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I should have done this long ago. Every time I get McDonalds for lunch at work someone has a dig at me about it. Maybe they’re just jealous because I eat so much crap and don’t put much weight on, heh. But the other day I had a change of heart and decided to turn over a new leaf. I signed a piece of paper which said, words to the effect of “from this day forward I will not eat at McDonalds ever again. (Except on Sunday mornings before work)”. Sunday mornings are a tradition and if there’s been drinking the night before, it’s actually quite a nice start to the day.. In general though, I’ve been having way too much fast food lately, it’s not only expensive but it’s not that nice either.. I may not put on weight from eating McDonalds but it’s probably not doing me a whole lot of good; so I am never having McDonalds for lunch or dinner ever again. Burger King is still a maybe but I am going to cut down. It’s official. I’m off now to make my lunch for work tomorrow, a nice bagel with some ham and salad, oh and Reggae Reggae Sauce!!

Two years ago, i lived at a boarding school where we had a chef that made our food. Some days i didn't like the food, and i had to make my own. Every single time, i made the same meal - boiled sausages, mashed potatoes and melted butter.

This summer I've decided to take things a few levels up, and now that i actually try I've discovered something - ether making tasty food is easy, or i am very, very good at it.

Here is part of my self-made menu as of late:

Pasta with pasta sauce and fried picnic-ham.

Spiced chicken fillet with rice and chicken sauce. Spiced with pepper, salt, seasalt, white pepper and/or sometimes curry.

Joikabuns (meatball with a bit of reindeer) with mashed potatoes and green pea stew.

Fried minced meat, mashed potatoes and pepper sauce. Surprisingly splendid!

And occasionally the simple omelet with ham and sometimes cheese.

Summer plans is pretty much decided now! So far this summer I've mostly worked, but with a lot of niceness in between. In a bit under two weeks, though, starts the part of summer with only sheer niceness!

About the 17th I'll buy my first car. About the 20th I'll be on the road southwards. The 22nd I'll be in Trondheim to see Iron Maiden live at lerkendal stadium! From the 27th to the 3rd of august i'll be at Actives summercamp in Ransberg, Sweden! After that i don't know. Perhaps Oslo for summercamp afterparty? Perhaps visiting some of my family or friends here and there? This leaves time for any spontaneous traveling-urges. School starts sometime mid or late august.

Maiden will be positively orgasmic, while summercamp will be a unmeasurable prolonged pleasure moan afterwards. I'm not sure wich one i am looking most forward to. Just, yay!

I wrote all this here so that I wouldn't have to explain myself. Whenever someone asks me for an explanation, I can just refer them to this page!
To the average reader it probably looks historically long, but bear in mind it's a review of Turn Left, The Stolen Earth and Journey's End all in one. I didn't get caught up in the tide of squeeing until last Sunday, after TSE.

First, I shall give the final three episodes each a score out of ten!
Turn Left: 9/10
The Stolen Earth: 1337^42/10!!!111one!one
Journey's End 7.5/10

Next I shall make a table of contents, so I can remember what I want to write about:

1. The lead-up to the episode
1. Turn Left
2. The Stolen Earth
2. The companions
1. Jack Harkness
2. Martha Jones
3. Sarah Jane Smith
4. Mickey Smith
5. Jackie Tyler
6. Gwen and Ianto
7. Luke Smith
3. The Doctor(s)
4. The ending

And now, let the ranting and raving begin! (*nerd*)

Number 1: The lead-up

I think the rest of the season previous to 'Turn Left' has rather turned into mush in my brain. Turn Left and The Stolen Earth were, to me, the best two episodes of the season, and quite possibly of the revival altogether. Looking back I was just a bit too young to properly take in the finales of the first two seasons (Ecclescake and Doomsday), and now I want to watch the whole thing from the beginning again in a way. But that's another story.

I've only actually watched Turn Left once, because I honestly don't know if I'd be able to watch it again. It's a very emotional episode in that it shows you what happens when everything goes wrong:- and the bad side of the Doctor. He needs a companion to keep him from losing it like he did with the Racnoss at Christmas, and without her he went and got himself killed. It revealed lots of tidbits of information and piqued the viewers' interest.I think a particularly sad bit of that episode was the fleeting TV broadcast where the newsreader was talking about the disappearance and subsequent reappearance of the hospital from 'Smith and Jones' - and mentioned as an aside that Sarah Jane, Luke, Maria and Clyde had all died in there. Why they'd mention that on the national news when everyone else except weird-medical-student died I don't know, but the fact it was only lightly touched upon made it even more powerful. I wouldn't have thought Martha would have given the last of the oxygen to weird-medical-student (you'll have realised by now I can't remember his name) when there were suffocating kids and so on. (Unless, as nabusan on the Doctor Who Forums pointed out, they died from other causes) Anyway, I won't pursue that any more, the fact that I could talk about it for about an hour shows how well it was written.

