Viilinainen's Journal

1:00am: Tatun ja Patun Suomi
Damn. Nothing posted for three months.

In the interim, Leysin had its first snow, I bought my first snowboard, and was promised lessons in boarding this winter. Before Christmas break, the weather was amazing, over a meter of snow and every day sunny and warm. Now that I'm back, everything is bleak, gray and snowless. BUT there's snow up on Berneuse, which is where I'm heading, with some feelings of apprehension, on Tuesday afternoon.

Travis is working two jobs, one building the snowpark in Leysin and the other working at the ski shop in Les Mosses. I'm still unsure of what I want to do after June; I'd prefer to stay in Leysin and at LAS, but only if they give me some kind of worthwhile job for next year. I don't know whether that's happening. Ideally, I'd like to work in a lab again, but that's obviously a tall order for a remote Alpine town. I wish I had some clear direction.

In November, I took Travis to London for his birthday, and we had a dazzlingly fun time, visiting the Dungeon and the British Museum and Mona in Warwick.  I'm actually considering London as a place to move to, since I'm desperately craving big-city life at the moment.  In London Vanessa and I had a stupid fight which we still haven't quite recovered from. In December I visited the Montreux Christmas market -- this year's theme was Finland. Although, it turned out to be some twisted Swiss perception of Finland, complete with overpriced smoked salmon and a weird wood hut plastered with reindeer skins.

Today is the last day of my vacation and I'm going back to the office tomorrow. Fortunately I have a big project ongoing, I hope it lasts for a while because I ran out of stuff to do before the break, and I hate sitting around idle at work. Visiting Finland was hugely refreshing, I hadn't had a proper vacation in far too long. Katja is going to film-directing school and is the star of the class, I'll post a link to her newest project as soon as she's done with it. It was great to have a traditional Christmas with my whole family, and Mai, whom I've missed terribly.

I guess that's it for now. Travis the good pasta kid is sexier than you remember him. We spend unhealthy amounts of time together. He came to meet me at Geneva airport on Friday with roses, cards and Christmas gifts. Yesterday we went to a punk show in Montreux, where a friend's band was performing. The bar ran out of whiskey, but who cares! Authentic shawarmas were consumed and free shitty wine was handed out. So that's the latest, and hopefully more updates in the next three months.

Happy New Year to everyone!!

5:03pm: Raspberry pie at the train station

This was a trip to Maf's goodbye party in Gland.

8:24pm: Crepes and Fishsticks
God. Whenever there's a new guy in my life, my journal pathetically degrades to "TRAVIS and I did something uber-cute today blah blah blah" nonsense that no one is interested in. According to previous surveys, all anyone wants to hear is the sordid details of my sex life. Though I suspect due to the lack of comments lately that that's getting old too.

HA! As punishment for the non-communication of my audience, I will now revert to pretending that this diary is written for me, and me alone. So....ahem. Yesterday, <3*~*TrAViS*~*<3 was super-soppily adorable when he brought me soup and orange juice from the Coop to heal my fever. In the meantime, I baked for him, again, this time with more success since he ate the entire pan....though overenthusiastic banana-bread consumption may have been partially fueled by guilt over previous cinnamon-roll disaster. The rest of the night we played Oblivion and watched a nature documentary on Bengal tigers.

Why am I even documenting this stuff? In years to come, my great-grandchildren will find this shit lying somewhere beneath piles of forgotten binary codes, take one look, say "Damn, great-granny was a pathetic, ranting sap" and posthumously disown me.

4:57pm: I thought this was fun. Thanks Katja!

10 years ago 1997:
1. I'd just left Saudi-Arabia
2. I'd arrived at high school in Switzerland
3. I'd never had a boyfriend

5 years ago 2002:
1. I'd been at college for 2 years and had just started courses in biochemistry
2. I was madly in love with a Californian
3. I still wasn't sick of the Scottish accent

4:06pm: Cinnamon Failure
So last Thursday, I went to my first punk rock show, obviously tagging behind Travis. The band was called Blood or Whiskey. The gig was fun but there weren't enough people and I consumed over-the-top quantities of the whiskey. Which was actually fortunate, because later that night we ran into T's *other* girlfriend, some tiny little elfin Norwegian girl who surprises him once in a while and shows up in Leysin unexpectedly, fawning all over him.

