My bubbly friend - Sure-Kurt

It is mighty cold here in the little country - come on, gulf stream, do your thing and warm up this country a bit!!


So you do indoor stuff as much as you can, and baking bread is one of my favorite things to do.


Last week I decided that I was going to start baking my own rye bread again. Danish rye bread is dark and often whole grain, and usually it is made with a sour dough.


I don't have one of those, so I went online to find a recipe to start up a sour dough. Turns out there are two ways to do that. One way is starting it with a bit of yeast, and the other is to let the yeast culture find your sour dough all by itself.


Why make it easy - I decided to go for the hard way. I mixed up rye and wheat flour with some water, and set it on my kitchen counter. Every day I fed a little extra flour and water into it. After 4 or 5 days it started smelling beery and yeasty in just the right way, and then came the bubbles.


So I was ready to make my bread.


I mixed about half of my sour dough, that in the meantime had taken on a personality of it's own enough to be named "Sure-Kurt" (Sour-Kurt), with water and whole grain, and let it sit over night. The next day I added rye and wheat flour and some salt, and my dough was ready to rise and put into a loaf pan and bake.


Wonderful, grainy bread with a tantalizing scent and a great taste - That is certainly not my last loaf of home made bread! It's been a long time since I made rye bread, and I wonder why I stopped...


In the meantime, Sure-Kurt still lives on my counter. Today he gave birth to Lille-Kurt (Little-Kurt) - who is moving in with my daughter. She will take care of him and feed him every day, so that he can get big enough for her to make her own lovely bread.


So right now, Sure-Kurt is pretty small himself. I will feed him well, though, so he is ready to use for a new loaf next weekend :-)


I love baking! It is so rewarding and it feels creative, even when it is just following a recipe.

A status at the beginning of a new year

Actually I didn't feel like writing this kind of post. And it won't be a cavalcade of all my blog-achievements, because they have been few and far between.

But I did feel like saying goodbye to 2011, that has been a year like most years are - a colorful quilt with a pattern diverging from the one I had expected.

Of course, many things were like planned and expected. I didn't switch jobs, husbands or houses ind 2011. I didn't get into wild projects or new hobbies.

It's been a busy year, but that was expected too. Job wise I've been extremely busy at times, and it's been fun and hard at the same time. I've been keeping the number of overtime-hours down as much as I could, because I don't want to work 20 extra hours a week. 20 hours a month must be plenty - I believe it is a lot about priorities, skipping redundant meetings and activities, and that kind of thing. If you do that, you can get a lot done without toiling like a Maersk-suit.

When I look back at 2011 I think about being tired. Mostly because I've gotten up early many mornings to put down my overtime there. My dear husband have not had much pleasure out of my company at night, because many an evening news have shone its blue light on my snoozing face on the couch.

At the end of the year I was a bit betrayed by my body. Perhaps I have neglected it a little, because even though I've struggled to keep workout and running going, it's not been a great exercise year. Anyway in december my doctor stated that my blood pressure was to the high side.

You could have heard my jaw hitting my knee with a slap, because I had NOT seen that coming. I am usually quite smug when I talk about my super low blood pressure (normally at 120/70), and a measurement quite a bit over that is a bit of a slap on the face.

I didn't get pills, because the doctor and I agreed to wait a month and do a series of measures again over a weekend. Until then I plan to be good and treat myself better with food and exercise, and if that does not work out, I will probably have to go on meds.

When it comes to love, 2011 has been a fine year. My Bruno and I celebrated our  10th wedding anniversary in november, and I still start every day relishing the fact that I am sharing my life with just him.

But we are getting older. In 2011 my kids are 15, 18 and 24 (!!) years old, and my siblings are ranging from 51 (my gorgeous young big sister) to 54 (my distinguished oldest brother). I am the only one of us who yet has to find a gray hair (I keep my hair dresser checking!).

My mother just turned 78, and that is quite the age.

An odd thing has happened this year. Print on milk cartons, rice bags and in books has gotten smaller and smudgier lately. That is why I have been seen balancing cheap glasses on the tip of my nose (eyeglasses, that is - don't get any outlandish ideas), trying to counter this strange tendency. I will consider a proper pair of prescription glasses in 2012, but so far I am in denial. And I guarantee, that as soon as possible I will rush to my local eye clinic and have them fix my near- and farsightedness!

So goodbye 2011. I am not quite sure if I learned to like you, but now you are over. You go where used up years go to die, and I enter 2012 - a little aloof, but still trusting, because 2012 is just a more beautiful number than 2011.

Happy new year. If you've made it all the way down here, I greet you. I wish for myself and for all others, that we may have the strength and the perspective to make the right choises that will make 2012 a great year for us.

Over and out.

Darwins danish inspiration

Until earlier this year, I didn't know that a danish scientist actually participated a lot in the creation of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. I became aware only when I listened to a very interesting radio program about scientific development through time.


