Looks much, much better on a white background. Click here to see it in its full ‘glory.’

Wishing you all a safe and merry Christmas. I sincerely hope that you manage to avoid the hipsters as much as you can (which is impossible, because they’re EVERYWHERE), and that you aren’t too cool to celebrate an otherwise fantabulous holiday.

Firstly, due to things that have happened today that I don’t want to get into now, I’m selling my iPhone 3G and downgrading. Whilst I’ve adored this phone, it’s not a neccessity. My number is likely to change as well due to this, but as I plan for it to only be a temporary thing, I probably won’t give it out to anyone outside family. Hey, at least it’ll be a break from receiving drunk texts/phone calls from me/people with me at the time.

With the loss of my phone, I figured it would be a great idea to take a break from the internet as well, starting with deactivating my Facebook account(s). If you have me on Facebook, you will know that I’m the ‘photo person,’ and there are hundreds of albums of photos I’ve taken at events. If you plan on looking at these photos again in the next few months, you might want to save them. I won’t be responding to many emails (but what’s new?) or updating Twitter/Plurk/anything online. The only downside to this is that I won’t know about as many events so easily, but I’ll find a way.

If you wish to contact me in the meantime, too many of you have my current postal address. Go old school and write me a letter. I will start deactivating accounts, etc. from the 24th of October.

See you soon!

Solnushka nominated me for this ‘award’ a while ago. This blogging meme basically involves you telling people 10 things about yourself. Now, previous attempts at sharing facts about myself have failed horribly, as I hate lists, but here goes…

1. I like flashmobs a lot. I attended the Rickmob in 2008, and have attended many Improv Everywhere events in London.
2. Additionally, I have also appeared sans trousers in several newspapers as part of No Pants Day in January.
3. Chris Blake, a musician I follow on Twitter, wrote a mini-song about this. And corrected it when I complained that my name was pronounced wrong.
4. I have eaten 1 packet of crisps today. And feel really guilty, as I’m meant to be eating healthily.
5. I cannot ride a bike, use a skipping rope, rollerblade, ice skate, skateboard, or do a forward roll. And that’s just the start of my shortcomings.
6. I want to live/work/study in America or Australia, but the only thing stopping me from going there next year or the year after is the lack of free healthcare.
7. I constantly think of bedbugs, and try to wash my pillows at least once a month because I’m scared of what could be lurking in there.
8. I am currently knitting myself a rug. Why? Because my feet are cold and I can’t be bothered to follow a pattern for socks.
9. Sorry. I lied. I have actually eaten 3 packets of crisps today, and will reward myself with another once this rug is done.
10. …This post was actually written 3 months ago, and I seem to have forgotten to publish it. I’m working on the “riding a bike” thing, though.

Addendum: It’s been such a long time since I touched this blog that I have absolutely no idea who to tag. If you want to do this meme, feel free!

Hooray for the new year! New beginnings, etc., etc. I failed NaBloPoMo in the middle of December, and it felt great. XD Well, not the failing part, but knowing I managed to blog for 48 days straight. [The fool in me started a few days before the November NaBloPoMo and continued on until December.]

I hope I’ll end up wiser by the end of 2010. That’s the only thing I want. Here’s hoping everyone who comes across this thing has a good year… *fingers crossed*

…Ignore the potential fire hazard.

I hope your last Christmas of this decade isn’t too shocking (heh, heh).

Roll on 2010!

And now, my birthday’s going to be over for another year. Boo.

What does it mean to be an environmentalist in today’s day and age?
I gave a speech at Toastmasters the other evening, and my introduction was about being an environmentalist. I always thought we were all “caretakers of the Earth”. That’s what I was taught as a child and grew up practicing.
It was only later that people called me an environmentalist, which sometimes has negative connotations. To me, it’s really about being a caretaker of the Earth and doing whatever you can to take good care of both our natural resources and nature. Yes, I love to plant trees, pick up litter and think twice about what I buy. Those are the same things I did as a child and still teach my children to do.

What languages can you speak?
I’m bilingual in English  and Swedish, and can understand a lot of Danish and a little French. My policy is to be able to say please and thank you in any country I visit. Although when I visited Russia this past summer, I only knew “no thanks” before we got there, and there never arose an opportunity to say that in 4 days as a tourist.  There I needed to be able to say “vegetarian food” and “How do we get to the St. Petersburg Hotel?” Without those two phrases, we got a little food and a lot of walking. Thank goodness for the breakfast buffet at our hotel!

What do Scouts and Brownies do?
Let me start by saying that I know almost nothing about Girl Scouts and Brownies. I’ve promised my 4 sons that one day when I have a granddaughter, I’ll be  a girl scout leader. Until then, it’s cub scouts and boy scouts all the way.  My oldest son is a scoutmaster for a Boy Scout troop, and he’s doing a fantastic job. My teenage son has just finished his eagle scout project and just has 2 merit badges left to make eagle rank. This is the son who led our whole family into scouting.  My youngest son is in his 3rd year of cub scouts, which makes him a bear cub scout.
Let’s start with the job of scoutmaster. He acts as an advisor/mentor/coach to a group of boys 11-18 years old. The boy scouts are supposed to be scout-led and plan their own activities, but they do need guidance along the way. The scoutmaster is also a liaison between the troop and the community and the troop committee (adults).  So, what do the boy scouts do? The goal for all boy scouts is to reach Eagle Scout. This takes a minimum of 2 years, 21 merit badges, a special eagle scout project and serving several functions within the troop.

