January

January became quite an eventful month here in England. Both expected and unexpected events and encounters, both of positive and negative outcome, took place.

The second weekend in January, I went for a short trip to Norway, to attend my grandfather's 90 year birthday celebration. It was good to see everyone again, and very strange to come to Norway as a tourist. I have never been away from Norway that long before. It was cold, dark, they drove on the wrong side of the road and had all strange food! I was sure to stock up on tyre chains and brought the lot of four sets back to Oxford, to different people. Already the first two days after getting back I got to use them...

The next week I believe will be a week to remember for some time. First, I got a letter from NAV, the Norwegian social services. I have been entitled to some payments since I moved to England, but have got none. Now, this letter didn't only give me a confirmation of getting payment through the coming year, but I also got repaid all the money I'd been entitled to since September, which is a nice sum of money. Even though a good part of it went straight to the house mortgage, I kept some for myself also. Just another two days after this event, I got another letter. This time from my book club, who could tell me I'd won 10,000 NOK (about 1000GBP) in their lottery. Such things doesn't happen to me! It feels very comfortable to have a handful of money in backhand, and I also have afforded myself a few treats.

The first thing I did was to buy myself a couple of board games I have wanted for some time. One of them was Oregon, a Norwegian-made board game which appeared to be very good. I saw it first time when Kristine and Geir got it, and got very eager to try it. Unfortunately, it didn't make it in the mail before the boardgame weekend here in Oxford, as I hoped it would.

The weekend January 23rd/24th, OxCon was taking place in Oxford city centre. I was there together with Anne Jorunn from Trondheim and a lot of townies from Brettspielwelt, which is an online board game portal. Anne Jorunn and her husband Håvard drove from Trondheim to England mcuh for the same as us, to see England. Just in less time, about two weeks. Tollef met up with them on Cambridge beer festival, before they drove to Oxford for the boardgame weekend. We had a great time, learned some new games, rediscovered some old, met some new friends and old faces. It was very nice to meet all our online friends, which we talk to almost daily but have never met before. My only regret was that I lent my totally new Puerto Rico game to the tournament, and afterwards it seemed to have disappeart. I didn't even play it myself.

As Anne Jorunn also is sewing a lot of things, she was looking to buy an overlock machine in England, since they are quite a lot cheaper here. I searched up a few places on Internet, and on Monday after the boardgame weekend, we went to Banbury on overlock-shopping. We found a nice sewing maching-shop with a nice man. He was quite surprised and very kind when we said we were buying two machines, and we got a couple of decent machines, already on sale, with an additional discount. It was even a good deal cheaper than I had expected it to be, and I am really looking forward to starting using it!

On Tuesday, we followed our friends to Milton Keynes, where we visited Bletchley Park again. Last time we didn't get to see other than the main building, and the area is quite big. It was rather more spread out than more interesting, but it was all right to have seen it. A lot of exhibitions were also closed on weekdays. But fortunately a very nice man gave us a private tour of the computer museum, which was really a treasure!

Afterwards we went to the Milton Keynes shopping center for dinner and shopping LEGO in the brand store, before going to an excellent pub. Tollef and I drove back quite early not to leave Odin alone for too long, while our friends continued their pub-and-brewery-tour.

Karianne