[this will only make sense to] ELLEN

Flipping through dagbladet.no, I have learned that "Don't Say A Word" is on TVNorge tonight.

HAPPY ST PATRICK'S DAY.

Yay! Ow.

Things you almost never see, unless you live where I do: two boarding school girls sitting in the sun making daisy chains while discussing whether they would be Crips or Bloods.

In spite of all my whining, this weekend is so far officially Not That Bad. I've been on house duty for six hours with two to go, and since it's a hot, sunny day I've spent most of it outside reading "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall". (I decided I ought to read some Brontë of the non-Charlotte variety and couldn't find "Wuthering Heights", so I'm stuck with the longest framing narrative in history. It's sort of charming, though.) On going inside I realised that my arms were properly sunburned. In APRIL. It's odd how difficult it is to switch into "oh no, crumbling ozone layer and prematurely aged skin" mode and out of "woohoo, tan!" mode.

Woohoo, tan!

your Thursday contrasts

Deeply bored and not a little annoyed (unreasonably perhaps) at:

- The prospect of my weekend. I've been working on this fashion show for the past two terms and now I'm not even going to see it, because I'm going to be on house duty. Well, at least I get to go to the after-party and make sure the models don't drink all the champagne. And I'm not going to be freezing in a field.

Delighted by:

- York, still. I'm in the infatuation phase and fixating on minutiae. I like the giant lake in the middle of campus and the bridges that let you cross from college to college. I like that there even is a campus. I like the long dissertations (though I might not in a year's time). I really like the Norwegian Study Centre and am going to turn up there ALL THE TIME demanding brown cheese.
- Dorothy Parker, mostly because just writing the word "champagne" above is making my brain go "Three are the things I shall never attain: envy, content, and sufficient champagne".

Leaves of Salad

In my dream last night, someone was showing me their PhD dissertation, which was written on (the subject of) Famous Brothers-in-Law in History, and written on (literally) salad leaves. You read, or I suppose experienced, the dissertation by putting a salad leaf with the name of a famous brother-in-law on it on each shoulder, like cap sleeves. There was also a short explanatory paper booklet, mostly full of unrelated quotations. "This is brilliant," I told the guy whose work it was, but in fact I was astonished at what passed for a PhD these days.

Yes yes fine I should just start a separate dream blog.

I accepted the York offer today. Am excited and ready to go for it. Psychoanalytic theory + feminist theory + Victorian poetry + Adam Phillips possibly explaining Lacan to me IN PERSON (possibly), all in a matter of months.

Amazing II

This is my hundredth post, and I'm going to spend it pointing out that they're making a film of the first Georgia Nicolson book. I am a) thrilled yet b) concerned that it will fall drastically short of my expectations. Probably "benignly indifferent" would be a more appropriate reaction for someone who is twenty-two and not fourteen, but there you have it.

After excitedly deciding last night to go on a Northern University Tour of Durham and York on my day off, I have in the cold light of day decided not to, as it will cost a hundred pounds and take ten hours on the train (five forth, five back). It wouldn't make much difference, anyway. I've basically settled on York, and I just need to drink a giant mug of coffee (massively undercaffeinated this morning), think it through one more time, and then send in the accommodation application so I can live in Wentworth College.

Amazing

This Saturday, it is literally my job to go to the cinema and see "Step Up 2: The Streets".

Concerns

I'm actually a little worried that Second Life will become a huge, all-encompassing thing, and that I'll be left out. Most of it just seems meaningless and/or pointless to me, even though it clearly has lots of meaning for others. I think it has to do with not being very visually or spatially oriented, because I'd love it if it was more or less text-only, but obviously that would defeat the point for most users.

Possibly the problem is that my computer is so slow at the moment that I can just imagine how slowly SL would run on it, and the very idea makes me shudder.

In other issues, does Olaug Nilssen's use of the basically untranslatable song lyric "Jeg vil ut! Jeg må ut! Jeg skal ut og drikke meg full!" as an epigraph for "Få meg på, for faen" qualify as the best epigraph ever? (I think picking the epigraph would be the best part of writing almost anything, though I've only had a chance to do it once, for a dissertation. The difficulty would be showing some restraint, rather than having five or six from various cultural levels like Stephen King tends to.)

&

Funding applications are done (and I'll need them, as apparently I'm paying overseas fees this year. Am not seriously considering a marriage of convenience for home status). The magazine contest entry is hopefully winging its way to the UK. I have NO OUTSTANDING PROJECTS.

Although I did go up to Dragvoll today to have lunch with Maren and Hans, breathe in some fungal spores and take advantage of the ultra-permissive lending policy. I do like it there; I'm glad they haven't dropped it all into Dødens Dal like they were planning to. I ate lunch in the sun among pine trees and clots of snow, read Gilles Deleuze and drank lots of fairtrade coffee. Then on the way home I went by H&M and bought earrings with ampersands on them. This has been such a good vacation.

maybe even a 9 and a half, in four beers' time

Tiiiiiiired. I now understand why, traditionally, one only goes out two nights in a row. But it's been worth it for the full Trondheim weekend experience. Thursday night was dedicated to brothel-esque sofas and red lighting effects in Supa. Friday night was Storås and possibly the best night of dancing I've ever had - quite a lot of the old standby where everyone dances in a circle and takes turns to go into the middle and do something exciting, but with none of the awkwardness that usually accompanies this. Also unselfconscious air guitars, unselfconscious swing dancing with friends and strangers, and unselfconscious shouting of lyrics (primarily to "Should I Stay Or Should I Go", "Hold The Line" and "Fit But You Know It"; the lyrics to the latter are apparently stored deep in my limbic system). Then yesterday we went to Samfundet, but I was pretty sleepy by midnight and went home at half-past one. The most notable event was two guys insisting that I was Silje from Pop Idol, which googling confirms was a mere ploy, as I look nothing like her. I think it would have been a more effective ploy if I had been more awake, because as it was I just went "what. Whaaaaaat? ...Excuse me" rather than playing along and maybe singing something.

Trondheim has been lovely for the past couple of weeks; I hardly want to leave. But I'm spending the weekend in Cambridge eating Italian ice cream with Becky and Vicky on Castle Hill, so that will be okay too. And on my VERY NEXT day off I'm going to York (which will take 3.5 hours by train, but whatever) to look around and plan the future.

Future plans on a micro-scale: library, coffee.