Bone marrow

I think we have seen too many episodes of "Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations". In yesterday's episode when he and his chef buddies where having bone marrow as desert and they described how delicious it was, we actually bought it. The thought of eating bone marrow started to feel tempting. Normally I think a few of the things he eats is not something I would eat but bone marrow actually sounds delicious in a weird way.

So one of the items on todays shopping list was a chunk of meat with large piece of bone in it containing a fairly big piece of bone marrow. So sometime during this weekend we'll be eating bone marrow.

The perfect housewife

We saw a television show called "The perfect housewife" it's actually a whole series but we will not be watching more than the 10 minutes it took me to realize that I hate that woman, the perfect housewife. Nina hated her after 5 minutes but I imagined for 5 more minutes that you could actually learn something from that show.

The show is about a perfect housewife that comes into people who are having a hard time keeping their home in an interior design magazine shape. So the woman in questions gives them advice about everything, how to wash vases with rice inside, how important it it to keep the dish washing water at 45 C and to use cold water for the last part of the rinsing to keep the water from vaporising to fast from the drying dishes and couple of hundred other advices on how to keep the perfect home.

You know when you have a perfect home you're not having fun anymore. All your time goes to doing the perfect home and the people around you aren't allowed to touch anything. Remember this, the day we have the perfect home there's probably something that has gone terribly wrong...

Winter tires

It's been below freezing point now and then the last few weeks but when I left work this morning two cars was standing at the side of the road 50 meters past the driveway to my work. It looked like the owners where arguing. That was the sign I've been looking for, the sign that it's time to change from summer tires or just tires if you live somewhere where it never snows to winter tires.

The roads where icy this morning so the fender bender outside my work was not the only one involving people who where still driving with summer tires. Three cars skidded off the motorway and the local police advised people on the local newspaper's website to change their tires immediately if they haven't already done so (they used those exact words).

Winter tires are tires that have metal studs and are marked M+S or M&S which stands for Mud and Snow. I've changed the tires on Nina's car tonight (I'm driving it to and from work tonight) and tomorrow I'm changing the tires on my car. They make more noise than summer tires due to the metal studs and the M&S profile compared to summer tires that are made for AC roads. It's only about 6 months until I can change back to summer tires...

Translation

I'm writing a blog in Finnish or rather I should be writing a blog in Finnish. It's there but I'm not updating very often. It's there mainly for the sake of practice. However I checked out Google's translation program and it's a lot better than the last time I checked it out. Last time the translations was outright hilarious. Now you can actually use Google Translate and get a fairly serious result.

It's a bit like cheating. I'm not really practicing writing in Finnish. I'm using a translation program. I get a few blog posts in Finnish and I get to see how it's written correctly. It's not as effective as working out the grammar with every word an sentence but it's small steps. It's better than not writing a blog at all. Google rocks...

Travel report

If have realizes that I'm not good at writing traveling reports. To write down a week of new experiences from places which sometimes can be called paradise is difficult. I usually find it overwhelming.

I wouldn't call Turkey paradise but I can definitely recommend it to anyone. It was clean, the people are friendly and the sun was shining. I can see myself visiting Turkey again...

Next stop Turkey

As the temperature here slowly gets closer to the point where water turns into ice it's time to head south for a week. So if you wonder why I'm not updating my blog or commenting yours it's because I'm on a beach in Alanya, Turkey. More likely sightseeing but however the weather will be warm =)

Drama

One of the things I like about blogging here at Blogger is the lack of drama. Most of us who have blogged at a social networking community have probably not escaped the drama. If not part of it yourself you have most likely witnessed it. Those participating in it like to call it blog wars or something like "the most important issue ever debated on the Internet and I'm RIGHT". I like to call it sandbox fighting because of the three year old attitude of the participants and the most important issue ever debated on the Internet is about as important as what a couple of three year old kids are fighting about in a sandbox, seriously.

I'm not saying that there isn't drama here, there probably is somewhere. I think the reason why is that on a dedicated blogging site you do not get points for who many friends you got or how active you are at that site. There's nothing to prove here except telling a good story and talking about it in a civilized way...