He had warned me about this in advance, so I wasn't too worried...actually, I was possibly too inebriated to feel anything except a strong desire to be left alone so I could pass out on the couch. Anyway, he left me in the middle of the night to go break up with her, because he felt bad about the whole situation. 

I wasn't worried until two days later, when I still hadn't gotten any word of what had happened. When I finally did reach him, it turns out he went to her apartment, told her he didn't want to see her again, and asked if he could have her tv which she was about to throw out. So yeah. He broke up with her, and walked off with her tv. She stalked him for two days afterwards. 



The newest development, that he's been ranting about for weeks now, is his new Xbox 360 and some random elf-game that he wanted me to be a part of. So as of last night, after a quickie on a nature trail, and inspired by his excitement, I'm now officially a red-haired wood elf. I was afraid the Xbox would get in the way of our sex life, but I think after seven orgasms last night it's safe to say, not so much.

So that's the bright side. But: yesterday I had spent most of my day baking cinnamon rolls for him. So I gave him one, and he bites into it and says "This is kinda hard". I was kind of pissed, and so he was all "I'm sorry babe, I'm used to high-quality pastries." Jerk. I said the girls at Eden had liked them just fine, and he said they were just being nice. Who the hell says that?? Then he was all confused about why I was angry. 

Anyway, it was nice that he had arranged for me to spend the night at his house, despite the protests of his dragon-aunt from Hades. But grr, in the morning I was still kinda miffed at his behavior...I didn't exactly give him hell, but in the end he said  "Is that it?" all bitchy-like and I looked at him and pointedly said "I don't know, is it?".  I think that scared him a bit...we'll see. Nah though, he's mostly nice, and even when he was a jerk it wasn't an aimed barb at me, just a misguided attempt to be honest. Next weekend we're supposed to be going to the birthday party of his friend from Leeds, who was also at the punk show and he says it's going to be wild.

8:35am: Hahahahaha!! I took Natalie's elaborate Career test, and my first result, the profession I'm apparently best suited for based on my interests is....


...taxidermist. A little bit morbid, but hey...I just can't hide my love for dead animals and sawdust.

7:27pm: Happiness and Confusion
I got a contract!! They want me to be the AV/IT girl. I'm up for it, it's hot. They're giving me a place to live and a travel allowance. So looks like I'll be staying for a while! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. Today I went to my first faculty meeting, pain au chocolat and all.

Last night, Travis and I went walking up to Prafandaz and eating at the Lynx. All of a sudden he looks up at me and says "I don't want to freak you out, but I really like you. " Before he was always saying that he didn't want anything serious, that we should also see other people. Now he's saying the opposite, and that I'm his "ideal woman". He seemed nervous and got distracted from his ribs.

Today he called me the second the clock struck five, and wanted to meet me on the way to town. We went shopping for hairdye and soap bubbles, and he said he wanted to move in with me.

Remember how I was smitten with the boy? I still am. Crazy little redhead punk, and all the teachers are shocked at our thing because he only graduated recently and they remember his rebellious antics. But dammit, I want to talk to Paul because he's always been the only one who really knew me and and who I never had to pretend to be anyone else for. Not that I'm pretending now....but you know.

I never know what I want.

7:55pm: So all the kids left last Friday...before that, we had the Extravaganza Night, which was insane. Insanely fun in parts, insanely ridiculously boring in others. Here's what went down:

1. After a full day of handing out pocket money to kids that were leaving, we had to get ready for the family banquet at five. So I put on my green shiny ballgown thing, spiked my hair out in the back and joined the family in the cafeteria. My family this session consisted of: Manaf, Anastasia, Juan, Humberto, Saleh, Joel, Nazli, Abdullah, Naima and other parents Scott and Brie. We had classic banquet fare (hasn't changed in seven years): cheese triangles, rice with vegetable hash and chicken shish kebabs.

2. Next we headed down to the black box theater, where the Seussical was set to begin. It was seriously impressive. Three kids especially stood out: the ones that played Horton the Elephant (amazing singing voice), Maizie (attitude) and The Mayor (naturally gifted actor). Cool costumes, too.

