Yesterday was one of those slightly more hectic days for me. I woke up at a quarter to seven and got ready for school. Everything was kinda fuzzy since I didn’t exactly go to bed at a human hour. My Norwegian football team of choice, Rosenborg, got a nasty, albeit expected beating at home by Chelsea in the Champions League and I was too depressed to sleep. If we’d only snagged a single point we could have gone through to the play-offs in a group where nobody (including yours truly) had a any higher hopes than maybe causing some upset.

Ah well…

So it was off to school (three hours of P.E. and then some Math and Physics) and then immediately after the mind and body had been stretched to their limits, I was off to feed the steadily fatter public of Norway at my job at a gas station. It all went down in nicely, except I got one of my career’s worst browbeatings by a customer who couldn’t for the life of him understand why we didn’t carry any books in Japanese. I think I made it worse when I accidentally began to laugh at the preposterous idea that we’d have something like that, but I couldn’t help myself. Stupidity knows no limits.

I came home in time to watch “De syv dødsynder” (”The Seven Deadly Sins”), which is my current favourite Norwegian program, and when that was over - all that was left to do before I hit the sack was to open my mail (the regular snail variety).

Normally I don’t get much mail at all, but this day had brought me Gene Wolfe’s “Latro in the Mist” omnibus and a Mysterious Package of Unknown Origin. I never, never, get mysterious packages of unknown origins, so naturally I was over the hills thrilled and overjoyed. I gently opened it and poured the contents into my hands. What the hell is this?

Out came six DVD’s in CD-covers and a little yellow post-it note that read:

“Alms to better Amras Elensar’s education” - Terje

And the “alms” in question was three seasons of Veronica Mars, a TV-show that I’ve yet to watch despite his many attempts to make to do so. I’ve blamed this failing of mine on my inability to obtain this series via my regular channels - an excuse now made totally invalid by Terje’s charity.

One of the DVD’s also contained “The Princess Bride”. I mentioned to him that I’ve always wanted to watch that movie - and then I forgot everything about it, and surmised he had done the same, too.

Terje is without doubt a great guy, and I thank him a thousand times for sending me this surprise present. In return he will receive a similar shipment with goodness so that I won’t feel so awfully bad about him using his stolen student undoubtedly hard-earned cash on me. I won’t divulge exactly I’ll be letting the postman walk away with, but trust me - it’s gonna be good.

Anything else would be an outright outrage.