreaded Danskebåt to Hirtshals. Here we are on the short ferry ride from Moss to Horten. We were joined later in the week by R's 16-year-old daughter, C:

CL, E, R, E, and KE.

We stayed at a campground outside of Hirtshals the first night since the boat got in pretty late.

Day 2: played at the campground before driving south through Jylland all the way to Billund. Here's the campground with our little cubicle:

And here is the amazing jumping bubble at the playground:

After a leisurely morning we started out, with a planned stop at one of the coolest Viking sites I know of, Lindholm Høje just north of Aalborg. We were greeted at the parking lot by a flock of archaic Viking sheep with some pretty natty dreads:

The site itself is a hillside covered in Viking burials, most with standing stones in the shape of ships. Here are some modern day Vikings posing there:

We stopped in Århus for an early dinner and grocery shopping, and arrived in the early evening at the stud farm where we spend the week. It's called Skandihest, and it's both absolutely lovely and absolutely crawling with flies. We stayed in a very cool apartment in a converted pig barn:

Day 3: We weren't quite up for Legoland just yet, so we went to the neighboring Lalandia, which I guess can best be described as an amusement mall. They have a huge water park, and very cool trampolines with riggings that allow you to jump really high. E very cautiously tried it out:

Day 4: We decided it would be a good idea to go to Legoland later in the day, so I was able to jump in the car and drive an hour down to a town called Kolding, where garn.dk has its distribution center. The people who work there were incredibly nice. They let me wander through the rows and rows of shelves filled with yarns. I had picked out a series of colors of their Shetlandsuld and was delighted to find smaller amounts of all but one of them on the cone, which meant that the price was 39 DKK per 100 gram, rather than 59 DKK to get the same 100 grams wound into a skein. Here's what I got to work with:

The two gray-green cones are for Fulmar, and the rest will be some kind of fair isle pullover. I'm very excited, at it is absolutely lovely yarn! More on this in a later post, I'm sure...

After my whirlwind trip down to Kolding and a quick lunch it was on to Legoland. It wasn't as overwhelming as I had feared, and E had a very nice time, I think. Here he is in his newly-acquired pirate gear:

He absolutely loved riding on the roller coaster in the castle. I was terrified and had my eyes closed the whole time. He also really liked the old models with moving planes, boats, and vehicles. I liked the bulk Lego section of the Lego store the best, but I wish they had more selection. I was at least able to increase our holdings in lime green Legos substantially.

Day 5: We discovered that the nearby city of Vejle is on the coast, and our vacation-mates were eager to go to the beach. We ended up at Tirsbæk beach, which is totally all right as far as beaches go. I'm not much of a beach person, but I did enjoy the fact that my knitting (the Garnstudio tunic) almost exactly matched the color of the sand:

And how can I resist seeing two happy kids building a sand castle?

Day 6: The 280-year-old Vorbasse market opened on Thursday, and our friends were eager to shop the hundreds of booths there. We were slightly less eager, but went along for a while. Having gotten his feet wet at Legoland, E was totally up for the carnival rides, and it was hard to coax (drag) him away from them. The only really bad thing that happened on our vacation was that I managed to lose my crochet hook somewhere at this enormous market. I had been crocheting dishrags with the left over linen yarn but had to give that up. My only remaining project was the Bridgewater shawl, which turned out to be too difficult for vacation knitting now that I'm finished with the garter stitch square and am picking up stitches for the lace borders.

Day 7: Our last full day staying at Skandihest, and we were pretty low energy. We decided to go to the campground at Randbøldal, where our friends had gone while we were relaxing on the farm earlier in the week. E really enjoyed it, and he and I spent a long time building a city in the sand. Since it was a lake, we were able to build a really complex coastal city with all kinds of islands and inlets right at water's edge.

Day 8: We headed out early, driving up to Frederikshavn to catch a ferry to Göteborg. Trapped on yet another tourist boat, there wasn't much to do but shop and play in the kid's section. E bought a pen that lights up and twirls around, and for some reason he burst out with "Discoparty i rumpa til pappa!" really loud while we were standing in line to pay. It was a little obscene (but very funny) so I had to take a picture:

Unfortunately there was tons of construction underway on the route (E45) we had to take to get to the pension we had booked for our last night, Pensionat Stenliden, which is just outside Trollhättan:

 After dinner in the local Pizza House (very reminiscent of Fares Fares' movie Kopps, by the way) we took a short walk along the river. The light was fantastic. Here's a snap of me in the newly finished linen tunic:

I've been wearing it every day since I finished it. I totally love it. It was so worth it to rip out the other tunic and reknit it. We had an uneventful night there, and a long drive home in the rain and more construction along E6. And now we're home and I've given a fairly full account of my movements over the past few days.

