Thursday 6 July 2000

Pic of the day: Due to the severe lack of chubby human females in my apartment, which I was not able to change in time for today's picture, I chubbified one of the paintings used by Dolly Dimple's Pizza. Hopefully I will find something else when they eventually discover it and sue me. (Yeah, as if their picture is an original work of art. Heh. It sure looked familiar to me ... except for one detail.)

Chubby human females

Yesterday started gray and overcast, but the sun came out and chased the clouds away. And with the heat, people poured into the streets in Kristiansand. The city is now hosting the Quart Festival, some kind of rock thing I believe. I heard one of the groups had announced that they would burn bibles on the scene, so I suppose it is some kind of heavy rock. Anyway, there are thousands of visitors, mostly young people.

The other notable event in Kristiansand yesterday was the return of Dolly Dimple to the main street. Actually Dolly Dimple is dead, I believe, since she was part of a travelling circus early this century. I seem to remember that she was marketed as "the fat lady". Ahem. But the pizza chain named after the severely overweight dame has opened an outlet in the main street. They used to have a small place near my workplace, and I bought pizza for lunch virtually every day. So I had looked forward to their return from the first day I saw the posters.

Since there were so many people in town, the fast food chain was selling pizza as fast as they could make them. I lined up and pretty soon got my two slices with pineapple, ground beef and mozarella. (I think it was ground beef.) I noticed that it was softer than I remembered. I guess they got them out of the oven as soon as they would hang together, since the customers were pouring in.

Eight hours later, my digestion ran wild. This happened to be around midnight, and it was not fun. Of course, I am not absolutely sure it was the pizza. I cannot remember ever getting sick from their pizza before, and I used to eat those daily. (Hey, it's less fattening than cakes.) I had also eaten 6 pieces of chocolate cookies when I came home. But I don't use to get that miserable from those. I called in sick today, and I am better this evening, but it was a rather shocking experience. I grew a lot more religious in a short time. And that could certainly be needed.

***

Today is Trade Day in Kristiansand, as is the custom on the first Thursday in July. The shops sell the stuff they cannot normally get rid of, at rock-bottom prices. People come to the city from the surrounding counties, especially housewives it seems. They struggle for outdated clothes and jostle for boxes of canned dinner. They stand upside down in crates of straw hats or similar dubious goods. They are jam-packed in front of jars with raspberry jam. I love it. When else do you see so many human females in one place?

Perhaps it could have been made into a sport. A common football field would be good enough. Pack it with soft and squishy females in clothes of mismatches colors. The contestants are placed at one of the goals and have to make their way to the other. May the best man win!

But I didn't get to play in that sport this year. I had a feeling - let's not quite call it a premonition - yesterday, even before eating any of the suspicious stuff. I thought it would be too good to be true, and of course it was. I even didn't eat sausages (which often make me sick, made as they are from cattle heads and such) but no dice. Oh well. No swimming in a sea of chubby females this year. (And no suddenly buying shirts that I won't wear, as happened last year.) I guess that's what you get for repeatedly praying "Lead us not into temptation." (As if I don't know the way myself by now.)

***

In other news, my parents called today. They wanted to inform me of the birth of their newest grandchild, as they were not sure if my brother had told me already. He had, but we still talked for a while. My mother surprised me by talking almost normally, despite the severe bleeding in her brain a few weeks ago. A blood clot of 3x3x3 cm, if I understood right. She had lost quite a number of words then, according to my brother, but evidently she has regained a lot of them by now. Places seem to be hard to remember yet, but the everyday words and grammar are there. I suspect that she relearns the words as soon as she hears them. She was always extremely intelligent, and it's not like she has Alzheimers or anything. As long as she survives, even barely, she seems to rebound from anything and everything. It is amazing. Then again, if anyone deserves to overcome, it would be her.

The farm is as always in a state of chaos. I think it surprises them each year. Besides having babies, the young couple is about to smash down the barn. Now in all honesty this is because they intend to build a new in the same place. Still, it is quite a project. And having three pre-school kids around you is really a full time job in itself. Luckily my brother always needed less sleep than the rest of us. Even so, I bet that he is drinking a lot of coffee these days... :)

But pizza, I suppose he doesn't buy much. And for a while now, neither will I. Though as the saying goes: It is not over till the fat lady sings.