No, I am not dead...

...though I see why you might think so.

The thing is.. the more I have going on, the more people I talk to every day, the less I feel the need to spill my guts on here. Between working, volunteering and negotiating my way through living with my parents - I'm all talked out!

But now it's summer. I've done nothing since the school holiday started three weeks ago.

Today my parents suddenly went off to Turkey for two weeks, my sister is moving home and the only thing I have to do is sort through my entire childhood in the attic and decide what parts of it to throw out.

...though I have a feeling there was something else...

Oh yes. Find a job. I definitely need to find a job.

Just sucks most jobs are in Norway when I don't want to be.

I've been hacked!

At 1.14pm I was hacked by someone seemingly located on a mobile device in Germany.

This person sent approximately a hundred emails to people in my address book, resulting in Google shutting it down. Which meant they shut down this blog too.

First of all - if an email got through to you, I'm sorry. I hate getting spam too and I always wonder what people do to get their email addresses taken over.

Second - Gmail seems to have caught pretty much every single email, labeled them as spam, and refused to send them. I am seriously impressed!

Third - to the best of my knowledge I have never had an account hacked before and now I'm not entirely sure how to prevent it from happening again. I'm resetting the obvious options but I'll have to look into it some more in the morning.


I wonder if this means someone has physically been in my Gmail account or if they've hijacked my address from somewhere else.. Either way, I hope they keep their sticky fingers away from my accounts in the future!

Blogging

One thing that often strikes me when visiting random (or not so random) blogs is how many of them seem to have lasted only a few months.

People seem to start off with a blast, telling the readers everything they're interested in and everything they'll write about. A few post (and months) later they do a post along the lines of; "I'm sorry I update so rarely, this will change from now on, stay tuned!"

Then a post or two later the blog ends, gets buried in Blogger's basement, until a year or so later I stumble across it and blow off the dust.


Do people quickly realize blogging wasn't as fun and rewarding as they thought? That they didn't get fifty comments on each post like those blogs they've read before?

Or do people realize they don't really have that much interesting stuff to tell the world anyway?

I'm usually in the second category but I'm sticking with it. I'm not quite sure why sometimes, but it's become a little hiding place for me (though not so hidden anymore).

This blog is kinda old (for a blog) and I started it basically before I even knew what a blog was - so I had no expectations. Maybe that's why I feel I have a right to fill your screen with random words strung together and wonder if you'll read them..

I realize how quickly blogs die, and I am glad there are some people out there who do stick with it. I'll do my best to stay among them - apples won't look good with dust on them.

Layouts

I'm going to try and change to Blogger layouts. Again.
I'll probably end up hating it and switching back. Again.

This is gonna be a bumpy ride.

I really should learn something, anything, about html codes, it would make everything so much easier...

Hating the stupid

I hate stupid Blogger and layouts and all the html that gets messed up, and I hate all the tags and codes and things that simply do not exist when they're clearly supposed to do so!

And I hate how it won't make a label cloud, and how archives look stupid, and how impossible it seems to make three columns look nice without messing everything up and switching to layouts and starting over. And even then it still gets messed up!

Once upon a time...

I should write a post about a woman named Shelly who has a blog right here on Blogger. But I think you should check out her blog for yourself because I could not possibly do her justice.

Some of you might know that I spent almost a year, between high school and University, as an au pair in the small town of Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse (just outside of Paris), France. I lived with a British family, looking after two children, Eloïse and Sebastian. It was the best year of my life. The kids were... well, little devils, in the beginning, but I think I became more of a friend than an au pair in the end. One day not long before I left, one of them said "Anne is funny" and giggled a bit...

It was a nightmare in the beginning, but when they knew they had to respect me, and that I wanted to have fun, just like them, things went great. Children and animals are easy when the parents/owners aren't around. I can be myself and people tend to love me when I am myself. Being happy is what it's all about, isn't it? When you're happy, you sort of.... radiate something. The first two of the last four weeks I was there, I was falling in love; the third week I was broken hearted and by the fourth, I was starting to realize how much I was going to miss everybody.

Children do something to you, and although I've never wanted any myself, I've always thought I'd end up having 3 or 4. I think love, as in finding someone you want to spend the rest of your life with, is more important, but I also realize that this is just my opinion. Finding that guy... I don't know if that will ever happen, but I don't want a family unless I find him. And I don't even know if he exists. But I do know that I already miss Seb and Eli, and I promise I'll come visit you my sweeties, even if it will cost me the last of my student loan.

I want to say 'Thank you' to Shelly and her blog (no I am most certainly NOT over-doing it with the URLs). It's taught me just a little bit more about life. It's reminded me of some things I do not want to forget. And it's showed me that gummy bugs can be scary. Thank you, Shelly. And once again, all the best.