Procrastinating, procrastinating, procrastinating...

The essay about Bendik og Årolilja is coming, I swear. But it's not easy to concentrate on essays when the library has a nice collection of sagas... Fornaldersagas to be more exact: Göngu-Hrólfs saga and the saga of the Volsungs. I haven't gotten the Nibelungenlied so until I can find a decent translation of it I'll just go to the library and borrow the saga of the Volsungs each month.
School is getting busier and busier too, but I'm not really motivated enough to do much homework. So, of course, I spent Thursday reading about Sigurd and Fafnir and just skimmed through the exam booklet for Norwegian. It didn't matter much. The texts in that booklet are pretty much the same every year - about growing up and being yourself and depression and ways of life - so you can always guess what sort of essay topics you get on the exam day. Not that they call it exams here. They call 'em all-day tests because they last the entire day. Exams are very official tests, corrected by random teachers who don't know you and not by your own teacher. But that's beside the point. This all-day test actually wasn't too bad because the teachers decided to make their own essay topics, and one of them was writing a causerie about how addicted we are to modern technology, and causeries are fun to write. For some reason mine was invaded by toasters, I still haven't found out why. Never mind. I'd rather have toasters in my causeries than ninjas.

Okay, time for a picture:

A view of the mountains surrounding Þingvellir.

To continue with the reasons that I still haven't finished the essay yet: I was away all day, to my cousin's confirmation (in Norway it's more of a coming of age ceremony than a religious one). Lots of fun. Except for the fact that I had to wear one of those dresses where you can't move an inch. Of course we ended up playing football and of course running around after a ball while wearing a dress held together by buttons isn't a smart thing to do. I sort of accidentally ripped half of them off. But at least I escaped the horror that is high heels. And I managed a visit to the bookstore too (because a trip to Trondheim = bookstore) and got seven very cheap paperbacks - only 30 kr each, you can't just leave that on the shelves!
Next Saturday is my younger brother's confirmation and I still have to write my speech. No one's asked me to hold a speech but I'm going to do it anyway, because I'm his older sister and older sisters have to be evil, right? *grins* My grandmother from the Netherlands is coming over for the occasion and she's really great - she loves history and mythology, which means I'll have a real-life person to talk to about these things.

Aaaand of course, the best reason for not writing about ballads right now:
My NaNo-novel! It's almost three NaNos long now, and not nearly finished yet. I think Marcus has lost his mind completely: he escaped from the massacre at Vetera and decided to go to... Mainz. Yes, Mainz. A 300 km walk through enemy-ish territory, without food, money and only a very basic knowledge of the language. I haven't got a clue *why* he wants to go to Mainz, but it might actually be useful because he can join up with Cerialis' troops there. Anyway, he's doing better than I expected too (random walk-ins are helping him), he just passed Koblenz yesterday. But of course we can't have that, now can we? I don't control my characters anymore, but the weather still listens to me, so I sent a bit of a storm his way. At the moment he is very wet, very cold, very hungry and thoroughly miserable. And I kill every walk-in who intends to help him before they even enter the story so there's no chance of finding any help either. Needless to say, I'm thoroughly enjoying myself with writing Marcus all miserable and half-dead like this. It's revenge for all those times he refused to listen to me and killed Civilis or amputated legionary #34's leg and made me look up the procedure on medical websites.

I might have found a summer job. I got a call from the supermarket a few days ago (took them long enough, I gave them my application in February) and they want me to come to a job interview on Monday. I'm actually not nervous at all, and I guess that's a good thing. I just hope they don't end up asking stupid questions like "Why do you want this job?" because I'll give them the honest answer (which is "I need cash because I buy too many books.") and they might want me to give some sort of cheesy Hollywood answer.