It seems at first, there were these bishops who honestly tried to contribute to the scientific pool of knowledge. They were trying to put an age on the earth, and based their theory on the number of generations in the Old Testament. On this basis they believed that they were able to estimate the earth's creation to have happened 4004 years BC.

It was a nice try - the error was of course that their starting point was completely wrong, as the Bible is not exactly scientific record material. 

It wasn't until much later that more serious bids on the earth's age came about, and today we know quite precisely (within one million years :D) that the earth is 4,567,000.000 years old. That is quite a bit, but his bishop Usher was onto something - - it was a number starting with "4"! 

The really fun part of the program, however, was the story of Nicolas Steno - or Niels Steensen, as he was called in Danish. He was from Copenhagen, and he was born in 1638. Steno wanted to be a scientist, so he studied medicine, to be a doctor. It turned out not to be quite what he had imagined - a little too much "barber" and not enough science. 

So Steno swapped to anatomy, where he actually made a really good name for himself - among other things by noting that the heart is a muscle. He became recognized enough that he toured Europe, and on his way he revised the contemporary view of how the brain works. 

At some point an Italian duke - one of the Medici - noticed him. He sent Steno a shark's head to Steno, so he could study the shark's teeth, that were oddly similar to little rocks that were found in the mountains - and by this, Steno's road to the science of geology had started. 

Steno began to wonder why fossils of sea creatures that were found far from the nearest coast, and it led him to the conclusion that the earth was not just a static thing, standing as it were created by god, but that it is undertaking constant change. 

By this, he was skirting a dangerous edge - at that time the priests of the Inquisition had a sharp lookout for scientists challenging what was written in their sacred books. 

But through diplomacy and probably also because he was a sincere Catholic, he succeeded to avoid a sudden loss of his head. 

Steno published several scientific writings during the course of his career, and actually his methods were to be the foundation of modern geology. Charles Lyell, who published Pricipia (Principles of Geology) actually wrote in his introduction that his theories rested on Steno's principles. And Charles Lyell happened to be one of Darwin's major inspirations, as well as friend and mentor. 

The fact that Steno is not better known today, is first and foremost that he was not an Englishman. His religiosity made him an outcast - in Denmark because he had converted to Catholicism, and further south because he originally was Lutheran. 

The man did not let his religious background stand in the way of his science, however, for he believed that when science and the Bible did not match, it was because the Bible was interpreted incorrectly:) - a relatively healthy starting point if you ask me. 

Some people actually claim that his contributions to modern science was on a par with Newton - and that it is quite unfair that his legacy is not greater. 

Regardless, I think it's beyond cool that we in Denmark have a scientist on record, who helped to form an important basis for Darwin's theory of evolution - albeit in a roundabout way:)

Selective body memory

Today I ran by the beach, and I noticed that the water was very still.

Actually I think the few creases on the mirror-like water surface was caused by the heavy tread and almost as heavy breathing that came with a certain runner.

That got me thinking.

I've often heard the claim that your body remembers. It's got a memory containing what you and others have done to it. It sounds a bit new age to me - no clue whether it is just woo, or if it's been scientifically proven.

Anyway - I wonder why my body finds it much easier to remember how overweight I was 10 years ago (and why it insists on trying to ease back up on that weight) than remembering the half marathon I ran 2,5 years ago - and all the lovely hours of training that came with that? Bad body!!

However I will try to keep in mind the great feeling I had in my body after today's run, as I undressed to shower. It might make it easier to get my butt out there, working those running shoes.

My heathen christmas

I like christmas, even if I am not a christian.


There is so much to like!


Candles spread all over my house, lighting the dark days (about 6 hours of daylight at the moment)
The electric lights in the bushes outside, that makes the dusk at 3 in the afternoon easier to bear.
The delicious cookies, and cozy get togethers with friends.
Good, homemade glögg, both the white and the red variety.
Oatmeal candies - home made.
My family getting together, eating, talking, playing boardgames.
Days off from work - peace and quiet.


I think it is a lovely, cozy season, even though I could easily do without the christmas gift craze. I think it's difficult to think of good wishes, and I know astoundingly many people that feel the same way.


Our christmas eve is quite ordinary, with a christmas tree and carols. We obviously don't go to church, and we don't say prayers at the table or read the Christmas Gospel. We still sing the christmas songs and hymns - many of them are beautiful, and remind me of the family christmas of my childhood. I love to sing, and the old traditional hymns are nice to share with your family.


One of the really good things about christmas is, that this is the solstice - the days stop getting shorter, and start lengthening. When I light up my calendar candle and my advent candlestick, that is really what I am counting down for. Originally christmas was a heathen fest of the light, and I think it is so much worth celebrating that darkness starts to let go and the days just get longer and longer.
I can't wait for the light to come back into the days - but in the meantime I'll try to light up the darkness around me.

On sexual harassment and good judgment

This week one of the big stories going around in the danish media has been of sexual harassment.

Appearantly one our new ministers got himself in a spot of trouble last christmas. At a christmas party, he said to a newly divorced female secretary: "So, are you going to get yourself a new man anytime soon?"

