What's this...?

Take a look at this cartoon.

When I looked at it I thought "uhh.... ok....". Then I saw the guy lying in the middle and, strangely enough, I found it offensive. I have no reason to whatsoever, but my first reaction was a "what...??"

Something has changed inside of me and I'm not sure if I like it. People you meet, places you go, even dreams you have at night, everything affects you. For better or worse.

I always try to see both sides of the story. Playing the devil's advocate, that's me. The past months I've been able to see more of a side I'd never seen before, I just hope I wasn't pushed to far away from the middle...

Me, me, me!

A week or two ago I asked some people I know on the net to describe me with one word. What kind of impression had they gotten of me during the years/months/weeks we had talked? Some know me better than others and I wanted to see how 'apples' comes across.

Listed in the order I got them:

- beautiful (inside your heart)
- diffident
- interesting
- apples (it describes everything) *erm...*
- understanding
- lovely
- thoughtful
- adorable
- functional
- confined
- loner
- open-minded
- mysterious
- inspiration
- intriguing
- open, lunatic
('lunatique' because one day you are happy and cool and another day you are more nervous and a little bit hard somtimes)

If I ever feel low I can just look at this list and see that people really do think I'm a nice person (or are too scared to tell the truth). Am I allowed to have a favourite among these? I'm not sure, but if I was to have one or a few, it would be those that really got through to the real me. Like 'diffident' came from a person who doesn't know me too well but it's right on the mark. Same with 'confined' and the person who added that to the list. Maybe I reveal more about myself when I'm not trying to. Maybe the real me shines through when I think it's least likely to do so. Or maybe... maybe one day my maybe's will stop and I'll be able to say what's really on my mind.

You never know. Anything can happen.

Phobias

Do you mix agoraphobia with arachnephobia?
Do you know what anuptaphobia is?

For a reason I can no longer remember I started making a list of strange phobias. It probably was because I read about some fascinating ones, it could have been because I found some names I didn't know or it might simply have been to get out of studying for my exams for a little while.

Either way, I did it about a week ago and here are the results:

Aerophobia - fear of fresh air
Barophobia - fear of gravity
Cathisaphobia - fear of sitting
Dermatosiophobia - fear of skin
Elutherophobia - fear of freedom
Frigophobia - fear of cold
Genophobia - fear of sex
Hedonophobia - fear of pleasure
Ideophobia - fear of ideas
Japanophobia - fear of Japanese
Kinetophobia - fear of movement or motion
Logophobia - fear of words
Metrophobia - fear of poetry
Nephophobia - fear of clouds
Osmophobia - fear of smells
Parthenophobia - fear of virgins or young girls
Rectophobia - fear of rectum
Scholionophobia - fear of school
Tocophobia - fear of pregnancy or childbirth
Uranophobia - fear of heaven
Vestiophobia - fear of clothing
Xanthophobia - fear of the colour yellow of the word yellow


If that doesn't scare you, maybe this one will:

Phobophobia. Fear of phobias. Yikes!

Anybody got any of these?


- Phobias from The Phobias Page

Agoraphobia - fear of open spaces
Arachnephobia - fear of spiders
Anuptaphobia - fear of staying single

As the sun sets...

I've finally put some comments on my 17. Mai post so if you ever wondered what the pictures were all about, now you've got a chance to find out. Run for it!

Sometimes.

Sometimes you find yourself in strange situations that you put yourself in, and that you really do want to be in. Most of the time that happens in real life but sometimes it can happen online. Anywhere that you can find people as strange as yourself. Yesterday I found myself in a situation like that. It wouldn't have worked if I hadn't wanted to so I guess I didn't really 'find' myself in that situation, more placed myself there.

Sometimes you are willing to give more than you thought you were. Other times you think you will be able to give anything but you realize you can't. Sometimes you want someone to do things for you that you don't want to do for them. Sometimes others think you won't do something that you have no problem doing. Sometimes it's all so innocent it can't be taken seriously, but at the same time, on some level, you know it's real.

Sometimes you feel naked just by answering a question or daring to do something. Suddenly it feels like there's ice inside your chest. But it melts, the cold never lasts. Sometimes you have to say or write something you didn't plan on either saying nor writing. Sometimes it feels like you have a picture in your mind of what something should be like, other times you really do have a picture you didn't think you'd get. Sometimes you play with sand. Sandcastles and fishies.

Sometimes.

Amazing grace...

Today Firefox didn't want to let people see my blog. If you typed in the address it said you were here, but the page that was shown was amazingbiblestudies.com, which calls itself;

"a Mega-site of Bible, Christian & religious information"

Maybe someone felt my page was too 'ungodly'...

apples revealed

All your 'apple'-related questions answered.


