fantastic4edinburgh

Signing off

2005-11-19T19:21:00.000Z

Apologies for any inconvenience.

An offer we cannot refuse

2005-11-16T17:12:00.000Z

We have been offered a mortgage loan - we will sign as fast as possible and then hopefully move soon, soon, SOON!
Mental note: need to buy one more car.

Frost

2005-11-13T11:08:00.000Z

Quick update after a busy week. Firstly it seems that another mortgage lender has accepted our application. So, now we are moving after all, but nothing is sure until the papers are signed.
Frost this morning, for the first time. The week has been cold and blustery, with lots of rain, and now winter is knocking on our door.
Thursday: Paul Weller concert in Usher Hall. Very good except for things like the crappy seats we had, and that the sound was excruciatingly awful. The support band was very poor as well. But the Paul Weller songs, wow.
Yesterday evening we went to see Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang, which was a great and memorable experience. Fabulous entertainment.

Write now

2005-11-10T00:02:00.000Z

Quick update.
Writing 'till my fingers bleed. Trying to keep up. Reached 13,000 words 2 minutes before midnight. That's still 2,000 short of the target. Man.
And everything was down at work today, no server, no network, no internet connection, no way of checking anything, even the phone lines were at times not working or sending German Kodak calls to Greek Motorola agents and so on. Very strange. Why didn't I write like a mad? Because everybody had nothing to do, and they were all staring at my monitor where I had written "breast". That's why.
The word thermometer on the right has been taken down due to too heavy web traffic. Do not adjust your sets.
Must...sleep.

Write on

2005-11-08T17:00:00.000Z

Second week of NaNoWriMo starts today. I am behind. I should have been close to 12000 words yesterday, but work and a roleplaying appointment made me reach less than 10000 within the first week. I have some serious catching up to do. Today I didn't have time to write a single word during work, not even in my breaks.
I managed to write 300 words last night after midnight, when I returned from my roleplaying session, and then another 700 right after I returned to work.
This is the week that will break me or make me stronger. Possibly both.

Happy birthday Susanne

2005-11-06T10:56:00.000Z

Susanne, aka Mrs Rasmussen, is 42 years old today. Happy birthday!

The night before

2005-10-31T14:24:00.000Z

Tomorrow, or rather tonight at midnight, is the kick-off for NaNoWriMo, the mad writing marathon for word masochists. I am ready.
To cleanse my brain and generally have a good time before 30 days of HELL, Mrs Rasmussen and I are going to a concert tonight with the American jazz guitar genius Bill Frisell, at Edinburgh's Usher Hall.

Dudes and Kaukasians

2005-10-30T12:35:00.000Z

Mrs Rasmussen and I went into town yesterday, when the weather was nice and warm and not rainy at all. We have been told that we can borrow money to buy a house, but not this particular house because of its location. The area is close to some of the more rough areas in Edinburgh, and the money lenders seem to have changed their minds. In this we can learn that it takes approximately 2 months for money lenders to change their minds.
Anyway, we bought Wonder Boys and The Big Lebowski on DVD and saw both films when we got home. We had invited S and R, one American and one Canadian, to watch Lebowski with us, while slurping away White Russians. There is no doubt. This is the funniest film ever. Not even the Life Aquatic comes close.
Oh, we also bought the paperback version of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, a 1000-page monster about 19th century British magicians.

Writing marathon

2005-10-26T11:20:00.000+01:00

November is the month for NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, which is kind of a marathon race for writers. If you volunteer to participate, you will have to write 50,000 words in 30 days.
The idea comes from the mind of an American - what else - writer, who started the craze in 1999 with 21 participants. Last year the event had exploded to 42,000, and let me just predict wildly here that this year it is going to be even bigger.
I am going to be a part of it in 2005, and I will attempt to write a pulp fantasy novel before 30 November. If I don't make it, call me a loser. A wimp. If it is not totally crap, I might even let you read it.
NaNoWriMo also collects money to build libraries in development countries, and this year the funds go to children's libraries in Laos. So, if you are not writing, you can donate instead. Click on the NaNoWriMo picture and do it. NOW!

A few days of rain

2005-10-25T08:08:00.000+01:00

People sometimes think it rains all the time in Edinburgh. It does not, really, and when it rains it usually lasts only a short time. Well, the last days have been an exception to that, because it rained pretty much all day yesterday, and all in all it has been a very wet week. I have been wearing my full-body anti-rain gear cycling to work most of the last seven mornings.
The kids start school today after their half-term break, and Mrs Rasmussen is off on her break this week. It is all very uncoordinated. I am working, looking forward to my next holiday, which is in February 2006. Weee.
Our house deal still has to come through. Nothing is new here either.

Life of a mind

2005-10-20T20:32:00.000+01:00

Matthias has started another blog, Lifelike. Good stuff if you are heavily into gaming and teenage brains.
Sofie writes her Livejournal on a daily basis. Read it at your own peril.

Planzo planning

2005-10-20T11:56:00.000+01:00

Are you still planning your calendar and ToDo lists in Outlook or other similar software on a PC? Man, that's soooo last century. Now we have the interweb. We can do it online.
Check out the splendid and free calendar site Planzo. My calendar is here, but you will not be able to see much unless you are added to my list of special people.

Me, myself, I

2005-10-18T20:13:00.000+01:00

Ahem...

