Adventures in Boating

Kevin turned the big 3-6 yesterday. He had been talking about getting a little 2 person sailboard for months, but I know he would never buy it for himself. Kevin never wants to spend money on himself--he has to be coaxed into buying socks when his old socks develop holes! (I don't quite understand this--I'm not a huge shopper, but if something is getting threadbare, I suffer no guilt when I replace it, and oh my, shoes, I never suffer guilt when it comes to buying shoes!) Anyway, I found a cute little blue and white used Dolphin sailboard at a local boat shop and had arranged for it to be delivered on Friday while Kevin was at work. I had planned to set it up in the driveway and adorn it with a huge red bow so he would be surprised when he returned from work on Friday night. Unfortunately, there was a mixup with the delivery van, so the boat ended up being delivered on Thursday evening when Kevin was already home. In the end, it was probably a good thing...that boat was HEAVY and Kevin was very helpful about unloading his own birthday gift! Also, I have never been around any kind of sailboard/sailboat thing in the past, and they are complicated! I would never have been able to figure out how to put it all together anyway....Kevin would have arrived home to a jumble of sail and mast parts in the driveway, and me shouting "Surprise, I got you a sailboard puzzle for your birthday!"
After rain and thunderstorms on Saturday, we were thrilled that Sunday was bright, sunny and breezy. Kevin rigged up the sail, and after slapping on some sunscreen, we headed out onto the lake. The wind was perfect, and we made it all the way out to a distant island in about 30 minutes. We capsized once, but it wasn't a big deal. We had our lifejackets on and it wasn't too hard to flip the boat up again. At that point, we were feeling very self congratulatory about our mad sailing skills...and then the wind just stopped blowing. I have horrible motion sickness, but when the sailboat was zipping along, I had no issues. Once we just started bobbing around with no forward motion, I became violently ill. Not once, not twice, but three times. I ended up sliding off of the boat into the water, grabbing onto a rope and directing Kevin to just tow me, because the pitching of the boat was too unbearable. We made quite a lovely picture, I'm sure...Kevin desperately whipping the sail around, trying to catch a breeze, and me miserably trailing along behind the boat! After about 3 hours, we finally drifted close enough to our house that we both swam the sailboard back to shore, much to the amusement of our neighbors. Oh, and remember how I nonchalantly mentioned that we had slapped some sunscreen on? That was a bit of foreshadowing...my application of sunscreen was patchy at best, so between that, the 4 hours out in the midday sun and my natural deathly pallor, I am a freaky, streaky, red and white zebra of a mess right now! Kevin's skin is naturally darker than mine, so although he got a little burned yesterday, today he is all brown and healthy looking, damn him! Not that you can tell from my rehashing of our sailing story, but we did actually have a lot of fun out on the water too. Now I know that in the future, I must take Dramamine and slather on the sunscreen, and that it wouldn't be a bad idea to check the forecast before we decide to sail too far from shore!
Kevin's birthday was capped off with a veggie burger, watermelon and corn on the cob picnic on the patio. We also went to see "Get Smart" that evening--we laughed so hard, it was insanely funny! And nothing could make a stinging sunburn feel better than sitting in an aggressively air conditioned theater with a big bucket of icy cold Diet Coke! Now I have 4 days to recover before the insanity of the 4th of July weekend. I'm sure there will be more sailing and the neighbors have threatened us with, I mean invited us to their annual pig roast...yikes, I gotta go take a nap now!

