I can’t read, Liz Lemon!

Two days ago I was sure there was a reality TV show competition going on at our local supermarket, ICA. The market was PACKED in the middle of the day on a weekday and people were running around like mad in the freezer section with shopping carts, trying to snatch up as many frozen food items as possible. The checkout lines were horrendous with all these cart people and I was pissed off that I had to wait my turn behind a woman with a full cart AND hand basket full of frozen cod, salmon and fish sticks.

I was thinking, wow, these Norwegians really like their frozen seafood.  And then I thought, maybe a really big storm or the apocalypse is coming and that’s why they’re stocking up on frozen food items.  That’s what happens every time there is a blizzard watch or hurricane warning in NYC.  Bread and milk fly off the shelves.  Maybe Norwegians stock up on fish instead.  Maybe I should be buying more than 6 strips of bacon and some olive oil today.

Anyway, I left the ICA, the sun rose the next day, and I forgot all about the incident… until I passed the supermarket again.  Absolute SCADS of people in the produce section.

I still can’t read Norwegian, but I finally interpreted what the advertisements outside the store were saying.  “40% off all fresh fruits and vegetables on Thursday.”  So I went in with the rest of the hoard and picked up some tasty discount fruits and veggies. 

All Norwegians speak English, but everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, is written in Norwegian and rarely translated.  I now know what it’s like to be illiterate.  I have considered starting to sign my name with an ‘X’.  Although I love foreign languages and have learned some Norwegian basics, I struggle with motivation since this impractical language is only spoken by 4 million people – half the population of New York City. 

That, and I’m still trying to crack the code on the language my boyfriend speaks - Italian.  One foreign language at a time, please.

When you’re illiterate in Norway, every day holds mysteries.  I can now relate better to the ancient Egyptians, unable to explain the incomprehensible sunrise and sunset, they determined that Ra, the Sun God, pulled a chariot across the sky while wearing a sun disk hat on his head.  I’m sure it seemed logical at the time.  Everyone needs some order and explainations in their universe.  When I was unable to explain the frozen foods frenzy, I determined that there was a reality TV show competition going on in our local ICA.  It could happen.

Today’s ICA offering is 40% off the entire Santa Maria Tex-Mex product line.  Authentic Mexican food did not survive the long trip across the Atlantic.  I cannot bear to witness to carts full of powdered, fake-Mexican caca, so I’m boycotting ICA for the day and cutting up bargain fruit salad at home instead.

ICA in the Aurlandsfjord

Photo of another ICA on a fjord, from the fjord tour I took this week. 

It seemed like a really exotic place for an ICA.

The death gong of summer

I really hate my job. 

And that is what I would like to talk about, but it’s not productive, so I’m going to talk about photography in a minute.  But seriously.  I f-ing hate it.  The return date for my leave of absence was set at Sept 1st.  Suddenly my company realizes Sept 1st is a holiday and now they are trying to make my return date Sept 2nd so they don’t have to pay me for the holiday.  Bastards.

Additionally, I just found out I didn’t get a raise this year for the first time EVER IN MY LIFE.  Yes, I know I’ve been on leave of absence for the last 3 months.  So that means none of the satisfied clients and late nights and weekends worked in the first 9 months of the performance year count?  I see.

Furthermore, I am mad at myself because I’ve totally dropped the ball on one of my Goals for 2008: Find a new job that provides some level of motivation and inspiration.  I haven’t used my Red Le Cruset braising pot yet either, but I am confident that the pretty pot and I will be fast friends upon my return, so that goal is no biggie. 

I did have a revelation on the train from Boston to New York earlier this month.  I was force-feeding myself this book on climate change and realized I don’t want to go back to school for environmental studies.  I thought I did.  But I realized I can be conscious of not trashing the planet on a daily basis and that’s enough.  I’m still reading the book.

As the train passed Mystic, Connecticut and some other really adorable New England towns and marshes filled with herons, I had another insight.  I thought about how much I really enjoyed tending to my boyfriend’s tracina wound in Tuscany this summer.  I enjoyed every bit of it – popping the blister, trimming the dead skin, analyzing how best to treat and bandange and extract the sand getting trapped inside the sore.  (Tip: do not walk on the beach with an open wound.)  There’s a reason I majored in Biology.

So I have narrowed my future job list down to physical therapy, nursing, massage therapy, and fake-Italian zonzelle shop owner.  I am totally serious about all of these.  I’ve never seen the yummy zonzelle in the U.S. but I think Americans are being deprived of this super yummy Tuscan delicacy.  Dough fried in olive oil (so it’s healthy!) that can be:

     - eaten plain and hot, 

     - stuffed with pancetta, mozzarella, etc and then fried and eaten oozing and hot,  or

     – fried and afterwards spread with nutella and eaten hot

Shit, I just drooled on the keyboard.  It can also be eaten cold, but as you can see, I recommend eating it HOT.  We’d either sell them out of a truck like the Wafels people - maybe get lucky with a spot in the Village, SoHo, or Williamsburg – or out of a tiny shop on the Lower East Side.

mmmm zonzelle

Despite my enthusiasm for the zonzelle shop, it is more likely that I will go into something medically related. 

I’ll have to talk about the photographs tomorrow.  I don’t want to taint them with today’s angry ranting.