Whether it's sexual harassment is difficult to say when it's taken out of context. I don't know how well he knew this lady, or whether they had the kind of tone where something like that would be a normal, jokingly thing to say. I don't know whether he said it with a kind smile, or leaning over her and breathing booze in her face, while caressing her knee.

Either way, I think it's an unsensitive and hurtful and stupid comment, and it seems the lady in question felt the same way. She filed an official complaint and her union took out a sexual harassment case, that ended up in a settlement.

I could write about what this kind of behaviour, whether its lewd or just rude, speaks of that specific ministers sense of judgement, and his suitability for leading a ministry, but I won't.

Because what really surprised me was how the online media commenters reacted to this case: They were lining up to defend this man, and simultaneously putting down the secretary, commenting how "she was too delicate and prissy" and that "perhaps she should not have gone to the christmas party."

Whoa, wait up a minute.

So, if I as a female, go to a company party, that I have been specifically invited to, I thereby send out an invite for any drunken co-worker of the opposite sex to breathe booze-stinking lewdities in my ear whilst fondling my thigh??

Hell, no! Nobody feels me up without being invited - and just coming to the party is NOT an invitation - not even if I dress up in something more sexy than a burqua, wear perfume and heels!!

The scenario gets even worse, if the breather-slash-fondler is your superior (work wise, that is). It can be a tad more difficult to administer a hearty shove to the guy that is in charge of setting you up for raises and promotions. You might be more inclined to try settling things quietly, and thus you might get your borders invaded even further.
What kind of a boss puts their people in that kind of situation??

My guys at work can certainly rest assured that I will NOT squeeze their bottoms or do a lapdance on top of them, when we attend this years christmas party. And I am not even a big shot boss, just a small time project manager.

And if the commenters mentioned above reflect the general culture, a damn boring old bird.

Me and the US of A....

Stuff I love about USA (in random order):

• how nice, helpful and service minded people are.
• italian sausage on pizza.
• hell - italian sausage on ANYTHING!!
• shopping ... stuff is so CHEAP! (If you see the economy going up in october, that was me).
• the absolutely stunning beauty of New England
• how you can order anything at a restaurant (like, if you want your burger without a bun or with two buns, or with whipped cream ... anything goes, I think!)
• the style of houses - be it the pretty wooden houses or the amazing glass towers.
• the diversity of the culture, and how everybody knows where their family is descended from.
• breakfast. You gotta love pancakes with syrup and all the eggs ... and oh, the wonder of breakfast sausages!!
• starbucks. Because they serve proper coffee ;)

Stuff I wonder about USA (also in random order):

• why they serve dark brown water and call it coffee?
• why you have to pay tips - why don't they just pay people a proper wage?
• the sizes of helpings in restaurants. No way I could ever eat that much. And I have the appetite of a lumberjack.
• why so many people that claim to be christian bitch so much because they have to chip in when people of no financial means get ill...
• when the otherwise nice lady at the diner goes into a rant about the stupid mexicans and the lazy black folks Ö
• why an advanced country has to put chlorine in their drinking water, even out of the big city (yuck - smells nasty and tastes bad!)
• no rugbrød ... that IS a major error!
• why people riding bikes all have their seats placed so low. It looks really funny, but must be quite uncomfortable?
• breakfast. I'd get HUGELY FAT if I had that kind of delish stuff available all the time!

On running and the shape of running shirts

I've taken up running again - again.

After I ran into (pun intended) an injury shortly after my first and so far only half marathon a couple of years ago, I've tried starting up several times, but never with much luck.

Recently, I decided to give it a shot and started up very gently. I found a beginners program, looked at it and immediately jumped to week 4 (there's gotta be a limit to HOW gently you can start up!).

Now I am almost done with week 7, and it is going really well! When I started running last winter, I never got out of the very short street I live on, before I felt the existence of my right back thigh. This time, I haven't felt it once (and I know my thigh is there ;).

So I am happily running along, and to encourage myself, I've purchased a bit of running gear - a couple of extra of the below-knee tights I fancy, and a slightly used (2 or 3 times) Nike running jacket that used to belong to my neighbor. We had a big yard sale recently, and this guy owns a sporting good store, so I thought I'd rummage through his stuff :)

I love the jacket! It's really nice (was expensive to begin with, I think) and I am sure it will be in every single wash for the rest of the long sleeve season.

Thing is, my neighbor is a guy.

I've tried buying running gear for women. The tights are okay, but jackets and shirts just don't fit me. I am not petite, but not grossly fat, but I have broad shoulders, and women just aren't supposed to be made like that.
So a men's size small or medium fits me way better than any women's size. The men's shirts are long enough, wide enough in the shoulders and chest, and they don't flap in all the wrong places. I've learned, but now I am stuck with all the freebies I got at women's races I've been to.

I guess I just don't have a typical feminine body shape. Nevertheless, I've lived 45 years and never had anyone run screaming out of a room when I entered. I've even managed getting married and having kids :-)

So perhaps it's not as bad as all that.

