Shades of Blue

Random thoughts for today:

• I’ve been feeling unusually tired all week, and not too good today either.
• There hasn’t really been much to post about. I don’t have a talent for making the most mundane things interesting - like some do.
• Work should be slowing down as most of the office is on summer vacation. Being a back-up for others kept me busy last week, hopefully the upcoming week will be slower - I really need to get some things done.
• I’m looking forward to buying lots of strawberries in the next couple of weeks (see the appropriate blog header), and I will put most of them in the freezer for winter.
• There was some family stuff happening on Friday; a reminder that my parents are getting older. Speaking of family, I should call my sister - will do that tomorrow. 
• I don’t have very many friends, and sometimes it worries me. I do love meeting with our small group of friends every week, though.
• I forgot to mention that I saw a hare on Friday morning when J dropped me at the train station. It was really close, just a few meters away. What a perfect start to a day!

What are you up to next week?

Today was the first day of Tour de France:

Spain’s Alejandro Valverde won the opening stage of the Tour de France to claim the coveted yellow jersey. Valverde, 28, is one of the favourites to win the Tour, along with Australian Cadel Evans, who finished sixth. [source]

I had an appointment at the Skin and Allergy Hospital in Helsinki today. My appointment was for the skin prick test and I was hoping we could figure out what has been causing my dry eyes, stuffy nose and now a new symptom, itchy legs  - appearing now that I haven’t been allowed to take my allergy medication for five days. However, my doctor had only sent me in for the basic test, which includes the most common allergens in Finland: birch, timothy grass (cat’s-tail), meadow fescue, mugwort, Cladosporium herbarum (a type of mould), cat, dog, horse, dust mite, alder and pine. Out of all these I’m only allergic to mugwort - which I already knew and had mentioned it to my doctor as well. So basically the whole visit today was a waste of time in the sense that I still don’t know what is causing these symptoms. There is no mugwort pollen in the air until August in Finland! But now I know I haven’t developed a new allergy to some other pollen, so at least that narrows it down somewhat. I’ll have to talk to my doctor and discuss what happens next.

Tomorrow is the first day of July and that means it’s almost time for this year’s Tour de France!

Running from Saturday July 5th to Sunday July 27th 2008, the 95th Tour de France will be made up of 21 stages and will cover a total distance of 3,500 kilometres. These 21 stages have the following profiles: 10 flat stages, 5 mountain stages, 4 medium mountain stages, and 2 individual time-trial stages. [source]

We saw M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening today. I’ve been looking forward to seeing each of his movies since The Sixth Sense and this was no exception. I’ve liked some of them better than the others, but they’ve all been good. Unfortunately I have a feeling that this will be the one I like the least. It’s a good movie, but maybe just not good enough. Maybe I’ve come to expect too much, I don’t know. I have to agree with a review I read earlier: the movies starts out very interesting but the storyline sort of fizzles out. It doesn’t really deliver the ending you start to expect based on the beginning.

Have you seen the movie and what did you think?

Thank goodness I don’t have to travel much for work: yesterday was only my second business trip within a year. It was a long day - I left home at 6.15 AM and got back at 10.45 PM. It was a good trip, definitely not a waste of time, but it’s still tiring. Not to mention that I don’t particularly enjoy flying, so these one-day trips are not very nice in that regard. But on the other hand it’s lovely to be back at home in the evening. Besides, you don’t really get to see much of anything (only the airport, taxis and the destination office), which is such a shame.

Work has been crazy busy lately, too much so, and I just feel so tired. Luckily most people will leave for their four-week summer vacation after this or next week, so everything should quiet down nicely. I’m hoping to get lots done in July, when there aren’t very many people in the office. I will start my vacation in the end of July.

This should definitely be the photo of the month at Cute Overload:

Little Owls

Just looking at that photo makes me feel so much better.