3. Dessert was in the gym, where art displays had been set up. Henry and I fooled around by forcing unknown people to pose with us in pictures.

4. After a while,  we had to sit down for the patriotism slideshow. Jon had made a powerpoint presentation that represented all the countries where our students and staff were from. Country by country, everyone had to stand up for their own national anthems and sing along. I was representing Finland alone, but it was fun! It was moving to see kids stand up by themselves to belt out anthems with hands on hearts.

5. The AA kids got to escape at this point. Lucky for them, because next followed a freakin' half-hour slideshow of pictures taken during the camp. Fun at first, but got pretty tedious quickly. Especially when the show went on for ages with pictures FROM THE PREVIOUS DAY. Isn't it a little early for nostalgia after 24 hours? I don't know.

6. Thankfully that was finally over and we thought the ceremony was over with...but no. Now began a candlelight vigil where all the families had reps stand up to give a speech about what they'd learned in family. It was sweet, but went on for decades again...some families had EVERYONE say something.

7. Finally we got to escape, tearful goodbyes in the Red Frog.

I think each of these events were a wonderful idea, but they seriously crammed too much into one night. By the end, everyone was exhausted and my kids were pleading with me to make it end. Mandatory events like this are never fun, especially when they stretch on and on. These ceremonies should've been spread over a few days, instead of coming all at once.

Now the kids have left, and a lot of the staff have either gone on Culturals or just on their own vacations. Henry, Holly and Paulina went to Prague and wanted me to come along, but I thought I should get some of my own (non-office-related) work done. Last night I was pubcrawling with Gi. She had a creepy townie stalker who kept showing up whereever she went. We were in Top Pub and wouldn't  you know it, half an hour later he appeared. She was not into it, and declined the offer of a beer, but he (not getting the hint) bought her one anyway and talked on and on about himself. Didn't even bother to greet me, or to offer me a beer, despite offering one to his friend and Gi. Gi practically chugged the thing and we ran out of there with excuses of having to get up early. We were halfway to Savoy when we realized we wanted to check out the situation at the Yeti, so we ended up sneaking past Top Pub again, and walking down. The Yeti was dead, so we headed for the Saloon, where Hailey entertained us with free booze and stories about her love life.  Finally we ended up at Le Leysin and got served Kahlua shots with whipped cream. Hailey promised to hire me at the bar if I learned to speak French quickly.

Today, I met Hailey at the Croissanterie and we planned to hitchhike down to Montreux for the festival. Just as we were leaving, her townie friends called her up to say they were driving down there, so we got a ride. I knew one of them from before, he was Travis's Quebecois friend who had sympathized with me on the second night when Travis had been late for our meeting. Anyway, the three of them spoke French together and I was just kind of a hanger-on, but it was still fun. We walked around, ate chicken kebabs and went swimming in the lake in our underwear. Il fait tres chaud. I was trying to absorb the French because I really want to stay in this town. When we got back we hung around at the Croissanterie for a while, with more townies showing up. It's so weird, I can understand French, I can read it, but I am absolutely painfully shy about speaking it. I should just do it. Hailey's advice is to speak it when drunk, cuz lack of inhibition and all.

Oh and hey, if you guys want to see pics of all these shenanigans, head to facebook.

Oh yeah and hey! Yesterday while walking around during the day, Gi and Andres and I visited the Esplanade! My room looked the same except that they'd added a massive closet where the Sex Wall used to be. Leslie's side had a new closet too. Andie, Liz and Nat's old room had been changed completely, there was a new bunkbed opposite Liz's, and another one beside the new one, separated by a wall. Andie's side also had another bunk.

11:09am: Hmmm! Yesterday, trip to Bern! Shopped myself to exhaustion, and I was blissfully alone this time. Missed the bears on the way in, and they were hiding on the way out. Massive amount of accessories and H&M stuff.

Duty C, with the stinky kid in room 208. He was poisoning the whole hallway with an odor of festering sweatsocks. His neighbor was helpfully running around with a can of deodorizer, spraying rose fragrance everywhere to get rid of the rankness. His poor roommates were pleading to switch rooms for the night, but like a true dorm Nazi I had to shut the door in their faces, locking them inside the noxious gas chamber of body odor. Just following orders!

