Eating Muffins in an Agitated Manner

No wonder they lost the empire...

Posted by Sari

Decca, Debo, Bobo, Cimmie, Beb, Cys and Puffin... I have been reading a number of books about British upper classes during the belle epoque and interwar period, and I have to say that the most memorable thing about all of them is the amount of silly nicknames people seem to have carried with them to their graves. Like the great friends of Edward VIII Baba and Fruity Metcalf. Or Brigadier-General Oc Asquith. Or Hoppy, Lord Manners. I tell you, P.G. Wodehouse did not exaggerate. [In all honestly, I have to own up coming from a family whose habit of insisting on more or less silly nicknames has generated much amusement among my friends, so maybe I am not the best person to cast this particular stone...]

Another fun thing is playing six degrees with the cast of characters: Prime Minister Asquith's son Beb was married to Lady Cynthia Charteris who was the daughter of Lady Elcho, who was friends with Lord Curzon, whose daugher, Cimmie was the first wife Of sir Oswald Mosley, who later married Diana Mitford, whose sister Debo married the future Duke of Devonshire, whose older brother was married to Kathleen Kennedy, who of course was the sister of JFK.

Yes, those were the days. I'd have to say that as a woman, the only time period other than present I would want to live in would be as a member of British upper classes in 1920s. Enough money to live as one of the leasured classes, but already enough possibilities for a determined woman to live her life independently. Only without that pesky stockmarket crash and Second World War ruining the fun.

If the period interests you at all, may I recommend Colin Clifford's The Asquiths which is a very readable bio of Margot, and her stepchildren with small cameos by Herbert Asquith. As it is not a political biography, and the main sources are letters and diaries by other members of the family, the PM himself does seem like a eminence grise in his own family. And be warned that Lloyd George comes out as a cowardly villain and Haigh as a hero. The book is, however, excellent in depicting the life of the Asquith children as part of the elite before the First World War and how the war changed everything (Raymond, Beb and Oc all served at the front, and Raymond was killed during the later stages of Somme).

In many ways similar but concerned with later period is Mary Lovell's biography of the notorious Mitford sisters whose mother used to complain that every time she saw a headline beginning with "peer's daugher..." she knew one of her daughters had been stirring up trouble.

Roses and booksie-wooksies

Posted by jukkahoo

Sari wanted me to write something here, since she feels she has been hogging this weblog for herself and if I don't write something very soon, she'll not be responsible for her actions.  Oh, well.

I've been a tad depressed lately, mainly because this post-infection state isn't really my idea of a good thing. We're (thats I and Maija the Fourth) pretty certain that the lump in my armpit and under the semi-famous scar is just a random post-infection occurence that will eventually wither and cease to exist. But it's still there. And I can feel it and it keeps reminding me of something far more serious and... I don't really know.

Maybe it's more about the fact that as I am well now, that everything that keeps reminding me of the disease has these negative connotations. Even the absolutely brilliant bedspread. Or should I continue calling it quilt? It isn't one you know.

I'm going to go back to the ward 7 every Friday for so long as it takes them to see that the lump is gone. Like Maija said, my lymphoma was very aggressive and I'm still under probation. Anything can happen. Just let's hope nothing will.

Anyway, I finally managed to crack the barcode on this one here. Goddamn! Se Hannu and SariP2 taught the bloody thing to us and in less that ten minutes or s-g, Sari managed to figure it out. It took me almost a whole month! Apparently I'm a ginnious!

I've been cooking again. Ever since I got better and we acquired this dish-washer (I'm certain Sari will write a loving and convoluted tale of how it got it's name RSN), I have been dreading the day when I'm told to start choring the household. So now I have cooked food. And laundred some clothes.

I even managed to re-arrange some of our books (and shelves). Still looking very crowded. I have these two bookcases, but there is no room where to put them! Don't you also hate that? And how about all those interior decorations shows! Have you ever seen a single show with proper bookshelves and books as the problem? Most of these people don't own books, apparently. Or then they must be hiding them away. I once had a workmate who had all her books in her closets. As in hidden. As our apartment is mostly furnished and decorated with books and bookshelves, I find the whole idea somewhat bizarre (like Nikolai, who used to be one, you know).

