books – Nokisuu

Long time no see

23.3.2023 julkaissut Nokisuu

I just saw that I haven’t been updating since January, almost two months ago. Sorry for that but Finland has been chosen as the world’s happiest country sixth time in row! Let’s not let that bother us anyways.

Nothing much has happened, mostly just the normal everyday life sucks all time. I’ve also been reading more lately and have already finished 25 books this year. And now as I remember again this blog base doesn’t show my Instagram feed for some reason on the right side bar but you’ll find me under name nokisuu there if you want to see piccies. I have some troubles with adding them on these posts (no idea why) so it’ll be easier if you go there.

I’ve been on a live music concert since my favourite Finnish artist Ismo Alanko published a new album and there’s a series of gigs. I bought tickets as a birthday gift for my friend Heidi, we danced 2 and a half an hours with Ismo and other people and it was awesome.

Last weekend I had Friday off so I browsed three museums before my osteopathy appointment and it was fun. The museums were the Zoological museum, Kiasma – The contemporary national art gallery of Finland and HAM – The Helsinki city art Museum. I especially loved the Zoological museum because when I was a child we lived quite near to it and I used to spend a lot of time there and so have a lot of happy memories. My osteopath is leaving to work to Canada soon so every time I make a reservation for her it may be the last one.

On Saturday I went to theater with my old friend from library school. There’s a contemporary author Tommi Kinnunen who has written several novels about Finnish women during and after the war times and this play is based on his book ’Defiance’ and it tells the story of five women who ended up to Narvik in Norway with the German troops and how they walked home from there when the Germans left and they were supposed to be taken into a camp as war criminals but they escaped. I really liked the novel and it was very well adapted onto stage so it was quite nice except someone in the audience had a stroke and it caused a bit of excitement.

Afterwards we had nice dinner in a restaurant and talked about everything going on in both of our lives and it was nice to catch up.

The Eurovision Song Contest is coming up too and Finland’s representative is dividing audiences here and there. I myself find the song Cha Cha Cha funny and the rapper Käärijä is a very down-to-earth-kind young man, he is so sweet and level headed. Once again Finland is on the bookies lists in the top but as you might know Finland is always on the top, it just depends which side you start from. I myself hope this time we’d win, it’d be so great!

Here is an article about Käärijä winning the UMK contest if you’d like to read more. I’ll add the song at the bottom of this update. I don’t know how you all feel about the songs this year but I think Finland’s song is the perfect party anthem, it tells a story of a man who needs to drink in order to relax enough so he can go dancing and be himself. So a lot like Finns.

On other news yesterday evening was a parent-teacher meeting at youngest son’s school and it was nice. His teacher is very nice and we had a chat after the communal meeting and since I’ve been a bit concerned if he has any friends it was a relief to hear that he does. Later at home I asked him and he just said that they are pretty much all footballers which is funny as he doesn’t care for football much. But everything is quite good atm here.

I have a lot of free days from work and they must be used before May so next month I have one whole week at work. Also both me and hubby have the week before Easter off so we thought we might drive to summer cottage to have a look how it’s been there but it’ll be just a day trip. Later in April me and Mareetta are going to Stockholm for two nights as she’s having a 6-month-leave from work. I might update after that 🙂

Next week (on April Fool’s day) we are having the Parliamental elections here and it’s looking pretty grim, the far right Finns and Social Democrats (Sanna Marin’s own party) are off to a duel. It’ll be a very tight win for either one I fear. More about the elections here.

Enjoy Finland’s party anthem! There’s one with subtitles too in Youtube but the video is not as good imo.

Hello again

21.1.2023 julkaissut Nokisuu

I just noticed it’s the end side of January and I haven’t written anything for a long time here. I’ve been having some kind of winter escape and haven’t been much on PC when I’m at home.

Nothing much has been going on. Christmas came and went as they do (as Neil Gaiman said in a bit different words) and we had nice time at home together.