Henry, Holly, Gi and Paulina joined me.  " I smelled a strange smell. I checked myself to make sure it wasn't me. It wasn't. There is a stinky resident in room 208, confirmed by several people. " I like the Beau Reveil kids, they're fun. Joined Gi and George at Top Pub for a rainbow.

Oh, little edited update on the previous entry!

3:21pm: YES! The Croissanterie finally opened up again. I went there yesterday with Henry and, as tradition demanded, had the Marseille sandwich and the Coupe de Forestier sundae. Nothing had changed, everything was the same as before. Very comforting.

Tonight they're opening up the Yeti and I'm hoping to go! I have to try the burger that everyone keeps raving about. No progress whatsoever on the infatuation, I'm driving myself crazy here.  I wish I could just switch the whole thing off, at least temporarily, goddammit.

Edit> The Yeti: fucking fantastic!! I must've been there before but I don't remember.  It's a restaurant near the telecabines, famous for their tasty burgers! Blaise was DJ:ing, it was an awesomely rowdy dance party, the staff were all there and were all wasted. Afterwards Henry, Holly and I skipped homeward, and back at the Savoy I drew tattoos on their sexy sexy bodies, as evidenced by pics on facebook.

3:56pm: Oh man...I don't know what's wrong with me. Last night a very hot guy was flirting with me, and I passed it up because I'm still hung up on Travis. Damn little punk only had me for seven days and I'm smitten.

But I mean...look at him.

Jesus.


I edited my original entry about him, because it was written so shittily. It's still shitty, but slightly less so.

1:12pm: PIctures of the fling as a friends entry!

3:08pm: More! more!
Okay! Here's the non-X-rated version of my working week. The X-rated one you can only read if you're logged in as my friend.

So:
Mona was here earlier in the week, we were at a chalet that Vanessa was housesitting and playing pictionary. Much amusement came from my effort to try and direct the drawing of the word "turban". Mona: " I like how you were all...yeahhh, well that's *kinda* it, let's just work with it and see what happens".

Going to Montreux, to the castle where I learned about people wiping their hands on rabbits after dinner, and about an island on Lake Geneva that the Swiss had gifted to the Queen of England...and then had asked her to pay taxes on it. So she returned the "present".

Henry and his glitter nametags! And Holly's overly enthusiastic effort.

I really need to post pictures.

2:08pm: Leysin
Leysin update continues!! Today we have a practice day where we go through a full day just like the students would, ie. breakfast, first through fourth period, lunch, and activities. So at the activities today we learned how to use our email, what to do in family, some Leysin history, and how the nurse system works. 

I'm excited about getting to be part of a family, but also a little intimidated since I have no experience working and teaching kids. But at least it's just family, I can learn little by little that way and have fun with the kids.  Oh! And I'm working on setting up a biology -related afterschool activity, something biological but not so class-like. I just wanna focus on things that might really inspire the kids to get interested in weird animal and plantlife.

Yesterday I met some great new people at the reception in Clairiere where they'd set up chocolate fondue and strawberries for us. Later we had a small room party, and everyone was great. I had more fun with the other teachers last night than I've had with my Finnish colleagues in my entire two years of doing a PhD.  I talked to Paul in the evening. 

In the afternoon today we learned what dorm we were assigned to for duty, I'm in Beau Reveil. In half an hour we're doing the fake "activities" down at upper or lower sporting.  So, Leysin is great! I do miss Finland, but only Katja and my family (and cat), my work not at all.

4:29pm: Lalalalalala
Yeeee! For those of you who don't know, I'm in Leysin right now! I'm working here for the summer as an office assistant. So far it's fantastic, I work half days although the next week is going to be busy with the summer school kids coming in.

Perks! The job has perks. For starters, we have a phone that we can use to call the US for free! In a lot of ways, Leysin is actually nicer now than it used to be. They have a new theater, a gym,  the library’s been renovated…there’s a dance studio and a choir room.  Oh, and they’re using Vermont and Beau Reveil as dorms. Everything seems better organized. I’m living in 6th floor Savoy, in Paul’s old room, strangely enough.