There are 12 required badges and 9 elective badges to be chosen. The boys start out at scout rank and advance to Tenderfoot, 2nd class, 1st class, Star scout, Life scout, and then Eagle scout. There is a boy scout handbook with all the requirements to reach each rank, and this includes skills like camping, fitness, knots and plant identification.
The cub scouts have 4 levels – Tiger, Wolf, Bear and Webelos. After that they move to boy scouts (at age 11). At each level, they have a handbook with requirements to complete at that level. My youngest son has finished his Tiger and Wolf badges and is now working on his Bear badge this year. He has almost 50 activities to do to earn that badge, things like community service, family activities and educational stuff. Today he’s been working on 3 activities about Tools for part of his Bear badge.

My teenage son originally started with the scouts in Sweden, which is co-ed and has almost no ranks. There it’s just about skills, camping, and education. He says he learned a lot of his skills there, before he started in the BSA. Now he is called upon all the time to use his scout skills in his Boy Scout troop. Sometimes I’m amazed at how much he has learned by being in boy scouts.
Subjects he never would have explored or places he wouldn’t have visited if it hadn’t been a required badge. Like this past week, when the troop visited the Yuma Proving Grounds (military test facility) to learn about troop mobilization. Also, his Eagle Scout project was so huge, but he learned so much from producing a play for the local homeschool group. It gave him a chance to test his organizational skills and to work with a host of adults and children.
As you can tell, this is a subject I love to talk about and can go on and on.

We seem to have taken part in the same events in past Novembers (NaNoWriMo, NaBloPoMo, IComLeavWe). How did you manage to do all of them at once?
This is the second time I’ve done NaBloPoMo, and I was successful again. As for IComLeavWe, it was my first time, and I wasn’t totally successful. Ah, a learning experience. Several years ago, I successfully completed NaNoWriMo. Yay! But the urge to do that one again hasn’t come over  me yet. It took a lot of concentration and dedication. Congrats to all those who finish that!

You’re related to Vanilla Ice and Bruce Springsteen. Any other famous names?
Those two are both related to us on the Van Winkle side of the family. My grandmother was a Van Winkle. All Van Winkles in the US trace their heritage back to Jacob Walichs, who was among the first Dutch who helped “buy Manhattan” from the Native Americans. My teenage son is so happy to be related to Vanilla Ice, but couldn’t care less that Bruce Springsteen comes from the same Dutch-American family tree.
I just consider myself fortunate to have had a great-aunt who actually kept the family history and passed it on to me in both written and verbal form.  It’s definitely a subject I can talk about for ages.

What was your favourite part of London that you got to see earlier in the year?
That’s easy… Hamleys. I have 4 sons, and they have all loved Hamleys and still love it whenever they get to go to London.

How easy is it to stay optimistic in times like this?
I’ve always been an optimist. Right now I’m trying to memorize the Optimist Creed, because I’m a member of a local Optimist club. The kids in the Jr. Optimist club that I act as advisor for say that I am one of the most cheerful people they know.
One teenage girl says I’m a little scary because I’m so cheerful. I think much of my attitude comes from my father, who taught me that everything will work out fine. I admire him greatly and just follow his example.

Knitting vs. crocheting. Discuss.
I love to do both, depending on what project I’m working on. Lately I’ve been having fun with guerilla knitting and freeform crochet. Sometimes I want to crochet an amigurumi, and later I may be knitting a prayer shawl.  My three oldest sons can both knit and crochet, but don’t usually have the time or interest to make anything nowadays. For me, it’s a way to relax when I find time to sit and watch a DVD with one of my sons. My oldest son loves to watch DVD boxed sets, so that’s the perfect time for me to knit or crochet.  Now to find somewhere to hang up the three guerilla knitting pieces that I just finished.

For more, see Laurina’s blog. Thank you for answering my questions!

The truth is, I do.

As much as I try to convince myself that I don’t, some part of me will always want a large ‘fan’ base, comments, interaction… You know the deal. I promised myself that this time, it would be different. I’d actually put some effort into maintaining this website, after so many years of neglect. That promise I made to myself obviously failed… The first thing I had on my list was to create a layout, and I don’t see that happening any time soon, at the pace I’m going.

Several years ago, I used to put most of my time into running websites, making sure everything – translation: almost nothing – worked, affiliating with others, etc. The key thing that’s changed now is the lack of time I have. Days go by so quickly, weeks are a blur, and months fade into each other without any significance.

Hopefully, one day, I’ll be able to take this whole website malarkey seriously again. Until then, I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with performing at a substandard level, for lack of better words. I hate that, but there’s really nothing I can do to change it.

So, what do you want to see on glomp.me? Join in the discussion on taser.glomp.me (yes the subdomain idea was entirely my fault).