Pyramid schemes

"A pyramid scheme is a fraudulent system of making money which requires an endless stream of recruits for success. Recruits (a) give money to recruiters and (b) enlist fresh recruits to give them money."

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Protect me from me

In the gorvernments attempt to help the population eat healthier, eat more homecooked meals, they are banning kitchen knives. They are what???

I couldn't believe my ears when I heard this on the radio this morning. "...banning long pointy kitchen knives... reduce stabbings".

Ok, I agree, stabbings are not a very nice thing, but do we have to go back to the stoneages and cut our meat (and vegetables for the vegetarians) with pieces of flint? Or will it be like on the airlines where only plastic cutlery is allowed?

Eventually they might even ban sewing needles (they do on planes), so we will have to get creative about how we get cloting?

Life essentials

Clean Air & Water,
Food,
Shelter,
and
Toiletpaper

Shopping

Summer is here so I thought I would splash out on a new summer dress. Knowing which shops I can never find anything in and which I usually like, it didn't take long to find something. But which fabric pattern did I like?

Hang on! Every summer dress in the entire shop was the same, only different fabric patterns!? All of a sudden paying £80 for one of there dresses didn't seem like such a great deal anymore. I walked out of there with no dress.

I'm getting my sewing machine out this weekend, and awaiting our trip to Belgium before I go shopping for a new dress. At least that way I will not be wearing the same dress as everyone else in my neighbourhood.

Chewing gum

When I travel abroad I always try to follow local customs and whereever possible speak the local language, or at least try.

When I turned 30 I went to Rome for a week, and one day I decided to go into a local delicatessen and buy some ham and salami, rather than have lunch at another restaurant.
I can do the small numbers and say please and thank you in Italian (or at least I could then, as I had practised), but what is the italian word for 'slice'? Noone spoke a word of English in this little local shop I had found! But in Italy speaking in hand movements is commonly accepted, so I got my 2 slices of ham and 2 slices of salami.

A few years prior to this event I was on a long weekend in the US, as you do. I stopped by a drgstore to purchase some chewing gum. In itself not a difficult task, considering we speak the same language in the UK and the US, or so I thought;
Shopgrl: ...cents
Me: Pardon?
Shopgrl: What?
Me: how much?
Shopgrl (to her colleague): What's she saying?

National ID Cards

When I moved to the UK from Denmark about 15 years ago, I thought great, no personal identification number, so nobody knows who you are.

Whenever you want to open a bank account, get a store card, buy anything on credit (i.e. car or house), etc. you have to fill in a million and one forms and provide several pieces of paper etc. for identification. But that's fine, as long as you know which pieces of papers to bring up front, and you are prepared. Right? Yes, unless you have more than one surname, and have used more than one of them over the last 6 years, in which case they cannot find your credit history, and you get refused.

So I have to make sure I only use one of my surnames for the next 6 years, and don't move house (another thing that confuses the tracking of your credit history) if I want to buy a car, a house or get a credit card?

Lucky I prefer to pay cash for smaller purchases like furniture and electrical goods. Or I would have to sleep on the floor!

Someone get me an ID, please! I am a law-abiding citizen who have had enough of being treated like a criminal in my home country.

"My home is where I hang my hat"

Star Wars

Find out which Star Wars character you are most like!
Matt's Star Wars Personality Test Version 1.1

I am PRINCESS LEIA!

The drums of vision

The Eurovision is an annual event in our house. When I was 12 I actually bouoght the MC! But it is not seriuos, if it was, surely the best song would win, right?

Political voting aside, my favourite was the Moldova song. Not because it was just plain silly, nor because of the grandmother on the drums. What was it with drums this year? every other song seemed to have drums in it, somewhere... apart from the guy with the airviolin. Not one you see often. But Moldova, as Vogan put it prior to the voting from Moldova, "Someone tell me who their neighbouring countries are". It turned out they where voting eastern european. I had never knwoingly heard of this country before, not that Georgrapy is my thing, but I looked it up on the map, and it turns out to be a small country squeezed in between Romania & Ukraine.

And that is why it was my favourite. It stood out from the rest, purely through the lack of my knowledge of the country even existing.

Philly Cheesesteak

Having fond memories of Philadelphia Cheesesteak sandwiches I simply had to try the new Philadelphia Cheesesteak pizza from Dominoes, but I must admit it was rather disappointing. The cheese was great, but the steak was too chunky, and not the freshest of meats.
Ah well, I guess there is no substituting the real thing.