We just had our first staff meeting today, and they’re letting me be part of an academic family, possibly teach an afternoon ativity and go on excursions. AND! Free pain au chocol;at on Wednesdays…I remember stealing them on Wednesdays from the office after the staff meeting back in senior year. If I get an afternoon activity, I want to do something with biology.  I’m just so excited, I love being here again!! I’m totally reliving my high school days, I miss you all so much and I wish you were here! It makes me sad that it’ll never happen again, that I’ll never be in senior year Leysin again because it really was the happiest time of my life.

It’s nice to be around American accents and American attitudes again, I was getting sick of Finnish and occasional Finnish coldness. Everyone here is so friendly and open. I’m eating way too much chocolate, but I plan to go running up to Eagle’s Nest any minute now. :P The Croissanterie, I’m extremely disappointed to say, is closed until July dammit. But until then, I have La Lorraine. La Nonna doesn’t exist any more, or at least it’s changed names.

Ask me if you want to know what’s going on at LAS these days!! Love it. 
 

10:53am: Prizes at the end!
http://www.truefriendtest.com/friendtest/528808

1:14am: Quotes!
Go to: www.quotationspage.com/subjects and choose five quotes that describe where you mentally are. Then tag 5 people...

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.
-Robert Fritz

Love is everything it's cracked up to be…It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for.
-Erica Jong

We are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
-Richard Dawkins
(I know he's aggressive, but I've been a fan of Dawkins for a long time, from back when he was known mostly for his zoology. I think people misunderstand his aggression as a desire to deconvert everyone, but I think his motive is more to help people understand that escaping from religion is a real choice, that you don't need to believe in God in order to be moral or respectable or accepted. Also, he's passionate because organized religion is a threat to the science he loves. I know there's a lot of fanatic atheists out there, and I don't think I'm one of them...I think people are allowed to believe whatever they want to as long as religion is not used as a premise to hurt other people and to hurt science. )

(and while we're on the subject of religion hurting science...)
Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without any proof.
-Ashley Montague

You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts. I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.
-Richard Feynman

Tagging five people:
eivadne
nyeh
quiznap
scarvie
mephistopholina

8:23pm: Previously Destroyed Entries
Before Matti, there was a guy I dated for about a month and a half called Petteri. He was nice enough, but turned me off by being a cleaning freak. We mutually decided to be fuckbuddies instead of dating, but even that didn't really work out. I've hung out with him a couple of times, though.

I wrote a mammoth entry earlier about how we'd gone to the Motorock show. This was a fascinating event in that it was absolutely the shittiest fair I'd ever been to in my life, couple of motorcycles scattered in a vast hall with sex-toy booths. Turns out also that the main attraction of the fair was not motorcycles, but strippers! The hall seemed empty because all of the audience (consisting mostly of men) had come in through the entrance, dawdled around the sex-toy booths and then slowly trickled into the dance room in the back. Petteri and I sat for the entire evening eating free ribs and drinking beer provided by Mona who was working there as a waitress, and watching strippers do their thing on stage. Petteri paid for one of them to shake their ass in my face.
One of the performers was meant to be a famous Finnish porn star, but when her turn came up, she sang instead! The crowd was disappointed (but bemused), but they were redeemed later when she performed a pretty wild strip act...including signing autographs for fans with a pen in her pussy.

The second interesting event from a couple of months back was visiting a friend of mine's boyfriend in prison. He had ended up there on some kinda weed-growing charge. We went to visit him during a weekend, waited in the waiting room with a bunch of other wives and girlfriends. At one point, one of them pulled out a crime mag from her purse and started reading it intently, which I thought was kinda fitting. Eventually after a security check my friend and I were led into a room with a long bench in the middle, chairs on either side and a vertical glass pane between the two sides. The prisoner was led in. We were allowed to talk for forty minutes, and the whole time we were giggling like mad and having a great time, much to the chagrin of the other prisoner in the room, who was trying to have a serious conversation with his visiting parents. Our guy told us all kinds of interesting stuff about life in prison...such as:
-once a week, the prisoners get to go to a sauna
-he's heard lots of murderers brag about the stuff they've done, including shooting people in the head
-when you're sent to solitary, you actually do go naked, like in Oz
-the prisoners work eight hours a day, and the rest of the time they just sit in their cells with nothing to do
-he's never heard of rapes occurring, but a friend of his (a huge guy) played a joke on a new scrawny prisoner...the huge guy came back from the showers with shampoo on his hands and ordered the scrawny dude to drop his pants and bend over. When he tearfully did, and the huge guy just laughed and said it was a joke.
-the murderer's cells don't have toilets, just buckets to piss in.
Of course, all the stuff coming into the prison from the outside gets checked and lots of stuff confiscated. When the prisoners first come in, they get a "Welcome to Jail"-package that includes essential items as well as some information pamphlets. When our jailbird first wrote to my friend, he had no other paper to write on so his letters included instructions on how to drop your drug habits in the back.

