Here, in this case, is Riverview (the Mothhouse).  I should have been in my old home packing.  My friend said he would come around half past nine in the morning, and the place still looks like I live in it:  Books in the bookshelves, clothes on the floor (OK, only a few clothes, and then in the bedroom), computers still running, other computers standing opened after I tried but failed to repair them.  A couple of the oldest computers probably ought to be recycled, truth to tell. I may be able to format them still.  If I have not used them since last I moved (4 years almost to the day) then I probably won’t use them ever again.

A little old lady on the bus said words of wisdom today, although not to me. I overheard it because she spoke to the woman across the  aisle. Said the little old lady:  “If you don’t have time now, you’ll never have time.”

I still plan to fix the two big black computers Someday.  Someday is the eight day of the week, right?  Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Someday. They both just need a new power supply, preferably one with higher capacity so it does not melt like the previous did.  I am planning to order that after I move, because I want the delivery address to match the address on my credit card, and I can’t change the address on my card until I move. So Someday after I move I plan to order the parts that I can use to repair the computers another Someday.  But this first Someday I’ll need to unpack and get things in place after the move on Saturday.  Actually, the packing gets a bit easier because some of the stuff is already packed – last time I moved.  I intended to unpack it Someday.

Anyway, I went here instead because I wanted to broaden the shoveled path through the snow.  It should be broad enough now for almost everything, but I am still not sure about the fridge and washing machine.  I broadened it a good deal last I was here, but I got tired, so I decided to do it next Someday.  I changed my mind to today, but in the unexpected howling wind I did not get done as much as I had hoped before I had to seek refuge indoors. Don’t want to be sick for moving day!

Also, I bought two smoke alarms and a second thermometer.  The thermometer is in the bedroom now. It shows -5.9 degrees Celsius, where zero is the freezing point, as you may remember.  The temperature outside is supposed to be 6 degrees. Honestly, it does not feel quite that cold in the bedroom, more like fridge temperature.  Still, it is a pretty good bet that I’ll put a space heater there before using it for the first time. Presumably tomorrow, rather than Someday.

The title is ironic. An online acquaintance of mine over many years, who could have been a friend if he wanted, has a rabid reaction against religion in general and Christianity in particular. If he is not foaming at the mouth in real life, it can sometimes be hard to guess. Among the peculiarities that follow from this is fairly consistently referring to God as “sky fairy”, and gods and angels etc in general as “sky fairies”. (I rather prefer “invisible friend”, which also seems to be acceptable to this guy. But the default is Sky Fairy.)

The phrase came to mind because today arrived with mild rain, after varying degrees of freezing temperatures since around the end of the Copenhagen Summit. The rain was very moderate, merely a taste of the real thing, and ended soon. But temperatures stayed high (about 7 degrees Celsius, where zero is the freezing point of water) throughout the day. Only after sunset did the mild weather fade. It is currently around the freezing point again and headed a bit further, about -4C the next few days according to the meteorologists. But during this brief flash of mild weather, the water pipes all thawed up at the Mothhouse (or Riverview, as I consider renaming it). The shower is already leaking a little, so I don’t need to do anything about that. I’m setting the bathroom faucet to a rapid drip, that should hopefully be enough. So, I should be able to move in this weekend anyway without fear of 3 months without a shower. Great, Sky Fairy! ^_^

In less exciting news, my snowblower plan failed. Jernia has a wide range of snowblowers on their web site, so I set off for their shop in the city (the largest city on Norway’s south coast – actually the only city that is more than a town, really) and saw a snowblower as soon as I came in the door. It was big, and heavy, and somewhat more expensive than I had in mind. But at least I was come to the right place, yes? Not quite. This was the only model they had. There may be a reason for that, I don’t know. But given that I was only going to need this thing once, there are limits to how much I will invest in buying it (not to mention getting it home). Once I am moved in, the aluminum spade is quite good enough, since I don’t have a car. The only need for a car to come here is during the move. I guess we shall just have to carry stuff from the road. I made a path yesterday, and made it broader today. If I am lucky, I may get another day or two to further expand it, but it should be broad enough to carry pretty much anything. And it is not like I have a lot of huge objects. The obvious exceptions being the fridge and the washing machine. I really wish it were possible to drive those to the door, but it just isn’t.

Well, it is closing time again. I am really looking forward to moving here now. Let us hope it works out well.

I am at the Mothhouse again! That means another slice of life, and especially of cold.  Amazingly, we have had a week of just below freezing point temperature. That feels like coming from the freezer to the fridge. Or in other words, like Norwegian spring.  But it was not to last: Last night it fell to -15 C again. (That’s 5 Fahrenheit, for those whose temperature measurement is not in any way connected to the freezing and boiling of water.)  It is already milder again though, and the meteorologists predict that it will actually rain tomorrow.  I believe that when I see it, honestly.  But perhaps that would thaw out the water pipes?

