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The boots that I ordered have now traveled from Sweden to Paris, France. Those silly FedEx people don’t seem to know where exactly Finland is and what the most economic shipping route is. What’s next, Kuala Lumpur?

I’ll just leave this here. Brilliant video, brilliant lyrics, brilliant beat, brilliant song!

Alright people. I don’t like pasta carbonara (specifically speaking all the ones I have tried to far). Oprah thinks she’s all that and Tom Cruise is batshit crazy. However, I’ll be damned if I don’t give this recipe a try:

Tom Cruise’s Spaghetti Carbonara, makes 4 servings

Ingredients:

1/2 inch olive oil (for frying pan)
2 cloves minced garlic
1 chopped onion
8 to 12 thick slices Italian bacon
4 eggs
2 packages spaghetti
2 cups grated Parmesan cheese

Directions:

In a frying pan, combine 1/2 inch of olive oil, 2 cloves of minced garlic, one chopped onion and the Italian bacon cut into small squares. Let simmer for about a half-hour, being careful not to let the oil get to a boiling point.

In a bowl, beat 4 eggs with lots of salt and fresh ground pepper.

Bring a pan of salted water to a boil. Cook both packages of spaghetti until al dente, drain and immediately add egg mixture to pasta. The eggs are actually cooked by the pasta. (Make sure the eggs are thoroughly cooked before proceeding.) Stir the egg mixture until it is well mixed. Pour in the mixture from the frying pan and stir. Finish with the Parmesan cheese and serve!

… as written on Oprah.com.

I’ll report back after I’ve tried it out in the not-so-distant-future.

I’ve been looking for some new shoes for the autumn and winter. I found a model I kind of like on Vagabond’s website, but they don’t have the shoe here in Vaasa so I’d need to order it online if I want to try it. It won’t be cheap either, plus I don’t know if the model suits me. I’m sure they’d be comfy though, and nice and warm in the winter with some woolen socks. I guess I could give it a go, I can always send them back if I don’t like them.

I also totally fell in love with these bright blue ballerinas with studs by Friis. I want them so bad but can’t really think of a valid reason to buy them. Oh, shoes, why must you torment me so?

Oh the eternal struggle with facial skin care. I can’t say I was ever that kid with extreme amounts of acne, but my skin is usually very oily and while I think I’ve gotten past the teenage acne I now suffer from PMS acne instead. Oh the joy. I think I’ve however found some pretty good products to battle the acne, impurities, and whatnot with.

For basic skin care I use Vichy’s Normaderm series, specifically the day and night creams as well as the cleansing gel. They’re more expensive than the regular stuff you buy at stores, but they have worked well for me. I wouldn’t recommend them for mixed skin types or dry skin, as they don’t have any remarkable hydrating effects. If you have very oily skin, kind of like me, I definitely think you should try it out though. I especially love the smooth, silky and matte effect the day cream has.

Another way I try to battle my monthly PMS acne is by regularly treating my skin with a clay mask and scrub, especially when I start to notice the early signs of my skin blooming up again. I’ve tried a few varieties, but at the moment I’m sticking to Blue Corn 3in1 Deep Cleansing Scrub Mask by The Body Shop. It really gives your skin a good cleanse and the scrub makes your skin feel even more smoother. If you feel like you don’t need a scrub just apply the mask and rinse it off without scrubbing.

Finding the right skin care products is however not the only way to battle acne. As far as my PMS acne goes I’ve found trying to reduce any sort of stress has helped. I haven’t noticed any significant changes when experimenting with various diet options, it’s all highly individual I guess. Hormonal contraceptives can also help you out. I’ve tried that option, but I felt like the positives didn’t quite outweigh the negatives, and additionally it did not clear up my skin entirely.

I’m glad I’ve found products I feel I can stick to, but of course you never know what’s out there until you try it. Does anyone have any recommendations as far as products or general facial skin care goes?

