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Brittany Murphy: “Everybody has difficult years, but a lot of times the difficult years end up being the greatest years of your whole entire life, if you survive them.”

Francois de La Rochefoucauld: “When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.”

I don’t know where my head is these days; some days ago I saw this very cool video called ‘MOVE’ by Rick Mereki and was halfway blogging about it just now, and then something started to itch…..yeah, I had seen the video before, AND blogged it…uhhh over 3.5 years ago!! Anyway, it is cool enough to put it up once more…check this link to my original blogpost to see the other two related videos called EAT, LEARN, trust me; worth it! 🙂

Larry Page: “The moments that we have with friends and family, the chances that we have to make a big difference in the world or even to make a small difference to the ones we love, all those wonderful chances that life gives us, life also takes away. It can happen fast and a whole lot sooner than you think.”

Ice T: “Passion makes the world go round. Love just makes it a safer place.”

Though part of my heart is still in Peru&Bolivia, I experienced yet another ‘bucket list’ highlight in my life last weekend: the magical Northern Lights in Lofoten!

As there is only room for one header graphic on my blog, the header graphic of the amazing Lost City of Machu Picchu is replaced by one of the many photos I took of the spectacular Aurora Borealis / Northern Lights!

He he, the ‘disadvantage’ of seeing the Northern Lights so sky-wide (the aurora appeared as a “corona”) is that it is hard to find a photo that can serve as a header graphic (one that is wide enough and does not have too much of the goodies in the picture’s height)…oh well, there are harder things to swallow!! LoL 🙂

In one word: MAGICAL!!

George Washington: “Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.”

TV series are ON again…time for something new though, as Sherlock Season 3 and White Collar Season 5 are in the ‘watched those’ bag, Person of Interest Season 3 is nearly done, and I haven’t been able to ‘find’ a high quality version of House of Cards Season 2 yet 😉 (which only released yesterday…he he, Season 1 went super fast a couple of weeks ago).

…and the winner is…The West Wing! A tad old though pretty good as I have been told, and…a whopping 156 episodes in 7 Seasons! Now, THAT will keep me occupied for some time eh? (uhhh, Season 1 is in the bag, and so is half of Season 2 🙂 )

Elizabeth Moon: “People are people, messy and mutable, combining differently with one another from day to day – even hour to hour.”

H. L. Mencken: “Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.”

Ha, if I ever get ‘stuck’ in a 1-room apartment of about 40 m2 I know what I will do with it; (re)build it similar to what Graham Hill did as shown in the YouTube below…an impressive optimization of a tiny space following the “One Size Fits All” design!

The full version of the project can be found here.

John F. Kennedy: “So, let us not be blind to our differences – but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved.”

Woohoooo!!!!! I could write a thousand pages and would still not come even close to describe my first Northern Light experience last Friday February 7 on the Lofoten Islands!! Absolutely stunning, amazing, bizarre, emotional, incredible, wow-WoW-WOW, etc., etc., etc. Seeing is believing…when I close my eyes I am there again and I am totally hooked (I want moreMoreMORE!!)…for now I guess it is best to let the pictures do the talking…

Disclaimer; It was my first time with the camera (Canon D40, thx Sascha for borrowing, the iPhone would NEVER have been able to catch any of this!), my first time photographing the Northern Lights AND my first time seeing the Northern Lights for real (so my attention was obviously somewhere completely else than with taking pictures! 🙂 ). None of the photos have been edited or optimized (…yet :))

I added a professional picture at the very end, taken by a Lofoten local Northern Lights pro-photographer (Vidar Lysvold)…it came out pretty nice eh? 🙂

Rene Descartes: “It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well.”

After nearly 15 years I am cat-less (not a great feeling actually…). Kwibus and Pluis flew back to NL tonight so it is all and only me in the house now (though *with* Misha for the coming two weeks, yay! 🙂 ).

Kwibus has some medical challenges and well, since I am traveling every now and then (understatement), it really didn’t feel good to have the care for them ‘outsourced’ so often…since Kristel moved end of last year to a more spacious home in a much greener area, the time seemed right for them to go back to NL.

One cat though, Nikky, will always stay here with me. I buried him in the garden last summer so he is always close…and in my heart forever!

William Van Horne: “Nothing is too small to know, and nothing is too big to attempt.”

Maureen Dowd: “The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for.”

Karen Hall and Jerry Stahl: “If you’re here for four more years or four more weeks, you’re here right now. I think when you’re somewhere, you ought to be there. It’s not about how long you stay in a place, it’s about what you do while you’re there, and when you go, is that place any better for your having been there?”

Lorraine Anderson: “Nature has been for me, for as long as I remember, a source of solace, inspiration, adventure, and delight; a home, a teacher, a companion.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes: “Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body.”