The ninja blogger up for adoption

As bloggers go, I've been quiet like a ninja.

I don't run around looking really mystical and killing people with unlikely objects, so I am probably not really a ninja. Actually I am big, blonde and noisy - whoever saw a ninja like that??

So you might wonder what I've been up to since I came back from my vacation. Except for working my butt off.

Well, for one thing, Bruno and I have fine-planned our trip to the US - coming up soon.
We will be visiting Roberta in Connecticut, and of course we will spend a couple of days in NYC. But we are also going to go see Niagara Falls.

Not just because I really like big waterfalls. I can't tell you if I do, because I've never seen one. Something happened, though, that made me really want to go see this one in particular.

I've adopted myself a father.

I had a great one - but he passed away in 1999, much too young - at 69 years. I've missed him, and I guess I have missed having some kind of father figure.

Frequently, I can be found present (in my online form) at a discussion forum - I've hung around there for over a year, and met some really nice people. One of them was Victor - a very smart canadian guy, 70 years young. In a thread a while ago, we got to talking about me not having a dad, and him not having any daughters. So I adopted him.

In jest, really - but we started exchanging private messages and later emails. Finding out we really like each other, we've made the adoption final :) not legitimate, but true in some sense anyway. And with Vic and his wife Pat living just a few hours north of Niagara Falls, we decided to meet up there.
So we are meeting my adopted dad and his wife for a day or so, and I really look forward to it.

Long ago, Roberta and I declared ourselves sisters. So of course, Vic had to take Roberta as part of the deal ;) A little online family, if you like. To tell you the truth, I am sure he is delighted - she is a lovely lady.

I can't wait for our trip to the US. It means a lot to me that Bruno finally get to meet with my dear Roberta and her Mike - and I am really excited to meet Vic and his wife in real life.

The internet really is an amazing thing, isn't it??

End of vacation - what do I do??

In just a bit, I've spent all of my 3 weeks of summer vacation.

It's been good! One week in Austria, with mixed weather, but singularly beautiful surroundings, and in the lovely company of my two youngest and my better half.

We hiked, went swimming, shopped, drove around, and had the meanest wars of card- and other games.

Then we came back home, and after a couple of days doing the laundry, it stopped raining - and the weather was nice, warm danish summer weather. So it was time for caipirinhas in the garden and all sorts of food on the BBQ.

This last week we had my mom visiting a couple of days. Good times - just mentioning our trip to the local english pub (only for adult ladies) with czech beer and pub food for lunch!

Yesterday we wrung out every bit we could of our last official day of vacation! Bruno, Andreas and I were in Vejle to watch a stage of Tour of Denmark, the biggest pro cycling event in this country.

We found ourselves a spot on the worst up-grade hill, where we actually had a chance to have time to see who was coming by us :) It was great fun!

On top of that tough afternoon, we decided to let Katia be in charge of our dinner. It was - as always - a lovely pasta experience, and we went home delightfully filled up. We love Katia's pastas - the tough bit is choosing which one to have :)

Today is saturday, and officially no more vacation - - only weekend :-(

Andreas has caught a train and is on his way to Aalborg, so in a bit I will strip the sheets of the bed in the guest room and let it go back into hibernation, until the next time we have overnight visitors.

I want to clear my laundry basket, iron the stuff that needs ironing, and try to mentally prepare myself for going back to work again.

Now I've been lounging around with no shoes and makeup for great parts of the past 3 weeks, and my hair has only been washed, never styled for weeks. Can I even figure out how to put on proper clothes again? Will I be able to find my lashes with my mascara (well ... I guess ... I did do a test run yesterday)? Can I figure out how to be a professional, plan and estimate, find my way around the tasks waiting for me?

Have the boys been snoozing their days away, leaving a disaster for me to come back to? Have there been any problems, that we didn't see coming?

Can I handle a full day of work without a break of 10 minutes, lying in a couch with a book? Will my eyes even open before 8.30 in the morning??

....well, I will probably manage, even if it seems a bit unclear right now. And actually, I am looking forward to it. It will be nice to see my co-workers again, and even the drive to Silkeborg I look forward to - my oasis in time with a sound book and coffee driving up the middle of Jutland.

Right now I have half a saturday and a whole sunday, where I am just enjoying that it is summer, and that I am really not sad at all about going back to work on monday morning.

Even though I COULD have used a few more days of vacation.

Summer is finally here!

All in all, it's been an awful summer, if you look at the danish weather.

Rainy - cloudy - cold.

It was like that in the first week of our vacation, but fortunately we were in Kärnten, Austria, and even though we didn't have mediterranean temps there, we did have mostly good weather.

Kärnten is absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous. We lived in Rosental, not too far from Villach, in a spacey, comfortable holiday apartment that we rented from an austrian lady, Sonja. It used to be her dads house, and he built everything there. He died a few years ago, though, and now it's been turned into a place people like us can stay :) You have the valley to one side of the house, and the mountains on the other - and when you walk just 5 minutes uphill, you hit a hiking trail that will take you up on the mountain.