Yes, they have managed to freeze again. When I came here today and opened the main water intake, only the kitchen and the WC had water. The shower and the bathroom faucet each has neither hot nor cold water.  I suppose I actually really should have kept it running, as insane as that sounds to a modern human.  I mean, hello, even in Norway I believe water costs money.  Hot water certainly costs money, and even the hot water pipes seem to have frozen when not in use.  People, it is ordinary room temperature both in the washroom and bathroom.  You could sit there and read a book in your ordinary indoors clothes.  Despite this, the water has frozen after 1 night of deep freeze.  Seriously, I can only conjecture that the pipes have never been insulated, just buried in the ground, and whoever lived here before just let the water run whenever the temperature looked to dip beyond zero.

I grew up in a house that was over 100 years old even then, 50 years ago.  There was no need to do crazy things there to keep the water from freezing, even though it was colder in the washroom there than here.  Someone here has done something stupid, and I seem slated to pay for it.  But as long as the pipes don’t actually break, I’ll just go ahead.  I called my friend with the big car and asked if he could help me move this weekend.

The road is still not plowed.  There has been snow and wind in the meantime, so the narrow track I had made through the snow with the spade was mostly lost.  Near the house it was at least visible.  So I have started on it again, but I can’t see myself clearing a road big enough for a large car to get to the house.  I will probably have to buy a snowblower.  Argh. This is not going to contribute lifetime happiness points, I fear.  The whole idea about hiring someone with a snowplow is that they actually use it to keep the road open.  Unfortunately, they cannot even know where the road was, given that it is now just a sea of white snow, so I can see why they would hesitate.  It is normal to mark roads with small bamboo staves before the first snowfall, but nobody lived here back then so it never happened.  I can only hope that if I manage to recover the road, I can mark it from now on.  But if I invest in a snowblower, do I actually want to pay someone to (perhaps) plow it too?

Farm living is not quite the paradise city people may believe.  Of course, if it were a real farm I’d use the tractor.  But it is just a farmhouse by the river, surrounded by pretty farmland that is not mine.  So no tractor. I love tractors, but I think I shall limit myself to a snowblower for now!

Unless the good Lord actually sends some mild weather after all.  But that might be a bit much to hope for, after the world leaders took responsibility for the climate at the Copenhagen summit.  And I don’t see any of them sending any mild winds anytime soon, literally or otherwise.

Anyway, don’t get me wrong:  I love this house, even if it is old and ugly and not practical.  It feels very homey. And I don’t feel like a guest here.  There is no one else in the house and it is not full of other people’s stuff.  So I really want to move in here this coming weekend. But I really want to be able to shower again before summer, too…

Fiberoptic cable, more exactly. While the water pipes remain frozen and the toilet remains broken, the fiber guys were here as soon as the deadly cold withdrew.  (It is now zero degrees Celsius here, the freezing point of water. Or perhaps melting point of snow, although I see no sign of that.  It’s generally been -3 to -1 most of the week. Feels almost like spring, but the frozen water pipes probably don’t feel the same way.)

So the irony is that now I have super fast Internet access, but not water.  I am a pretty computer-oriented person, but I think it should be obvious which of these is the most important.  So, I won’t be moving in until the water pipes are thawed. The landlord believes that there is no damage except for the broken toilet, which he has promised to get replaced. Hopefully he is right.  This means we won’t break up the floor.  This means it won’t cost any of us a fortune. But it also means the pipes probably won’t thaw until the ground under the house has been above freezing for a few days.  (Having a comfortable room temperature for a few days certainly does not seem to have made an impression.) Which could, in the most extreme case, be until spring.

Luckily the landlord at the old place is no longer in any hurry to get me out.  So if that’s the way fate wants it, I may stay there until spring.  This is attractive in the sense that I get to continue ferrying stuff over, one carrying bag or backpack at a time.  It is repulsive in the sense that I have to pay rent for two houses all winter.  This seems a likely outcome since I have been less than impressed by the economic sense of a friend who ended up owning two houses for several seasons.  It is not something that makes me look down on people, exactly, but I would not hire them as an economic advisor either.  So it only makes sense that I get to walk a few months in their shoes, in a manner of speaking.

I can almost afford it, too.  I will have to borrow a little each month, but it is not like I have to borrow the whole amount for the old rent.  I used to have enough left over to buy a new computer every few months, remember. So it is more an attrition than a disaster.