A few stray details: I was taught how to play a very ruthless card game called 500, which I dubbed FRP-spillet, since it was so merciless. I bought Henning Mankell's most recent Kurt Wallander novel, Den orolige mannen from 2009 and a few dozen pages in it is very engrossing. I learned that my family has a significantly lower activity level than our friends have. There were two bordellos on opposite sides of the road right near our farm. They were marked with only small neon signs in the window that said "open." Very discrete, and kind of creepy and fascinating at the same time. Nearly every second farm house in Vejle kommune is, somewhat mysteriously, for sale. I reconfirmed that I am a poor loser in cards. I made a really good pasta salad. It was a good vacation. What else is there to say?

Lister

What to bring for a week in Jutland? First is the knitting basket:

1. In-progress Drops Lin Tunic 112-24
2. In-progress Bridgewater shawl
3. Printout of the 112-24 pattern
4. Jared Flood's Made in Brooklyn
5. Tove Fevang's Helt enkel hekling (will use any left over linen yarn to make dishrags)
6. photocopy of Fulmar pattern from Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting (I'm planning on buying the yarn for this at garn.dk in Kolding)
7. My ancient black accessories bag (scissors, stitch markers, stitch holders, tapestry needles, measuring tape, needle gauge, crochet hooks, cable needle, seam ripper)

Other reading materials:

1. Arne Garborg. Ein biografi by Tor Obrestad (on page 70 right now, and really enjoying it)
2. Arne Garborg's kulturnasjonalisme. To studiar by Morten Haug Frøyen and Sveinung Time
3. The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings by Peter Sawyer
4. The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Vikings by John Haywood
5. Euro-Road Atlas Scandinavia: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland

Based on the list, you can see that I'm brushing up on my Garborg and terribly excited about revisiting Lindholm Høje and seeing the Jelling stones for the first time! I'm trying to see if I can squeeze in a visit to Moesgård Museum to see Grauballe Man (a bog body), but I'm not sure I can get anyone else to go along with me (it's over an hour from where we'll be staying). Bummer! I think everyone thinks I'm crazy with all the Bronze and Iron Age sites on my wish list...

Arbeidspress

UPDATED:

This is one of those cranked-up weeks for me, where I'm racing to get a million things done. We're leaving for Denmark on Saturday ACK! I mean Friday, so there's an extra incentive. Here's my to-do list for the week:

1. Finish corrections on the proofs on my Når vi døde vågner article for Ibsen Studies
2. Finish revisions on my Døleviser article for Scandinavica
3. Apply to become a "totalkunde" rather than a regular "kunde" at my bank so that I can stop paying unnecessary fees and get 2.5% interest on my savings account
4. Apply for "studierett" so that I can take a class this fall (this is a horrible task, as they require all sorts of documentation that I don't have
5. Finish a draft of my paper for the upcoming IASS conference in Lund, Sweden
6. Get my plane ticket to said conference
7. Change hotel reservation, since I won't be staying for the whole conference
8. Figure out ground transportation to and from the conference
9. Figure out the details of our trip home from Denmark
10. Plan with the other family we'll be vacationing with
11. Do laundry early enough that the clothes will be air-dried by the time we leave (we don't own a dryer)

Today's only Wednesday, so I really shouldn't be panicking, but of course I am.

ETA: got 6 out of 8 pages done on the IASS paper, which really isn't all that bad. I worked up to the point where I really didn't have anything more to write because I need to do more research.

Turistbilder

Wow! Check out the amazing photographs that the Library of Congress has made available on Flickr. I did a search for Norway, and found this spectacular set of old tourist photos. I'm completely enamored! Here's a shot of Prekestolen from the 1890s, for example:



Such lovely coloration! And here's the famous tourist hotel at Stalheim:



And then a photograph of Tromsø in around 1890.



This may well be the image for the cover of my Cora Sandel book. By the way--can't believe I didn't mention this right away--on Friday I got a letter from Norges forskningsråd telling me that they have granted me the publication support money I had applied for back in February! I'm thrilled, as funding was the only thing keeping the book from coming out. I was very proud to read their consultant's review of the book--it made me feel like it really is a good academic book that is worthy of publication.

Normal

I finished up the striped sweater for E out of recycled yarn yesterday. He was eager to try it on, but not eager to pose:

This was the best picture I could get. I actually love it, since it captures some of what it's like to have a five-and-a-half year old around the house. I didn't get a very good look, but I think the sleeves might be too short. No problem, since it's a top-downer, all I need to do is unpick the bottom edge and add a few more centimeters. And since it's striped, it's doubly easy to add the same number of row to each arm. Yay stripes!

