Kaisa's blog : Non technical update

Non technical update

My blogging has been embarassingly sporadic. The second half of 2007 was crazy, I spent a lot of time working on a fairly big BI project as well as trying to pass Microsoft exam 70-445 (TS: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence – Implementation and Maintenance). I also went on a 2 day training course on MEC, Microsoft Enterprise Cube. I've implemented PerformancePoint Monitoring Server a couple of times, even enabled it for Kerberos authentication. (Should write a post on that.)

But the biggest stress factor, as well as happiness factor, the last half year was to sell our old flat and buy a new and bigger one! Even though the estate market isn't as problematic as in the USA, we decided to sell first and buy afterwards. Our flat was on the market for about 2 months, which felt like forever... But in the beginning of December we sold it, just a bit under the asking price. The first weekend in January 2008 we went to see 10 appartments on sale and bought the first we visited... It sits on the ground floor, has 1 more room than our old one and a better floor plan. AND it has a terrace and a garage.

As soon as we'd signed the papers, we started furniture shopping. We wanted to throw out our sofa and lounge chairs and get a new bed and a fridge. New bed was easy, I wanted a Tempur bed. We visited a show room where we could try different Tempur beds and Bernt agreed that this was the way to go.

Then there was the fridge. We were kind of looking for a side-by-side fridge, but knew that the freezer part of these fridges might be a bit small. We found a really smart one from LG, with double (French) doors on the upper section and a freezer drawer in the bottom. Our fridge isn't as full as this picture. Yet.

When we'd settled for a bed and a fridge, we started looking for a sofa. I'd visited a rather nice and swanky furniture shop a few months earlier, and brought Bernt around to see if there were any sofas we liked there. Off course there was. We found a really nice Rolf Benz sofa. None of us have that much knowledge of fancy furniture brands, but this seems to be more like an Audi than a Volkswagen. After some though and visiting other furniture shops without finding any other sofas that we liked, we decided to go for the Rolf Benz Dono. Ours is dark brown with walnut railing and the right leg is longer and has one more pillow. It's awsome! Because our whole flat has white painted walls, it doesn't look too dark.

But the BEST part of moving house, was a coincidence that happened last week. A friend of our's sister has a really old cat, and she needed to give it a new home. And miracle over miracles, Bernt decided that we could take him in. I've wanted a cat since before we started dating, but he hasn't been too keen on the idea. I came home from a visit to my grandparents, and there Bernt was on the new sofa with an old cat in his lap. This cat is around 20 years old, has about 4 teeth, has blue eyes and mostly white fur (bit gray on top of his head and end of tail) and is very, very talkative! And cuddly. And shedding fur like mad. And I'm really fond of him. :) He loves being outside and to cuddle, or cuddle outside.