No, the really bad part is that you can’t access my home server from the super fast optic cable.  You know you want to listen to my music, or watch anime that was never officially released in English.  But for now, not only is my main computer down, but the remaining machine is connected to a router that randomly decides that the Internet is not a good place for young computers to be, and so you just get an error message when you try to connect to trine.itlandm.operaunite.com/ .  Of course, you can always try again later.  But it probably won’t be stable until I move here.

Speaking of which, it is time to log out and wander off to the bus again.  At least I get some time for brainwave entrainment this way.  I did say I wanted a longer commute, right?  Actually it isn’t much longer in time, since most of the road is quite good and there are fewer stops.  But a little more it is. Almost exactly 40 minutes, which is the length of one LifeFlow entrainment track.

The good news first, I guess.  I got a call from the guy who is installing the fiberoptic broadband.  I have not been surprised that they didn’t get it installed before Christmas as promised.  The weather has simply been too cold to work outdoors.  (Not that IT people habitually keep deadlines in any case.) Now they have stretched the cable, and will install the indoors part tomorrow between 7AM and 8AM.  I told him I’m just leaving the door unlocked.  (It is not like there is a lot to steal – a couple space heaters and stacks of used clothes.)

In other fairly good news, the weather is milder.  It is still -3 or so outside, but that’s a huge step from the double-digit minus degrees we had.  And it is supposed to rise to zero the day after tomorrow.  (Then again, it has been supposed to do that for a few days now.)  It has actually been zero or a little above during the day, although it cools a little with the night.

The bad news are not really news at all.  As expected, the thawing of the water pipes showed at least some of them to be broken.  Probably more as more of them thaw.  The toilet is cracked and the bathroom floor was flooded from that.  There is water on the washroom floor too,  and in that room there is no other explanation than a broken pipe.  Although it is just a pool, not a fountain or anything.  So perhaps the breakage is relatively minor.  Even so, it is more likely than not that the floors of the washroom and bathroom will have to be broken up to replace some or all of the water pipes (and hopefully insulate them better this time).  The question is whether it amounts to thousands or tens of thousands, and of course who is going to pay.

Anyway, despite the high-speed internet, it is a good bet I won’t be moving in this weekend.  If ever.

The space heater kinda backfired, I guess.  No, it didn’t catch fire, and I honestly don’t think there is any risk of it, as it is hot only in the front.  On the contrary, the fuse for the bathroom AND hotwater tank was blown when I returned Monday evening, and had probably been blown all weekend.  All water in the house is frozen solid. Luckily the weather has been milder on Sunday and today, but never above zero, and on Saturday morning it was -20C in Nodeland, so it was probably below -15 even here.  That would be around 0F, I guess.  Definitely enough to destroy water pipes, if it had time to enter the house before the milder weather came.

I have mailed and texted the landlord (he did not answer the mobile phone).  I asked if we should get a plumber to look at it.  After all, I am still not living here, so if it thaws while I am away, and the pipes are cracked, the water could go to exciting places.  Not that I think it is likely to thaw any day soon.   It was hard enough to get even some water running even before this. The temperature is predicted to touch 0C (the freezing point of water) briefly on Wednesday, but so far it has been rather colder than predicted.  It could theoretically be until spring before it thaws naturally.  This would be impractical if I live here.  Of course, my moving here may be in some doubt after this episode.  If the landlord blames me for this, I may be evicted before I have even stayed a night here.  This seems eerily familiar.

I returned to the Mothhouse after two days. With the extra space heater in the bathroom, it seemed reasonable that the water pipes would have thawed.  On the contrary, the cold water in the kitchen was gone now.  Only the warm water in the kitchen remained, and in the bathroom neither the faucet nor the shower worked (same as Monday).  Luckily the cold water in the kitchen returned some minutes after I drew some hot water.  I suppose the two water pipes lie so close that the heat from the hot water melted the ice in the cold water. Evidently none of the other pipes are close enough to benefit from that heat, though.  Sucks, but I guess that’s the way the ice crumbles.

I moved the new (small, expensive) space heater to the last room in any way associated with water, namely the washing room.  I have not moved in with the washing machine yet, so the only thing there is the hot water tank. It is not particularly warm on the outside, but that is supposed to be a good thing.  Still, if there is any room on the ground floor that might possibly be below the freezing point, this would be it.  Particularly the floor, walking on it in thin socks was painful.  (The thick wool socks are amazing insulation. I put them on afterwards.) I placed the heater on the floor and it is still running.  You are not supposed to use them in so small room, but then you are not supposed to let your water pipes freeze either.  And luckily the room is long, so there is nothing even remotely near in front of it.

