Lørdagskos

I woke up early this morning in a great mood. If I'm lucky I'll have two hours to myself. Yay for Saturday mornings! There's a lot that's good at work: I made it through lecture number 5 in my class, which means I now have three weeks off from teaching, and can focus intensly on my research, finally. On Thursday I walked into my office to find that the iMac I ordered was all set up, and the nasty old PC had disappeared.

I didn't quite reach my goal of finishing all outstanding work projects by the first of March so that I could start in on the cabin book. I still have a little bit left on the Holt article revision, a book review to write, and a MA thesis grade to evaluate (the student has petitioned the grade assigned--I'm an outside reviewer). But it's all interesting and useful work, perhaps even relevant to the book. I plan to include a chapter on crime fiction in the book, so the Holt article isn't as in left field as one might think. The book review will be of an anthology of articles on Ibsen, and I'm always needing to beef up my knowledge of Ibsen scholarship (and of course Ibsen fits into the cabin book project too: Peer Gynt and Når vi døde vågner have fabulous cabin scenes).

The thesis is on two contemporary novels, Nikolaj Frobenius' Teori og praksis and Dag Solstad's Armand V: Fotnoter til en uutgravd roman. I hadn't read either of them before, and I have to say I'm so very glad that I was asked to review the grade on this thesis, as both are really interesting. The Solstad novel even contains a cabin scene! Frobenius' book explores life in a "drabantby" (satellite town), and contains some really wonderful writing about the attempt to plan happiness. So interesting for an architecture groupie like me! Plus it's really great to get a chance to review the grading process for theses here, as it's quite different--so much more thorough than what I'm used to in the U.S.

My old life in the U.S. seems so incredibly distant now. Other than regular email and Skype contact with my mother, it's all sort of disappearing. I was going to write a post with a list of things I miss about the the U.S., but I only came up with three things! They were: my 15-minute bike ride to work, Starbuck's coffee almond fudge ice cream, and microbrew porters. Otherwise, I'm glad, glad, glad to be here. I can't blog about it, but I am really not happy with some interactions I've had with colleagues back home. I'm technically on unpaid leave, so I still have duties at and communication with that university. It's not fun.

Last night I finished the second arm, joined it to the body, and knitted almost 10 cm on the raglan yoke on the Hourglass sweater. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to wear it to work on Monday, though for some reason it's looking really short to me. I haven't sewn the hem yet, so it's rolling a lot and I'm hoping that's the reason. Here 'tis:

Hybelen vår

I thought it might be fun to post some snapshots from the "hybel"--our rental unit, which we'll be living in until May. The main part of the house is rented out until then. Here is an evening picture from the main room, with the boys hard at work (although I admit it was me that sorted the legos according to color):

The round table is the only furniture that we actually purchased ourselves. Everything else is a freebie, and will probably stay in the hybel when we move into the main house. We hope to actually decorate that with things we choose ourselves. This room is a combined kitchen, living room, and dining room. We also have an entry, a bathroom (with washing machine and shower), and two very small bedrooms. I think it's about 60 square meters (roughly 600 sq. feet).

Here is a snapshot of the exterior of the hybel from two summers ago. It was taken with the camera on my laptop, so it is reversed:

Here's another (reversed) exterior shot, this time showing the side entrance to the hybel:

And here's a shot of the yard, showing one of the many birch trees on the property. This shot is looking from the house toward the street. It's a one-"mål" lot, which is to say about a half an acre:

Pretty nice, huh? KE designed the house himself and had it built in 1996 or 1997, I think. He inherited the lot from his father. There used to be an old cabin on it that he had to pull down. He had to clear the lot and did a huge amount of work on the yard by hand. We're excited to take over the whole property, and have lots of plans for small changes and improvements on the main house.