Discopants and Haircuts

There is one thing the Norwegians love… and that is the farts demper. They have them everywhere. I see about 100 on the way home alone… Sometimes I drive right over them. Farts dempers can save lives. Farts dempers give many people a feeling of safety. Personally I hate farts dempers. They tend to be right where I don’t want them. Sometimes they surprise me and really piss me off. Americans would protest farts dempers. They would take to the streets. Sure, we have a few in the US, but the ones here are just huge. I mean, you really can tell the difference.

When I get up in the morning and go to work it is dark. The sun rises, right now, at about 9. The sun sets around 3:30/4. Also, it hasn’t snowed here other than a small mount 3 weeks ago…. it rains instead. Honestly, in the last 3 weeks, we have had maybe 2 days that weren’t totally overcast. It’s no wonder I feel like injecting myself with a constant flow of Guinness and some form of Whiskey…

I am doing my best to stay positive though. But I am beginning to understand why the English look all pasty and hunched over.. If it wasn’t for our warm, cozy huge-ass house I think I would go nuts. If I was stuck in a little cardboard -box apartment I would currently be attaching electrodes to my testicles. …

We finally got a phone installed at the house. Here it is very common not to have a home phone. I, personally don’t need it, but without broadband it is a must. Because we live on the top of this mountain and the major phone company that owns the telephony infrastructure are incredibly inept, we have been battling to get broadband at our house. Here are some of the experiences I have gotten when talking to a customer service rep for Telenor:

1. (september) ‘You’ll be hooked up in three weeks.’ 3 weeks later I get a letter saying that there is no broadband service in my area. I later find out my next-door neighbor has broadband with Telenor. It also turns out that my neighbor’s neighbor also has it..

2. I go online and look to see if there are other companies. There are 5. I order from the best priced one.. 3 weeks later (they have to send the order to Telenor to send it to a contractor to install it) a guy calls me at work and says, ‘I’m here and ready to install. Are you home now?’ I told him Deb was home. It didn’t matter anyway. He was given a different address in a completely different part of Norway. No install. Oh, by the way, the bill was sent to the correct address. When I reordered I never received a notice of a new install date. 2 weeks later I called only to find out that Telenor ,who got the new order, never told the company that the lines where I live had reached maximum capacity. I truly believe this to be utter bullshit.
3. I then decided to order phone service with Telenor as a way to become a customer and possibly get broadband service afterward. The phone came yesterday. I still have heard nothing regarding my broadband order. I called twice yesterday to find out what was going on. I did it twice to see what would happen. I got two completely different answers…

What the heck is going on with these idiots?