Today I actually visited and looked at the apartment I wrote about yesterday.  It is really just the basement of a house.  This is pretty common here in Norway, as you can rent out these without paying tax for them.  I lived in one such for about 20 years, in the original Chaos Node.  This is about the same size as that, looks a little smaller to me but not drastically so.  And I have less stuff now.  Much less stuff.  Of course it is rather small compared to the House of Chaos, or Fortress of Solitude, where I live now.  The difference is again not drastic, since there is so much of the landlord’s stuff standing around here.

The thing most difficult to adjust to would probably be to not have a house for myself anymore. It is quite habit-forming.  But affordable houses are far out in the countryside where there are no buses or trains.  You don’t come across an arrangement like I have now many times in a lifetime.  Most people probably don’t come across them ever. Even for me, one of the luckiest humans around, it did not last.

Anyway, the apartment faces out toward the wild forest.  It does not have floor heating like the Chaos Node had, but it has a wood stove and free wood.  And being a basement, it is naturally less of a frying pan in summer.

I told them I was interested, and the husband seemed rather enthusiastic about it.  But here in Scandinavia, the women have the final word on all domestic matters and some other matters as well. If she is uncomfortable with a single male living in the same house as their little girl, I’m off the list immediately. And given the prejudices around here, that could well happen.  A man is only borderline human until he has a woman to vouch for him.  Women do rule these lands, but subtly, with a silken glove over their iron fist.

At least I think I conveyed well that I was stable, well employed, financially comfortable, and experienced with living alone.  The majority of single men looking to rent are just crashing somewhere while looking for a new woman to attach themselves to.  Or worse, they are insane or on drugs.  My friendly, calming aura pretty much puts me out of that category.  (And I did not even need to sing to them… They do have a dog though, so I may still need that calming song.)

The apartment was not really finished, although officially they planned to rent it out from tomorrow.  It may be finished tomorrow in the sense that the paint begins to dry before midnight tomorrow, but nobody would move in that fast.  Anyway, in some days I will presumably know whether I get it or not.  In the meantime, I keep throwing away stuff. Today went a bunch of trashy supernatural romance novels.  (If you need to know, Margit Sandemo was my inspiration as a writer for a long time:  Even though she never wrote well in the sense that a literary critic would acknowledge, her books sold like hotcakes. )

Anyway, there went my day.  Oh, and we had a very important event at work today, but it went better than expected. I can’t talk about it though.  We have pretty high standards of secrecy, for reasons you would know if you knew what I was doing.