We speak a bit of german - and the austrians like that. Actually, once you've said a few sentences in german, they decide you are fluent, and they chatter like there was not going to be tomorrow. If you've ever heard austrians - particularly from the south - speak german, you'll know that the accent differs A LOT from regular german. So we were straining our ears trying to get what people were trying to say to us :)

I've decided to work on my german, as a result of this trip. So I bought a crime novel (by american writer Karin Slaughter, actually) in german, that I plan on reading when I finish the book I am reading right now. I'll keep my dictionary close at hand, but if I manage to finish and understand the german book, I'll get my hands on more of them. In my experience, that is probably one of the best ways to keep updated in a language you've allready learned.

I have most of my vocabulary in english from reading novels, news stories, blogs and bunches of other stuff in english. So I have great hopes for improving my german this way.

Well, we came back to Denmark after a week in Austria, and it was RAINING and RAINING ... but only for a few days. Then it cleared up, got warmer - and now we are enjoying a spot of wonderful, warm summer. It is supposed to stay nice all of next week, and that is what remains of our vacation.

This will probably be bad for the work we won't be doing on our room with the bay window - the one we are restoring - but hey! You have to be out to enjoy the weather!

Another full week of spare time, summer and the company of those I love - life is good!

Counting down

I can feel my body and mind counting down for vacation! On friday, my vacation starts.

3 weeks - I look forward to it every single year. Much as I like my job, I really dote on my summer vacation.

This year part of it will be spent in Austria - in a province called Kärnden. My husband, myself and the two "little ones" (15 and 18 years old) will be going there to hike in the gorgeous landscape. Meanwhile, Andreas - my oldest (24) is coming home to mind the house.

The rest of the vacation we'll just enjoy not having to do anything :)

At the moment, I put in extra hours every week. I am momentarily stationed in Silkeborg, a drive of an hour and 15 minutes each way. So many mornings, I get up early in order to be there at 8. I drive in the wee hours of the morning with my sound books, my coffee and my cheese sandwich, through pretty morning landscapes, and I return again in the afternoon. Most days I am home around the same time I normally would.

But I still feel the extra hours, and the extra tension it gives to know we have a huge task to accomplish before next fall.

We are converting a big bank into our system complex, and a lot of functions need to be added to our existing systems before that can happen. That is what my team and I do. And I am acutely aware of each week that passes.

But when I go off on vacation, I will cleanse my mind of any thoughts of work. I will enjoy spending time with my family, I will take time to read books, sleep late and just generally enjoy myself.

I will recharge my batteries, and be ready for the hustle and bustle when I return.

I am counting down!

On being happy as a clam

A while ago I got a phone call from a blogger, that I've been exchanging comments with, and sometimes had one-on-one contact with online for a number of years.

The call was a nice surprise, because she is a lovely lady, with lots of interesting angles on life.

She was, it turned out, a bit worried about me, because I blog more rarely, and when I do, it seemed too rosy - could I really be that happy, and could things be that all-round-good in my neck of the woods?

I thought about it for a long time, and since then I wondered - am I really as happy as my blog postulates?

The answer turns out to be - yes, I am. My life actually is devoid of great sorrows and relatively free of weltschmertz.

I am in a relationship with a man, that manages to make me happy morning, noon and night. Even when he is not here, it makes me amazingly happy to imagine his face and think that he will come back home to spend his life with me in a little bit.

Our life together is happy, giving and receiving and completely uncomplicated. In the 10+ years we've lived together, we've probably had 2 fights. We don't always agree, but we embrace each others person with love, and we find solutions to our differences.

My kids have grown up to be lovely adolescents and adults. Bruno and I have 5 children all together (3 of them mine), and when you have kids, you have worries - but not the kind that keeps me up at night. These days even my relationships to the father of my children is tranquil, friendly and cooperative.

When it comes to my extended family, I can't find any problems either. Our parents are aging - all in their 70'es, and disease and age do cause worries - that is not to be avoided. But still, harmony is dominant. My mother is an agile and sharp-headed lady of 77, and my mother-in-law is one of the toughest, most fun and positive people I know, in spite of my father-in-law's illness - he has a bad case of smokers lungs, which is known to be quite debilitating.

At work I thrive with what I do. And I sincerely like and care about my nearest colleagues - the guys in my team. They are nice, fun and professionally able people, that clearly don't mind going the extra mile, and we have a good time while getting the job done.

I live in a lovely house, that my husband and I picked out ourselves, and that we are restoring room by room. I love being close to town, and the life that it provides. I adore the little, cozy spots in our small garden - the morning sun on the terrace, the shady spot under the pear tree - and we have nice neighbours.

Even my car makes me happy :) When I pick it up in the parking cellar after a day of work, I smile at it, when it greets me with flashing headlights. Then it treats me to a lovely, comfortable drive, where coffee is served (if I remembered to make it) and a nice story is read to me - I like crime stories the best :) The drive takes us through a nice moor landscape, and it doesn't really feel all that long any more.

