Category: Personal

My answers to this week’s question at f.riday5.com.

1. During which specific hour of the day are you likeliest to be happy?

Now that I’m just home due to being chronically ill, there is no particular hour because it can be just whenever. But back when I was working or in school, it was always around 8/9pm. Because the day’s demands were completely finished or at least done for that day and I could just relax and think whatever.

2. Which food-beverage pairings do you feel strongest about?

I really love a ice cold milk and a just-right-fresh-not-at-all-brown banana. It’s a tasty combo!

3. Do you enjoy (or have you enjoyed) socializing with coworkers?

Sure!

4. When did you last try something different (alcoholic or non-alcoholic) to drink?

Maybe three summers ago I made a sustained effort to learn to like coffee. I tried for three months because it’s sort of un-Finnish not to like coffee but I kept disliking it as much as ever I did! Three months because I read somewhere that’s how long it takes to get used to a new food. Yeah, never happened with me and coffee. I like the Paulig Frezza cold coffee drinks which have like 5% of coffee in it and the rest is milk and various flavors, but real coffee? It’s a big fat NOPE.

5. What’s your favorite way to unwind after a long day of doing whatever you do during the day?

Reading! It’s always been reading. I have to read for minimum of 10 minutes before lights out or I feel out of sorts and really weird. I usually read for longer than that (for hours often!), but 10 minutes is the minimum to put me in the right head space for rest and relaxation.

Today’s questions over at f.riday5.com

1. What’s your favorite dehydrated or freeze-dried food?

I can’t think of dehydrated or freeze-dried foods that I use… I used to have powedered milk in storage and use it to make lättyjä because otherwise I would have ran out of fresh milk too quickly. But I don’t even have use that anymore. There’s this certain ice cone which is sprinkled with dried strawberry bits and I like the taste of those bits on the cone, but when I bought a package of dried strawberries I didn’t like them. Dried foods have never been much of a thing in my life, the ones I’ve tested I didn’t like enough to try again.

2. What’s your favorite among foods requiring peeling or shelling?

Banana! The taste is pretty neutral (when it’s just ripe enough, not too little or too much), and it’s filling. I appreciate bananas a lot!

3. What’s something you could probably cook to impress if you were in someone else’s kitchen?

Nothing, I’m not much of a cook and add to that a strange stove and different and probably bigger pans and having to make more of the thing than what I’m used to (being I cook for one) – it’d come out as okay, not impressive.

4. What food do you look forward to getting in a town you visit only once in a while?

There are no such towns, but whenever I go to a restaurant which is about once in five years if that, I always order french fries and lehtipihvi (a leaf steak – a very thin steak, like 2-3 millimeters thick). It’s my favorite meal ever and has been since I was a little kid. I sometimes make lehtipihvi at home too and while it’s good, it’s never as thin as in restaurants and doesn’t taste quite the same either.

5. What foods specific to autumn do you especially enjoy?

I do like hot cocoa year round, but it’s particularly good in the fall when the weather is crisp for the first time after summer, on the edge of freezing.

Almost late answers to Jo’s Daily Questions for August!

1 – World Wide Web Day: Think about how much of what you do each day you do online. If the internet disappeared tomorrow, how would that impact your life? How would you have to start doing things differently (or go back to a pre-internet way of doing things)?

Everything would change, and I mean everything. All banking is done online, all unemployment and most of the social security stuff is done online, information lookup is online, I don’t own a TV and so watch and download all tv shows online, find my music online (luckily I download all my music when I find it so I have all that on my hard drive). Hell, I look up all the phone numbers online when needed! I don’t think phone books are even printed anymore? So I wouldn’t have ready access to all of the above instances without their phone numbers and now I can’t look them up online anymore. Library loans are renewed online. New books to read are found online. Fanfic is online. My illness support groups are online. All bills are on companies’ websites online where you can also pay them via a bank service, or bills are sent to your e-mail. I buy all my clothes online, and the bras sizes I need are only available in this country via a single online shop. And a million other things.

2 – Colouring Book Day: Were colouring books something you enjoyed as a child? Adult colouring is now a huge trend. Do you do colouring as an adult, or would you consider engaging in this activity?

I do enjoy it as an adult! I do it regularly, because it’s something I can do even when I have a bad head day and it staves off boredom when I can’t listen to music, or read as an example, because of migraine. I don’t remember whether I enjoyed it as a kid. It was probably just another activity – okay, but not above others like reading which I loved.

3 – Clean Your Floors Day: How often do you clean your floors? Do you have to deal with different types of flooring (carpeting in some rooms, hardwood, tiles, linoleum in others)? Do you use a regular vacuum cleaner or a robovac, or both? Have you ever gotten down on your hands and knees and actually scrubbed a floor – the whole floor, not just one stubborn stain?

Not often enough! I have a Roomba, but other than that or vacuuming manually, I sometimes sweep with damp after vacuuming. We used to do that after every vacuuming (so, once a week) when I was a kid, but I don’t know if that’s considered necessary now? I have only one type of flooring – I think it’s linoleum but I don’t know these things, and would have to check my papers to know for sure. The pictures linoleum produced when I googled look right though about what it is. Oh, I don’t know if my bathroom’s that too. It’s not tile, but linoleum or plastic or something of that sort. I haven’t had carpets on the floor for about 20 years now because they drove me crazy back when I did and vacuumed.

Continue reading Jo’s Daily Questions – August 2023

Fun questions this time!