6:56pm: A couple of weeks back, when Vanessa was visiting, I met a really hot guy at my local club Forte. He was a little bit drunk but kinda charming and a good dancer, and he walked me out to the taxi line after the club had closed. In the cab line we quizzed a lady in her 50's about where she'd been clubbing and ate makkaraperunat. Halfway through the line Matti decided he was going to introduce me to his friends, so we went to visit Jussi and Matti's cousin Mira, who were going out and living in the center. We slept at their place, and in the morning Jussi gave us a lift to my house in Harittu. On this, and all subsequent drives Jussi was hungover and therefore not fit to drive, and would've been arrested had we been stopped by the cops. I didn't realize it the first time, but I knew all the other times and I was an idiot.
Matti stayed over to sleep in my bed for the rest of the afternoon. The whole night, he held me really tightly against him. He wouldn't have sex with me, and I said I knew it was because he'd taken a vow of celibacy at the monastery. I called him a monk. I think he was just too drunk. The next day I went to the Caribia spa with Mona and Vanessa, and Matti paid for the cab there and was all excited about getting my number. I told him to call and tell me more about his life at the monastery.

Next Friday, I was at a Chinese dinner with the members of my choir, and he texted me asking whether I was going out that night. I told him I was disgusting from being at work, but he told me to come to his friend's house anyway. So I took a bus, met his friends and went with them to a shitty local bar, until we decided to move on to Forte again. I got really stupidly fucking drunk, I don't even remember that night except for vague images of lined-up tequila shots. We went to Matti's place for the night. No action. He told me fairytales about Goldilocks.

The next morning, Matti was webcamming with his friend Tumppi, who kept saying I was hideously ugly, fat, and had a huge nose based on my image on the screen. Matti didn't say anything back. After a few minutes, this guy and Jussi showed up at Matti's place. We had a discussion about why I wanted to come to a titty bar with them...they alternated between seeming to like me and being assholes. They walked me to the bus stop, and Matti and I agreed to meet later that night in Forte.

I showed up at Forte, but the guys were nowhere to be found. I called Matti to see what was up, and turns out they were in a pub about a kilometer away. So, retardedly, I walked there...Matti was glad to see me at first but then ignored me while his friends Jussi and Tumppi were trying to hit on me...Tumppi especially trying to eat his words about me being ugly, and trying to impress me with his knowledge of science. When we left the pub, the guys got into a wrestling match on the street.
On the way to town, Matti ditched his friends and came dancing with me in Amarillo. Afterwards, we sat on the curb listening to the street flautist play "Under the Bridge". Again, back to his place with a cab that he paid for, drunken nonsense, hungover the next morning. Jussi came over with Mira, we all went for kebabs, and I got dropped off at home again.
The whole time I've spent with Matti, he's paid for all my drinks, food, movies, everything. He hasn't let me pay for a single thing. Opened doors for me and given me his coat when I'm cold, too. But, it's not really so redeeming when you think about the discrepancy about how he treats me when we're alone and what a dick he is to me when his friends are around.

The following Tuesday I called him again, asking him to the movies with me. We went to see 300, and he was being sweet and stroking my knee. We went for ciders afterwards, and again he paid. We played Trivial Pursuit. I told him he was lovely, he kissed me and said we should keep in touch. Then he left for work.