Oh golly! Sometimes I think, like beforementioned blogger - I've gone soft and content with too little, but making status, I find that I have incredibly much! Including all kinds of ways to improve my life and myself even more.

That I happen to have been granted a positive and easy going personality, probably accents it and makes it even easier to be me.

But my conclusion has to be - I AM that happy, and my life IS that good. There may not be a colour coordinated flower setting in my garden, and my everyday plates may still be the dull white ones we bought in bulk when we moved in together. My garden chairs may have white paint flaking off (thus becoming shabby chik at a point where it is not really modern any more) and I may need to lose a pound or ten (but I don't bother right now). My bookshelves may be messy, and my tiny lawn may need mowing. My current knitting has been halfways done for months - but hey!

I am pretty good. Life is fine.

Even when I consult my deepest gut feeling.

Adventure on a saturday

Sometimes Bruno and I go off on an adventure.

Well, not a big, epic one - just small ones, where you see what is great about the small stuff. And we had one of those yesterday.

We know a guy who likes to go hiking with his wife, and when they talk about it, it sure sounds like a nice thing to do! So we talked about trying it. But you gotta start out small - and certainly when you have a slipped disc that likes to act up, which my dear husband has.

Yesterday we planned a slightly longer walk on Addit Næs - not very far from Silkeborg, where I work. Bruno biked up in that area not too long ago and liked it, and he also had a nice map of the area, that we could use to avoid getting lost.

So, yesterday morning we stuffed a backpack with raincoats, coffee and other essential stuff, and got in the car. Near our starting point we went into a bakery for a couple of raspberry cakes (yummy!) and soon we were driving down very narrow forest roads.

Fortunately Bruno knew where we were going, and soon we parked the car, and off we were, walking out into the forest.

We walked about 10 km in Addit Næs (I'd forgotten to charge my Garmin Forerunner, so it ran out of juice after 7 km), and we only met a few people on our way - the forest maintenance guy and a runner. Very different from the areas we usually walk in around our home, where you almost need traffic rules to handle all the people walking dogs, running or riding their bikes.

About halfways we found a nice place to sit down with our coffee and cake, while we looked at a small stream with lots of little bugs and snails - you know, the little skater bugs that run on the surface of the water? There were also a mosquito, that really wanted to get in close contact with Bruno, but he was not very interested!

Back at the car we drove a few miles up to Klostermølle, not far from Gl. Ry. Here we took another walk for about 3 km, to a peak called Sukkertoppen, where there is an amazing view of the area.

It was a great nature experience, walking in that area. The wooded area is rather big, and Bruno claims that he could plan 10 trips like the one we took, without walking the same paths. It was beautiful, varied and nicely un-crowded. You feel a bit closer to nature, when you don't meet dog-walkers and runners every time you turn a corner.

There was plenty of other stuff to look at ... great, wide-spanning views, with trees in all shades of green. Tiny streams making waterfalls, and loads of pretty lakes hiding between the trees. Places where the forest would suddenly open up, and make room for a stretch of moor.

And you talk so well, when you walk. We touched on all kinds of subjects, and fantasized about all the places we'd love to hike in. We planned a weekend trip canoeing on Gudenåen, and a hike from shelter to shelter in Sweden - and loads of other things.

It is so much value for money, a walk like that. A couple of bucks for cakes, and the gas to get there - and we brought coffee, water, and a couple of cans of coke, carefully wrapped in wet newspapers by Bruno, so that he could surprise me with a cold cola at the right time :)

That bought us a wonderful nature experience, exercise (several hours of walking must count for something) and quality time spent with each others.

We finished off the day by driving to Silkeborg and eating at a greek restaurant. As I go there every day, I spotted a place named Zorba (is there a law that all greek restaurants MUST be named "Hellas" or "Zorba"??). I like greek food, so we went there for late lunch / early dinner. We had 8 mezes (like tapas, only greek) with nice Mythos beer, and coffee with chocolate cake & vanilla ice cream. It was good food, and I'd gladly go eat there some other time.

All in all, we had a lovely day. Well spent, and we were good & tired by the time we were back home.

We plan to go on more trips like this - it is good for the body and the soul :)

Melodies for the road

Before I got the flu, it was my birthday. And one of my presents, from Bruno, was an album by danish artist Agnes Obel.

This is her debute as an artist, and it is not like anything else you hear, really. Her soft voice is accompagnied by a classical sounding piano score, or by something as whimsical as a harp. It works beautifully, and even more so because of the quaint harmonies and the way she handles rhythm.

The music makes me think of cool mists over dusky moors, and I keep finding more little details to catch my ear.

These past days this album has provided the soundtrack for morning sun over Vejle Fjord, and has carried me through the moors of mid Jutland going home.

I am sure my driving is a little calmer and safer while I listen.

If I believed in Nemesis...

... I would curse myself for declaring me almost well again this saturday.

Because I wasn't really that hot sunday. And the cough was back, with its older brother.