Even so, I don’t think the problem is the air temperature.  I think the problem is that the ground under the house is frozen, and the pipes go through that frozen foundation without enough insulation.  This may have worked when people used them every day several times a day.  This may be the first time the water has actually stood still during a long period of intense cold.

This seem to be all I write about when I am here.  But the truth is that I kind of like the house, even though it is worse than the one in Nodeland in every way I can think of.  It is older, it is smaller, it is less practical, it has an upper floor instead of a basement, it is not furnished and did not even come with a coat rack.  The location is beautiful, but so far I have only seen it twice, otherwise it has been dark.  But it is kind of cozy, and just the right size.  And it is not full of other people’s stuff, so I don’t feel like a guest in someone else’s home.  The other house also had a wood stove, but this has a wood stove AND wood, which means I actually use it to heat the living room rather than just retreat to the home office like I have done the last four winters.

Of course, once I have the computers up in the study, I may retreat there anyway.  But so far I have not even heard from the company that should install fiber-optic cable before Xmas.  And I don’t expect them to do it while the cold is this extreme.  Any outdoors work should be postponed till we get milder weather again… if we ever do. So far, it is just getting colder and colder. Although the long-term forecast still fantasizes about milder weather from this weekend, except it is now expected to suddenly start on Sunday.  I have read, not many years ago, that if the weather is dominated by a high-pressure area (as it is now) the best forecast is always “the same weather as yesterday”.  Sooner or later it will be wrong, of course, but it is impossible to know when, and until then it is right each time…

In other news, I’ve got a bad cough and a sore throat tonight, but I am not convinced that this is Moth-related.  My nose was stuffed with gunk this morning after all, and I had not been here for two days then.  It does not really feel like an allergy:  No running eyes or nose, no sneezing, just  coughing up small lumps from my bronchies.  Perhaps I should get more sleep, but then when would I re-watch Hikaru no Go? At least the bus travel gives me plenty of time for brainwave entrainment.  Using mostly LifeFlow 2 (2Hz delta).

And now it is once again the time when the bus rolls out from Mandal.  7 minutes later it should be on the bus stop. I better be there or there definitely won’t be much sleep tonight!

Time for space heaters. Because space is a cold and lonely place… (My rented house, on the other hand, is only cold.) 

No, not space theater, although it was a bit theatrical I guess.Let us start with the cold facts, which is that the cold weather has just gone on and on ever since the Copenhagen Climate Summit reached a vague semblance of agreement. I am not going to comment on the theological implications of this today, just the practical consequences. As it dawns on me and my fellow Norwegian that the cold snap was not a snap but the onset of a serious piece of winter, and as we have put behind us the frantic shopping (for them) and days off from work (for me), there arises the matter of buying an electric space heater. The cold is advancing on all fronts: Gnawing through the walls, creeping through the ground to come up under the floor, even settling in the water pipes. Something must be done. Something, in the Land of Cheap Electricity, means a space heater.

In truth, electricity prices are constantly higher now that we have several thick cables to Europe, but this winter is not the worst, since the hydropower magazines are nearly full from two years of plentiful rain. The electricity backbone net has been upgraded bit by bit lately too, in preparation for more power transfer between the different parts of the country (and between Norway and Sweden and Denmark) as well as in preparation for the new energy sources, mainly windpower, now under construction and/or planning.

In any case, the electricity network is going to be put to the test, because I was not the only one buying a space heater. When I was there a bit after 3, people were swarming around the few remaining space heaters like male beetles around a female, except several of the customers were actually female. Like the one who bought the oil-filled radiator. It is not fueled by oil, it is electric, but it uses oil to store the heat and distribute it around the fairly large surface of the radiator. A nice invention, but oil does not strike some of us as the obvious medium, especially after reading the (very rare) report of them exploding, scattering superheated oil all over the place and setting it on fire. The lady was somewhat wary of this as well, it seemed. The store clerk assured her that accidents were very rare. “Just don’t leave it on when you go away from it.” “So does that mean I can’t leave it on at night?” “No, just don’t leave the house with it on.”

I for one would rather be outside the house when it is suddenly and violently set on fire, rather than sleeping upstairs with only one stairway between me and the world. Your sense of self-preservation may vary. If the house is going to burn down anyway, I would rather it do it without me. Preferably not at all, of course, but this means a bit of a balancing act regarding space heaters. Like balancing it on top of the toilet, since the alternative is halfway hidden by the curtains, and I think that is a truly foolish idea.