I'm currently reading a book about collecting books. A great tale, full of insightful reminiscence, think of this like a novel-long version of Boris Hurtta's GoH-speech at Finncon X. Very, very good. (John Baxter: a pound of paper - Confessions of a Book Addict)

Whiskers on Kittens

Posted by Sari

Are not my favourite things, and neither are brown paper packages tied up with string. Unless they contain books. And Bill Clinton gave me an idea, yes he did. His fancy new presidential library is going to be opened in the fall of this year near Little Rock, Arkansas and part of the exhibition he has picked 21 of his favourite books of all time.  Now, I have read - okay in some cases just leafed through - whopping six of his choices (Marcus Aurelius, Eliot, Ellison, Marquez, Weber and Yeats), and few more are on my endless to-be-read list (Orwell and Wright mainly), but most of them go straight to the never heard -category.  Some of his choises are pretty representational for a man hof his generation and beliefs and are less central to someone outside that experience and some are in fields like theology, philosophy or political science which I have always found, well, boring, so I am not going to feel too bad about not liking same books. And I think it is kind of cute he has Hillary's autobiography up there with Eliot and Thomas a Kempis...

But that got me thinking. Which would be my 21 books? Okay, firstly I could not narrow it down to 21. So I have 32. Which is 11 more than Bill and I am sure there is some deep numerological wisdom to be found in there. Secondly, I love novels, and in order to have some other works besides novels on the list I divided my list to 16 novels, five plays, five poems and six non-fiction books. Thirdly, the previous classification is the only structure I allowed for the list. I did not aim for erudition, geographical balance, inclusion or exclusion of genre books or anything other these are just books that made me go "Wow!" for some reason or another.  And fourthly, I exluded all books however good that have to do with my work, this is pleasure reading only.

So you want to see the list? Sorry, not yet. What would be fun in that? I spent enough of my Jukka's and Mexi's time on this excercise to just blurt it out.  I am feeding it to you in drops, one book at the time, in alphabetical order. Which mean we are beginning with one of my passions, Jane Austen.

Me and Jane got of to a very bad start when I was about eleven years old. I had just read Jane Eyre and was full of Mr. Rochester's passionate speeches and windswept moors and wanted more. My gran with whom we were spending our summer did not have Villette or Wuthering Heights, so she gave me Pride and Prejudice. Big mistake. How could "My affections and wishes are unchanged" hope to compare with "Oh Jane! My hope - my love - my life"? What a lame stuffed shirt that Darcy was, and there there was no kiss, even. Bah.

Later in life I learned to appreciate Austen’s fortes as a writer: sharp eye for character and charicature, engaging though very civilized love stories, delicious wit and masterful command of language. She worked on limited subject matter, the relationships between a small closed set of English gentry, the world she knew best. She herself described her work famously as “a little bit of ivory, two inches wide, on which I work with so fine a brush as to produce little effect after much labour”.

Though I loved each and every one of Austen’s books, the one which I keep returning time after time is her last, Persuasion (Viisasteleva sydän). There are millions of reasons I love the book to bits. In addition to the qualities it shares with all Austen’s work Persuasion has something extra. Firstly there is the heroine of the novel, of all the engaging characters Austen created I love Anne best, her hidden wit, her cool head in the crises and her kindness. I also love the more introspective and melancholy mood of the novel.  I also think the it captures wonderfully Anne’s agony when she is trying to singnal captain Wentworth that she still loves him when it is not proper for her to make it obvious neither by act or word. It is a beautiful and true depiction of how the society and the dominating friends and family have forced the heroine in such a passive position, she really has very few means to communicate what she wants. Then there is of course there is” the letter”, the one Wentworth  gives to Anne. Swoon.

And last but not least is the fact that this is the most nautical of Austen’s novels. Which mainly meas that in the novel there are a number of naval officers living on shore on half pay, and were thus available as objects of romantic attachment to the heroines of the novel. We have the adorable Admiral and Mrs. Croft, and the Captains Benwick, Harville and of course Wentworth to entertain us with tales from the seven seas. There just seems to be a little more feel of a world outside the tightly knit gentry community than in other Austen novels which makes Persuasion more part of the world than many other Austen novels. There are some glitches in the structure, mainly due to the fact that Austen died before she could polish it off, but even so it is a gem. And now I want go and read again the bit where Anne comes to visit her Musgrave relatives at Uppercross, and then maybe the bit where Luisa jumps of the stairs in Lyme and injures herself. And then the beginning wher Sir Walter is depicted obsessing over his entry in the baronetcy and then the scene at the recital at Bath which stills leaves me breathless in its perfection.

Health update

Posted by Sari

So, on Friday Jukka went to have some blood tests done and then we went to see Maija (fourth). She was still hedging on her diagnosis, but is heavily leaning towards the idea that the funny area under the scar is most likely just due to the after effects of the infection. The tests have come clean and the blood indicators are within normal parameters. She did order another visit and a blood-tests on next Friday, just to be on the safe side. Jukka's cancer was so aggressive and quick to spread that they just want to keep close tabs on him for a while.