And A Bit About Gjovik

Before my trip up to Lofoten, I spent 3 days in Gjovik...there it is, nestled on the shore of Lake Mjosa:
And a view of the fields across Mjosa:

When I left in November, I was so thrilled to be moving back to the U.S. that I really didn't think that I would miss anything about Gjovik--I could not get out of there fast enough! I think spending a few days again in Gjovik was a good way for me to gain some new perspective on the 15 months I was there. I remember spending massive amounts of time by myself when I lived there. When Kevin was on a business trip, days would go by where the only person I talked to would be a cashier in the grocery store. Yet when I was back for 3 days, so many people were excited to see me again and I spent the entire time surrounded by friends...it's hard to reconcile this with the experience that I had remembered. I suppose that anytime you go back to visit somewhere you once lived, everyone comes out of the woodwork because there is such a limited time to see you, but I also think I was so depressed when I lived there that I completely stopped reaching out to anyone and I isolated myself. After feeling that in many ways, 15 months of my life had been wasted, it was incredible to go back and realize that no, I had actually managed to create a life for myself there, I had managed to make friendships...that the time, while not always well spent, was definitely not wasted!

I am still very grateful and happy to be back in New York, and that was definitely driven home on the Sunday I spent in Gjovik. My friend Heather from norskkurs drove up from her home in Nore to hang out with us for the day. Unfortunately, Sunday is not the best day of the week to spend in Gjovik--the streets of downtown were completely deserted, nothing was open anywhere. We ended up sitting by the lake for hours, eating ice cream from a kiosk and pistachios from the Asian market. Here is a picture of Kevin and Heather and their huge bag of pistachios:

At some point, we did finally find a Chinese restaurant that was open for lunch--yay for immigrants!

In addition to seeing Heather, I went for a long walk with my teenage friend (who used to catsit for us). His family is planning a vacation to the U.S. this fall and hasn't decided between New York or California, so he had tons of questions for me. He is quite obsessed with seeing celebrities, he also wants to see an impressive skyline, to visit a great beach and to enjoy some cheap shopping. I told him it's possible to see celebrities in either NYC or LA, but probably more likely in LA, NYC has the great skyline and the imposing skyscrapers, California has the beautiful beaches, and as for shopping, he's Norwegian, any shopping he does in the U.S. will be cheap for him!

Kevin and I also spent a day with Anders and Nina and their family, playing croquet in their garden:

I had another tiny epiphany during our croquet game...everyone kept pronouncing it "crockett," which I found very endearing. And it reminded me of all the times I was too inhibited to speak Norwegian because I was so embarrassed about my American accent and so fearful of making a grammatical error. (Hence why the best Norwegian conversations I ever had were after several glasses of wine--I probably slurred my words, but wow, was I ever uninhibited about talking!) I wish I had reached out more, that I had been braver and less cautious when I lived in Norway. I think it might have made my time there so much happier. Oh well, I learned, I grew, I'm better for it, yadda, yadda, yadda!

Nina and I also drove up to my old house. It has been sold (for an obscene amount, I'm still in sticker shock!) and the buyers plan to put another $400,000 in renovations into it. I was amazed at all the progress they have already made. There is a giant pile of rubble outside--obviously the hideous kitchen and bathrooms have been gutted. The outbuilding which was falling down has been lifted up onto a new foundation and reroofed. I was so happy to see this--it was a great old house in an idyllic location, and it was sad that no one had taken care of it for decades. I wonder if they will change the color of the fabulous violet guestroom?

Anyway, I spent 3 wonderful days in Gjovik followed by 4 fabulous days in Lofoten. It was a rejuvenating vacation, and absolutely what I needed. Now I'm back and very happy with life in New York, but without a lot to write about. I'll blog occasionally, but I'll try to refrain from posting every random thought that pops into my head or every cute cat picture I take!

Lofoten Pictures: Part II

This is the adorable little fishing cabin we stayed in for the week:
Lofoten is full of cute little rental fishing cabins. Some are rustic, and some, like ours, are very modern. We had a full bathroom with a washing machine and a full kitchen with a dishwasher. Both rustic and updated cabins all boast gorgeous water views!

Lofoten is known for torskfisk, or dried fish. Here are a bunch of them hanging up in a shop (the same shop where we rented the car). I didn't enjoy the look or the smell of them so I didn't try any, though I was tempted to buy a doggy "snack pack" for Kermit and Honey. I decided it wasn't worth stinking up my luggage, especially since the dogs would be just as happy with Milk Bones!