Yes, I bought a small “ceramic” space heater. Quite small and quite expensive. I do not mean to imply that the shop is gouging, even though today would be a good day for just that. Rather, I think the earlier customers have bought the cheap and most of the large heaters already, leaving only those that seemed to offer less value for money. I suspect that by the end of the day, they were all sold out anyway. Because you really don’t want your water pipes to freeze and stay frozen, like the ones in the bathroom here. Not that I am sure heating the bathroom will help. The pipes come up from the floor, and hot air is unlikely to have much influence on the ground under the floor. After all, hot air rises up, away from the floor. This is why modern Norwegian houses use heating cables in the floor. That way you only need a moderate heat to feel comfortably warm. Oh well, a bit late for that now.

The temperature today is by the way up to a moderate -7C (just below 20F). It was -16C when I left home this morning, so this is not so bad. Generally Møll is milder than Nodeland, being closer to the coast and near sea level (although none of them are really inland or in the hills). Also on Norway’s south coast, being further west generally means milder weather in winter (and less hot in summer, and more rain overall), although the difference is probably not that great from just half an hour’s bus ride… The weather forecast for tomorrow is the same, then colder again Wednesday (-12/-11C). Beyond that it is probably guesswork as usual. They guess that it goes back up to -7 on Thursday, then slowly up to -3 through the weekend, with cloud cover mostly but without snow. That seems kind of optimistic, but would be nice. Of course, I could just keep buying space heaters, and if I get enough of them the weather will turn warm, like the rain stops if you carry an umbrella, right? After all, I am the main character! Well, of this blog I guess.

Seriously though, it seems like the weather is the main character when I write from the Mothhouse. Hopefully that will change, given time.

***

Oh, and one more thing. I spoke to my immediate boss about my incompetence. I asked that I be given more of the work I can do, until such a time as I can learn more. Right now one of two local coworkers is on sick leave and another on partial sick leave. There is no one to teach me, and no material for self-study, and I don’t know a lot of people so I could call them and ask. I have to do what little I still can. I feel that this all happened because I did not value my work as an opportunity to give help to others. Because I did not appreciate my opportunity, it has been almost all taken away from me by fate. I am not going to just stand by and let that happen. The time for repentance has come, even if I do it badly.

Road through Møll. 

I am back in the Mothhouse, for the last time this year. Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve, and once again almost all of Norway comes to an abrupt halt early in the afternoon so people can start preparing for the celebration. So I better remember my mobile phone this time.

The poor little thing has tried repeatedly through the day to wake me up, but to no avail. This could have been really tragic, but luckily the reason was that I was in Kristiansand, miles away, while the Herophone was left behind in the Mothhouse when I ran off yesterday. (I should probably stop calling it the Googlephone now that Google is launching their own mobile, although the Nexus One too is manufactured by HTC.)

It keeps growing colder. I can feel it right here and now. Yesterday when I had been burning wood for a while, the electric heater turned itself off. Today it doesn’t, even though I keep the stove as hot as I reasonably dare. (I don’t want to leave the house with the stove literally red hot.) But it really is uncomfortably chilly, even with both the stove and the space heater. And yet it is less cold here than at Nodeland. When I left the house there this morning, my nostrils started freezing shut. This only happens when it is below -13C (=+8F). It may have been slightly colder than that again, but probably not much. At this level you can also get an idea of the temperature by listening to the sound of the snow as you walk on it.

Meanwhile back at the Mothhouse, the bathroom faucet now only runs cold water, ironically. The shower has neither. The kitchen sink has both, but the pure hot water is little more than lukewarm. Even after running for several minutes, it is still not too hot to touch. That’s kind of disturbing. I turned up the electric radiating heater in the bathroom, as it was a bit chilly in there. Not nearly chilly enough to freeze water, mind you. Even in the central hallway, the one with the stairs, it is not below freezing. I store the cola there, and it is very much liquid still. I could probably store pretty much any food there – the temperature is about ideal for a refrigerator, from the feel of it.

I don’t like to leave the house with the heater at max, since it is closer to the ceiling than I would have wished. The ceiling is painfully hot to the touch, and there is a dark stripe across the ceiling just over the heater. But at least it is not smoking or smoldering even after an hour… and I don’t want to risk the water pipes bursting from ice, flooding the place. I am between a rock and a hard place here. I can’t shake the feeling that this must be a design flaw. You should not have water pipes freezing when the house maintains a temperature not far from what it would if people lived here on a daily basis. Even if I lived here, I would still not be tapping water for about 8 hours during the night and about 10 hours during the workday and travel. Â If you have to leave the hot water running when you are not there, it is definitely a design flaw. Perhaps I should bring it up with the landlord.

Or I could buy a couple more electric space heaters, I suppose. It’s not like I can’t afford the utility bill. I just don’t like it.