Shopping from US online stores isn’t always the easiest thing when you are living across the Atlantic. Some stores don’t ship internationally at all, which is a pita when the items they offer aren’t available elsewhere. Fortunately for me, Jen <3 doesn’t mind being the middle man, meaning I have the stuff shipped to her, and then she sends it to Norway. This summer my oldest kiddo had his mind set on a Godzilla playset found on Amazon.com, and of course they wouldn’t ship directly. Jen to the rescue, she told me go ahead and send it here, I have a few things I want to send to you anyway. Today those “few things” arrived..! Adrian was dead happy to get his monster figures, and I? I was beyond thrilled to find not one, but _two_, bento box sets, _lots_ of bento supplies (rice molds, egg molds, sauce bottles, food picks, grass dividers). Bath’n'Body lotions, a Hello Kitty notepad, a box of Pocky and two boxes of yummy Pretz, om nom nom nom..! The gift was made even more special when I learned that Jen has a pink version of the box on the picture, and that she and Sarah both have the black box with rabbits and birds. We’re connected!

I’ve added photos of the “haul” on flickr, please have a look! Oh, and on the subject on other sites: I’ve set up a dolls&toys LJ. I didn’t want to mix personal entries with squeeing over plastic, and I am pretty certain most of those I’ll add as flisters on that doll journal won’t be too interested in what’s going on in my non-dolling world. Please add moeeeh! ო if you want to keep up with my collections! (Why “moe“?)

Off to Denmark tomorrow, on Thurs-Friday I am participating in an Umbraco training course in Copenhagen. We are thinking of using this CMS for low budget clients, will be interesting! I am going alone, and “have to” spend an extra day (tomorrow) because of stupid flight schedules. Am taking my camera with me and hoping for nice weather! Now I’d better log off and set up the laptop I am bringing along..!

They are taken, and edited, by a young boy named David. Looking at his flickr profile I wouldn’t be too surprised if the kid makes a career in design, not everyone have as “clean” and stylish rooms at such a young age..! And the eye he’s got for what’s pretty.. I am envious!

My own Pullip photos so far can be seen here. I am having so much fun with this!

I haven’t really had a real photo session with her yet, the picture above is from when I unwrapped her. I haven’t even given her a name, as I understand is custom among doll owners. Suggestions, anyone? I was thinking “Lisa”, but that’s really dull compared to the names that others give their Pullips.. (I just thinks she reminds me of character Lisa from Six Feet Under).

I’ve also bought a Chill (pic1, pic2), and I am currently the highest bidder on a Zuora. That one is nude, though, and not with her stock clothing, so I won’t go too high. Pullipstyle.com has her in mint condition for a reasonable price, so if I don’t get the eBay one I will most probably order her from there on my next paycheck.

These dolls can wear Barbie clothes, so I am going shopping in my lunch break (as soon as I’ve blogged this!). ) I will also have my mum knit me a few outfits - she’s declined to make me amigurumis because she hates sewing them together and shaping them, but I know she’s knitted Barbie clothes before so now there’s no escaping! Finally, I will set up my sewing machine - this will be the incitement I needed to get it fixed (there’s a problem with the bottom thread). I am really looking forward to creating stuff for the dolls and taking them outside for photo sessions!

What’s _your_ silly hobby?

I am between laptops - now that I’ve finally gotten a desktop computer at work, I’ve convinced my significant other to take over the “monster” laptop that I purchased a couple of years ago in order to actually get that job (small company, we’ve grown since then). I want a smaller one to use at home and out-and-about, I really really want a Macbook but will probably end up with something similar to the one on this photo.

Tonight I’ve been installing and modifying a “hidden” version of Flock on my kid’s laptop (no shortcut icons anywhere, you have to get into the program files folder to start it up). As it’s a pc granted to him for use in school, I don’t want to set up an extra user for it, nor do I want to keep switching bookmarks etc. for his default browser (although Foxmarks made that task a _lot_ easier). Plus, now I can autosave the passwords.

Anyway, Flock is the perfect browser for my social butterfly evenings on the couch, using kiddo’s laptop until I get one of my own! A few glasses of nice, chilled, white wine goes well with it.

- but these were too beautiful, colourwise as well as shape wise. They are Przewalskis, the last wild horse species and a symbol of Mongolia, according to Wikipedia. The ones I’ve captured weren’t exactly “wild”, being that they were living in a zoo, but at least the zoo in question - Nordens Ark near Smögen in southern Sweden - is a decent one.

