Granny Physics

Out of 22 Christmases (really, spellcheck? Just the one s?), I've probably been shopping for Christmas gifts on about 18 of those occasions. During these times I've observed an interesting fact: Grannies seem to follow their own laws of physics which are inapplicable to those under 60. I am the kind of person who decides what they want to buy and finds out beforehand how much it costs and where to buy it. In such cases, for example, Grannies have the innate ability to block exactly enough of a corridor to make impossible for you to get past, should you be in a hurry.
They can sense the speed you want to go at, and the speed that they are going at is relative to yours. Basically, the more of a hurry you're in, the more space the grandma takes up and the slower she goes. Also scientists have correlation between the amount of grannies about and the amount of things you need to get done divided by the amount of time you have to get them done in.

I don't even know if that's an equation, I just wanted it to sound official.

Here's the second thing I've noticed. Having read some material on string theory and finding out that there's a good possibility that there are more than 4 dimensions (and having watched stargate, where there are definitely more), I've decided that grannies have developed the ability (perhaps through cataracts) to see into these other dimensions.

This manifests in the 4 (3 + time) dimensions we lowly whippersnappers can see as a sudden, unexplained and abrupt stop in the trajectory of the granny. Usually this happens as you are planning to overtake the granny (which they can sense, you know) so you end up nearly running the granny over, or crashing into her back. Of course, this would be totally YOUR FAULT. Because you are young. And she is old.

The abrupt stop is followed by some sort of eerie silence where the granny is almost seemingly rooted to the spot. While you may think that nothing is going on upstairs, and are trying to figure out whether or not the old dear has dementia and thus gauging how nice you have to be to her when you ask her to get out of your way, the reality is that the granny is back on one of the other 11 dimensions that M-theory has speculated to exist. About now the granny starts to turn, but there is still no sign of higher-level intelligence or thought processes. You realise that she's just trying to decide which way to go.

Oh no. You've come dangerously close to the event horizon.

The event horizon is the circular region around a black hole beyond which is it impossible to escape the crushing force of gravity and you will become spaghettified (that's a real thing) as you are pulled mercilessly into the black hole. The nearer to get to the event horizon, the more time slows down, and this is the effect that you notice most when in the vicinity of the granny. You know where you want to go and how to get there, but for some reason the way that the granny was going about a minute ago was unsatisfactory and now she's trying to decide on whether or not to pick a new direction or to carry on as before.

Now you're in a lose-lose situation. Either the granny carries on going the way she was before - in which case she just wasted a good part of your day for no apparent reason, or:

The granny is now apparently oblivious to you. She is now entirely in her own dimension. Unfortunately you're stuck in this one, so you just feel the granny banging into you repeatedly. This has ACTUALLY happened. Instead of asking me to move out of the way (or going round), the old biddy in question actually tried (twice) to walk THROUGH me. Her quantum physics needed tweaking, otherwise she'd have been able to.

Of course, there are many kinds of granny. The one described above is reminiscent of an English or Helsinki granny. There are, however, a rare kind of lovely granny called the Finnish rural grandma which appears to have separated from mummo anglicus and mummo helsingiensis before the latter developed the art of being the annoying side of geriatric. :

Among other talents, the Finnish granny, or mummo fennicus is able to make seemingly unendless amounts of coffee and sweet buns appear from nowhere. As soon as you drink one cup, you are offered more coffee and buns, until the minimum quota (the pulla constant) is filled. This hovers at around one litre of coffee and three buns. Should you need woolly socks, locate a mummo fennicus, who will gladly knit you a pair. The mummo fennicus has walking poles for exercise but chooses to use them for good rather than evil, rarely frequenting shopping centres at Christmas and preferring instead to entertain people at home, feeding them buns and coffee. For the love of humanity, please try to aim for this kind of granny and keep your tartan bag out of the way at Christmas.

Some bad art

I now have marginally less to do, having dropped off my master's thesis at the department office of the faculty of arts. It's their problem now. It was an epic journey (from the computer centre to the office, I mean) that I might consider blogging about just because it was so ridiculous.

An eye of calm has transcended over my storm of batshit crazy busy. Perhaps I'll stop almost falling asleep as soon as I sit down (I'm very scared I'll do it on a bus and end up in a neighbouring city) and will be able to process information like a normal person again. I've been cycling about 16-18km a day, writing the thesis, reading for exams and trying to sort out the business stuff. But when I get to bed, I encounter setbacks. I hope - and I'm quite sure - that I'm not the only person this happens to, but I'd really appreciate some reassurance on this one.