Eldest son was here for the Christmas Eve and Day but then he went to live in his Godmother’s house as a cat-sitter because they have a little Spynhx (@rufusthesfinx in Instagram) and they left for two weeks in Thailand. Middlest son came home for dinner on Christmas Day with his girlfriend which was nice. Now he has last of his studies in Jyväskylä and she quit her job here and is looking for studies there too so they’d live together. I think that’s very nice for them.

During Christmas we got glasses for youngest son and now he’s very fond of them, they are his first and he’s got just a bit of astigmatism (like me and his dad). I told him that’s his Christmas gift from me. DH had the days between Christmas and New year off so one day we went to movies to see the new Puss in Boots which was very good. I’ve also been reading a lot and I wonder if I already read the best novel of this year Sea of Tranquility by Emily St.John Mandel in the beginning of January.

At work it’s been nice to see both old and new clients. Two years were pretty glum because of the plague so it’s good to see people again.

Only thing that bothers me is the renovations going on at the underground station closest to my workplace, it’s a lot like the Hell in Good Omens tv-series so I’ve been using the next stop and then walking or taking the tram from there, it’s about two minutes more to my commute but I’m happier.

I’m watching a lot of tv it seems. During Christmas and New year I watched all of Better call Saul, White lotus (I re-watched S1 too) and All creatures great and small and then some. I also knit a pair of mitts for myself and a scarf is halfway because I need to buy more yarn for it. I’m giving it for a friend in March when we have a theater date.

My pilates lessons begun again and I’ve been going to zumba classes since November and it’s been so great. I really like it but now the teacher just told us she’s going for maternity leave in May. The group is great, all of the other women are Russian except one young lady from India and one from Philippines and I’m the only Finnish-speaking there. They are all lovely and we have great fun.

So nothing much going on, just the normal everyday living. Here’s Måneskin’s newest video for you, I quite like them (and the drummer has Finnish step-family by his father).

Time flies

8.11.2020 julkaissut Nokisuu

November is already rollin’ ahead and I’ve been lazy with updating.

Eldest son turned 22 and I wonder where the time went since I’m about that age myself. Well, it took some time until he arrived, we even went to a clinic bc my hormones didn’t have a clue what they were supposed to do so I was pretty happy to finally have my baby boy in my arms. He continues to be a joy as does his brothers.

Today we Finns have Father’s day but since both mine and hubby’s fathers have long gone we only celebrate by having our own family on dinner. We are also celebrating eldest son today.

During this week I’ve been to movies to watch Tove-movie which was very good. Usually the films about Finnish artists show the person on a pedestal (i.e. Helene) like they weren’t a living and breathing person at all but lived from the spirit of art. Tove didn’t suffer of this and it made the film much better. The movie concentrates on Tove Jansson’s life between the WWII and 1960’s when she became a ’household name’ with the Moomins. It also tells the story of her finding her sexuality and in the very end we see a real clip of her (the actual Tove) dancing on the island of Haru where she and Tuulikki had their summer place.

I read in a magazine that Tove hated doing beds in the morning so in the summer cottage they always slept in sleeping bags in a tent in order not to need to make the beds. I find it a very nice thought. (Of course I seldom make beds myself..)

Sirius watching tv with me — A nice sunny day at my work

What else? Work went by as it does, everyday chores. Yesterday I went to another National park nearby us called Sipoonkorpi. It only takes about ten minutes to drive there so hubby drove me there and then when I had enough mushrooms and felt refreshed enough I called him and he came to pick me up again.

Then at home I baked a mud cake for today and a mushroom pie of the yellowfeet I had picked. It was so good.

I’ve also listened to and read some novels so that I already had to change my reading goal in Goodreads from 80 to 90 books this year. Lastly I’ve listened to Robert Galbraith’s (aka J.K.Rowling) Lethal white and Troubled blood of which the latter was very good. On the first one I knew the culprit pretty early on. I also read Quantum thief-scifi novel by Hannu Rajaniemi, a Finnish guy writing in English and I must say the story was good but I’d have needed a dictionary for all the new words he had invented which kind of took the joy of reading his story away. I also read one very light Finnish chick-lit and I don’t quite know why I read them since I always feel like I had been robbed after finishing them.