So today I went to let my physician listen to my cough. He pulled out the stethoscope, listened some more and swiftly wrote out a prescription for antibiotics that should make the rattling sound make like a tree and leave.

With the penicillin in hand, I now believe I will soon get better!

Or else!!

Hrmpff.

Revival of me & my blog

So, spring has really come to Denmark!

These past 2 weeks we've had almost-summer-like temperatures, and I, for one, overdid it completely.

I don't know how many days off people have in other countries - I remember the US having not very many days off around easter - but here we have thursday, friday and monday off around the easter weekend. Also, the vacation days you get at work expire on may 1´st and then you get a new batch. So I took 3 days off before easter to enjoy a full 10 days of r&r.

My days off were great! Lovely weather, spending time in the garden, hanging out with my kids ... doing stuff I felt like. Wednesday my youngest son and I rode our bikes to a nearby beach - all in all 25 kms - and I guess I just got carried away with the summer spirit.

I like to ride my bike at a good pace, and even though my son is 15 and taller than me, I am still quite a bit stronger than he is. So I sort of wore him out going too fast on the way out, and that marked our pace on the way home waaay down. And I got cold, having broken a sweat on the way out there.

The next day I said to Bruno "I think I have a spring cold coming on," and boy, was that an understatement!

Because from last friday and up until today - saturday, more than a week later - I have been totally on the bench. Coughing, headaches, sore throat, fever ... you name it, I had it. And I managed to contaminate both my daughter and my loving husband - oh well, that got me company in the couch this week.

Yesterday I was still wondering whether I'd be able to make it to work on monday. Today, however, I am loads better! Not quite back in fighting shape, but I will be there in a few days.

Today, Bruno and I actually put on real clothes (as opposed to sweatpants and a tshirt), and walked downtown to see an exhibition on the plans for the new neighborhood that is going to be developed on the site downtown where we once had a huge fertilizer factory sending out its poisonous fumes. It looks like it is going to be a great place in 15 years from now.

We actually mused on the possibility that this could be a great place for us to buy an apartment when we retire :)

Well, the point of this post was really how I wasted an entire week of lovely spring weather nursing a stupid case of influenza. And how I am now rejoining the living.

And how I thought I'd revive my english blog in the process ;-)

House plans ...

Come april it's been 3 years since we carried the last boxes out of our 70'es house in Snoghøj and moved in here at Fasanvej - in our charming red brick 2 story house from 1926, close to the center of town.

One of the things we fell in love with then was the pretty bay window in the room next to the living room - and we could imaging how nice it could be. This room was, in short, ugly - with the brown 70'es windows, the kiddie carpet, and the strange two-tone floor underneath, the terrible cigarbox ceiling and the unpainted walls - but we saw the a potentially lovely room.

A combination of an office and a living room. No TV, to nice chairs by the bay window, a small table for our cups of coffee or glasses of red wine, soft colors, the floors stripped, new windows...

We changed the windows 2 years ago, and the kiddie carpet is long gone. But the ceiling and the walls are still unpainted , and the room is, besides being my home office, a storage room, where unwanted things go :(

But it ends now!

Yesterday we sat down with our original list of projects, from when we moved in. It was a long list, and a lot of things were ticked off. But we needed to get the big perspective, and to get the jobs categorized, in small and big tasks, and the kind that we need to buy help to get done.

As we got our remaining projects in order, we decided that our first project we'd start on, would be the room with the bay window.

Today we started out a little bit. The first step was to organize and empty the room, and get rid of all that was in there, that we did not want to keep. And today I went through the bookshelves in there, so it is now ready to empty, take down, and reassemble in the basement, where it will keep all of our stuff while we renovate the room.

There is a long way to go. The room needs new ceilings, and we are going to raise them to the original height, because in the 70'es somebody lowered them. The walls need to be re-done, as they are covered with a kind of insulation that burns very easily, and we want to replace that with plaster walls.

Perhaps the wall separating the bay window room from the living room will need to be made higher - we think it's made after the ceiling has been lowered.

We also need an electrician to come and make more outlets - there is ONE in the entire room - and a carpenter to strip the floor.

We need to paint the room, and get new furniture.

A couple of comfortable chairs, a small table, and a sofa that converts into a guest bed, lamps, a new work station table - I can almost see how nice it is going to be!

All this energy - it must be the spring setting in :)

Teaching old dogs new tricks

If you don't already know, I work at a company that makes software for banks.

And last september, the news came out that we were going to take in the 3rd biggest bank in Denmark by 2012. Up until now, this bank have had their own IT unit, but as demands from laws and than kind of thing has been growing, they found it less and less attractive - they were spending a lot of manpower meeting legal demands, and as a result had too little manpower left over to develop new systems to help support their business.

As they looked around, they found a willing and competent partner in my company - Bankdata. It is owned by a number of local banks, the largest being no. 4 in Denmark.