Diary Blog

5.15 - son wakes up, and climbes into Mommy & Daddy's bed. Goes to sleep.
5.55 - radioclock comes on. (what's on the radio differs)
6.10 - get's up, have shower & get dressed. (what I wear differs)
6.20 - take son to bathroom & help him get dressed.
6.30 - make tea & toast. Drink tea & eat toast.
6.50 - daddy leaves for work.
7.00 - son goes and plays, mommy clear up, pack bag for nursery, empty/fill dishwasher/washingmachine, get's ready for work. (What he plays differs)
7.45 - leaves for nursery/work.
8.00 - drops son off at nursery & drive to work.
8.45 - arrive at office, log onto pc, sits at desk.
10.00 - leaves desk to get drink. Goes back to desk.
12.00 - has lunch. (what I have for lunch differs)
12.30 - goes back to desk.
14.00 - leaves desk to get drink. Goes back to desk.
16.55 - watches clock
17.45 - leaves work. Drives to childminder to pick up son.
18.30 - pick up son.
18.45 - arrive home. Get dinner for son. He eats while mommy keeps him company.
19.30 - son finish dinner, play. (what he eats and plays differs)
19.45 - brush sons teeth, give him a bath, get him ready for bed.
20.00 - read bedtime story. (what we read differs)
20.15 - cook adult dinner. (what we cook differs)
21.00 - eat dinner.
21.30 - watch TV. (what we watch differs)
22.30 - go to bed.

"You can't dunk a custard cream in camomile tea"

Quing into work I was listening to my local radio station. Apparently the sales of fruit and herbal infusion teas has increased 30%. It is healthyer than your ordinary cup of English breakfast tea, but does it taste better?



I'm not vegetarian, I like my tea brown and with caffeine, and I like custard creams.

...but crumbs in my tea and soaking biscuits, no thank you.

Then we got a car

We used to,
Buy bread at the bakery,
Meat at the butchers
Vegatables at the market,
Then we got a car,
Now we,
Drive to the supermarket.

13

Beleiving friday the 13th is a bad luck day, is apparently one of the more common, but

Why Are We Afraid of Friday the 13th?

Being Scandinavian, I will have to go with "The butler did it", or, "It's Loki's fault!"

Laundry

Four Yorkshiremen from Monty Pythons Flying Circus is the ongoing joke in our household, and has been ever since we went on holiday at Easter.

And I must say, our 2½ y.o. is really getting the point: "In my days we didn’t have washing machines”. Ok so we didn't have a washingmachine, briefly, when we just moved into our current house, but he was 1 y.o. then, so surely he doesn't remember!? Does he?

Probably not, considering his other favourite, "In my days we didn’t have laundry"... I wish.

Only in Norway...

What is art? Is nudity art? Raphael thought so, and so does millions who view his and his fellow artists as art.

"A Norwegian court ruled that striptease is an art and should therefore be exempt from value-added tax (VAT) after an Oslo strip club sued the state for trying to impose it a VAT"

A state of mind?

Boredom
Def.: The state of being bored, or pestered; a state of ennui.

Ennui
Def.: The feeling of being bored by something tedious.

"Boredom, or ennui (the French word comes from Old French enui, root of the English word 'annoy') is a reactive state to wearingly dull, repetitive, or tedious stimuli: suffering from a lack of interesting things to see, hear, etc., or do (physically or intellectually), while not in the mood of "doing nothing"."

"Intelligent people don't get bored", or is this something we tell intelligent people so we don't have to deal with their boredom?

Apparently "Using harmful recreational drugs provides another example of the perils of boredom."

So is it intelligent to use recreational drugs?

Toy or weapon.

Finding Nemo being one of the favourite films in our household (besides Chicken Run), as dictated by the youngest member of our family, all things Australian are the thing. So after taking the broken TV to the skib, and hence not being able to watch either of before mentioned movies, or anything else for that matter, we took to the playing field with our boomerang.
Is a boomerang a toy or a weapon? I suppose that depends on how well you control it, which I must admit I didn't. Give me a few more days, just me and the boomerang, and I might develop from being able to get it to go in the general direction I wanted it to, to actually start heading back towards it's original destination, me.

This morning I was told we needed to bring the boomerang to nursery. However, they don't allow toys to be brought into the nursery, and even if bomerangs don't fall under the category of toys, but weapons, which is not mentioned in the nursery policy, leaving it at home was probably the right parental choice. Parental can be so boring.

Polling station

My local polling station is at the community hall, which is not in itself the most interesting building....

A couple of weeks ago I did see a polling station in a pub.... Who says it's only in Australia?

Life is not a holiday

Randomly flicking through blogs I came across Gomad's Experiences, and it made me realise how much I miss my life.
I love my son, no mistake, I love him lots, but after paying his nursery fees there's not much left to spend on travelling and the likes. Sometimes, I wonder if going to work to pay his nursery fees, so I can go to work, isn't a little bit silly. It's not as if I am in a dreamjob with fab career prospects.
But I'm not going to complain, not this time, even though I really do feel like a right good moan.
"Stop moaning, and do something about it!", is my motto, or it ought to be, so I will stop moaning, and think about what I want to do about it.
Ok, so last week i wanted to get another job. I still do, but until I know which job it is that is going to make me feel less like complaining, there is not really much point in changing.
"A change is as good as a holiday", but holidays does not last forever.

Wednesday = rainday

Does it rain alot on wednesdays?