Onto The Stolen Earth. Ever since I saw the trailer at the end of Turn Left, which showed a roughly equal share of time alotted to each spin-off programme (wow, that does sound geeky) I was very excited about it. I really like the idea of the spinoff shows being spawned by the Doctor himself directly, and then them all going about their business for a while, and then them all coming back together again to save the world from some great evil. They certainly seemed to do this in TSE, and that alone made the episode brilliant for me. While it was sad to see the end of Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister (who certainly did her part for the human race in the end) the way whole crew banded together instantly to reel in the TARDIS and the Doctor was admirable, and also one of the main reasons I disliked Journey's End. It was also nice to have Sarah Jane and Luke in because they'd already recycled Jack at the end of the last season, but not any of the characters of the Sarah Jane adventures. Arguably they couldn't have Sarah Jane without Luke anyway, him being her son and everything. I suppose they could have explained it away by saying he was camping with Clyde or something silly, but that would have been more annoying.

Number 2: The Companions in Journey's End

a) Jack Harkness
Why did he leave Gwen and Ianto in the Hub when they all knew the Daleks were bearing down on its position? Considering he really does care about them both I found it the second-most-hard-to-believe-character-interaction; see below for the first.

b) Martha Jones
She was rather good while she was in the Doctor's company last season, but ever since then she seems to have turned into some sort of single-facial-expression war machine. When she first revealed she'd joined UNIT I thought that was a good thing, but considering her actual self (not the evil clone thing) was only in the Sontaran double-bill for about 10 minutes we didn't get a good view of her character development until this episode. Now, comparing her to the other companions I think she's rather rubbish. However, that said, she wasn't bad in Torchwood so now she looks to be joining them full-time maybe I'll grow to like her again.

c) Sarah Jane Smith
She would NEVER leave Luke on his own! About half an hour earlier she was crying her eyes out (a sad scene, by the way, and excellent acting from Lis Sladen) and now she's just running off to find her precious Doctor. If I was her I still wouldn't trust Mr. Smith completely, looking back to the last episode of SJA and the revelation that he had been pretending to help her all along while really he was just trying to destroy the world.

d) Mickey Smith
He was only in this episode to introduce him as a new cast member for Torchwood, that much was plainly obvious.

e) Jackie Tyler
I don't know why she was in this at all. Did she do anything? Maybe it would have been a bit more powerful if she'd been disintegrated by the neutrino-whatever thing. Then again, one universes' version of her has already died.

f) Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones
The way they were saved was rather pathetic. The classic intruder-alarm triggers a previously unknown time-field that they're protected by? I don't know about you, but if I was Tosh I would have at least told someone about that before I died. Again, they didn't do much in the second episode.

g) Luke Smith
I'm sad he hardly got mentioned. There were so many possibilites to explore his vast intelligence and while I knew he wouldn't be particularly instrumental in saving the day it would have been nice if he could have at least helped in some way. As it is, he just got up, said "lol, who's there?" and then K9 butted in and did everything. I'm sure he'd be able to figure out the TARDIS base code quite easily, he's already fixed an energy capacitor that can handle the whole energy output of the sun itself.

Number 3: The Doctor(s)
While the method used to create the DoctorDonna was rather crude (and you'd have thought the Doctor would know it could happen) I think it worked really well. Lots of people were saying that leaving it with Rose was a horrible resolution to the plotline, but I disagree. It's kind of like in Star Trek : Nemesis when they have to teach the 'new Data' aka B4 all the things they've already been through with the original paranoid android. It's also nice that Rose accepts him, and the Doctor accepts the loss of Rose finally. Technically, he finally got to tell her what he never got a chance to last time they met on that fateful beach. It also closes up that line of enquiry (although that's what they said after Doomsday, admittedly) while leaving the possibility for...something, I'm not sure what...maybe a Torchwood in alternate universe special?

Number 4: The Ending
When I first wrote up the table of contents on Saturday, I had a generally negative view of the episode. Here I was intending to write about how all the companions just wandered off their separate ways, and how they should maintain their special lil' Outer-Space Facebook. I still think they should, but fortunately something's changed my attitude somewhat. Murray Gold's music. This morning everything was a bit of a fuzzy haze, which was partly because I had woken up at 5am and finished reading Garth Nix's Superior Saturday (only one left in the series, woo) so I decided to flick through the episode on the DVR again. This basically meant flicking right to the end, and watching the tow-the-Earth-home bit. This is another thing that people say was the downfall of the episode, but I think it was brilliantly ingenious. I've gotten used to the entire programme being completely scientifically inaccurate by now - I mean, Z Neutrinos negating electrical charge?! Neutrinos are called so because they have no charge and almost no effect on physical matter, dumbos! - so it was a welcome and rather funny ending.

The music for this section was simply brilliant. It's right at the top of the 'Murray Gold awesome list' with 'Doomsday' in a close second, 'This is Gallifrey, Our Childhood, Our Home' third and 'The Face of Boe' fourth. I can't wait to get my hands on the season 4 soundtrack! The music made the whole 6-pilots scene bond together perfectly with the characters' brilliant acting and made it a scene I will remember happily for a very long time.