Here goes. I come home from cycling and read/clean/write/whatever all day. It's bedtime so I get into my lovely baggy pyjamas, slip into sultan (the name of my IKEA bed) and relax. Then I get up to shut the window, go to get the water I forgot, get back into bed and then get annoyed because it's not parallel to the wall. Adjust. Then I relax.
See how sensible the time is? 11pm. Twenty-three hundred hours. At around this time I am struck with a legitimate worry.
The offending thought is usually something of unsurmounted importance that would surely win me a nobel prize for science AND literature in one go, should I have included it in my thesis. I consider getting out of bed and editing my thesis, but sultan is comfy. The particular incident that made me think about blogging this was that I had run out of milk. Let's stick with that. I was going through a porridge phase and used about half a carton of milk per morning fer me oats. Okay. No porridge. That sucks. I'll buy milk tomorrow. Problem solved.

Seriously milk, you aren't that important. It's as if my mind is playing squash (is that the one where you smack a ball against a wall and it rebounds? Sort of like tennis for people with no friends?) with my awareness of my lack of milk.
Oh come ON. It's not like you can buy milk now anyway, the shop is shut. Write it on a post it so you remember to buy milk in the morning. (You won't see the post it note and will be surprised that you have no milk, even though you're wasting time faffing about having no milk now).

Guess who can't make cereal or porridge in the morning? YOU! Because you have no milk.

Some people probably stay awake at night pondering world hunger or what colour petrol is, but I, my friends, am super aware of dairy. It's crazy o'clock and my brain is a stuck record. Really. I have done everything in my power to ensure that not only will I KNOW upon my awakening that I have no fucking milk, but this fact will only prompt me to buy more. My brain finally gives up and turns off for the night.
You know what's really annoying? I was so concerned about missing out on my healthy nutritious porridge at night time, but I invariably wake up like:
You don't need milk for toast.

On a side note, have you noticed that something can really stress you out in the morning while you're in bed laying down, but the minute you sit up, everything seems much better? You don't even have to get out of bed, sometimes just sitting up works. Wtf?

O hai

Hi. I haven't written here for a while because I've either been too busy or in a procrastinatory coma. I thought I'd write a small update on my life, the universe and everything because that was the original point of this blog, until I decided to use it to inflict poor-quality artwork on everyone else just because I can. So no badly-drawn pics for you today. Sorry. Maybe tomorrow.

So I got my thesis back from my teacher yesterday and as soon as my maturity test is accepted I'm good to go and drop that bad boy off at the department where two Finnish language gurus will read it and then give me a grade. FYI, I really don't mind if you want to give me a laudatur. That is okay with me. After that, I only have two book exams to do, which means, I think, that I can graduate on time on 14.12. Weird. My university career will end on 14.12.2010 at 3pm. Unless I get approved to do a doctorate and decide to spend another 5+ years being really clever at one specific thing that most people don't care about.

My business is slowly coming along thanks to my strategy of flailing at people on the phone and being gormless in many places. I'm applying for business start money in 2 weeks. If I get that money, I won't die of hunger, which seems to be the better of two alternatives. I'm trying to see if I can buy a tax-deductable espresso machine "for the company" as a piece of "equipment" but we'll see.

Exercise. It appears I was scarfing down lots of crap because I had lots to do, which obviously justifies selective consumption of noms. So to combat this (make me feel like it's okay to eat a ton of crap) I decided to cycle to the centre of Helsinki from where I live about 3 times a week and swim twice a week. Somehow I feel like there could be a better solution (don't eat a ton of crap), but this works for me okay at the moment.

Procrastinatory coma. Have you ever been in one of these? They're pretty good. There's something you should do, but you can't do it before breakfast, because that would be inhumane. So you eat your breakfast, then you have to make coffee. And a biscuit. Coffee without a biscuit is inhumane. I am a humane person, so breakfast-coffee-biscuit out of the way first. Then you have to digest it. Browse the internet. Did you know how many puppies there are on the internet? Or pictures of cake? It's my birthday in too many days to be counting already, but I've been looking up ideas for cakes. I think rainydaygal and cakespy are great, btw.
If all else fails, make some tea and stare out of the window because the trees are all autumnal and pretty. Don't blink for an unnaturally long time. There you go.

Garments. I HAD to finish a scarf for Leonard, whose name is Ari, because I had been at it for four years. FOUR YEARS, you guys. I started it when I was a noob at knitting (knoob?) so I was stupid and decided to make a scarf taller than Leonard on number 4 needles. Never again. I have a weird callus on my finger now. I guess it's a friendship callus. I hope you appreciate the friendship callus, Leonard. I also crocheted myself a scarf (he doesn't get one if I don't get one). Here is a picture of my scarf.
There's a picture of it on facebook but I appear greasy and sort of look hungry/predatory in the photo and the colours didn't show up right. I think I look less alarming in this picture.

Due to the callus, I'm not knitting/crocheting for a little bit (though Leonard wants some socks now, ffs) and due to the READYability of my master's thesis, I'm not doing that for a bit either. Sure, I have to read about 600 pages in a couple of weeks, but hey, I just spent 40 euros in a shop that doesn't really sell anything useful, but sells tons of FUN stuff and I am going to felt some elves, bitches. --->