Success!

For those of you who appreciate memes

I did it! I read fifty (yes actually 50) books this year! I planned for this to happen, of course, but I am kind of amazed that it did anyway. I'm not huge on self-confidence, as you can probably guess.

So now that I have read all these books, and I also have a lot of books, I have been thinking about what I should do with all these books. I mean, put them in a bookshelf, obviously, but how? A lot is too relative, so I tell you what, I'm going to count all the books in my bookshelf here (The books that are not notebooks, reference, or school related. Basically the books designed for cover to cover reading) (I have more books, but they're not here). Just hold on for a second...

112. So then I, as the sorting and collecting kind of person that I am, unavoidably start thinking about how to sort and organise all these books. For as long as I can remember owning more than one shelf (80 cm long) full of books, I have been organising them alphabetically by the author's last name, like a library. But there are so many ways to organise books!

My books, sorted by colour. Isn't it pretty?

After I moved here, I decided to try a new way that I had seen on (wait for it...) the internet. I sorted my books into two categories - series and singles - and sorted the singles by colour. Not very systematic, I know, but I don't have that many books, so I can find the book anyway. The series then followed, in the order I preferred relative to the size of the bookshelf and the colour scheme. I am pleased with this sorting, and I also find it aesthetically pleasing (I know - I'm such a girl).

But there are many alternatives to these two ways of sorting books. I could organise them by height, or number of pages, or how well I liked the book, or publication year, or genre, or themes, or any other criteria you could possibly think of. I think the most fun would be to have a system that only you can understand. For example, you could group them according to what they meant to you, whether they (in your head) relate to each other in any way (across the usual boundaries) or just your personal preference.

Advent has just started, and there is snow on the ground and a calendar waiting for me in the corner. So I will go now, and open today's package. I hope your December has been nice so far.

Books read: 50
Pages read: 14616

11. Walking poop

Today, as I was shovelling manure from the wheelbarrow onto the pile of compost, I discovered something that was so funny I laughed out loud (even though I was alone). One of the pieces of poop was slowly but surely moving towards my shovel! It was as if it wanted to be thrown into the compost pile as quickly as possible! It looked very strange, but I soon realised what it really was. When I pick the manure up from the ground, I often see these small holes in the soil underneath. I have realised that these were from small black beetles who lived in the manure. So underneath the moving poop there were one or two of these beetles. All the same, the sight of this piece moving towards my shovel made my day. I still smile when I think of it.

When we (me and my friend who is also a working student here) were done with shovelling the manure, we decided to take a walk with the two lead horses, Darling and Jack, because they had been out eating on the lawn all day and needed variety (and we had been told to do it). As we were loosening their ropes and had got their attention, they both stopped and stared really hard inland. That was when we saw it. Two solid sheets of rain coming towards us. It was as if the horses were saying: "Do you really want to take us for a walk in that?"

We decided we wanted to, and agreed that rain was really quite refreshing here (as it is almost never cold), and it doesn't hurt getting wet. So we headed out. After about two minutes, the rain started pouring. It doesn't rain as heavily here as it does on pacific islands or in the rainforest, where the sun makes the water evaporate and then it rains down heavily later. Here, the weather comes in from the Atlantic Ocean, crosses the mountains and falls down on us, on the leeward side of the island. So it rains like it does in Norway, nice and easy, not raining cats and dogs so that you can't keep your eyes open. But even so, the rain was quite heavy on our walk. I got lots of water in my eyes, and it was dripping from my nose. After a short while, my T-shirt was soaked through and had started dripping too. The water flowed down my legs into my sandals, which were still wet from Saturday's hike. So I squelched on, blinking furiously, trying to get the fresh water out of my eyes so that my contact lenses would be all right.

It rained on and off our whole walk, and when we finally made it back, I was soaked to the skin (at least in the front). It had also stopped raining. When we had tied the horses again, suddenly my friend cried out: "Rainbow!" There it was: a beautiful and clear rainbow behind the house. We could make out an extra colour below purple, and it was yellowish. It was also double (but not all the way, for those of you who appreciate the reference). The rainbow was a wonderful ending to our not too pleasant walk, and it brightened my mood considerably.

Books read: 17
Pages read: 4649