As a last note, I hope that the events of this episode translate somehow into Torchwood and the Sarah Jane Adventures! It'll certainly be fun when they return later in the year to see how everyone's changed.

This is the longest post I've ever written, and over the summer I hope to write reviews and things more often.

And after about an hour of edits, rather conveniently spread out over the day, that's this finished! I'd be interested to see what people think of my writing style, I've never revied anything in my life before but now I've finished my GCSEs, and English as a subject along with them, I feel I'm going to somehow miss the analytical essays I always complained about in lessons. I've noticed I tend to use brackets a lot, I get easily off-track! I also start sentences with 'I' a lot. Just look at this paragraph: there's 11 Is in there I think.

Because i think that i am the one who should choose what is right for me, and not nececerily norms and society. Allignment unlawfull good? But, i'm asking myself right now, is it really worth it for being myself, if i end up breaking a heart because of it? I just hope i've not, but i shall probably be more careful in the future.

There are some odd drivers out there.

This evening, I was driving alongside this young girl in a big shiny HSV. Every time the lights went green she'd make a gentle little rolling start, then put her foot down and make BIG V8 NOISES for about 3 seconds, until she got within cooee of the speed limit. Then she'd back right off and potter along at slightly-lower-than-average speed.

The other funny thing was that she was a weaver; she'd dart in front of multiple lines of traffic to get first-in-line at the traffic lights, she'd move into any clear space beside her. She must have changed lanes 20 times in the space of a few kilometers. And it was all completely pointless, because she wasn't driving any faster than anyone else so half the time she was changing back into the same position she'd been in three lane-changes ago!

Since i started working here at Kjerringøy, i've been wanting to climb the nearby mountains. It took me a bit over a month before i managed to get so far as to climb Kvarven, but man was it worth the wait! Now i've had two trips up there, one überperfect 9-hour trip and another far less perfect, far faster trip where i also went to the second, taller pinnacle.

Normally the 9-hours trip would have been a 2 hour one. You are free to guess what prolonged it. I'll just leave it at saying that there is nothing more perfectly romantic then a mountaintop view.

The walk up to Kvarven is a particularily nice one. It starts out with a lot of forrest walking on a relatively good path. There is the odd bench to rest on, and after not too long a time walking you reach the first good views, where the forrest has a clearing or starts thinning for good. Perhaps two-thirds of the way up is Kvarvkjonna, the Kvarv-puddle as it translates to, wich is a small but stunning mountain lake. 

(Fullview)

Max, my sisters Cairn-terrier, is stick-crazy; hes favourite thing to do is fetching sticks that we toss. He is not, on the other hand, too happy about water. It's clear though, if it is craving or loathing that wins in hes mind;

Yes, we threw a lot of sticks! Poor Max wanted us to throw more and more, but eventually was so tired that he could hardly manage to get them. The last stick we threw he went underwater with twice before he finally had to give in and let go of it. 

There was a lot of insects. None of the particularily nasty biting buggers, but enough to make a unplesant buzzing at times. But there was one pequiliar thing there, that i've never seen before. Using my human encyclopedia, i found out it was a (in norwegian) Bjørnespinner, wich translates to bearspinner. Cool name, eh? Googleing now i find that the english name is none the less cool - It's called ether a tiger moth or a garden tiger.

Upwards from the Kvarv-puddle was the last and steepest part of the climb to the first pinnackle. No more trees, only rock and heather. But at the top was a soft green patch just in front of a steep plunge, wich provided a perfect spot to lay and rest for three hours.

(Fullview)

The secound day of kvarven the hike went on to the taller pinnacle close by. That meant climbing down a stupidly steep slope, maybe 100 meters, and up another long and steep slope. The top picture is the view from the first to the second pinnacle. I took my sweet time on this part of the climb, it was not possible to rush it or i would have risked a deadly roll.

Finally i reached the top, and it was epic! If the plunge on the first pinacle was awsome, this one was proper ninety degree, and i doubt that i am exaggerating if i propose a height of 400 meters straight down. It's not possible to photograph these plunges and make the scale visible, but this might give you an idea;

(Fullview)

Epic, eh?

There's one more particularity worth mentioning about this trip. The first day as we went down, one of the forrest benches wich we were looking forward to resting on had ben conquered by a herd of particularily giant, feroceous and rugged cattle. I'm used to cows, but most of the time they will run away as you approach. These ones sure didn't! We tried to make them move so we could reach the bench. I had to apply all the guts i have to make my way to it, and when we finally were sitting there the most furious of the cows repeatedly attacked poor Max who had been trying to seem tough towards the giant beasts. Lucky for Max he can run the fastest. Such ill-tempered cattle i have never met before! We had to eventually evacuate and settle for the next bench.