summer cottage – Nokisuu

Hello hello hello, where is the cat?

12.10.2023 julkaissut Nokisuu

That used to be a line in a Finnish children’s program in the 70’s, the kids watching tv were taught English with a show where two English policemen were looking for a missing cat. The answer is of course ’The cat is in the moon.’ (Later the other policeman became a writer for several Finnish tv comedy shows and he is very much liked, his son was my client in my previous library.)

Ok so I just thought to give a sign of life. Yes, I’m still here and kicking but I’ve been kind of busy with work and everything. Last week an old Finnish blog pal emerged and gave me a spark to start writing my Finnish blog again but also this one.

I spent about all of summer at the cottage and also every second (at least) weekend has been a cottage weekend for us. Next week I’m having my fall leave as is youngest one and Hubby said he’d be working from home so we’re going to the cottage on Wednesday because it needs to be made ready for winter hibernation. We’re also going there to see if we’ve finally gotten the water meter installed. We had only lake water for washing and drinking water had to brought from home or shop since the old well wasn’t reliable and so we decided to have water line drawn to the plot. It happened in September so we now have water on the plot but the meter is still on it’s way. Luckily we’ve been able to take water from the line already but it still need to be warmed up on stove for dish washing or in the huge cauldron in sauna if we warm sauna up.

I’ve enjoyed the cottage life. My soul relaxes in the quietness and nature. I also swam in the lake every day (when in cottage) until October. In summer Sirius the Cat used to come and sit on the pier when I was swimming and she’d look at me like I had lost all of my marbles finally. She also liked the cottage life and visited all neighbours, even the one with two dogs who were a bit miffed of her.

Anyways nothing major happening here. The work is also what it’s always been, just a bit busier since after the pandemic we have now returned back to the normal scale of things. The new cabinet of ministers is worrying with its politics so we shall see if there’s going to be strikes.

Eldest son is graduating to become a programmer and they won a game-coding contest with his friends and went to Riyadh to collect the prize in August. We asked him what he’d like to have as an graduation present and he said that since him and 15 friends are going to Tokio, Japan for the month of December we could buy him the plane tickets which we did.

Middlest son is still studying in Central Finland and now his girlfriend moved in with him as she got postgraduate study place in the same city. Youngest one is on the 2nd year in high school and he loves history and social studies.

Here’s the program Hello Hello hello’s 1st ep for you. The first part is a bit slow with the vocabulary but the real thing starts around 5’20. Everybody was hooked watching this, both kiddies and adults.

End of May and others

29.5.202330.5.2023 julkaissut Nokisuu

Adding a trigger warning here, this post talks about death right at the beginning.

I think last time I mentioned I was going to Stockholm with my friend M. Unfortunately they all got Covid and we debated about going as she was already healthy again before our traveling day was approaching but her mom was in really bad shape and we decided not to. M’s mom had Alzheimer’s and weighed only 36 kilos so she didn’t have the resources to pull through and after a week she just faded away. M said it’s really weird now since they have a lot of free time with her dad now as they used to home care for her mom.

Today as I was looking through the most well known Finnish newspaper which has a lot of obituaries every Sunday (M wished she’d get the latest Sunday paper because of her mom’s obituary) I noticed a familiar name among other obituaries. My old colleague whom I used to call my work brother had lost his brother in March and his obituary was on the paper also.

After work I went to meet my colleague and tell him I was sorry, his brother was just two years older than me. We chatted a while since he knows me and DH and the boys so it was nice to catch up. He said his brother had been ill for a long time but as he lived with their parents and took care of them it’s kind of hard for him now to do everything on top of his work (they were/are both bachelors).

On other news Middlest son’s girlfriend enrolled to pursue her studies in Jyväskylä so they’d move together and first it looked like it was not going to happen since the English IT-courses she’s enrolling had over 3700 people wanting to start and they only took 25 students but she made it and now in July she’ll be moving to Jyväskylä too. I’m so glad. Since Middlest son will be making a career in the Defence forces it’s important that he’ll have a girlfriend who is willing to move where the DF sends him.

What else? I spent three nights at the summer cottage with eldest son in mid May and it was very nice. The weather was very warm and I swam in the lake for the first time this year, the water was +18C degrees and so nice.

The Eurovision Song Contest was very good too this year and so exciting! Finland with Käärijä’s Cha Cha Cha came second and as someone said Finland won but Sweden holds the party next year so it’s all good. We are very proud of Käärijä 🙂

The Mayor of Vantaa (my hometown mayor and also our next door neighbour) Ritva Viljanen gets a kiss from Käärijä. She almost forgot to give the flowers to him 🙂 I just love this picture.

In about three weeks I’ll be on my summer holidays at summer cottage but before that I’ll begin an online course about Elements of AI in Open university due to my boss’ recommendation. We can do the course on our work hours which is good.