I’ve also been thinking about changing this blog’s theme. My instagram pics don’t show on the sidebar and it doesn’t help to refresh or redo the link, I don’t know why that is.

Now I’m going to have some coffee and mudcake. I hope you’ve had a nice Sunday too.

Halfway through August

16.8.2020 julkaissut Nokisuu

So I’m back in the city and work too, it begun last Monday and I’ve been so busy with everything. Youngest one’s school begun on Thursday too.

The cottage weeks went quickly and I enjoyed time with my eldest and youngest son and Sirius. Middlest son visited for overnight as eldest picked him from the city and then gave him a lift to the garrison which is an hours drive North from the cottage. I did some foraging in the forests and picked berries and mushrooms. We had some encounters with wildlife, i.e. bats, and one day we drove to Jyväskylä to meet my cousin and one of my local friends popped by for a coffee. Very relaxing and nice two weeks.

Here at home besides work I’ve been busy sewing masks for myself to use in public transport as it was finally recommended by the authorities. There’s still a lot of people not wearing masks.

I’ve also been washing laundry from the cottage and also from the clearing I did here at home. I’d still go through my clothes to see what to put forward and what to keep. I have less clothes to wash now as middlest son is in the army, he used to change his clothes so often that the basket was always full.

On Friday evening I had coffee date with my friend and we decided to visit two art museums in Helsinki which was nice. The other one has great cafeteria, so after the first museum we then decided to have dinner at this one and checked the exhibitions too and afterwards had coffee and cake. It was nice to catch up with her too.

On Saturday hubby went to buy us more firewood and it was a bit hot weather to put them into the shed later but I love doing outdoors things in good weather. Today we watched middlest son give his oath via live-stream so now he is finally a conscript and not a rookie. Usually they get a vacation after the oath but these days the vacation is postponed still two weeks. In his speech the general said they haven’t had any of the boys sick with Covid19 since spring which is really good.

I’ve finished knitting a scarf, I finally got more yarn on Tuesday. I visited my dentist and afterwards went to my hairdresser and as I had a spare moment I did a quick visit at the yarn shop near her place. Oh and my dentist suggested I’d get braces as now my back teeth are getting too much pressure so I’m going to have a consultation made in mid-September. There’s always some moneypit one can throw her earnings.

This is about all from me for now. Pics in instagram and read books in Goodreads on the right side sidebar.

Cleaning, books, baking and movie

15.7.202015.7.2020 julkaissut Nokisuu

I’ve been mostly offline, mainly because I begun to clean my bookshelves last Friday and it spread a bit. It took me three days to clear the books and organize the shelves and then I had to clear my writing desk and the chests underneath in order to get everything out and re-organized. It took two days..

Today I’ve been cleaning the ”boys room” which used to be first eldest and middlest son’s room and then middlest and youngest one’s room and now it just middlest’s. But since there were so many layers of history to go through it takes time to clean.

But now it’s all done! Now I only need to take the overflow books to the second hand center (for a big 2nd hand shop retailer) and get some clear plastic boxes for all the myriad of playing cards we have obtained from our travels… There’s some jigsaw puzzles too which some I’m keeping and some I’ll give to my cousin’s little boy. I used to do a lot of puzzles before we had kids but now the cat likes to sleep on them so it’s a bit of a hindrance.

I managed to listen to all of the Alexander Gregory stories by LJ Ross. The first two were read by Hugh Dancy and they were good but I must say that RA’s reading is on a different level all together. (Or maybe I’m just biased.) I also listened to a podcast about opera made by a Finnish actor Antti Holma. He is very funny and he lives now in NYC because his husband is one of the harpists in Met so he made a podcast of how to opera.