2005-10-12T13:36:00.000+01:00

Sorry for not having updated the blog for so long. My attention has been on other things.
House update: the people that wanted to buy the house instead of us withdrew their offer, and we were offered the house. Great. Except we are still waiting to get an answer from the mortgage people on whether we can borrow the money or not.
You think it's hard if your name is Turkey and you want to join the EU? Pfff. You think Soviet bureaucracy was bad? HA! I laugh in your direction. Try applying for a mortgage in Scotland if you are a foreigner. Then you will see both bureau and cracy click into action.
Life update: we are still alive.
Weather update: rain.
What tarot card I am update: The Fool.

House update

2005-09-19T11:13:00.000+01:00

Well, we are back to square one. Somebody else bought the house we were bidding at. But we are fine and OK with that. Thing is, we actually love living in Colinton, if only it was closer to St Andrews.
I have been working for Kodak Digital for a couple of weeks now, and it is very nice. Good colleagues and good vibes at the office.

Offer turned down

2005-09-11T19:35:00.000+01:00

It was close. The people selling the house we tried to buy decided to turn down our second, lower, offer. So we are back on the house-hunting market. It's not that bad, really, and there's nothing we can do about it anyway.
Besides that, everyday life has kicked in for real, with Mrs Rasmussen driving to and from St Andrews 4 times a week, and me now working for Kodak Digital Cameras. All is normal.

That feeling, you know...

2005-08-30T16:44:00.000+01:00

When you just applied to borrow £150.000. Anyway, it seems like we are part of a house deal, and it looks like we are going to start living here from the end of September.
We've offered. They've accepted. Now we just have to wait for the fiddly bits, like solicitors and mortgage lenders to do their things.

Pure Serenity

2005-08-26T14:09:00.000+01:00

We somehow managed to get tickets to the last screening of the film Serenity at the Film Festival. If you don't know what Serenity is, then you can stop here.
OK, Joss Whedon and the cast had left Edinburgh - they were here - and we only had the film itself. And 1000 nerds in black queuing in front of us to get the best seats.
It was good, mostly great characters and not even a silly plot could do anything to take away the entertainment value.

House found - money short

2005-08-23T12:40:00.000+01:00

We actually managed to find a house we like. And want. But it's too expensive. Like £9000 too expensive. It may not sound like a lot, but if you don't have it and cannot borrow more, it is. So, so far it's only in our dreams.
(If a rich benefactor reads this, just leave a comment and I will contact you with my bank details ;))

Hey nineteen

2005-08-17T10:23:00.000+01:00

It was nineteen years ago yesterday. Mrs Rasmussen, then miss, and I met on a warm summer's day somewhere in Denmark. We've been together since, and I think we are a good team. Tonight we will celebrate. Go see a film. Have a beer. Kiss.

The hunt goes on

2005-08-07T21:37:00.000+01:00

Went to two job interviews last week. one for a good, well-paid job with lots of responsibilities and one shitty paid, shitty job. Got the last one, which involves supporting a very well known producer's digital cameras. Still searching for jobs, but at least I am employed.
Our house hunting goes on. We are narrowing down on what we can afford, and where, and Thursday we actually saw something, a first-floor flat with a garden the size of a handkerchief, which we actually might consider maybe buying, if something better doesn't pop op while we are considering.
This weekend kicks off the many Edinburgh Festivals, and we are only planning on visiting a couple of events on the Book Festival. S from London is coming to stay for a week while checking out the film festival. Maybe we will pop in on a Brazilian or Chinese film or two, who knows?

Back on track

2005-08-02T13:38:00.000+01:00

Finland was great, absolutely great. We had a great time swimming and fishing in the local lake, reading, hanging out in the sunshine, relaxing in the sauna, shitting in a plastic bucket and eaten by moscitoes and flies. All in all it was a splendid holiday, away from TV (almost), news and internet.
I started back at work yesterday, and step one in finding another job was a job interview I was invited to attend this morning. I have another interview Wednesday. We'll see.
This week Matthias participates in a Philosphy week for "gifted children". Yesterday he came home talking about absolute sceptisism, realism and stuff like that. All very cool. And the he went into his room to shoot stuff up in TimeSplitters. If that's not a broad range of interests, I don't know what is.

See you all in August

2005-07-10T17:14:00.000+01:00

Sorry, I kind of lost that "Yay! It's my holiday tomorrow"-feeling when people where being blown to pieces in London. Maybe it's me getting old and sentimental, but I texted my friend S in London (something I normally NEVER do) to hear if he was all right.
Just thought I would say, killing people just doesn't solve anything. Ask Hitler. Ask Stalin. Ask Franco. Ask Amin. Ask Hussein. It makes living people dead, that's about IT. Don't ask Bush, I am not sure that he actually thinks it such a bad idea after all.
Anyway, it's summer here in Edinburgh, with sunshine galore and temperatures close to 30 degrees. And we are leaving for Finland on Tuesday.

T minus 2

2005-07-06T16:27:00.000+01:00

It's getting better...

Holidays T minus 3 days

2005-07-05T15:47:00.000+01:00

It cannot become Friday quickly enough. Summer holidays. Three weeks off. 2 of which relaxing next to a Finnish lake, with the hardest decisions being what to set the exposure time on my camera to, or if you want another beer.
Mrs Rasmussen is playing paintball with some students from her school today, and the first reports say that she is OK, suffering only minor injuries from a hit to the neck, and paint in her hair. There is no news about how the students are doing.