So it is pretty much business as usual at Casa Tali. I even began renegotiating household chores contract, though in all honesty I have to admit that Jukka pre-emptied some of the need by beginning help with the laundry without any prompting :-)

He is home

Posted by Sari

At least for now... Jukka got back from Hospital on Tuesday and is feeling OKish. He is still on those purple antibiotics he liked so very little earlier, and is going in for tests on Thursday and Friday when the doctors have their weekly meeting. As you might infer, they are still not quite sure what is going on, if it is just a nasty infection or something more insidious. Not that infections in this age of antibiotic resistant bacteria are anything to take lightly. But we'll see what we'll see.

Hobbies

First I don't post for months, then I can't stop posting. My excuse is that this is really my first properly bloggy post in the sense it is about links.

First, a link of Teresa Nielsen Hayden's post about geek knitting. A Pi Shawl, DNA double-helix scarf... New mantra: finish the sweater before beginning anything new. And Anna is glad to know she is not the only yarn junkie in the world ;-) Teresa's post also has a link to a picture of Jukka's birthday-present. He blogged about it in Finnish, but just to reiterate, 44 people in Finnish SF fandom knitted, crocheted and felted (is that a word?) squares for a huge beadspred which says Live Long and Prosper on it. We are all quite embarassingly proud of the end result; it is just the most amazing and wonderful thing and I am still sneaking to bedroom just to look at it sometimes. Some of the squares are truly wonderful works of art and imagination - my favourite is propably Leena's alien who apparently quotes Dave Langford in Tolkien's runes - and others are just as wonderful just because someone who has not picked up knitting needles for ages did so in order to contribute.

And not only is the end-result maybe the coolest thing ever - and probably the thing I'd save from fire aside my USB stick - making of it was also fun. We wove a web of deceit and lies in order to have the meetings to crochet the quilt together. We invented sessions where one of us was supposedly teaching to the rest of us the secrets of thai-kitchen, contrived to arrive in small groups to regular fandom meatings so as not to appear suspicious, some people snuck to side rooms in bars to be re-taught how to purl and my real project to knit blankets needy children in Russian Carelia came in real handy as a cover story (pun unfortunately intended, you'll be glad to know it works also in Finnish and was already used by Jukka). And he never suspected a thing! Even though there was one close shave which was due to strong pain medication ;-) So again thanks for all of the participants, and especially to Jossu who came up with the idea. All of you guys have visitation rights to the quilt, just give us a bell and come to admire how incredibly talented we all are :-)

My other link is to Time Team drinking game. Yes, yes I know every show and its sister has a drinking game nowdays, but it is the Time Team!. We are just watching old episodes and I was feeling nostalgic: Here we are on Salisbury plains, only three days time to locate ancient Roman villa. Carenza's trench is yelding only iron age pottery, John and geophys unit are not finding much, Stuart has gone walkabout and mutters about something about banjos, and Phil just wants to dig some more or maybe make a stone age tool. Is Discovery channel still running the series in Finland? I might be tempted to get cable just to get to see Time Team again. Apparently Channel 4 has not seen fit to release the series on Video or DVD grrrr...

Sari

Fire bad tree pretty

Posted by Sari

Ben wanted to know more about the fire, and I want to tell more about the fire, because, you know, fire, woo! Exciting. And scary. And I just got my Buffy DVD's so just live with the lame efforts of valley speak.

Anyway, I woke up little before seven cursing the jaintor who obviously was cleaning the yard from snow with his machinery because there were flashing lights and the annoying beep-beep-beep sound the snow plows make when they are on reverse. Then there started this thumping noise somewhere above us, and though the kids upstairs are often noisy, they are not that noisy. So I got up and opened the blinds just in time to see the fire-truck extending its crane the balcony above us and to the left, lots of fire-men with and without smoke helmets, police officers and paramedics running around and hanging about. At this point I made the brilliant deduction our building might be on fire and notified Jukka. He said someting like "ghaanuff" and did not seem that interested. Next time I looked out there was smoke billowing out somewhere above us so I reiterated my firm belief in the fire in the building, and finally got Jukka up.

The nice thing about living on the ground floor is that unless we for some unfathomable reason wanted to barricade ourselves in the sauna, there is always an exit. So we had no problems acting as one is supposed to: kept all the doors and windows shut and waited with our clothes on. I honestly did not even start thinking what to save except my USB memory stick with all my "stuff" in it.

The crane got the woman out of the burning apartment and as Jukka says, she was really shaken and not all there. Ater about an hour of hectic action the police, firemen and the paramedics wound their operation down and left. The newspaper story on the fire said that the firemen suspect that the fire started from more than one location in the living room, so that points to an arson or an attempt of suicide by arson or something like that.

So, not really that exciting. The burnt apartment looks really spooky with broken glass still on the frames of windows and soot all over the place, and apparently everything in there was totally destroyed. The hallway still smells a strange combination of smoke and some strong cleaning agent. Our buzzer-phone is out of order, but there does not seem to be any water or smoke damage to our apartment. The fire was also a bonding experience for all the people living in the house, Jukka and I have been gossiping with neighbours we have not even said hi during the four years we have lived here. I am not quite sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing...