I also started the Sandman audioplay (that’s probably the best word for a comic turned into an audiobook) and it’s very good. I love Neil Gaiman’s voice as the narrator, he was so good in reading ’The Ocean at the end of the lane” too which is one of his best novels imo.

On Monday when it was a bit less windy and more sunny I managed to finish ”Milkman”, a novel by Anna Burns sitting outside. It was a hard read. Actually in the middle I just leafed it through so I know what happened. I seldom leave a book unfinished because I think you can always get something out of a novel but boy this one was hard.

As middlest son left to the army I inherited his root. First he said he’d dry it but I said I’d try to bake some bread with it and so I did. We went to movies on Friday to see ”Parasite” and I bought a book about how to bake with a root. On Sunday I took a bit of the root and on Monday evening I finally started the dough and yesterday baked a lovely sourdough bread. It’s so good I’d eat it all alone.

About ”Parasite”: I really liked it. It’s one of those that sink in later. A great movie, very Oscar-worthy and a globally touching story. In the movie theater we had our own row, there were some people on other rows but you’d only buy tickets for two people and then there’d be two empty chairs between other people but since we were just three and there were not many people we sat together. (Sorry for the confusing text.)

Now I’m going to watch some tv. I started to watch ”Stateless”, an Aussie serie in Netflix and it’s very good about paperless immigrants and a woman who’s escaping a cult ends up in the same detention centre. It’s very interesting and it’s also got Cate Blanchett in it who I think is the most beautiful woman on Earth and my fave actress. Some of the New Zealand-made Netflix series have also been very good, I especially liked ”Wanted” and not only because of Deano (*blushing*). He was also very good in ”The Bad seed” but I don’t know if that’s on Netflix since I watched it via our public broadcast company YLE.

But now Sirius needs some scratches and I need coffee and knitting and tv 🙂 CU.

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Immersed

6.7.2020 julkaissut Nokisuu

I was spending about all of my waking hours in the Rain Wilds last week. I was rereading the Rain Wilds Chronicles by Robin Hobb and during the night I dreamed of them. I love Hobb’s novels and I’ve been slowly rereading all of them and it’s been a real pleasure. It’s always been like this for me when I read her books, I get so immersed it’s hard to do anything else. I don’t get just as deep with Tolkien or other fantasy realms but the Six Duchies touches my soul differently than others. Maybe it’s the dragons; I’ve always loved Hobb’s dragons, they are like cats, very independent and selfish but in need of servants.

We’ve had horrible weather ever since last Tuesday. The wind blows like it was Autumn and the rain sloshes down at every hour (except right now). In June I was worried the plants would die from drought and now I fear they’ll need a lifesaver so they don’t drown. I can’t even go to the forest to walk because the ground is so wet and since it’s so blustery cycling is hard. On Thursday when it didn’t rain until evening I visited a friend by bike and my knees have been aching ever since.

I came home via the graveyard where my father’s grave was, we gave the lease up since none of us (me and my siblings) didn’t much care about the grave site. Me and my sister agreed that we can just as well light a candle for our father in the remembrance site in the graveyard. In Easter me and hubby visited the grave and then the stone was still there but now they had already taken it off.

Middlest son left early this morning to the Air Forces base in Central Finland. He’ll be there 11 months and due to the Covid19 we don’t yet know when he’ll going to come home. I guess we’ll hear about the off-weekends later this week. Yesterday we had eldest son for dinner and since tomorrow would be middlest son’s 19th birthday I baked a cake and it was all very good but now it’s very quiet here. Just me and hubby and youngest son. Luckily Sirius meows every now and then.

I started to knit a shawl but had to change the yarn. The first yarn was a very nice yarn and I loved the color but since it was handpainted it kind of lost the brilliance in lace knitting and vice versa.