Here are tons of the fish drying on racks in the sun. We asked a taxi driver how they manage to keep the sea gulls away...he cheerfully answered, "We shoot them!"

And here are yet more racks of fish drying on the remote island of Vaeroy:

We took a ferry bright and early on Friday morning from Moskenes to Vaeroy in hopes of spotting some puffins and other sea birds. Vaeroy is gorgeous, and we took a wonderful hike on the seaside cliffs.

We also suited up to go on a spectacular raft trip to see the famous "bird cliffs." Our guide was just wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, so I thought maybe our heavy flotation coveralls were a bit much, but oh my, it was crazy cold out there! Who knew I could be so happy to be dressed up like a dirty, fish scented, orange Pilsbury dough boy?

We saw tons of birds: razor bills, sea eagles, seagulls and even a couple of puffins. Unfortunately, when you are in a raft going 30 knots through choppy waters, it is very difficult to get good photos of birds soaring overhead. The ride was amazing, it really felt like we were flying with the birds, but I have very little photographic evidence to show for it! Here are a bunch of, hmm, I'm not sure what, let's say they are some type of duck, okay?

And here are some nesting kittiwake seagulls. The sea eagles have eaten most of the kittiwake chicks and eggs, and our guide said that so far this year, only about 45 of the chicks have survived.

This would be my one and only photo of a bird in flight which turned out at all.

I'm so bummed out that none of my puffin pictures turned out--they are so cute, like fat little penguins with bright orange beaks. If you want to see one, you can go to this site: http://www.audubon.org/bird/puffin/puffins.html It's nice to know that there are people out there who are even MORE excited about puffins than I am!

After our raft ride and our lovely hike, we still had about 10 hours to kill before the ferry back to Moskenes. Vaeroy is pretty, but 10 hours is a long time to spend on a very isolated island with one small cafe and one convenience store. Luckily the convenience store sold decks of cards, so after wandering around some more and hanging out on a beautiful beach, we ended up back at the ferry terminal with a bunch of junk food and played cards for the last couple of hours. I taught Michele and Victoria how to play blackjack--just in case our next vacation together ends up being near a casino, we'll be prepared!

Lofoten Pictures: Part I

This is a view of one of the islands of Lofoten from the ferry--at this point, I have no idea which island, but I loved this photo's dreamy look so much that I decided to post it and admit my ignorance!
This is the village of Sorvagen, where we rented a fishing cabin. The village was charming, the cabin was adorable...I felt like I was standing inside a postcard througout the whole vacation!

The weather was quite chilly and overcast the first couple of days we were there, but we channeled our inner Vikings and braved the elements! We went on a few gorgeous hikes--this was the view just steps from our cabin door:

And this was the view once we reached the top of a huge mountain...I mean, ahem, a medium-sized hill:

We had reserved a car...that was, um, interesting. First, we called the woman at the car rental shop. She gave us directions and told us we could walk there. After walking quite a distance and seeing no car rental business (or any other business) we hailed a cab. It's a good thing we did, because the shop was still several miles (and one long, dark tunnel) away. (I think that anyone giving directions needs to realize that just because it is technically possible to walk somewhere does not necessarily mean that it is a good idea!)

When we arrived, we realized that the business wasn't so much a Hertz or an Avis, but a fish shop specializing in dried fish (torskfisk) and whale meat which happened to have one ancient 2 door Nissan with 250,000 kilometers for hire. We were all feeling cheerful and adaptable (not so adaptable that we were willing to sample whale meat, though!) so we piled in and drove off to explore the archipelago.

There are some gorgeous North Sea beaches throughout Lofoten. This one in the picture below is called Brunstrand. As beautiful and inviting as it was, it was also very cold. People do travel to Lofoten to surf and in August the water warms up enough to swim, but mid-June is far too early in the season to do much more than stick a toe in, squeak and run away!