Sushibar

The city where I live, Vaasa, has a number of restaurant that offers international food. In Vaasa's case that means Mediterranean food and kebab. So there are still a few gaps. But today they started serving sushi at a cafébar. The cafébar is located in an old cinema. The cinema is now called a cultural stage. They have stand up comedians, amateur theater and local film festivals. The cafébar has up until now served coffee, beer and alcohol with cakes, danish and toasts.

But they have started serving sushi on Wednesdays and today was their their first Wednesday with sushi on the menu. We've made sushi at home and the last place we ate sushi out was in sushibar in Stockholm with an all Japanese staff. As their first day of serving sushi it wasn't bad. It wasn't as good as in the sushibar in Stockholm but it looked better than the stuff we have made at home.

It's not a sushibar, it's a cafébar. The other customers looked like artistically orientated students. But now we can eat sushi in this city in a restaurant environment. I don't think a dedicated sushibar could make it here so it's nice that someone makes the stuff once a week.

We did pick up satelite dish

Well last nights visit to Meteorian visiting center in the Söderjärden impact crater turned into a drive by visit. The problem was finding a parking spot within walking distance. The parking lot was full, the dirt roads around the visiting center were filled with parked cars. Not to mention there were a lot of people outside the visiting center waiting to get inside. In short everyone had found out about the event and thought it would be a great way to spend Saturday night.Our daughter still travels around in a stroller and moving around in crowded place is not that great so we decided it was worth paying the entrance fee another time for a smaller crowd.

But however one other thing that we did do last night was to pick up a satellite dish. We have decided to go from cable TV to satellite TV. There's nothing wrong with cable TV if you forget the fact that the number of channels are limited. I mean they have actually coded TV channels that are free if you have an antenna or a satellite dish and demanded fees for them. Not to mention that the fees are quite high. So for more freedom, more TV channels and less fees we are getting satellite TV.

But back to the dish. My fiancée's parents have a summer house nearby and they had a leftover satellite dish there. It's missing a few installment screws, feedhorns and cables but my fiancée's brother should have at least some of those. I also need to buy a satellite receiver card and replace the cable receiver card in my decoder. Anything else missing can be bought at the same place. I'm a HAM radio operator so I find the concept of building my own antenna and receiver system interesting. It is a hobby of mine, although it's been dormant for many years...

It all started 550 million years ago...

An event that started around 520 to 560 millions years ago in the southern hemisphere has led up to our plans for this evening. You see a few miles south of Vaasa is an old impact crater called Söderfjärden. Around 540 million years BC Finland was placed somewhere in the southern hemisphere and the meteorite that struck created an impact crater 6,6 kms wide and 300 meters deep. It was later filled with sand and clay that was formed into sandstone creating a large circular field inside the outer rim which is clearly visible in the landscape.

But back to tonight plans. There is a visiting center in the middle of the impact crater called Meteorian. Tonight there are having an open house evening between 18.00 and 22.00 with no entrance fee. It's not only a meteorite exhibition but since the crater floor is fully cultivated it's a bird haven so they got a bird watching tower and they make their own electricity trough renewable energy.

Scraping the windows

This was the first morning this fall when there was a thin ice sheet on the windshield and the roof of the car. No ice on the side windows and back window, just moist. That was easily cleared with the window elevators and the back window wiper. Unfortunately I had my window scraper somewhere under the the floor in the back of my car with a dog cage on top of the floor. I used it last in April. I'm tired in the mornings so that meant I started the car, set the heat on full and started working with the windshield wipers and the windshield wiper fluid. After a minute or so I could actually see the outside world trough the windshield. One trick in this climate if you are in a hurry and the windshield is all frozen is to roll down the side window and stick your head out. Always bring warm head gear when going somewhere and it's not recommended on narrow roads 7.45 AM in urban areas.

This means that it it's time to put the the window scraper next to the driver's seat, install the compartment heater and start using the engine heater. The summer is over, the winter is coming. This is the fall, the transition season between summer and winter. I'll probably hate the winter in February but I have always loved the seasonal changes so when the first snow falls sometime between late October and Christmas I'll love it. But until then we have a great fall ahead of us, full of colours...

Facebooking

You know those little short blog posts you, or least I did, used to write about the little things that happened in life. Those are called Facebook status updates nowadays. I'm not a twitter but I like to update people who are not on my Facebook list. Just a few lines...