Winter pelt

22.6.2020 julkaissut Nokisuu

Here in Finland we call the first swim in nature waters after winter ’throwing one’s winter pelt’ and since it’s been quite warm weather these past days I got rid of mine. The sea was wonderfully warm, I was expecting the water to be colder and was surprised when it wasn’t. I could have stayed in the water for all afternoon yesterday but.. Hubby doesn’t like to swim in ’cold water’ as he says and youngest one wanted to skim the stones off the water surface.

We’ve celebrated the Midsummer just being at home and enjoying it, I’ve read outdoors and already have nice tan. Middlest son has been mostly with his friends since he is going to the army in the early June. His friends cut his hair, it was to his shoulders but now it’s shaven 1mm long. He looks so much older it makes me a bit weepy.

Tomorrow is my first official day of summer vacay but I took Thursday off already and it feels like I had already been several weeks away from the office. Our new work desks came but they can’t be put on place yet since the acoustic wall-to-wall rug must be washed during summer. Well, it’s nothing we can do so we’ll just have to wait and see.

Due to the Covid19-situation the public swimming halls have been closed among other things and I thought that since hubby is working on Tuesdays and Thursdays now I’d go for a swim in the mornings since we can’t do any short trips until he gets off. I missed swimming during the closing, it’s my fave sport (pilates is another of my faves).

Since we are not traveling outside Finland this summer I have time to go through the cupboards I’ve used to fill with things when we get guests. I should also go through my book shelves and re-arrange them. Whoo boy.

Normal people

7.6.2020 julkaissut Nokisuu

I’m watching the tv-serie Normal people which is based on a novel by Sally Rooney. I haven’t read the book and I doubt I will even thou the tv-serie is good.

It tells about a young couple, Marianne and Connell, who start dating in the high school and then their on-off relationship through college years. It’s been a bit of a task to watch because

it’s kind of too artsy. I mean the high art when you try to pretend to understand all the nuances and it gets a bit boring to reflect everything through the Deep Meanings (you know what I mean here).
there is too many sex scenes. I don’t know why but we are back to the 80’s now with all the official sex scenes in movies and tv-series. Sometimes less is more you know, it gets boring pretty quickly.
it hits too close to the young girl I once was, just as unsure and doing what I was told by my boyfriend. And I don’t want to remember the time nor the boy nor the girl I was back then. Of course I’ve changed and people do, they grow up but it’s hard to watch. I guess we’ve all been there.

So yeah.. just two eps to go. And a button strip to knit.

On to other things. We’re having middlest son’s graduation party next Saturday and I’ve counted that all together we’ll make about 30 adults including us.I’ve been cleaning the house and baking all weekend. I washed the kitchen windows today and I don’t think I’ll wash any others during this week. I still need to wash the floors before Saturday.

Yesterday I baked a bundt cake which my sister loves, it’s called Sandcake since it’s very dry and today I did some ’gentry cookies’, they are a traditional small cookie in weddings and other kin parties. Here you can see a pic of them, I cut them heart-shaped because I like it more.

Hubby has been cleaning our garden furniture and finished painting them today. One of our neighbours came to inquire where we bought them 🙂

At my work we’re waiting for our work desks to arrive. If we’re lucky we’ll get them this week which would be great since we’re off to our summer holidays on June 18th and come back on early August just as the clients arrive too. On Friday I got rid of all the music class books the teachers had decided they didn’t need anymore and it took me all day to shred the books off the covers. I was quite done afterwards.

Here are some pics. The music class pics show the state of Friday morning before and after lunch. Then there’s some Rhododendrons from my yard and the last pic is of a Finnish actor Jasper Pääkkönen, whom you might know from the Vikings and the BlacKkKlansMan. This pic was in an article and I was just thinking how here in Helsinki our (famous) actors can just casually bike around the city, nobody bothers you (much).

Now I need to get my beauty sleep 🙂

These times

5.4.2020 julkaissut Nokisuu

On Friday I cooked some sort of tian, a Provencal veggie dish I found by accident when googling something else. I used eggplant and zucchini and it was so good! I also read ”Everything I never told you” by Celeste Ng on Friday and it was really great. I loved her novel ”Little fires everywhere” but for some reason this was better imo. I also finished listening to ”Patient man” by Joy Ellis, read by Richard, today and it too was very good.