This is the town of Eggum. We were told at the tourism office that we should definitely check it out, as there is some crazy statue of a head there that is really worth seeing. The town is tiny, we drove through it a couple of times, and we never saw any kind of cranial sculpture. Oh well, the drive was beautiful, the town was picturesque and the Nissan chugged along without incident, so no complaints!

On the drive back to our cabin, we passed this building with a flock of sheep grazing on the roof. How did they get up there? Is it possible that they climbed the ladder? Even the sheep in Norway seem hardier and more rugged than their American counterparts!

There really isn't a good way to explain how amazing this vacation was. Yes, the pictures are nice, yes, I can recount little anecdotes here and there, but I just can't recapture the crazy joy of this trip. Michele and Victoria are a couple of the funniest people I have ever met, and we all got along so well. I can't remember the last time I have laughed so hard for 5 days straight. We're talking about taking a vacation together next year too, maybe to Paris. I can't wait, but in the meantime I have so many awesome memories to savor. Like our trip to the bird cliffs...I have lots more photos to post, so stay tuned!

Too Jet Lagged to Blog

I'm back from my trip to Lofoten--it was wonderful and gorgeous and amazing, and I have lots to write and tons of pictures to post, but I am way too tired to right now. The midnight sun was beautiful but it also made going to bed at a reasonable hour impossible. Here is a picture of the view from our cabin taken around noon:
And here is a photo of the same view taken around 1:30 AM. See how crazy light it still is? We sat around, talked, laughed and drank wine until the wee hours every night, tricked into thinking it was still early by that bright sky.

So now I'm jet lagged in addition to being incredibly sleep deprived...I have lots more to post, but it will have to wait--my bed is beckoning!

Drug Dealer

So, my 4 kittens got adopted today. They went in pairs, which is exactly what I wanted. I'm sure all the employees at the shelter were very happy to see them go, as I might have been a tad bit obsessive about their care. I had been grinding up L-Lysine tablets and sprinkling the powder on their food (it is supposed to boost the immune system). One of the women who works at the shelter joked that everyone suspected that I was lacing their kibbles with cocaine. I laughed, because obviously that would be ridiculous...I was then reminded me that the accusation was not made completely out of the blue.

A couple of years ago, I was at the shelter when someone donated a carload full of pet food, litter, blankets, toys and treats. At that time, several students from the local college were volunteering as well. We all hauled the donated goods into the building and started to sort through everything. I grabbed a little Ziploc baggie full of catnip and started doling it out to the kitties. I was surprised that the catnip smelled kind of funny and was clumpier than usual, but I continued to serve it up until it finally dawned on me that it wasn't catnip at all, and I was actually giving the kitties pot! Apparently the baggie had fallen from one of the student's pockets when he was carrying the donations into the shelter. That incident ruined any "street cred" I had, but at least we had some mellow, mellow kitties that afternoon!

Anyway, now that my kittens are no longer homeless, I can finally relax and look forward to my trip to Norway. I leave tomorrow evening, camera and extra memory chip in tow. I probably won't blog until I return to New York, but I promise to post tons of Lofoten pictures once I'm back. Cross your fingers for some puffin sightings!

Mission Accomplished

On Memorial Day, Kevin worked all day to finish our bathroom. He didn't quite get everything done, so the next morning, even though he was scheduled to fly to Manila at noon, he feverishly installed the medicine cabinet and caulked everything. I was very impressed--he completed the project with 5 minutes to spare, hopped in the shower and was in the car with his suitcases just in time to make it to the airport.
So here is the new bathroom:
It is so tiny but so pretty--I really love it!

And the vintage faucet on the sink is my favorite detail in the room.

So that mission is finally accomplished. Unfortunately the other project which has been consuming all of my time and energy, my foster kittens, is not going as well. They went back to the shelter this weekend but were not adopted. There are a lot more homeless kittens than there are adoptive families, so who knows how long it will take. Seeing them sitting unwanted in their little cage is breaking my heart. A pretty bathroom is nice, but nothing would make me happier than finding good homes for my kittens!