Thursday 1 June 2000

Pic of the day: Actually, this is not from today, but I thought it would make a good Ascension picture. :)

No friend, no pincers

Today is Ascension Day, and most of us Norwegians are off from work. For me this is a good thing, because I don't feel much like walking. No wonder my foot hurt a bit yesterday: It's got a tiny splinter in it. I saw it this morning. It's a very small splinter, very thin, so I cannot believe it can have penetrated deep. In fact, I'm baffled that it has managed to get through my fairly thick skin at all. I'm a walking man, so those soles are not exactly baby skin.

Now it so happens that the splinter is located near the right edge of the right foot. Due to the way these things bend, it is inaccessible to my right hand. And since I'm not very dextrous, it's hard enough to get it visible at all, not to say reasonably accessible for my left hand. It's nice living alone, overall, but it is horribly inconvenient when it comes to extracting stuff from remote body parts. Still, after much stretching and experimenting, I could vaguely see the site of operation. Then I remembered that I have no pincers. It would be hard enough to do with those, but without them, pulling our the little thing with my nails? No can do.

So, I hope God's nanotech will fix the thing by itself eventually, isolating the intruding material and building new skin under it. I keep thinking of this guy who got a small sore on his foot and then it was devoured by flesh eating bacteria. But our ancestors ran around barefoot for thousands of years in varied terrain. Now in all honesty, their life was probably nasty, brutish and short. Still, scientists claim that we humans have a double-strength skin regrowth factor, slightly like animals designed to live in muddy waters. -Though some frogs outdo us fabulously, having for all purposes a strong antibiotic skin. Of course, the way things are headed, these amphibians may be extinct before we find out exactly what's happening...

***

Anyway, as I said, we Norwegians have a day off to celebrate that our Lord (who we generally don't obey) ascended to Heaven (which we generally don't believe exists physically). And to add chaos to confusion, why would he do so at different times each year? I mean, if he was beamed up in May then he couldn't also be doing this in June. Make up your mind already.

It is a kind of irony: Norway is officially a christian country, with a state religion (Lutheran). However, we have freedom of worship, and religion is kept separate from science in the schools. A much smaller part of the population consider themselves christians, compared to the USA, which is officially secular. Indeed, their constitution forbids the government to support any religion, while ours mandates it. But if we judge the tree from the fruit, as it were, things are flipped around. In Norway, being christian is considered ... well, slightly shameful. On the level of age-induced incontinence or some such. And so people don't mention Ascension Day by its official Norwegian name, "Kristi himmelfarts dag" (The day of Christ's ascension to Heaven) but rather call it "Himmelspretten" (the Heaven hop).

I guess that was more than you really wanted to know. Always glad to be of service!

***

News today: There has been an earthquake on the west coast of Norway, not far from where I was born and grew up. The quake was moderate, though, only about 3.8, and no serious damages are reported. Still, it seems that these quakes are growing worse. There were a couple in my childhood, but so small that they were barely noticed. We learned in school that we were safe from earthquakes because we lived on an old, stable continental plate. The nearest active zone was the mid-Atlantic ridge, on which Iceland was situated.

Obviously the earthquakes have not read the books the same way we did.

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Meta stuff: I have uploaded the missing entries from June 99 to my archives. I have no idea why there seems to be missing files yet again. I suspect this hails back to the time when Crosswinds.net was moving and had lots of server troubles. They have been pretty stable for a while now. Did you know that these guys offer unlimited web space for free? No popups, banners, frames etc needed? You can not use it as a storage place, though, but must link to all of it from your Crosswinds index page. Which is why I have farmed out my archive in a separate site, the Diary Farm. (For entries that have bought the farm, tee hee).

Since I had the day off anyway, I also uploaded my May entries to the archive, the day after the month ended! This is a record, and not likely to be surpassed either. Spent some extra time because I used Netcom as ISP for the evening. They are slightly cheaper than Nextel, or Nextra or whatever our former monopoly calls themselves this month. But Netcom is also slower and less stable, so I doubt I saved anything on it. I just used them because I had some mail to send from that account. They are unimpressive in all regards except price. Their night price is incredibly low. Incidentally, Netcom in Norway started out with mobile phones. They are not exactly a success there either, but the competition has forced the former monopoly to slash prices dramatically. So I guess the rebels deserve some support! :)

I also uploaded a new Sim Diary to my Sims fan page. Simple pleasures. :)

And finally, I mucked with the color because it is a new month. There is no deeper meaning to it this time. I just felt playful.