I have 5 or 6 projects in mind that I want to work on. A couple involve unraveling sweaters that I've knit over the past year or so and re-knitting them. Thank goodness for the ball winder I bought in Sweden last fall:

I really, really love this machine. I'm getting way more use out of it than I imagined, and it makes the prospect of dismantling an entire sweater much faster and much less daunting. What I'm deconstructing here is one of the two linen tunics I knit last summer. This one is Drops 106-24 and it is completely unwearable on me. The other one is Drops 112-24 (in black) and it is possibly my favorite item of clothing. I knit the black one first, and my first instinct was to make the same pattern over again in natural. But unfortunately I had to over think things, and managed to convince myself that I shouldn't do that. So now that I know how perfect 112-24 is for me, I'm ripping out the ridiculous 106-24 and turning this yarn into what it was always meant to be.

Other plans include finally making a Fanakofte for myself out of one of my Goodwill sweaters and another cardigan I knit for myself (if the yarns are the same weight, which I'm guessing they are), and ripping out my Hourglass pullover so that I'll have enough yarn to finish the Aran pullover that I started before vacation. And of course there's the Bridgewater shawl to work on too. Then I still have that funky yarn I bought in Sweden last fall. I'm thinking of knitting it double in a top down raglan. I won't have enough for a full sweater, but I can just use it as a yoke and find a coordinating color to finish it off, right?

Then, as if four projects isn't enough, I recently ordered the color chart for Shetlandsuld from www.garn.dk. I am itching to get started on Fulmar and this yarn will work for that, plus I am starting to dream about making a fair isle sweater out of it too. As luck would have it, their warehouse is open to the public and quite close to where we'll be on vacation in Denmark later this month.

Hmm... I think I'm in a bit of a knitting frenzy again. But I am getting work done too. Yesterday I tallied up how many research publications I have "out" right now, in the pipeline so to speak: a book manuscript and the manuscripts for nine articles. That's the equivalent of a strong tenure case. It's incredibly maddening that it's all in limbo, some of it from as far back as 2007. All but two of the articles have already been accepted and revised. Crazy.

"Vil du leke med meg, please?"

I hear that almost every day. And I'm afraid that I've been a terribly bad parent, because most times I just don't want to play, at least not on E's terms. But E is still struggling emotionally, and I've got to do something. He was great during our visit with my mom (go figure, he got tons of appropriate attention from grandma, who is a natural with kids), but already two weeks after coming home, I can see some of the same conflicts arising.

My sister-in-law gave us Carolyn Webster-Stratton's The Incredible Years, for Christmas (in Norwegian). It's a book on problem-solving in parenting of children between two and eight. I've know it was stashed away somewhere in the house for the past six months, but despite all the red flags that have been coming up, I haven't had the wherewithal to look for it. Finally, this morning I dug it out of a pile of books and within the first two minutes of reading I was already overwhelmed by the clear message it sends: I've been screwing things up, and much of E's emotional turmoil is probably coming from his interactions with me. Shit.

In the chapter on playing Webster-Stratton writes: "the instinct for creative play gradually fades if adults don't stimulate this development" and "Such criticism and correction eventually result in children becoming wary of exploring their own ideas ... it also appears to cause helplessness in small children." Oh my. Well duh. KE and I are constantly frustrated by E's helplessness, and in fact that was something the people at preschool brought up in our first meeting last fall. I've suspected that it is our behavior toward E that is the source of the problem, but I haven't seen it stated in so uncertain terms until now. Without meaning or wanting to, we criticize and correct him all the time.

It's really hard to face the fact that I am doing some things wrong as a parent. I need to change some of my behaviors right away. It's going to be really hard. I can think of three or for little incidents from yesterday alone that I am now bitterly regretting. I can hardly bear the thought of reading the entire book, when just a few pages have already pointed out so much that I have to work on. I think I'll just stick with what I've gleaned from the chapter on playing with your child for right now, and work on changing some of my behavior there for a while, before moving on to other areas.

First up is this:

For the past few months, E has been less interested in building with Lego than in playing with the Lego people. I have pretty consistently insisted on not doing that. I can happily sit with him and build, but I cannot bear to play with the people, for some reason. I have even told him straight out that I don't like it and I won't do it. Yet he's always asking me to do it. So today, I'm going to give it a try. I wish I understood why I have such an aversion to it. I'm just heartsick over this.

ETA: I did it! For one day I was a super good mom (without faking it and acting like someone I'm not) and didn't do anything that I now regret. It felt sooooo good. Maybe I can do it another day too?

