L-O-V-E

Boy do we love our dogs. As many of you may know Dopler and Stretch are retired racing greyhounds - when they came to us neither one knew how to walk up or down the stairs. Dopler learned quickly and became a pro. Stretch also learned quick but he never really mastered them and instead of taking stairs slow he tends to get scared and jump which isn't the best method on wooden stairs. Our house in Norway has open stairs which is even scarier for us and Stretch. He has fallen several times and is all around nervous on the stairs. In the past 3 months he has had 2 bad falls- once ripping out a dew claw and once cutting himself leaving a 6 inch long gash on his front leg which took a month to heal. His confidence has gotten worse and worse and we are worried he is going to fall one day and break a leg or worse.

So we decided to "carpet" the stairs. Since we are renting we can't make too many changes which left carpeting a challenge. We went to Ikea and bought 2 large plastic backed rugs and cut out a pattern that would cover the whole stair and could be wrapped around the bottom to be secured so it wouldn't spin. We were not quite sure how it would work but it turned out great- Stretch has already shown an 100% increase in his confidence. It is not the best looking thing in the world but it is not too bad. The project reinforced that we love our dogs like kids since we spent all day tried to make the stairs better for poor little Stretch!

Before

After

(Un)Events

We have had an uneventful week (like most weeks in Norway). I did get a flat tire on my way to pick Jason up from work on Wednesday. Although I do know how to change a tire I couldn't get the stupid lug nuts off the tire so I was stuck. Jason took a taxi to meet me and changed the tire in a jiff which was great since it was raining. We took the tire to the tire store the next morning hoping to drop it off and pick it up when it was done. This being Norway we were worried the tire store wouldn't open until 9:00am and would charge us a fortune. To our delight they opened at 7:00am and fixed the tire while we waited. Then the most miraculous thing happened- they didn't charge us for the repair! WHAT! It was a great morning for us in Norway.

Nothing much else to report. Jason is currently using his engineering skills to fashion carpeting for our open stairs - Stretch is not getting any better at going down them and we are convinced he is going to break his leg so we have broken down and are trying to fix the problem. It may look really ugly when we are done but hopefully it will be safer for our little dog.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

This week I made Red Velvet Cupcakes with Butter Cream Frosting. It was much better then my first attempt this past winter when I ended up with "pink velvet" and learned that one bottle of food coloring in the US is larger then it is here! Although today's cupcakes turned out well I am still don't think the color is quite right...maybe it is my imagination or maybe the food coloring is different here. Either way the cake tasted good and the butter cream frosting was excellent!

Cooling after coming out of the oven

After being frosted

The minis I made with the left over batter and frosting...decided they needed more frosting so I made a yummy sandwich with them! They remind me of these great cookies we had in Switzerland.

First Signs of Autumn

The first signs of Autumn have arrived

• The leaves have started to turn color
• We can see our breath on evening walks
• Jason mowed the lawn for the last time
• Our neighbor took down the trampoline for the season

We haven't seen anyone else take down their trampoline yet but we think our neighbor did it early because he is a communist. No joke (see the post about the elections) - we recently noticed that we can see a painting of a hammer and sickle in their house from our kitchen window. All of our neighbor's funny ways all make sense now :)

Sour Cream Pound Cake

This week's baking - Sour Cream Pound Cake from Cooking Light. It turned out really well. It may be the first thing I have cooked in a tube pan that has worked! Our last attempt was angel food cake which was a disaster. Glad this one wasn't.

Norwegian Elections

Today is the national election (called Valg) in Norway. We have received a ton of mail about it but sadly we can't vote. We did get to experience some campaigning recently downtown - each party had a booth set up and was handing out both educational material along with stickers, candy and the like. One group even gave out roses. As we walked along the row of booths we came to this one:

Let's take a closer look....yes it is the Norwegian Communist Party! Great stuff! We got some educational material and some stickers. And from what we can tell this isn't some crazy tiny party (like the Green Party) they actually win seats....gotta love socialism!

Speaking of socialism- Jason just walked in and told me he just had to admit to a National Radio Communication official that we have a TV. The man was out checking all the addresses that were not registered for the year - why you ask? So we can pay our yearly TV fee to the tune of about $600 a year.....why is that not included in their 36% income taxes or 25% sales tax? The fee/tax to have a TV not for basic cable. Evidently if Jason said we didn't have a TV the man would want to come inside our house to check - not sure what happens if you refuse that but since my renewal visa is still pending it wasn't worth the risk.

Hobby

I was reading an article recently about hobbies which said how healthy it is to have one.  I have never really had a hobby and I think it would be nice to have one.  The thing that caught my attention in the article was that it said you should be really good at something and your hobby is a way to do that.  It got me thinking- what am I good at and what could I do for a hobby?

I came to the conclusion my hobby is cooking.  I do it a lot, I really enjoy it and I am pretty good at it.  So I am going to make it my official hobby starting now!  And I thought I would share some of my hobby with you.  Unfortunately you won't get to eat it but just see it.  My colleagues and Jason are the recipients of my hobby.  I don't work on Tuesday so I plan to cook/bake then and take the goods into my school meeting on Tuesday afternoons.  

Here is my first thing: Cream Puffs!  Always loved them but seemed really scary to make but they came out really well and were fun to make.

The puffs fresh out of the oven

After being hollowed out- Dopler, the sneak, ate the top to this one!

The finished product!

Trondheim Marathon!

My crazy husband decided two weeks ago to run the Trondheim Marathon with basically very little training.  Well the big day was this past Sunday.  We were very interested in how a Norwegian marathon would compare to an American one....we weren't expecting there to be any real comparison since there are only about 150 people running the full and half marathon combined and the entry fee was inexpensive.  

Here is packet pick up.  One guy and a box next to the information desk at a busy mall.  Packet pick up lasted one hour.

Here is Jason's race packet.  Yes it is just his number and safety pins.  But the number is pretty cool.  There wasn't even a map available!
The full marathon started at 11am on Sunday and ran 3 laps on a relatively flat course.  Here is the full marathon start.  Yes they are standing behind a chalk line in the middle of a street.  The street was not shut down (nor where any streets along the course) and the start was the organizer yelling "go!"  The start line was about 5 rows deep- I think about 70 people ran the full marathon including some really old people and maybe 8 women.

Here is Jason along the course.  Notice how uncrowded it is!  I think this is mile 2 or so!

Jason finishing the first lap downtown

It was really nice to have laps since it meant that I could support Jason at 6 different mile markers by just walking across a bridge.  He did amazing - he finished in just under 4 hours!  Quite a feat without really training for it (he did run 18 miles 2 weeks before to ensure he could finish).  He didn't feel great at the end but recovered quickly and hasn't been too sore.  I am super impressed with him!

Here is Jason coming into the finish line "chute"

Here is the finish line - he is running into the local mall (which was closed).  Notice the guy on the left getting money out of the ATM!

The half marathon had more participants and more women which I was glad to see.  It was interesting though- I got the feeling most of these people were out for a Sunday run.  It didn't seem like a big deal to many of these people - and they were running fast!  I did see one guy finish the half in cargo jean shorts- great stuff!