So there you have it the exciting and dramatic tale of our building being in fire. I am off to see Jukka, will write more later.

Sari

Long time no see

Posted by Sari I know I have not posted for ages, I have not answered e-mails, I have not hung out at my usual hangouts on the net, I have not even SMS:d to people. So this is a collective apology to you all. We had loads of wonderful presents, christmas cards, and whatnot from y'all, and I have just been too tired to do anything about any of them. I promise I will get to it, really. At the moment, just getting the work done seems like a huge effort. The bad news is that Jukka is at hospital again. Hopefully nothing worse than an infection under the operation scar, but it still gets us both down. On Thursday he went back to blood tests as planned, and the infection indicators were way high. So after looking at his arm-pit Maija (four) and James (five) decided it would be better to have surgeon to see it so they sent us to Töölö for a surgical consult. There we had a reunion with the plastic-surgeon-on-call Suvi. Her numerical designation was under dispute but after calculation we decided on -2. So, Suvi (minus two) was of the opinion that operation was not necessary but recommended antibiotics straight to bloodstream. So after waiting around, going out for a kebab, waiting around some more, stopping Jukka from yelling at an innocent X-ray nurse, waiting around even more and finally getting necessary papers, we were off back to the Cancer clinic where they gave Jukka a bed and hooked him up with an IV. And there he is still. The infection indicators have come down, but nobody really knows (or at least tells) what is going on. Also, the smell of the hospital food seems to be enough to trigger his gag reflecses, so I have been doing twice daily supply runs so he gets something to eat. He is felling a bit better, partly I suspect because of the visits by his brother Pasi, my sister Merja and her shiny new boyfriend. I was certain the nurses were going to ask us to tone the laughter down. [A side note: there has been a nasty hospital bacteria doing rounds in Meilahti hospital though not in the Cancer clinic building. Even so, I have been little more careful with hygiene when going in and out of the building. And can I just say how much I love the disinfectant you rub on your hand and leave it there? It makes me feel all clean professional. Such a pity you should really not use anti-bacterial products at home, otherwise I would get tons of it...] Anyway, they may let him come home today or tomorrow, but it is also possible he has to keep taking the antibiotics intraveniously(?), so that would mean a visit from a nurse every six hours. Or that is what Jukka says. Would they really com knocking on our door at 2 a.m.? We'll see... Sari

Our building is on fire

Posted by jukkahoo

But alas, no more.

We were woken up by this infernal noise and flashing of lights by the godawful time of 6something AM. I was pretty much ready to either keep on burying my head under my pillows or go out and kill the blasted caretaker, but then Sari said that there is a bally huge number of firetrucks in our yard and a ladder truck with dozens of firefighters, police, ambulancemen etc. around. Apparently something had happened.

And indeed it had. The apartment above us and then left ie. the one that doesn't exist at groundfloor (with the backdoor entrance and plants) was to blame. Or the woman who lives/d there. I saw her being carried away by four men (ambulance and police), she screaming blue murder either completely out of it or seriously distressed over something, dunno.

The whole thing took about an hour and there was some smoke (and more smell later), but no real flames and such. The firefighters didn't use more than one water truck and the damages, as far as one can see from the ground, seem to have stayed inside the apartment. Good thing too, since I was already rather worried about our books.

We got dressed as soon as possible, but never left the apartment, nor opened the door. We dutifully followed the procedures. I spent a few minutes trying to think what I actually would save from our apartment if the flames would've reached us. I couldn't really think.

Which is somewhat due to the fact that I'm sick. Again.

I was having these little dizzy spells in Turku whilst visiting Hannu and SariP2, but I never thought they were that serious. Then on the way back home last Friday, I realised there was something agog at my left armpit. The one with the scar from the tumor operation. At home, I checked the area and lo! and behold!, it was red (and I mean the scar here, Juha). And apparently infected. I decided to wait until Monday, just in case it would go away (yeah, I know) but as it is the case with these things, By Monday morning I was experiencing more and more wooziness and the skin was continuously red and sore to touch.

And I went to see my doctors. First I went to the lab and then I waited. And waited.

Finally Maija (the fourth) saw me and asked a lot of questions, but finally gave me antibiotics and sleeping pills. Have I mentioned I can't really sleep? Well, I can't. Pills ought to help.

Now I'm looking towards next Thursday (more lab tests and doctors). Antibiotics are for ten days and these sleeping pills are very good. My blood pressure is normal, so no low-level dizzying there. Lab results revealed nothing out of the ordinary, even my infection levels were merely risen, instead of high as we were expecting.

Antibiotics taste bad. This I could've done without.