Penger

I used to have a pretty good handle on my personal finances. I worked really hard to educate myself about money and debt and how to handle them. I am lucky to have a naturally frugal personality, so after a few years of ignorance and sloppiness, it wasn't actually all that hard for me to get my act together. A series of books helped enormously (Amazon links):

• Your Money or Your Life (Vicki Robin & Joe Dominguez: the classic and still best of the "get out of the rat race" books available. It is difficult to grok because it has such a radical message. I went through the 9 steps and it really was a life-changing experience)
• Simplify Your Life (Elaine St. James: This was the fluffiest of these books, but even so I learned a lot from it about making better choices regarding my possessions and my consumerism)
• 25 Myths You've Got to Avoid (Jonathan Clements: the least well know of this list, and actually one of the best. It really encourages independent critical thinking about finances, encouraging the reader not to do the expected thing, but rather what works for her specific situation)
• Smart Women Finish Rich (David Bach: a good workbook-y kind of book with a few simple but important points. The title itself was enough to shame me into getting my act together)

There was a time (nearly 10 years ago, actually) when I poured over these books, working with them intensely and writing in them and trying to forge a financial future for myself. It was incredibly empowering to discover that "money" wasn't the dirty word I was lead by my family to believe it was, and that I could use it as the tool it was always intended to be if I just learned and implemented the basics. By the time I met KE, I had a lot of good habits in place, and I'm sure one of the reasons I was attracted to him is that he had pretty much the same attitudes. We differ a little (he is less debt-averse, for example), but to all extents and purposes we're on the same page when it comes to money.

I cannot explain the beautiful feeling that reaching each one of my small financial goals back in my single days gave me. When I learned about snowballing debt and was able to pay off my car loan early, when I learned the habit of transferring the remaining balance in my checking account from the previous month to debt repayment (in the early days) or savings (after I was free of consumer debt), and when I set up my CD ladder I gained an enormous sense of pride. Seems silly, but really when so many other people out there are crashing and burning financially I do think it is something to be proud of, since it obviously isn't that easy after all.

The move to Norway, though, meant that our personal finances got very turned upside down, and I just haven't had the wherewithall to sit down and learn the new system(s). Suddenly KE was paying all our bills rather than me, and I didn't have access to our mortgage online to track it neurotically like I used to do in the US. One of the positive results of our recent vacation is that the time off has afforded me the headspace to revisit our finances and start (re)educating myself.

Don't get me wrong--it's not like we've suddenly racked up a bunch of debt. It's just that I haven't had a handle on exactly where we stand. Now I do. I have a nifty little spreadsheet with our sole liability (the mortgage) and various assets. The good news is that the assets outweigh our liability, and that's excluding what our house would be worth were we to sell it. This is very reassuring to me right now, especially as I have been so bummed out recently about the unlikelihood of getting hired for a permanent position.

We're still not even close to where I'd like to be (totally debt free with enough principle saved up that we could live frugally off the interest!). I think it's realistic to pay off the house, but I don't think we'll get to the next step, mostly because it's just not a priority for KE. So for now, I'm just going to start running the numbers on how quickly we can pay off the mortgage...

Arbeidsmoral

Something happened to my work ethic. I appear to have lost it somewhere. Instead of working, I felt compelled to unravel two of my thrift store sweaters yesterday. By this afternoon I find myself with what can only be described as a solid start on a striped raglan sweater for E:

That included both knitting a swatch (gasp!) and my false start where I was so enamored of the great indigo color that I decided to ditch the stripe idea and go for a solid sweater. When I got about 10 cm into the yoke I realized that was a little too minimalist, even for me, so I ripped it back and added the gray, which I'm much happier with.

I think part of my lack of motivation stems from the fact that I found out on Monday that my department has been placed under administration (we're in a budget crisis) and that means a hiring freeze for a minimum of the next four years. That more or less guarantees I'll be out of my field and unemployed when my fellowship runs out. The reality of no job prospects was just enough to tip my pouty indifference into full-blown rebellion.

Luckily, KE got a letter today saying he'd been accepted into the one-year pedagogical training course that he needs to qualify as a high school art/design/IT teacher. Apparently, it's very difficult to get into. I'm so excited for him, as he has been languishing without anything to focus on since he finished his bachelors degree last summer. It also means that in all likelihood he'll have a real job by the time I'm out of work, and I can go back to school for a masters degree in English literature. To celebrate, I broke out my newly-acquired copy of Raymond Carver's short story collection Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, which is an incredibly creepy book. It makes me feel dirty for reading it, in a vague, non-specific way. Love it!