I don’t know what kind of phase I’m going through but each morning I have a very vivid image of the dreams I dreamed during the night. I almost forgot it today, since I didn’t pay much attention when I got out of bed, but when my friend mentioned something jokingly about feng shui through instant messenging the memories suddenly sprung back. They had nothing to do with feng shui per se, but I dreamed about my apartment tonight. The main thing is though it (my apartment) sort of morphed into my grandparents’ house, and I was discovering how my apartment suddenly was way larger than I remembered, I found a new bedroom and all. The apartment/house started to get bigger and bigger, and I kept discovering all kinds of new rooms. This went on until I came to some sort of realization inside the dream, that I was having a dream within a dream and that’s why the house grew out of proportion. How very Inception-esque of me. When I snapped out of the dream within the dream, the house shrunk back to being a morphed version of my aparment and my grandparents’ house.

The most significant thing now that I’m awake though is how sad I become when I think of the dream. I don’t know in which year my grandparents had the house (in Lammi) built, but my memories must be from the period I was 3-5 years old, since my grandfather died when I was 5, after which my granny sold the house and moved into a smaller apartment in Helsinki. I still remember all the rooms, the scents, the cellar space that was always flooding, the back room my grandfather had his desk and all his papers in, and it makes me miss those days, that house, my grandfather and grandmother. I’m actually tearing up as I write this.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just the hormones.

Tomorrow school’s in sucka as MC Hammer would put it. Well, not quite actually. I only have an exam, after which the first actual lecture (for a course I’m not sure I’ll be bothered to participate in) is on next week’s Wednesday. Classes at the university start on, erm, week 37.

As for tomorrow’s exam I can’t say I’m very bothered. Haven’t had the time or energy to study properly, but it doesn’t really matter if I pass or not since passing the exam won’t actually speed up anything and I can do a retake in December again. At least I feel like someone gives a damn about me at the university of Vaasa, a fact and feeling I’ve learned to appreciate. I realize that as a university student you carry all of the responsibility for your studies, but when the system fails you beyond your control (oh so many times) and no one actually cares enough to fix it you start to wonder. When school doesn’t give a shit about you I don’t think you should give a shit about the school in question, either.

The end of the summer cottage season is this weekend, I don’t have any plans though (the one plan I sort of had went down the drain already). Anything crackalackin’ somewhere in the area?

My batshit crazy dreams continue. Animal Planet or such still seems to be the theme. Last night, I was competing in a apprentice-like setting, but for students. The prize was to go on a charity exhange of sorts (volunteer work, I think) to this Indian elephant haven called Ümberville. Think of a tropical jungle setting, with ancient ruins. In Ümberville a kind lady cooked me some dinner, including boiled lions. It was kind of nasty to see a dead lions head roll out of the pot, and it didn’t taste that good either. Kind of like… dry chicken.

Oh well, carry on citizens, carry on.

On a more normal note I enrolled in some classes at the university today. Hopefully I also get into the beginner’s Spanish one (it has a limited number of seats and you had to motivate why they should pick you). Hola, mi nombre es Silja!

Today’s link: http://www.eroakirkosta.fi/ – “Leave the church”, Finnish site for an effortless resignation from church online. Unless you’re actually a believer and/or remotely active within the church, give me one, ONE, 1! good reason why you shouldn’t leave the damn thing.

No, really, I did. I can see where my brain picked up most of the stuff I witnessed tonight, but how the hell it ended up patching the story up the way it did is behind a shroud of mystery. To put things short tonight I have, among various other things, cuddled with the sweetest sloth ever somewhere in a tiny zoo in Florida, witnessed the camping site reception being completely smashed up by a group of chimpanzees in a camper, and witnessed a snow leopard with a cub in the Finnish woods. Last night’s theme was clearly Animal Planet. On top of everything, just as I woke up and gave it a good stretch my heart lost its rhythm for a brief while (it skips a beat, then beats twice as fast until I get it back on track).

Top of the mornin’ to ya!

Yesterday and part of today was spent at my childhood home in Maalahti keeping an eye on my parents’ dog Klara. Things usually tend to get boring, so I grabbed a hold of the camera and played around some.

Summer’s Kiss by Silja on deviantART

If you’re more of the music type, then here’s a song by the Finnish band Regina called “Tapaa minut aamulla” (“Meet me in the morning”) for you to listen to.

Another raku ceramics course coming up next spring. I’m so participating. I’d also like to try out new languages, I might enroll in Spanish class at the university, where I for the record have three courses and the candidate’s thesis left to do before I graduate.

Oh, another thing! Imogen Heap is coming to Finland again in November. I so want to go to her concert!

Yes, I’m alive. My inspiration just went for a summer vacation, that’s all.