1. Are you prepared for the Zombie Apocalypse (essentially any disaster, natural or otherwise)?

Apocalyptic disaster… I won’t survive anything which requires things like running, a lot of walking or other sustained physical activity because I’m in bad shape, in pain and exhausted all the time. Once my glasses get too weak or if they’re broken, I’ll be practically blind because I can’t see even my fingers clearly without my glasses. Crohn’s Disease and chronic diarrhea makes it so my diet is on restricted side, sometimes more sometimes less, and the chronic diarrhea would weaken me even more once the diarrhea meds run out because all the food would just go right through me. Not to mention chronic migraine and pretty much weekly migraine attacks which often even now make me feel like being chomped on by a zombie would be the better option. I don’t see myself surviving for long in an apocalyptic disaster similar to such as… I don’t know, The Last of Us or The Walking Dead or anything of that ilk. I’d probably be one of the ones who stay behind/get left behind/sacrifice themselves in a dire situation so that the other people have a chance to escape and frankly I’m okay with that.

Non-apocalyptic disaster… I can’t think of what this could be. My country is very stable as far geology goes so no volcanos, earthcakes, hurricanes, tornadoes or things of that sort. I think it would have to be something like another pandemic, or some measure of food insecurity due to foreign wars (probably instigated by Russia) in countries that produce majority of like wheat and other grains and crops so that importing food is affected and Finland having its own bad crops year/years. In these cases, the state and government has infastructure of assistance in place that I trust we as a nation would manage, and that I could manage too. We had that happen with COVID-19 and I think we managed quite well, but not perfectly. Of course, I’m not sure how much of that was because we had a centre-left, left leaning government in place at the time. I certainly don’t trust the current right-wing destroy the poor and kick the workers government to do as well if the pandemic were to escalate again.

2. What’s in your bug-in (stay safe at home) kit?

Everything I got at here at home!

I could survive maybe a week or two if the shops weren’t open as long as the water worked (we have drinkable tap water everywhere). But I don’t have a lot of food stores – there’s nowhere to store a lot of foodstuffs in modern apartment buildings and small apartments. That week or two would mean literally eating everything from the fridge and the freezer, and from the cupboards.

If it’s winter, heating would be a problem after a while if district heating is damaged and can’t be fixed in like 24 hours. I don’t have a heater. If it’s a hot summer and no electricity, people over-heating would be a problem.

I don’t remember the last time there was a power outage that actually affected me in my city. Once or twice there’s been like a blink type of thing where the power cuts for a second and the only way I know about it is because my tv or my laptop shuts down suddenly or fridge/freezer makes the sound it makes bling sound when it automatically turns back on. The last real power outage for me was probably at least 20 years ago and lasted for 10 minutes or thereabouts. I live in the 4th biggest city in the country and the power grid is very stable here, but occasionally I hear about power outages usually caused by a storm that’s felled trees on the power lines. I have the image that these affect more those living outside cities than in cities.

3. What’s in your bug-out bag?

Don’t have one! Mentally, I have on the list all of my all various medications and phone/phone charger. Those would be the first things I grab.

4. What’s on your ‘to get’ list?

I’ve been thinking since the pandemic that I should buy bottled water enough to last 3 days as recommended. But where to store them? And because we don’t need/use bottled water, I’m not sure how I should make sure it doesn’t get old because I never use it. And really, buying it feels like waste of money and storing it a waste of effort because we don’t need bottled water because all tap water here is drinkable (except in some summer cottages where municipal infastructure hasn’t been build because of there’s no around-the-year-allowed-living-summer-cottages).

Also been thinking I should make sure I have small store of canned foods like fruit that doesn’t need cooking/heating instead of usually just eating them pretty much as I buy them.

5. Do you keep gear in your vehicle, if so, what?

I don’t have a car, but when I did I didn’t have any survival gear in it. Only the typical car gear – tools for changing a tire, one extra tire, a paper towel roll, work gloves, oil for greasing the locks, and a tarp protect the car from snow and ice in the winter while parked. I almost never drove long distances (longest was about three hours and that only 2-3 times) and where I live is densely enough populated that breaking down on the road, it’d never be very far to the next gas station or house. If I’d driven longer distances, I’d of course would have prepared more.

My answers to last Friday’s question @thefridayfive

1. Do you want to get married?

Nope. I’m not even in a relationship and am not looking for one, so marriage is so far down my list of Possible Happenings that I can’t even see it.

My Mom’s best friend has never been married so I grew up with that as a normal thing. And my Mom never re-married after my Dad died although she and her SO have been living together for about 30 years now, as well as many closest people never marrying or marrying late (close to 40 years of age), so I’ve never been in environment where not being married was seen as weird, or where there was pressure to find a boyfriend/girlfriend and marry. Just some of us are single and some of us aren’t and it’s all normal. All in all I think I’m generation where people living together without marrying started to become more common along with being single.

I’m not sure I could even learn to live with another person, having lived alone for 32 years now (since I was 17). And honestly… the thought of tying myself to another person legally is mildly horrifying.

2. Where would you like to get married?

If the impossible happens and I find myself wanting to get married, I think I’d want to do it in a civil ceremony in the Court’s Office, with only witnesses present. I hate being the center of attention and big parties/crowds. So I think I’d prefer to just tie the knot quietly and privately and then let people know after the fact in a casual way. I think most likely my spouse and I would’ve been living together for a long time already (years) and this was just making it official, in no small part due to it being easier legally and practically in some ways to be married in the eyes of the law.

3. If you were getting married in a week, who would be in your wedding party?

No wedding party. Just the witnesses.

4. What would your wedding colours be?

None.

5. Does marriage mean to you ’til death do us part?’

Nope. If you’re really lucky, you may get that. But mostly I think that people change and grow, and it’s just as likely that they change and grow in ways that their wansts and goals aren’t compatible anymore. Then it’s better to divorce than to try and force it.