Last night, I was out with some of Mona's friends and ran into Matti by chance. He was with his asshole friends again, and he bought me a drink but he seemed kind of distant and kept disappearing. After a while he sat down next to me and started to slur that he didn't want a relationship, and that he's been worried that he's hurt me. I said I'd never said I wanted a relationship either, and that I wasn't hurt. After this everything was fine and he was all holding my hand and slowdancing with me. His cousin Mira was making out with some random guy. Matti told his friends I was coming home with him, but that I was sleeping on the couch. I think for some stupid reason he was ashamed to say we were together. Tumppi was asking me woefully why I was with Matti when he (Tumppi) was so much smarter. Matti took me to his parent's house for the night, and we had a fun time talking but I still didn't get laid because of drunkenness. At like 6 am Jussi called him to ask if he could take Matti's ex-girlfriend Jenni home with him.
Matti was talking at length about how I had the wrong impression of him, and how he wasn't a good guy, and how he didn't want to be just friends but he didn't want a relationship, he was still broken up about his girlfriend of five years and his mom was worried. He had told his mom about me, and she had said she wanted him to have a girlfriend. I said it wasn't so serious, no pressure. We also talked about how the name Matti didn't suit him, and he should be a Janne instead and about iguanas and scorpions. In the morning Matti was holding me again...but all of a sudden his parents came home, we got up and got dressed quickly and said sheepish goodbyes before we headed to his friend Tumppi's house again.

His friends as usual were kinda assholes, Jussi was there, extremely hungover. Everyone was kind of out of it, Matti was playing musical chairs by himself and presenting everyone with his ass. The previous night his friends had whipped him and given him titty twisters, and he had awful red welts on his ass and kept complaining that his nipples were sore. I held Tumppi's rabbit in my lap, and got a horrible allergic reaction! Hives on my arms, and my eye swelled up after I'd touched it. Matti told his friends he had to go and clean his house, and asked if Jussi would take him there and drop me ("the baggage") off along the way. We took one more stop at Hesburger where Matti paid for my food again. Jussi told us that Jenni was not very bright, and talked other shit about her, the girl he'd slept with the previous night.

So anyway. This has been my dating life for the past few weeks. Matti is nice with me, but an asshole and a childish prick when he's with his friends. I only ever see him when he's wasted or hungover. His friends are total dicks and just act like teenagers, everyone fucking everyone else, no one caring about each other and everyone getting wasted every weekend. I'm not even getting laid. I'm so stupid, I put up with all this bullshit because Matti was hot as hell and I loved his weird pale green eyes. But green eyes only get you so far, I'm through with this. Too bad though, he was fun when it was just the two of us. Hmph. Next!

6:47pm: game
* Go to IMDB.com and look up 10 of your favorite movies.
* Post three official IMDB "Plot Keywords" for these 10 picks.
* Have your friends guess the movie titles.

1. loneliness, foot injury, karaoke (2003)
2. mining town, stoicism, bell ringing (2003)
3. flat tire, lips, electric carving knife (1975)
4. s&m, love, typographical error (2002)
5. memory, train, nonlinear timeline (2004)
6. france, redhead, psychopath (2006)
7. mail order bride, maori culture, infidelity (1993)
8. stapler, waitress, computer virus (1999)
9. curse, log cabin, volcanic island (1998)
10. dutch elm disease, house arrest, teenage girl (1999)

5:48pm: Some birthday pics

1:39pm: The fleeting realm of scent
Everyone, go see Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. Best movie I've seen in years, I went the next day and ordered the book. Totally absorbed by it.

Oh, and also, the other fantastic movie I saw this year was Dogville. I don't know if I mentioned it before, but also definitely recommended!

2:08pm: Night of the Psychos
Urgh. New Year's in Finland is so anticlimactic. It builds up, builds up and then....NOTHING happens. I was in a club, and there was no countdown, no party hats, no confetti, no kissing, no squeaky toys. At least there were fireworks outside, but the rest of the New Year's hoohah hasn't really caught on here...the Finnish way is to melt a tin horseshoe over the fire, drop it into cold water and predict the next year from the resulting shape. Thrilling.

Time for a man-update. Somewhat unsuccessful man-month. Here they are, in order of increasing creepiness:

-John: nice half-Irish guy who I invited over to watch Almost Famous after he had hit on me in the taxi line two nights before. So far, no new developments on that, which is too bad cuz I kinda liked him.

