Sustained Criticism

Kristine and I plotted a day of 'fab two', giggles, coffee and shopping, for Thursday. We failed the shopping – I've lost my purse, she didn't buy anything –, giggled too little, but we coerced Anette into cutting her hair. All part of a day's work for the fab two. Though, come to think of it, we giggled more than enough into our wine.

'Man, my heels are killing me,' Kristine said, somewhere between Zara and Paléet.
'I know. I think there are blisters,' I said.
'Coffee?'
'I don't think I really want coffee. Do we want coffee?'
'No, but we need sugar. Or we will collapse.'
'Right.'
'Muffins. Then bench, and loo. Or looing, then benching?'
'Man, loo first. Or we can't enjoy the muffins properly. You have to concentrate.'

We collapsed anyway, but made it to Grønland to wait for Are, after muffins. He cooked us a delicious tandoori for dinner; Kristine cut a potato, I conducted commentary. Sometime half-way through the boxed red wine, I gazed into the dredges of my dinner and predicted that I would get laryngitis. Thirty minutes later, my voice cracked, things went downhill from there. But the rest of the evening was fun. Are went out to collect Siri, so we were charged with fixing the stereo. There was a wayward cable, but it shouldn't be all that difficult. We crawled around, I theorised about what should be plugged where, Kristine experimented. It took Vibeke's iPod to get us music, we just couldn't make it work.

I'm ignoring Ozzie. (Nicknamed Ozzie after Osbourne Cox in Burn After Reading for no particular reason, other than being an Aussie whose name I forgot. He needed a name.) Are and Kristine approve of the plan. He kept calling, texting and being sickeningly sweet. Where's the fun in men who call three times a day?

The night's mission was to meet the buddy group at the student organised Octoberfest. That failed miserably, we only found Siri. At two we were thrown out of our stupor by the fire alarm, everyone was ushered out to shiver in lines. Teaching Anette to flirt is going well: she snared a lovely-looking man all on her own. Kristine and I exchanged drunk-subtle grins, high fives and gesticulated in joy. Anette and I ended the night on her sofa, and fell asleep in an attempt to watch Donnie Darko. I rolled out of bed at 8, fumbled around her flat and got up to campus in time for class.

Clothes and make-up from last night, hair less than pristine, no voice and no energy. I have class, clearly. The rest of the week? Spent furious about lack of purse, reading King Lear and finishing Great Expectations in a day. Now I'm making an effort to plan New York properly. Two philologists in New York calls for a plan.

I live, I aspirate! (That is a really useless allusion.) And I am sort of back at LJ. I've been busy caring for our charges – Anette and I've shared the responsibility – which entailed dragging them around campus on a pub-crawl, getting uselessly drunk in general and showing them where to get good coffee. We've been drinking too much, but that's student's privilege. The cunning plan (if all else fails, get them drunk) worked: everyone bonded. And I've found a platonic soulmate in Vanja, who happens to own about as much make-up as I do, read as much, and share my taste in men.

We went to a lecture about Coetzee and Knausgård, that finally crystallised my issues with my education. It is not science, it is culture. Utterly useless as a profession.

I survived a visit to the dentist yesterday; I went half-hoping for a wisdom's tooth showdown, half not. It might not be the best idea to go to a lecture drooling blood. They are both going away the 16. September, at last. Today I've dragged my eyes through 50 pages of Austen's Emma. Free indirect style doesn't really help, it is horribly boring.

Did I mention that we bought tickets to New York? We did.

Caught up with Katrine today, she's back in town for the summer. I always love it when our lives collide for a bit. We have a shared history of three school years, are politically aligned, share an interest in reading and culture, we both savour what we can. Shared history sustains friendships only so long, you need some other glue. I can't wait to go clubbing with her again. We are such mean drunks together, and it is so fun! Last time we ended up at a worn-down rocker haunt, where all Oslo natives take their first, underaged steps on the pub scene. The drinks are cheap, the toilets notorious. And we threw our legs on the table, leaned back and floated. Two girls on killer heels and too much vodka.

I wonder how I would find it sober? Best not to know.

Anna Karenin – I prescribe to the Nabokov spelling in English, besides it makes more sense translation-wise – is a terrible chore to read. While I know it's not as bad as other Russian works, there is a bit too much. Tolstoy is a bit too thorough. I enjoy the characters, the flaming emotions, the grand gestures. They even pick mushrooms! The translation is not spectacular, either. I can taste the Russian in the back; the Norwegian reads like a faded copy. I picked my way through a few sentences in a Russian edition, which was much better. It is better than War and Peace, of which I read two pages a few days ago and am now at page 266.

(Yes, I really am listening to You Can Call Me Al, I have no idea why. Blame random lists on spotify.)