You wanted interior pictures. Here, the alternative heat source.
I am writing this sitting on a low bench in the living room of my new rented house at Møll, what I call “the Moth-house” since the Norwegian word “møll” literally means “moth”, although that is surely not the meaning of the place name. No, I have not moved in.  I came here after work, carrying with me a few things from home, as I planned to do.  The bus back to Kristiansand goes in about half an hour.
I have a bad deep cough. Â I am not sure if I finally got the Death Flu of Doom (although I would expect other symptoms to show up long before the chest cold) or perhaps an allergy. Â I spent more than an hour in the home office, which was dusty with the remains of drilling a hole through the wall and setting up the heat pump which is supposed to heat the place in winter and cool it in summer. Â It does not work, but I spent a lot of time there trying to get it up and running. I can only assume that they have not finished the installation, although it certainly LOOKS installed. Â In the end, I turned it off and went outside again and pulled the plug. The lights were on and the LEDs indicated that it received commands from the remote control, but nothing else happened, certainly there was no fan running as the booklet led me to expect. Nor was any heat coming from the unit, even after it had plenty of time to get started, and the lights indicated that it was running normally. Oh well.
I don’t know if it was the dust from inside the wall that triggered this cough. I did not have it the two previous times I were here, so I don’t think it is the house in general. In any case, it is pretty bad.
I got the province-wide bus card and it cost no more than what I was told, less than double the normal price between Kristiansand and Nodeland. I also asked the bus driver to help me get off the bus at Ytre Møll, as the stop is called. This he did. I think I can find it by myself next time, if any.  I enabled GPS on the mobile phone and followed on Google Maps.  Using the same technology again I should be able to get off at the right stop, or very nearly so. It is amazingly precise.  I love living in the future!
The touch-screen laptop is currently connected to the Internet through my mobile phone. I plan to leave it here in a kitchen drawer – the laptop, that is, not the phone! Â If God wills, I shall return to use it again. Â If not, I will have far more important concerns. But my chest feels less tight now, at least.
EDIT: I have come home to Nodeland, and there is no deep cough, just a sore throat from all the coughing earlier. I just walked for half an hour in air colder than the freezing point, so it was not the cold that triggered it either. I also have no fever. Â That strongly implies allergy. It seemed to recede already toward the end of my half hour in the living room, so perhaps it really was something in the home office. Â It better be the dust from the carpentry work. Â I was hoping to spend five years in that room.
There are some dusts that are more noxious than others, for some reason. Dusts from school rooms, for some reason, are like poison to me. It doesn’t really matter what district, only that it be a real school room, not a “portable” (equivalent to a “mobile home” school room). It doesn’t wear off, though, but lodges in my head and makes me miserable. I’m careful not to dislodge any more dust than necessary, and to leave every day when things are being dusted/swept. Hopefully they just haven’t finished with the installation of your heat pump. Maybe they’ll clean everything up and make it nicer as well as getting it into actual working order. Being warm and not having to wheeze and cough in your new home is a good thing. We had a heat pump . . . three houses ago? Jeff does not like them for some reason. I think it was the cooling aspect, though, that he didn’t like, and we have more need for that than you will. It is actually fairly cold-ish here. It’s been in the low forties all day, and will be around freezing tonight, then will be in the low forties/high thirties tomorrow. Tomorrow night we are even supposed to have a chance for . . . . . . SNOW!! I wish the kids could see real, substantial snow sometime. That probably sounds silly to you!
I love the stove in the photo! That is really neat! I wish I could see it more closely. Is the floor real wood, or is it just some type of wood-like substance? And what is that a stack of to the right of the stove? I can’t tell right now. My brain is fairly fried. I’ve been at school since about 6:50 this morning (went early for listening skills practice with my team, none of whom showed up!), stayed late until 4:30 with the same listening skills team, then went to the basketball game for a while after Jared texted me to say that the Johnson City kids (we are playing JC tonight) would like to see me. Then took Jenna and her friend to dance lessons. Then picked them up. Now am going to shower, do more laundry, do the dishes, wait for Coach Mathis to bring Jared home from the basketball games so that I can go to bed so that I can do it all again tomorrow!
I’ve been in contact with my current landlord and will most likely be renting here out January. Norway more or less grinds to a halt as Christmas approaches, and I am not moving in until that room is completed and has been aired for several days. Besides, I still haven’t had the Death Flu of Doom so it is anybody’s guess how long it will keep me in bed. This is a good time to have some margin of error, even if it costs money.
The photo is necessarily blurry because it is taken with my mobile phone, without flash, in lamplight. The nearby objects are wood for burning. The floor is made of a think layer of hardwood imposed on a cheaper but durable substrate. This is common here in Norway.
It sounds like your days are at least as interesting as mine! Perhaps you should get your own blog too. Surely it must be of interest to more people than me and my (very quiet) old friends and family.
Also, I can’t believe you and Jeff are already 3 houses old! So much for my notion that buying a house means not having to move every few years. Not counting the botched move, this is the third time I move in nearly 25 years!
1. Lived with parents, first in Wichita, then in Holliday, then in Iowa Park.
2. First teaching job, lived in apartment in Bowie.
3. Hated Bowie, moved back to apartment in Wichita.
4. Was traveling back and forth so much to care for livestock that I moved back home again.
5. Married, moved to Bastrop, 5+ hours away.
6. Ended up teaching in Dripping Springs instead of Bastrop, moved to rental house in Dripping Springs.
7. Built own house in Dripping Springs. (This is where you and I began talking.)
8. Divorced, moved to rental house in Johnson City.
9. Bought house in Johnson City.
10. Remarried, moved to house Jeff built in Johnson City.
11. Moved to rental house in San Saba, which we tried to buy, but sellers flaked out on us (which turned out to be a blessing).
12. Bought this house.