-Mikko: my sister's roommate who I initially thought was cute, but turned out kinda nerdy. Another affair forbidden by my sister, who says things would get awkward, and is probably right. Besides, my interest has waned.

-Patrik: boring guy I met for one date who was obviously full of himself. Our date had no chemistry, so I never called him again. A week later he messages me on MSN, saying "I hope you don't take it too hard, but I didn't really think we clicked". Um, you'd think the lack of communication would've clued you in about my feelings, idiot. I'll try not to break down. Oh, and then he was like "I'm sure someday you'll find your special someone."

-Arto: another one of Tomi's friends who was painfully hot and apparently attracted to me, but my sister has forbid me seeing him due to his dallyings with drugs.

-Kimmo: my sister's boyfriend's (Tomi) friend who somehow developed an obsession with me after meeting me twice while clubbing. Confessed his love for me, said I am his ideal woman, and that I'm "made for him". Waved his hands around shouting "I can't help it, I'm attracted to your sister, she's so beautiful". Tomi got embarrassed and escorted his friend outside, and that's the last I've heard of him.

-weird dating site guy, who wrote me the following message. All the weirdness is directly translated:
"Come into my Christmas. ATTENTION here is a 29-year old man from Turku with dark brown button eyes and brown hair, whose personality is Trustworthy, Honest, Faithful, Sensitive, Humorous, Affection-craving, Romantic and Social. Oh yeah and I don't tolerate cheating and lying and I don't smoke or use alcohol and I'm looking for you woman who doesn't tolerate cheating or experience heartaches and crave closeness and want to be in my arms and sit on my lap and like that you're spoiled and you're bought dark red roses and you're surprised and you're worshipped. (Ed:I'm assuming a sharp intake of breath goes here) Oh yeah and my hobbies include among others sports, writing love poetry and competitive dancing, movies and travelling abroad and I also like evenings at home like worshipping you and buying dark red roses also and if you're interested then contact me and you'll hear how I will make you happy and you will certainly not be disappointed or experience heartaches nevererer and we will see when it's not good to be alone and alone I can not sleep when loneliness shoots poison arrows at me now."

-Tero: This is a guy from the dating site that I'd given my MSN address to.
We talked for five minutes one day, before I made my excuses, creeped out by his already-apparent clinginess as well as the fact that we shared the same last name. He texted me a few times after that, and I never replied.
Last night, this creep called me at 4 AM, saying Happy New Year, and ignoring the fact that he woke me up. After I finally got rid of him, he texted me again.
I replied this time, saying this isn't going to work because I'm weirded out by the same-last-name thing.
He calls me AGAIN (I couldn't figure out how to turn my phone to silent), saying he's looked through all our family trees (?) and that we're not related. He also keeps asking me whether I know Pertti N.? Tapsa N.? Kirsi N.?, and saying that though we have the same name, he'd still like to meet up.
I say it's a bad idea, he screams and hangs up...
.....and calls me again half an hour later. By now I tell him that I'm creeped out, and that I'm going to call the police. He says he's "creeped out too" (???), hangs up and sends a final text an hour later:

" Hello I will never bother ever bother you whether we are related or not. I hope that you will not be in a state of fear. I will never bother you again. I will remove all your information that I had. I hope that this kind of situation will never occur with anyone else. Wishes Tero. "

9:50am: I always did love me some fillet of a fenny snake
In my last post, when I claimed to be a witch I was referring of course to my weird career of brewing up magical potions and mixing eerie chemicals in my tiny Eppendorf cauldron. Yesterday, I spent eleven hours sloshing *human blood* from one vial to another, like some macabre bartender at the vampire club. Blood the midwives at the local hospital had extracted from newborn babies, no less. *cackle*

If I did live in medieval times, our group would be very suspect witchcraft-wise. Not only is it about 80% women, but I discovered yesterday that almost half of the group is left-handed. What's that about? So I'm part of a left-handed coven of wily sorceresses who spend all day chanting spells and blending together mysterious concoctions, and I own a black cat. At least I haven't grown a third nipple or anything.

Also! Fill up my Christmas sock. Mmm, sock.

6:41pm: My Xmas Stocking
( my xmas stocking )