Valentine's Day & Burning Kitchens

Valentine's day.

The last few years it seems I've hated Valentine's day with almost religious fervor.
Idiotic day, I would say to myself. I remember (was it 2005?) when I went into a combined bakery/coffee shop while talking to a friend. It was the day before valentine's day and I saw all the posters and little hearts that were scattered all over the place. 'I hate valentine's day (jævla drittdag)!', I exclaimed, and then realised I was almost shouting. It looked like I'd given the poor (and very cute) barista (who had been smiling at me for several days) a heart attack. She stopped smiling after that.

I think it all started a few years before that (2001, I think). I had been in a relationsship that ended pretty badly. We were not friends (or speaking) afterwards. Shortly after it ended I moved away for about nine months. After 6 of those months she started calling me. She would call me every night, flattering me to no end, telling me it was good to hear my voice and that she missed me. After a while she persuaded me to meet her in Oslo, and the day that was chosen was of course valentine's day; what else? Anyway, I got to Oslo and I showed up at the café in which we were supposed to meet. She was late. She came running in the door just when I was about to leave. From there on out it got better, though. She was making her best effort at beeing as cute and charming as humanly possible -with considerable success, I might add- and after a while topped it all when she gave me a card with a beutiful (and very personal) poem she had written for me. Needless to say, I was charmed out of my boots. We spent the rest of the night togeather. It wasn't until the next afternoon I learned that the reason she had been late was because she had gotten back togeather with another ex of hers - just about an hour prior to meeting me. It quickly got ugly once more. I still have the card.

Anyway, I think that was what inspired my intense hatred of valentine's day. And with an exception or two, I've managed to stay single on valentine's day since. I've had a few dates on valentine's day, but (as far as I can recall) they mostly didn't go well.

2007
This year, though, I was not only not single on valentine's day - but also freshly in love. And on top of that my girlfriend is american. Beeing a hopeless romantic at heart I decided to do something nice on valentine's day. She had a modeling-gig she had to do, but the plan was that she would come over immidiatly afterwards. I then decorated my livingroom with roses and strategically placed candles, killed all the electric lighting, opened an 8-year-old Barolo and started preparing fondue and a killer salad. She called me from her dress-fitting and didn't know when it was going to be finished, so we concluded that I should aim the food at beeing finished 3 hours from then.

When 4 hours had passed I decided that the foundue-oil (that I had placed on the stove about 2 hours prior) probably could do without more heat for a while, so I turned off the heat, moved the pot to the side and sat down with a glass of wine and the newspaper while I was waiting to hear from her. Suddenly I am yanked out of the article I'm reading by a gust of smoke that sears my eyes. Just as I'm getting out of the coach and running towards the kitchen the fire-alarm starts screaming. My kitchen is on fire. My kitchen is on fire! I don't know if some water from the kitched fan had condensed and fallen back into the pot or anything else, but I have a pot of burning oil on my stove! I attempted to kill it with a lid but all I managed was to burn my arm. I tried throwing wet towels on top of it, but they just caught fire. As I saw the kitchen fan gradually melting and falling to pieces around me I start to panic - I just bought this appartment in june! As the kitchen doors are starting to smolder and are just about to catch fire I get a hold of myself, run over to the window, open it, wrap my hands in kitchen towels and throw the pot out of the window and into a big heap of snow. That didn't stop the fire either, but at least it's outside. There are some burning towels left inside, but theese I manage to put out. What is it with valentine's day?! Outside a lot of the oil had fallen out of the pot when I threw it, so after a while I manage to put it out.

Shortly thereafter my girlfriend showed up...
Luckily, though, as I'm frying the meat in a pan since the oil sort of went out the window (ehhh..), this is what she told me: 'Thank you for today. It is perfect, and it's where I wanted to be all day.'

Maybe valentine's day doesn't have to be such a bad day after all. :)

/Christian

No longer single

...

Finished

Finally.

This idiotic course/certification is now done. This means all my work here is done and I can focus on drinking beer for the rest of my stay, which is until my plane departs at 13:30 tomorrow GMT-5. Yay. Unfortunatly the people I am going to drink beer with are not finished yet, but at least that gives me the time to write this blog-entry.

Due to my busy and extremely dull schedule nothing that even remotely resembles an interesting topic has happened this week, with one exception. The girl called. And not only did she throw out phrases like 'I wish you could come back sooner', which is always a good thing, but she also challenged me to a game of chess when I return. 10 points to her. Actually, make it 20. I have to admit, when I first met her I didn't afford her great intellectual capabilities. I met her at a party; a fashion model from New York + her two sisters continiously screaming 'Oh! my! God!' in perfect unison. I admit to beeing predjudiced. My bad. Still, something about her facinated me so we ended up togeather that night. And every time I've met her since she has shown me some new and interesting aspect of herself. She is not stupid. Allthough she is not directly knowledgable she does suck up information like some sort of a sponge. She is both kind and honest. She is good at instigating conversations about topics that are actually interesting (something I often find lacking). She is both open and trusting and always seems to have a smile up her sleeve. And now she challenges me to a party of chess. Great.

This might actually be going somewhere.

Summary

Friday.

Well, I haven't been able to post much recently, so I figured it was time for a status update.
I came home from Stavanger this weekend, albeit later than expected. Gardermoen (the airport) was closed due to a potential bomb-hazard (of course ending up beeing a security screw-up) and I had to wait several hours on Sola airport. Fun.

It's Friday and tomorrow I'm leaving for Indianapolis in the morning. There's a course I have to attend. Sounds dreadfully boring and it actually has a schedule starting at 8 in the morning and ending at 10 in the evening every day for a week; but who knows. Stavanger actually ended up beeing a lot of fun, so maybe this will too.

Oh,
I met a pretty interesting new girl a few days before I went to Stavanger and I've actually spent more than a little time with her this last week. Things have been going well. Of course, things always go well the first few weeks; so we'll se. This feels promising, though. I just noticed she's left her toothbrush.


Will be back,
Christian

Time; or lack thereof

I've been meaning to post. Really, I have.
It's just that I've had absolutely no time on my hands.

I'm in Stavanger this week; had to go on-site for some customers. I would have thought this meant I would have a lot of time on my hands in the evenings - and blogging was on my agenda.

So farI haven't had a free minute though, so there's been no posting.
Will get back to you in the weekend!

/C

Still hung over

... this sucks.

Hung over

Ugh