Yesterday I was a bit down. One of my best childhood friends had her 50th birthday and we couldn’t celebrate them. We’ve known each other since we were 9-y-o and their school’s all pupils came to our school for the school year as their new school was getting built and on one of the first gym classes she asked to be my pair and now she’s eldest son’s godmother.

Since there’s no celebrations during this time me and some of our mutual friends gave her together a gift card for a pedicure and a bunch of flowers delivered to their house and it was nice to surprise her. I also sent a greeting card from our family.

My friend is working as an X-ray nurse in the pandemic hospital which I must confess makes me a bit worried. I’ve also been a bit blue since on March 27th it was the 5th anniversary of my mom’s passing and this is always sad time for me.

Luckily we had good weather during the weekend and yesterday I made a 90-minute walk in the woods (and my legs ached all night), heard finches sing and later helped youngest son to cook us dinner and dessert since it was his HE homeworks.

Today I sorted the old cook books and recipes in kitchen self, it’s been on my to-do-list for ages. Did you know that in the 70’s it was recommended to cook pizza with liver or European cisco (fish)? I didn’t throw those recipe books to the bin yet, I’ll keep them as a curiosity. Later me and hubby changed the cactus’ dirt and pots which has also been on the list quite some time.

There was an article about Finland’s stockpile of supplies in NYT if you want to read. There’s an old joke which goes: ”What does Sweden have Norway and Finland don’t? -Good neighbours” (neither Finland nor Norway appreciate Sweden as high as they could, sort of sibling rivalry).

Tomorrow I’m going to work for a few hours since my workplace health care is in the neighbouring house and I need to go there for some bloodworks (thyroid). Hubby will drive me there and also collect which is nice.

Working from home

28.3.202028.3.2020 julkaissut Nokisuu

I’ve been working from home this week. I thought I couldn’t because I’m an assistant librarian and there’s not so much for me to do from home but my boss had thought about it and suggested I’d begin to put up our library’s blog which has been a long-discussed project and so hubby drove me to my work last Monday and I picked up a laptop to go and then he came and drove me back home. We had a short briefing with my colleague (she lives quite literally next door) and I also had a chat with Tuija in the office, she was the only one there. There was also four of our doormen since their boss is a d**khead and doesn’t let them do other jobs the city could use them for, so they sit in the empty house without anything purposeful to do.

I finally managed to get the blog together yesterday but I’m not happy about the look and I think I need to tweak it still. I think mostly my unhappiness with it comes from the point that I haven’t been able to show it to anyone and have been alone on it. It’s a collective thing and I feel awkward doing the basic outlook by myself, I need mirroring and brainstorming. On Thursday I was so frustrated with the whole thing that I did a longish walk to the grocery store, it took me over an hour all together but afterwards I was in a much happier place.

On the other hand there’s been lots of good things too since I’ve been learning something new every day. I couldn’t get the laptop into my workplace VPN from home but with a little help from one of my colleagues I managed to get get over it and do something else instead so now I can do most things like I was in the library on my own workplace.

I like to be at home but I miss my daily walk to the metro train station and it’s too easy to let the working hours spread into the evening by ”I’ll just do this quickly” you know. I have never been great on working from home and I still prefer going to the actual work place and after working hours to close the PC and door and get home. also I get less reading done since I don’t have to commute. It’s not easy to pick a book for lunch because I could more easily just work through the lunch time and eat a sandwich or something by the laptop.

Now the government has closed the most southern part of Finland off of the rest of the country because people were swarming to Lapland and summer cottages to smaller districts which have less capacity if people fall ill and need ICU. How idiotic can people be? Einstein said it right:

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”

Well anyways. This too shall pass. Meanwhile enjoy Richard in a nice jumper.

RA Daniel