green

It's spring - and suddenly green is everywhere. (I didn't join this color week because I don't think I'll have that much time for my camera this week; but it did inspire me to take these photos.)

a spring saturday

I came to Helsinki for the weekend, purely because I had an opportunity to meet four of my friends, two of whom I don't meet that often. Plus see baby T, three months, for the first time. I reminisced about the days three of them used to live in a big apartment in central Helsinki, about five years ago, and how things were then. And then I thought how things have changed, luckily for the better for all of us, but for a second the fact that there are now two married women and one mother among us felt so ....grown-up. (Not that I don't think of myself as (mostly) a grown-up, or couldn't see myself having a family of my own already had things gone differently, but remembering us as the girls we were then made me feel a bit old. Not in a bad way, though.)





I was asked to babysit my nephew, and since the girls said it was ok, I brought him along to see my friends. He seemed to have fun, although he did complain about lack of cars at A's home. The best part of the day for him was surely meeting A's cat.





It was a lovely day, the warmest one yet, and we took a long long walk in the sun. There were anemone nemorosa's everywhere, a sure sign of spring!

in my bag

I thought it was time to empty my bag from old receipts, crumbs and who knows what. In addition to the aforementioned things this is what was in there, and I have to say I was surprised to find all this. (I like seeing what others have in their bags, but haven't done this before, so this was for my own amusement.)




*my cool headphones (I've been planning to sew them a bag of their own)
*apple necklace I wore & broke yesterday
*my wallet
*a pencil, a pencil sharpener, some pens and three erasers; at least I was well prepared for the exam yesterday
*packet of staples
*two packets of gum, one empty
*two different lip balms
*some candy from a box I bought on Monday
*cellphone
*key (not my home key)
*water bottle
*Tori Amos' Scarlet's Walk cd; I thank this cd for my assignments getting done
*25 cents
*paper napkin from university cafeteria
*a crumbled print of a job I was pretending to apply for in my other assignment (one I'd like to apply for if I had the qualifications already)
*three buttons; the big one an extra button for a spring coat, and the others missing from garments they belong to
*USB flash drive
*one mitten, knit by Mum


I have to say that my usual bag is a big tote made of tan leather, so it didn't feel like I had lot of stuff in it. I just can't use small bags on a normal day, I want to be able to carry a lot around with me.

The cd saved me; I tried working on my assignments at the uni mainly because there are less things distracting me from my main focus there. But one of the things which can make me crazy is the other people taping on their keyboards (or sometimes their talking/whispering, or someone walking around with sqeaky shoes), so my solution was listen to something I like. This cd was the only one that worked for me; I was able to concentrate on writing, not music.

I'm in Helsinki for the weekend; wasn't going to go, but I have a chance to see several of my friends at the same time, and one baby I haven't seen before (suddenly, everyone is having babies, or so it seems). So it'll be friends-time, nephew-time, and hopefully some studying-for-another-exam-time for me. Hope you'll have a happy weekend, too!

phew!

I have lot on my plate right now, so haven't been blogging - not that I really work on my assignments all of the time I sit in front of the computer, but blogging when I should be writing something else makes me feel guilty. I've been missing blogging though, so I'll probably post about everything I've been wanting to in a few days (i.e. nothing of great importance, as usual). Like last Sunday's post I didn't seem to have time to finish until today.
A short story for a writing course has been getting most of my attention. For me, creative writing is scary, since I don't think I'm very good at it, and this blog has been the most creative thing I've been writing in a long while (I used to keep a journal, but don't anymore). Top that with a fairly bad case of fear of the blank page (or screen). So I wasn't so happy about this assignment - but mysteriously, this time writing was almost easy at times, and I'm quite pleased with my little story.


(But thank heavens for the spell check in Word - as you may have noticed, I'm pretty lazy to keep an eye on whether I'm writing in British or American English while blogging, though it would probably be useful, and I feel bad about not doing it; but we had to mark all the assignments for our course as UK or US - and write in both language variants - and the little things like writing gray instead of grey escape me easily. Ok, enough about this rambling.)




Although there's been nothing after those rainy photos in my blog, we've had the perfect spring weather - sunny and windy - for several days in a row (I'm knocking wood here). The wind has been quite chilly, but it's lovely to wake up seeing sun and blue sky. It makes all this studying more a lot more bearable! Even though I don't really feel like going to a windowless classroom to write when it's sunny outside...

Last but not least, thank you for all your comments, once again! They've made my day, really. And thank you friends who do not comment, it's still nice to know you're there. :)




*And look, an abundance of brackets! Or parentheses, if you like that word more. I think it's my most common mistake when writing. Tai siis tarkoitan, että helmasyntini. En keksinyt sopivaa käännöstä. Helmasynti on hyvä sana!

friday afternoon with friends

On Friday I visited my friends J and R again. They were the first friends I made here in Tampere; funnily enough, when I first saw them in a classroom, I thought they look like nice girls and I'd like to be their friend. With some people you just know right away, I guess.





All the times I've visited them, we've cooked together. Meals taste so much better when you share them with friends! Plus I'm still lazy to cook only for myself.





You know you have to eat cookies like this one half at a time, right? Or one part at a time, if you manage to get the filling off the cookie - though I don't do that anymore.
That's J on the other side of the cookie, by the way! I took a photo where she's sharp, too, but I'm protecting her privacy. :)

spring rain

Right when I left university library it began to rain. Hard. I didn't have my new umbrella with me because it was sunny when I left home (somehow the weather forecast I'd actually read for once had skipped my mind). Luckily the rain wasn't that cold - and afterwards the sun came out again.

beverages

I wanted to share some with you:





Probably the cutest lemonade ever! Although I don't really drink lemonade, I'm a sucker for ones bottled in cute small bottles - you see, I'd like to buy them just for the bottles and keep them on an open shelf, never drink them (this, too, was too sweet for my taste, naturally flavoured or not). Kind of like with doughnuts, actually; I like looking at them more than actually eating them.

This photo makes me want to buy Lorina lemonade in all flavours and go to a picnic with a basket full of these bottles:




Another beverage, and this time one I like to drink too, is White Tea with Natural Orange Flavour by Clipper. All the Clipper teas I've tasted are really really good, and I like their packages; they are so pretty they make a perfect gift (you can't see it, but the package in the photo is a pretty metallic green). Plus I think when organic/fair trade food product has a nice package, it makes people who don't really care about the organic/fair trade part more likely to buy the product (note: all the Clipper products are not fairtrade).





I'm going to buy their peppermint tea next, and maybe white tea with ginger - I'm a big ginger lover. And drinking chocolate with cinnamon sounds good too, doesn't it?