Extremes

This week Ten Thousand Questions (the mysterious interview blog with all questions and no answers) has been asking about Extremes…

1. What's one of the riskiest or most reckless things you have done?
   I honestly can’t say. I never really considered myself the reckless risk-taking type… Of course there have been things I’ve looked back on afterwards and asked myself “what was I thinking”… But on the whole I’m probably more prone to being overcautious than reckless. (Which is not problem-free either!) 
   
2. What is something you do where success is measured by tiny details or depends on very delicate, small movements?
   Just now: playing Words with Friends – especially from the cellphone!
   
3. What was your longest period of time traveling away from home?
   I think that must actually be my one-month stay in England at age 16 going on 17! But then I was staying in one place most of the time… As for holidays of the continuously-on-the-move kind, I don’t think I’ve been on any lasting longer than 3 weeks. And most of those were family holidays back in my teens. Most holiday trips in my grown-up life have been shorter… 1-2 weeks.
   
4. What was the biggest food item that you ever helped cook and/or eat?
   Again, nothing extreme comes to mind. In the past when I was involved in church camps etc, the arrangement was often that we took took turns helping out groupwise in the kitchen … I was always more of a Mary than a Martha in that context though* - the kitchen was never really my domain. (I do cook for myself, and occasionally a friend or two or three – but arranging large dinner parties was never my thing; and I feel lost and mostly in the way in other people’s kitchens.)
   
5. What was the largest event you ever attended, or the biggest crowd that you were a part of?
   I suppose the largest event/crowd I was ever part of must have been when Billy Graham visited Sweden – Stockholm - back in 1978. (35 years ago!) Three friends and I attended one evening in a crowd of (ca) 10,000 people. However, what I actually remember best from the occasion is that we forgot where we had parked the car and had to spend ages looking for it in the huge parking lot afterwards!!!

Christ in the House of Martha and Mary by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh. (Wikipedia)

*As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!" "Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her." (Luke 10:38-42)

Booking Through Thursday: Spring Forward

Question  from Deb: Clocks change this weekend here in the US, which means one less hour to read … does anybody else begrudge that hour like I do? Wish the Powers That Be would just pick a time-frame and stick to it instead of inflicting clock-driven jet lag on an innocent public twice a year?

Here in Sweden, daylight saving time or ‘summer time’ does not start until the last weekend in March; which this year mercifully means not until the very last day of the month. I agree with Deb – I never saw the point myself. My body clock never seems to fully adjust and I always welcome ‘normal’ time back in the late autumn.

A clock in Borås museum.

I’ll add a clock-related question of my own:
When you think of clocks, what books (if any…) come to mind for you?
Here are three that popped up in my head:

The Borrowers by Mary Norton:

Borrowers, in case you don't know, are a little people who live under the floor or behind the walls in big people's houses, preferably close to the kitchen or dining room, because they live on what the human beans leave lying around. When the story begins, there is just one family of Borrowers left in a big old house - 14 year old Arrietty with her parents Pod and Homily; with surname Clock, because the entrance to their home is behind a clock in the hall. The greatest fear of a Borrower is to "be seen" by a human bean. One day, this happens to Arrietty… (from my review 2009)

The Distant Hours by Kate Morton:
It wasn’t actually the layers of time in this story that made me think of it now, but an image of another clock in a hall that popped up in my mind, triggered by thinking about the one in The Borrowers…  Funny, isn’t it, how you can have images in your mind of a house just described in a book even though there were no illustrations. I think in both books there was a man who came once a week to wind the clock!

The Time Keeper by Mitch Albom:

A sort of modern fable, connecting the fates of two very different people in our own time with that of the first man ever in human history to start measuring time. It also involves the myths of Father Time, and the Tower of Babel.
(from my review in October 2012)

Teaser Tuesday: The Secret Keeper (2)

I’m still reading Kate Morton’s The Secret Keeper…

Jimmy sat up suddenly and dug out his faithful Brownie from his haversack. ‘How about a picture?’ he said, winding on the spool of film.

How about that. It was only two weeks ago that another book made me look up Brownie.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

Macro Monday: Tulip

For Lisa’s Macro Monday

Nothing New Under the Sun

The sun is still having a tough job getting rid of the ice.