Almost patio weather

The smell of spring hormones lingers in the air. Fancy a drink outside with kisses from the spring sun? Hear the softly roaring sea?

Took this photo yesterday in our backyard. Yes, the sea is frozen, and yes, it says 'No winter maintenance' on the sign.

I want to cry into my snowy icy champagne.

Hamster wheel Friday

It's St. Patrick's Day.

Here in Hel, it only shows in the Google logo, and perhaps later in the few Oirish Pubs we have in town.

I'm drinking too strong coffee in stupid quantities, which makes me feel like this:

http://www.kossan.se/hamster_i_hjul.htm

Soon heading out to enjoy the sun.

Nothing to do with saints, but I've been meaning to mention about this fantabulously entertaining blog (completely in Finnish, I'm afraid) taking place in Van:

http://maksuttapuistoon.blogspot.com/

Funny and great with wording, too: our national curling hero's surname Uuspaavalniemi (literally = Newpaulcape) turns into Vanhapietarpoukama (=Oldpeterbay) in his blog.

Best web cam in Van

It's easy to fall in love with Vancouver again by looking at this:

http://www.numinous.ca/Webcam%20Page.htm

Early morning rhythms taste sour

Bad domestic beer on the train turned into nice white wine after all. Drunk with sunlight and my friend's good news on the train, after lots of babbling we suddenly remembered we needed to eat something and got our food just ten minutes before arriving at Tampere. Salmon soup with the moving snowy scenery was great.

Enjoyed the premiere of the documentary 'Kenen joukoissa seisot', dealing with the popular political singing movement of the seventies. Had no idea how much media interest it would gain. What o' different world it was back then. What o' lovely innocent faith in making the world a better place.

http://www.tamperefilmfestival.fi/2006/fin/kauppa.html

A great day had a stupid end; we waited for Giant Robot to start playing till 1am. There were two rapping idiots wasting everyone's time, performing some bad stuff before the real music came out. Yeah yeah, I have been e-mailing the list of Chuck Norris' fab qualities around, but hearing that it was Chuck Norris' 66th birthday accompanied by some bad jokes didn't make me laugh. http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/

In today's Helsingin Sanomat, there's an article of audience and some bands, too, wanting the gigs to start sooner rather than later.

Concerts at large venues usually start nicely around 9pm or 10pm, even earlier, and I think that it's still okay at smaller clubs to get the band on stage anytime before midnight. But at 1am all the anticipation has run dry.

I'm an old lady and need my sleep.

Right tracks to the film town

Gonna hop on a train to Tampere in a few hours, to see a bunch of films at the film festival. Yippeee! http://www.tamperefilmfestival.fi/2006/eng/index.html

Gonna meet my lovely friend on the train and drink bad Finnish beer out of plastic pint. Yippeee! http://www.koff.fi/en/products/beers/koff3.html

One of my fave bands, Giant Robot, will throw a gig tonight! Yippeee!
http://www.giantrobot.fi/index2.html


At 32, it's all about packing the right amount of warm clothes and dental hygiene device.

'Isn't it great that we have the hotel room for both nights, it means that we can go and have a nap between the films if we like', I said to my partner. And I was serious. Then it got even more serious, when I realized how things are now. Before, eons ago, I could have said: 'Isn't it great that we have the hotel room for both nights, it means that we can go and drink cheap wine/suffer in silence from a hangover between the films .'

Rays of babyboomers' dark light

Horizon was golden with light around seven a.m. Spring is crawling here, slowly, and with snow, but there's so much more light now you can feel hormones rustling somwhere underneath. Went to interview a professor of history today and walked past our historic downtown core in Hel in a perfect morning sunshine.

With frozen toes, it felt good to step into an old, silent building. The department of history at the Hel Uni is located in a building that was originally a military school for orphan boys, was then turned into a hospital in the mid 1800's and has now functioned as uni premises since 1997.

We discussed different meanings of home and roots and various aspects of European culture. I mentioned my cheerful theory that babyboomers will live well and prosper to be the healthiest generation ever, while us thirty-somethings will die prematurely. She, herself approaching fifty, had the same idea of the babyboomers: 'They will, I'm afraid, drag the rest of us with them, still for a long time.' All social structures have come roaring down with the babyboomers. At first, it was just that there were so many of them. Now, they have most of the power and money. And good teeth.

Just Can't Get Enough...

... of Depeche Mode, that is. We saw them in Vancouver in November and boy, were they in good shape; energetic, devoted, intense. They weren't bad in 2001 either, but there's clearly a difference on the current 'Touring the Angel' tour.

So we decided we wanted to see them again in Hel. Driving to the concert venue on Monday, there was someone carrying a plastic pint of beer in the snowy -8 celsius night.

Yep, we're in Hel. Just keep your beer frozen and down it thawed.

But the veterans did not let us down. Again, there were deliciously many classics lots of forty-somethings were singing and dancing to and Gahan was trying his best to get people moving. The band has never been this popular in Finland before. We're slow starters.

It's easy to forget concert nuances in four months, but I would still say that the guys were even more intense with their guitars this time, rough around the edges you wouldn't expect from a synth band. There was more freshness in the Van concert, though. Them getting slightly tired of touring or just me seeing them again?

There's something angelic about Martin Gore. He's not quite from this planet. Yay. Love it.

Steamy windows

There was water all around, the window was steamy, but it wasn't the car scene from 'Titanic'.

It took me 32 years to learn the secret of creating humid enough air in sauna with an electrical stove. Stepping to the sauna at my gym, the whole glass door was steamy. When I said that now we're talking - for once - the lovely lady sitting inside told me that she had poured water all over the place, on the walls, on the benches. It was heavenly humid. Now I know what to do next time. She had such a bubbly laughter, too.

But no, we weren't happy enough to whip each other, though.

With the birch twigs, I mean.

There were none round, anyway.

The unbearable lightness of gleeing

In times of any type of blahs or blues, open this link:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5619481843152124341