Monday, October 27, 2003
A new day is here, our furniture is due to arrive in a few hours! But, of course, something has come up which will not allow us to enjoy it for a couple of more days. We are babysitting tonight and tomorrow for our friends here, Tapsa and Pirjo. They are both leaving town on projects and their 10 year old Nikke needs some company. This is a fair trade-off since they are our drivers when we need them and have given us support since our arrival, but the timing is crappy.
It snowed all weekend long and has finally stopped. There is about 6-8 inches left on the ground and I don't think it's going anywhere for a while. This seems slightly early to me, it still being October and all, but what are you gonna do? Another element of the winter that smacked us in the face yesterday was daylight savings, it's getting dark here around 4:30-5pm and that's only going to get earlier, but with our house in order it shouldn't be too bad.
Today the cross-country skiers were out, I guess it was the retiree club, because there was not a single person out on skies younger than 60, or so it seemed.
I had a funny conversation with a couple of winos on Saturday. I had just picked up a bottle of wine - nice selection and cheap prices (a good combination) - and these two guys were standing next to my bike. For a moment I thought my bike was as good a gone, but these guys were quite friendly. They spoke to me in Finnish, I told them I don't speak it, and said I speak English. They asked me where I was from, I said New York & Texas and they stopped and asked if they could say something to me without me getting angry. I replied of course and they said, "F-ck the Bush." It made me laugh and we talked for a while. Then they said they were off for some winter sport, which consisted of drink Wild Turkey from the bottle with no gloves or hat on. Interesting game.
Sunday I had driving lessons, with a stick-shift. I know I should have learned this long ago, but we never had one in the fam. So learning this combined with driving in a snow storm led to some shaky nerves, but all went well.
One thing that pissed me off was the news coverage of the World Series, or lack thereof. It received almost no mentions in World Sport. The only thing they talk about is the Rugby World Championship and Soccer, it's driving me crazy. The damn BBC has the same stories running all the time, but it's in English so I watch, ugh.
The best show, in Finnish, on TV is their version of American Idol, simply called Idols. It's the same format, but is much more enjoyable to watch. There are some real country folk singing up there and they are awful. It's especially funny when they sing a song in English and their accents come out in full force.
So I've only got a few more minutes and I have a whole weekend of news and sports to catch up on. More later.
It snowed all weekend long and has finally stopped. There is about 6-8 inches left on the ground and I don't think it's going anywhere for a while. This seems slightly early to me, it still being October and all, but what are you gonna do? Another element of the winter that smacked us in the face yesterday was daylight savings, it's getting dark here around 4:30-5pm and that's only going to get earlier, but with our house in order it shouldn't be too bad.
Today the cross-country skiers were out, I guess it was the retiree club, because there was not a single person out on skies younger than 60, or so it seemed.
I had a funny conversation with a couple of winos on Saturday. I had just picked up a bottle of wine - nice selection and cheap prices (a good combination) - and these two guys were standing next to my bike. For a moment I thought my bike was as good a gone, but these guys were quite friendly. They spoke to me in Finnish, I told them I don't speak it, and said I speak English. They asked me where I was from, I said New York & Texas and they stopped and asked if they could say something to me without me getting angry. I replied of course and they said, "F-ck the Bush." It made me laugh and we talked for a while. Then they said they were off for some winter sport, which consisted of drink Wild Turkey from the bottle with no gloves or hat on. Interesting game.
Sunday I had driving lessons, with a stick-shift. I know I should have learned this long ago, but we never had one in the fam. So learning this combined with driving in a snow storm led to some shaky nerves, but all went well.
One thing that pissed me off was the news coverage of the World Series, or lack thereof. It received almost no mentions in World Sport. The only thing they talk about is the Rugby World Championship and Soccer, it's driving me crazy. The damn BBC has the same stories running all the time, but it's in English so I watch, ugh.
The best show, in Finnish, on TV is their version of American Idol, simply called Idols. It's the same format, but is much more enjoyable to watch. There are some real country folk singing up there and they are awful. It's especially funny when they sing a song in English and their accents come out in full force.
So I've only got a few more minutes and I have a whole weekend of news and sports to catch up on. More later.
// posted by Howard @ 10:25 AM 