What followed was - a number of people working at their IT unit in Silkeborg, had to swap places with a number of people working at my company in Fredericia. The two towns are a 75 minute drive apart - so to make up for that, driving to work is paid for, both the expense and the time, up until the final conversion of their systems into ours in october 2012.

By november it became clear that my department was being sent to Silkeborg, and I was really fine with that, given the good conditions we got. I mean, I am quite fleksible - or at least, I thought I was.

Now I have worked in Silkeborg for little over a month, and I can say that it has been a lot harder than I had figured at the time. To be quite frank, moving my work base that far away hit me like a ton of bricks - for a number of reasons.

For one, the drive. It is a 91 km drive to Silkeborg, and the last half is on smaller roads, where passing slower vehicles is very difficult. Add to that a lot of snow, slippery roads, and temperatures down where the salt they spread on the roads don't have any effect whatsoever. Even though I am not a nervous or anxious driver, a long trip in the dark (morning starts around 8 this time of year), with your senses at high peak to be ready for all kinds of situations, is tiring.

Another thing - new surroundings. A new office building. New people. Having to figure out where the cafeteria, the printer, the meeting rooms, the coffee automat - pretty much EVERYTHING - is. Not being able to book meeting rooms, not being able to operate the video meeting equipment. Working on a technical setup that is far from good (actually feeling like a VERY temporary setup), and working out all the quirks on that.

The change in pace - because driving is part of your working day, as a rule you lose 2,5 hours of working time e-v-e-r-y day. It really makes your cadence go down seriously - and even though I know those are the terms right now, it is very frustrating for a result oriented project manager. So far, we have managed to make ends meet in my team - due to the guys being really good sports and using extra hours on the bonus deal our company has given us (put down 100 extra hours the next year and get a money bonus on top of your overtime pay).

The change in your everyday life. A lot of my working days start at 6 in the morning, when I leave Fredericia to drive to Silkeborg, I choose to do my overtime in the morning, to have it affect my family life the least. So I have to change my sleep pattern, or be very tired at the end of the week. And I don't get the nice mornings with breakfast and coffee and breakfast table chit-chat with Bruno and Kristian that I am used to.

Also, I am suddenly far away from my kids, my doctor, my hairdresser, my dentist, my chiropractor.... it takes a bit more logistics to make things work.

So, all in all, there has been a lot of change. A lot of it not positive. And I have had times where it has been difficult for me to focus on why this is a good thing. Even though I know it is for a bigger purpose, and that it will make sense in the end, it has been a hard pill to swallow.

To be perfectly honest, I've been experiencing slight stress symptoms this december. Notice: I have not had STRESS, but I've had a couple of alarm lights flashing, that I recognize all too well. For one thing, I have been sleeping poorly. A classic stress giveaway for me. I've been waking up in the wee hours of the morning, and not been able to go back to sleep. Most frequently on the nights, where I've had to go to Silkeborg the next day. My moods have been up and down - mostly down - and my usual love for my job has been faltering. I have not been feeling happy at all.

I guess it must have been showing. Because about a week ago my dpt. manager looked at me during our weekly status - actually I was just catching my breath after a long ramble explaining how things were going in my team - and said "How about you - are you okay?".

Difficult question. But I had to fess up - and say that I had been happier.

"I know," he said "You are usually a happy girl, but you haven't been smiling lately." Good leadership work - he is a busy guy, and I am a fairly good actress.

Sometimes I've had this unpleasant experience that I found my mouth opening and a lot of negative stuff came out. And that is really not the kind of person I want to be. But it seems like somebody was taking over my body, and I was sitting on my own shoulder yelling "HEY!! Stop it!! This is not me, I am happy, positive and flexible!!"

So - I've been working really hard with myself to solve this situation. I've been thinking about how I could fit this challenge into my life in a way that would make me find my smile and my love for what I do again. The good news is, I thing I am winning this one. I've found a set of routines and a mindset, that I can work with.

And this week, the amazing thing happened: I sat at work, and I heard myself laughing. Hard and hearty, and I have felt good and energetic. My joy at working is back, and best of all: I sleep like a baby all night, every night.

So - it is possible teaching an old bitch new tricks. All you need is time :-)

I am still around, you know :D

I know it's been quiet here on my blog.

December just came and went in a hurry - and my focus was otherwhere.

I spent my time on extra xmas activities during december, including a couple of concerts with my vocal group, X-tetten (they went really well, thank you :). I had xmas parties to go to and cookies to bake and presents to buy. I took more time off for xmas than planned - I guess I needed it.

And I worked at getting used to the drive from Fredericia to Silkeborg - and learned that driving 182 km (bit more than 100 miles) every day on roads as slippery as a skating rink is not something I enjoy.

I worked out a little to little and ate a little too much.

And here I am, it is 2011, and a brand new year lies at my feet. I have no new years resolutions, and no goal for this year. But I am here, still blogging (every now and then), alive and kicking, and in fine shape (well - working on the shape).

I plan to go to the US this year, though. I want to go see my bestest friend in Torrington.

And I might blog about that, too :-)