Ouch

There is going to be a wedding in the family at the beginning of November. It's not really going to be a huge celebration but somehow we still felt like we should prepare something. They don't want the general wedding progamme with silly games so the only option is to play some music. So I got my guitar out of the box to play a few Irish songs with my cousin (who is totally into Irish music and plays the tin whistle).

The problem is that I have a Western guitar with steel strings and of course once upon a time I had to get the hardest strings for this guitar (because it sounds so much better but the fingers are completely destroyed ... who cares about fingers when you can have the sound eh?). The finger tips of the left hand are so sore now ... and I have to practise every day to manage at least the basics .... I must be am mad .... ouch!

Frozen

Frozen waterfall and sunset over frozen lake - you get that a lot in Norway in November. 

Ahhh, winter is on its way and this year I really hope it will bring lots of snow :)

Customer-friendly ... yeah, right!

Dear company starting with an a (and sharing the name with a river in South America), 

for years I have been a very loyal customer since I never had problems with any of the products I bought. In particular, I liked your offers on mp3 music because I am moving a lot and having to transport lots of CDs is just not very practical for me (since I listen to music when working at the computer, I would make mp3 files out of CDs anyway). 

Until now, there was no problem with buying and downloading mp3 music as long as I was in Germany (with my IP address to prove it). Recently, you decided to change to a new payment system and you promise that the customer can get the product with just one click. That actually works well with books for another (kind) product I have. With the mp3s, however, it does not work for me and instead I get a message that this purchase is only allowed for people residing in Germany. If you do not want to sell your products that is fine with me but what really annoys me is the fact that after 3 e-mails from my side, explaining that I have a German IP address AND a German provider AND am residing in Germany, you're still not believing me and instead tell me that I should use my computer at home since internet cafés and public places sometimes might use international IP addresses and if in doubt ask my provider. Strangely enough, all the tracking programmes I tried to check my IP address confirm that I am actually in Germany (and I know that I am or at least I thought that I was). And since you had no intention to take my problem seriously for the past 4 days and maybe look if something on your side was wrong (which can happen no doubt), I bought my music from a different store. You will not believe it, they never complained that my IP address was not German (and they have the same restrictions as you do).

Way to go!

Sky on fire

On the way to a cave for bat night. This one was the only good thing which resulted in that trip. While driving there, it started raining, then a tunnel was closed and we had to find an alternate round to get to our destination so we came too late to get a seat inside for the talk which was horribly boring (which scientist nowadays shows slides and graphs from 20 years ago for more than 2 hours? And that for an audience including children. Are things so different in biology?). Finally in the cave, we saw 2 (!!!) bats and were told that normally there were so many that you'd be afraid they bump into you but due to the rain they apparently didn't come. Unfortunately this wasn't really worth the 2 hours drive and 2 hours boring talk ... oh well, we wouldn't have known if we hadn't tried.

Styggmann

I think this was a hike to the mountain Styggmann in the Skrimfjell close to Kongsberg (it's been a while so I am not completely sure anymore). The only trouble was going in November ... there wasn't that much snow but water had been running down the hiking path and was frozen so we would have been better off with ice skates or at least some spikes on the shoes. I guess it's a nice hike in summer though ;). Due to the extreme conditions we also didn't make it to the top.

New project

 

Field salad for the winter ... so looking forward to it :)

Summer visitor

Although there are no frogs spawning in our pond, we always have a few staying around in summer.

This one came out for a photo shooting.

Normally the best you get is a picture of lots of plants where you have to search for the head.

The picture is from last year but the frog might possibly be the same.