Another Quck Update

Still jetting around like an idiot, but the last week or seem have been increasingly alcohol soaked, primarily because I have been mixing weddings with catching up with old friends and in both incidences there is a tendency to drink too much...

Last weekend was Åsmunds wedding, a very nice humanist service in a theatre followed by food, beer and speeches in the old Hansa Brewer. A great day.

Monday night flew to the UK for Riks wedding on the solstice at Mytholme. Another great humanist wedding with a service devised by the couple followed by a large drinking session in collasal set of wigwams. Really great atmosphere, eventually made it to bed at 4am.

Next day it was down to London for various meetings and some beers in Soho with Gregor. Thursday night headed up to Liverpool and had a huge night with Flint and Dave - great to catch up with them and nice to be out in the Pool.

Friday night drove to the peak but couldn't find Chris' house and ended up staying with Mike. Long story. Eventually got Chris' number and spent Saturday mixing concrete and driving a tractor - that took me back a few years. Realised it was 26 years since we left the farm. That's more than half a life time.

Then back to Macc via the Peak and one quick gritstone VS crack that destroyed my hands. The clue was in the name - "the file"

Night out in Macc with a curry and then a night club full of menacing looking guys with shaven heads and fat girls in too-tight clothing and very high heels. Oh the joys of England...

Now heading back to Bergen for a few days before Spain...

The geologist

We are all accoustomed to the fountain of knowledge that is wikipedia

Well it seems that the lesser know uncyclopedia has got the common geologist better nailed here

Friday Joke - Creationists

I never cease to be amazed that in modern, sophisticated societies, large numbers of people still subscribe to a belief that the World was created in 6 days, 6000 years ago by some invisible, all powerful mystic being.

I guess stupidity is the easy option when you can't be bothered to try and learn something complicated like science, but if you want to accept all the benifits that sceince has brought you should also accept the logical conclusion that there is no god and even if there is, the Genesis account of creation is a pile of steaming horse poo...

"All a bit serious this, where is the Friday Joke?" I hear you mutter...

Creationism is a huge joke, but if you want something more tangible...

L

L

There are some excellent youtube channels that very clearly explain the basics of science, including geology and evolution.

For starters I recommend:

http://www.youtube.com/user/cdk007

http://www.youtube.com/user/potholer54

http://www.youtube.com/user/AronRa

Have a good weekend

Friday Joke - Parking Nazis

This weeks Friday joke is dedicated to bashing the traffic warden, primarily because they gave me a ticket last night...

I make no apology for picking such any easy target, I can't begin to imagine what personality defects would bring a person to chose such a mind numbingly tedious and hateful career. Maybe it's the neo-nazi uniform, maybe it's the power trip, maybe it's the pleasure you derive from inflicting misery on people or maybe its simply the fact that you were too stupid to get any other job. Whatever the reason, if you actually woke up one morning and decided "I want to be a traffic warden" then you are scum.

I recognise that there is a need for some enforcement, I know that without some sort of rules all the selfish tossers that drive BMWs would just stop when and wherever they wanted. But when you wander the virtually empty streets at 9.30pm looking for victims or dish out tickets at 8.05am to people without residents permits then you probably need to ask yourself where your life is headed.

And the jokes

Why do Traffic Wardens have a yellow line round their hat?
So people don't park on their heads.

As the coffin was being lowered into the ground at a traffic warden's funeral, a voice screamed from inside, "I'm not dead! I'm not dead!"To which the vicar shouted back, "Sorry, the paperwork has already been done!"

I was parking my car up yesterday when a rather angry traffic warden banged on the window and shouted, "You can't park your car there!"
I said, "I can, the sign says 'Fine for Parking'!"

And some movies I found....

And while I was looking for material to put here I found this rather good short movie from NZ that made me feel just a tad guilty about what I wrote above....

Then I thought about the 500 nok fine and remembered that they are still scumbags...

Have a good weekend

Quick update

I have been super busy recently, mainly with work so I haven't had much time to lay much compost down in the blog. Weather-wise it's been a truly shit summer in Norway. There was only 6 days in the whole of August when it didn't rain! As I sit and write this the evil lair is once again trashed by a another huge storm and the fat cat is refusing to leave the house.

www.yr.no is a great Norwegian weather site, it has pretty good forecasts and some really neat animations of both the radar and satellite data. When the weather is shit you can at least see what is giving you a hammering.

It also has stats, lots of them - I love stats. Here is their summary for the last year.

From this you can see that almost every month has been wetter than average, except June, when the summer was young and had so much promise! On the plus side I am glad I was away for May and you can see the really cold spell in Feb. when we did lots of ice climbing. Lets hope that comes again.

Anyway so in all this shit weather we have
1. Been to see Cold Play - which was much better than I expected. Always thought they were ok but a bit dull, live they were excellent. It's a long time since I saw a singer work that hard to entertain a crowd.

2. Been out climbing twice, got rained off my secret crag after doing 1.5 routes.

3. Built a wall in my garden

4. Been to Houston twice - Texas is having record temperatures, which are keeping the hurricanes at bay, which in turn is why we are getting lots of shit weather. It's always good to blame the Texans

5. Been to Wales for Val and Eric's wedding. A fine weekend, great atmosphere, really nice to catch up with everyone

6. Party at Rolf's place with much wine and cake

And a hefty dose of lots of work in both jobs and that about sums it up...