Many years ago I was in a chat room. It was a room on a webpage where we had email accounts, message boards, like a little community with groups of friends.

One day when I was in one of the chat rooms we were talking about famous people whose first and last names started with the same letter. I asked;

"alright, my name is Anne; what should my last name be?"

"Apple"

and that's how apples was born.

The reason it's stuck with with me until now, years later, is probably that I got a new hotmail address not too long afterwards. I'd never wanted a hotmail address, I had one a few years before that but it was just too 'typical', everybody had it so I didn't want to.

Then came MSN. I needed an address and I guess you, like most people, know from experience how hard it is to get the address you want when 200 million people(or thereabouts...) have already signed up. So after a while I landed on anne_o_apple, which wasn't taken.

The apple thing just stayed there in my address for a while and I'm not sure what happened. I've probably got so many questions about the 'apple(s)' that it was the first thing that came to mind when I started this blog last year. Applestories was a fact.


Apples is a confident Moonbeam.
But that's another story.

An inbox full of apples

I've been getting so much spam lately, I've taken my email addy off here and anywhere else it's just sitting still for people to look at.

I did, however, put up a new one so if I get any spam there, I know you're to blame. And then I'll smack you in the head with a shovel. (yes I'm serious)

The addy is applestories@gmail.com and I even put it in MSN on Trillian so if you suddenly feel a burning desire to tell me off for something or other, you're very welcome to do so.


Oh, and if anybody wants a gmail account please give me a shout. I just can't get rid of them.

17. mai

Our national holiday started with rain. Our day, the day we celebrate that, in 1814, our constitution was written. Lots of rain and 2 degrees C, people are lining up by the university to walk down the hills to join the parade.




You can't have May 17th without walking in a parade, so I joined someone from the Uni marching down to the square where everyone was to line up. This is looking down from the top of a hill, down lots of stairs, to the square.




Not easy to see but there were so much people, I've probably never seen so many people in one place in my life. They were standing like this along the parade route, which went on for miles. The parade is where anyone can walk with a flag or a poster with the name of their group. There was anything from schools and kindergartens, sports teams, Bergen's football team and great pride had their own place, there were old cars and people on bikes, singing groups and I even saw some under the definition "those of us who don't have our place in the parade". It's like this in all of the country, but the bigger the town, the bigger the parade. So if you want to join, no one can stop you. Why would they want to?




Speeches, speeches, there are always speeches. It was raining though, then the sun came out. When we were watching the parade it started hailing. The weather kept changing. The secretary of the Children and Families part of the government had her speech but there weren't much people there. Was a little boring so we didn't stay long. I heard two and a half speeches, without having to, I feel proud! (I'm still a kid, really..)




The viking ship. They put this up just for the day, I think, they were taking it down the next. This was where they held the speeches. Clouds in the east.




The weather is always nice on May 17th. It did look bad in the morning but later the sun came and it was warm and oh so beautiful. I love trees and here's a picture of three of them. A few days later the pink flowers had started falling off but here they were just gorgeous; it was a perfect day in many ways.




The fire station all decorated with Norwegian flags. People still watching the parade, it never seemed to end. Another beautiful day in May, it's a special day. It's the childrens' day with ice cream and hot dogs. We don't have military parades. We have children, we have flags, we have the russ (gotta love it, I was blue). It's a happy day. If you're ever here on the 17th of May, get a flag and join the parade. You'll never forget it.

Looking for Mike

Mike was a guy I met at Spinchat a little over a year ago. I was living in France, so was he. He was an an American working in Belgium (I think) and living just on the border. Funniest thing I'd ever heard, living in one country, working in another... Anyway, I think we only talked once or twice but he really made an impression on me.

His 200kB-something email had just being lying in my Hotmail inbox for over a year. I'd thought about writing him or deleting it but never got around to it. We sent a few emails back and forth but it seemed like half of them got lost on the way. Tonight I decided I was going to send him one, a year after I last talked to him, even though he has no idea who I am. It's just something I have to do.

I wouldn't ordinarily write this, sending a weird email to someone I have no idea who is (and who might very well read this) isn't really a big event. I guess I just thought that if I don't get a reply, and I decide to delete the emails and that was that; at least I'll have this to remind me of it. It's strange when you talk to someone who makes you think, even a year after you had a conversation with them. He had dreams. He believed in what he did. And he had the balls to go for it.

Any wonder I liked him?



Edit:

"This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification. Delivery to the following recipients failed..."

The one that got away...