The last few weekends have been spent partly at home, partly in Sweden - first we took a trip to the Anderstorp car race marking the 30th anniversary of F1 driver Ronnie Peterson’s untimely death (he survived a crash, but not the stay at the hospital..), combined with a walk at fun fair Liseberg plus a day at explore center Universeum; some photos are up at the kids’ flickr account (click towards right to see them all). Then a weekend at home, then another weekend in Sweden - we were supposed to spend a few days in England for the Donington Park MotoGP plus a visit to Drayton Manor, but being that work is really stressful for my s/o at this time of the year, things got canceled in the very last minute. In stead, we spent a night with my parents, then headed south for a stay at the mentioned Nordens Ark zoo (they have a hotel there). We spent Saturday evening walking around the small coastal town of Smögen, watching all the young folks celebrating midsummer’s eve. Such beautiful scenery! The town is popular with sailors (the modern species, that is - the ones with the moulah…), all the idyllic wooden houses, painted in pastel colors and scattered out on the skerries, and of course the constant wind - making things fun for those with an urge to live life _on_ and not _by_ the sea. Sunday, we walked through the zoo, watching all kinds of Nordic species and some foreign ones; they have wolves, owls, goats, lynxes, raindeer, wolverines - but also red pandas, Amur/Siberian tigers, snow leopards, and Amur leopards (so, so beautiful!). Everything is situated in a forest of selected valuable broadleaved species (oak, elm, ash etc.), and in the midst of it is a small cafe offering the most delicious baked goods.. brownies, muffins, cheese cake and more! Anyhow, we had rain that day, but because of the trees we didn’t really notice. How neat!

At work, things are a bit slow right now, but I guess that’s normal with less than two weeks left until the summer vacation. We just moved to a new office - what a vast improvement from our previous ones, now that we are 7-8 people and not just the four of us! We even have a (huge) kitchen now; our previous one was a closet where we’d stuffed our coffee maker, that’s all there was room for. Now we’ve got a dishwasher, a fridge and all kinds of handy appliances, hooray. But I digress. What I was meaning to say is that I am a bit between jobs, waiting for the designers to finish their stuff and the clients to approve of it, so that I can get to the coding. I work with WP quite a bit, but most of what I do is actually static HTML pages. Occasionally, I also code for more complex CMSes, but then I am not the one deploying the design, I just prepare everything for those who do (and then grind my teeth when I see the finished site, noticing all the shortcuts and errors made.. ). I’ve registered with an online school for two shorter courses to properly learn how to make templates for Word and Powerpoint; with Office 2007 all the menus have changed so much I can’t find my way around anymore..! My job is paying for the courses, which is all good - I also get to order text books and go to seminars; I want to learn how to set up and adapt Umbraco, meaning I will be going to Copenhagen once or twice in the near future, yay!

This weekend is Adrian’s, he’s 9 on Sunday and has been counting down for months already. I’ve gotten him a couple of Star Wars LEGO sets, a Pokemon game for his NDS Lite, and a Nintendo Monopoly. All of those are items that his younger brother wants too, so I am anticipating some disappointment on his side - but then, his birthday is in just a month from now, so I reckon I will be able to keep him somewhat comforted. I am planning on making Mario bros cupcakes for the kids’ party on Friday, will be interesting, at the least… I probably should have a plan B..!

Home from a lovely weekend in Germany. On Friday, arriving in the evening, we just checked in to a hotel, had a schnitzel, then walked downtown Cochem to check out the ongoing wine festival. Saturday was spent at the Nürburgring race track, and on Sunday I was on my own photowalking in Cochem. I even have a nice sunburn as proof. My s.o., btw, got slightly lost in the forest surrounding the Ring during his want-to-see-the-race-from-every-angle-mission, and has a neat blister as _his_ proof. I think I prefer the redness any time..! At one point that day, the local accordion group on the town square actually played “The Happy Wanderer”; that was when I - comfortably sitting in the shadow, sipping to a chilled Bitburger - called the lost and bewildered Dag up just to mock. I am nice like that. (For the record: he laughed with me, he’s not really any fun mocking.)

Inbetween photography, motor race spectating and forest exploring, we had a few beers between us, each day a schnitzel dinner “Wiener Art”, and of course a few sips of Mosel wine. Oh, and freshly baked German pretzels, yum!

Looking through my photos, there’s a few things that become embarassingly clear to me - I still don’t have enough courage to take the time to make sure the photos turn out like the images I really “see”, and also: I need to work on creativity and technique alike. I brought a tripod and a speedlight - didn’t use any of them… Especially the photos from the Reichsburg castle would’ve been massively improved had I been bothered to whip out that speedlight. With blending sunlight, a flash is often not what you think of using, but for close-ups especially it’s probably one of the most important accessories. Worst thing is, I was actually good at using fill-in flash ten-twenty years ago when I did film photos… Tsk, tsk.

I know, I know, Johanna - why even bother with a blog when I don’t write anything..? I am in the middle of a process of gathering enough guts and carelessness to actually start using my blog - it’s not like I don’t have anything to write about, it’s just that, well, working in the web design business with all my colleagues browsing the web for a living, it’s easy to become a little paranoid. I don’t want to upset anyone at work who might come across my space on the web, you know? I mean, it’s not like it’s a hard domain to find. Perhaps I will use “that other domain” in a while; I’ve set the registration hidden and there’s nothing there that really reveals me as me (except myself, that is - I have a hard time believing that I will be able to stay “anonymous” even on a project like that). We’ll see…

In the meantime, someone please bring me the moon? It’s not _that_ far away, financial problems seem to be taken care of from next month (huuuge raise), and I’ve managed to de-clutter not only my house but also my many online distractions that for a while kept me from being the good mother that I want to be. Please?

My partner and I are leaving for Germany on Friday, four days without the kids. Woot for that! Hopefully some nice photos to follow.

But as for now: final four eps of House M.D. season 4 just arrived! :D

Other than that, this is really just a test post to see of the plugin works at the new location.