I think this is all from me now. See you later alligator 🙂

I’m waiting for the album to come out in September.

P. S. Maybe next time I’ll upload the cat video I made on the video course I took part in April.

Quick one

31.10.202231.10.2022 julkaissut Nokisuu

This is just a quick post because I realized that October is ending and I haven’t written anything since mid-September.

I have been busy at work but as the school’s here have a so-called Fall leave in mid-October and my workplace is a school so I took the week off.

As DH didn’t have leave I went to summer cottage with eldest and youngest son. We managed to get the cottage warm even thou I forgot to take newspapers with us. We had nice time, went to sauna on both nights and managed to do the couple of things we were meant to; turn the row boat upside down and put locks on the barn doors.

Me and DH need to drive there once more since I forgot to close the fireplace dampers… Don’t ask how.

Then I took youngest son to Stockholm by ferry and it was nice. We had good food, ate breakfast at Mr Cake and visited our fave shop Scifi bokhandeln in the Old city. We also visited the Stockholm City public library’s main building which is very pretty.

About Mr Cake, if you’re familiar with the name Josef Fares or Fares Fares, Swedish actor and director brothers, Mr Cake’s owner Roy Fares is their cousin. I must say the Fares’ brothers movies are quite funny and I think Fares Fares was in the Westworld too.

Now we’ve turned the clocks towards wintertime and darkness approaches in other ways too.

I wonder what will happen with Twitter so I made myself an account on mastodon.social. You’ll find me there by this alias too, as I’m everywhere with it.

Here’s a pic from last night. My friend and I did a short roadtrip to seaside and Tammisaari and enjoyed the views.

Daytrippin’ yeah. Again.

15.4.202215.4.2022 julkaissut Nokisuu

I feel like I mainly post about my day trips and I don’t even do them so much. So funny!

Last Saturday we (me, DH and youngest one) drove to Jyväskylä to inspect middlest one’s new flat which was very nice. It had many cupboards and the rooms were spacious and the balcony was lovely. While the men assembled some Ikea furniture I unpacked the kitchen things and uploaded the dish washer with the new dishes. We made a list what middlest one should still buy, i.e. dish washer tablets and so on and then we had dinner in the city centre. I called my cousin and we decided to go to her place for coffee and bring something to go with it.

My cousin’s little boy (5) got a bit scared when we showed up as they have been low contact with people since he’s a ’heart child’ with HLHS. Luckily he got over his scare in a short while and later played card game with youngest one while we chatted with my cousin. It was nice to see them too 🙂 Afterwards we drove middlest son to pick up his car from the garrison and left for home via the local chocolate factory shop.

This is the lake from the summer cottage city centre.

At work the week (three days) was hectic as we have a strike looming ahead. It was supposed to begin on the Tuesday after Easter but it was postponed two weeks. I’ve never been on a strike, they’ve always been cancelled for different reasons so I find this very interesting. I’ve promised to go to my old work place as a picketer for a day with our head shop steward.

On top of these strike news I got news that I was selected with my colleague and our Media teacher for a Erasmus+ for a week in Limerick in May. I’m flabbergasted to say the least, I never expected to get chosen but my lovely boss said I should apply and I did and here we are! I’m so excited!

DH had one of his summer holidays still left and as they are lost if not used at the end of April we took a one-day cruise trip to Stockholm. I got a day off and youngest one too and on Wednesday evening we went to the ship, ate well and did some shopping and in the morning we woke up in Sweden. After breakfast we walked to the Viking museum in Djurgården which was very interesting. Afterwards we took a ferry to the Gamla stan where I did some book shopping and then we had coffee and cake (”fika”) and then we slogged back to the cruise ship. The weather was smutty, drizzling but okay. Back at the ship we had dinner and this morning we were back home.

Both eldest and middlest son were home so we had dinner together and I baked a Key Lime pie which was very good.

I’m trying to find us a summer cottage where we could be as we want to. I don’t get along with my SIL and it’s getting harder summer by summer to stay civil, not that we ever see but my brother is the in-between-man and I don’t think it’s fair, besides the boys are getting frustrated too as they’d like to go to cottage more than they now can. I found one place which would be in my price range and contacted the seller about going to visit the place next week but he hasn’t answered yet. It’s a three-hour-drive but it looks promising. I’ll be going there with eldest one to inspect.

A summer cottage right outside Helsinki, behind one of the most famous Helsinki summer restaurants called Klippan

Small island Lonna and behind it Suomenlinna (Sveaborg), the church tower is light house too

Nice Easter flower arrangements outside Nordiska Museet

I don’t seem to get pics to gallery mode anymore and now I’m too tired to look into it. Maybe it’s all right as it is. Here’s a song for you, I really like Ben Folds but then I kind of forgot him for a while.