Finally, officially old

I've been thinking lately that now, at 33, I'm finally getting old or at least middle-aged. Symptoms:

1. We've been thinking about buying a summer cabin.

2. I was thinking about complaining about noisy neighbours to the landlord.

3. We were at the woods picking mushrooms and berries with friends today.

4. I was drinking last night and had a terrible hangover and said to Elina, for the first time in my life, that I won't drink again. Never.

As for the last note, I was last night drinking with my dad. Who's been in bars drinking with dad? No one does that. But I did. Dad was here in a seminar about the possibilities left for the Leftist media and as they were journalists, they went drinking afterwards. I met some of dad's old buddies and heard very funny stories about the culture festival in Helsinki in 1962 that CIA tried to sabotage by publishing a mock paper called Festival News. I also had an interesting chat with author Riku Korhonen, who has a poetry collection coming out soon. We develoved an idea about a reality TV show in which the contestants try to get a book published. It's just that writing doesn't look too good in the telly. Maybe if they were naked...

What I did wrong was drink strong cider: goddamn 8,6 %! And it goes down like nothing... And what goes down, comes up.

I managed to get to some kind of shape, when my friend Juhis and his family picked Ottilia and me up at the one p.m. We found a nice spot with lingonberries and some blueberries and I spotted some mushrooms - I don't know what they are in English, so I'll pass. I like picking mushrooms more than picking berries, since it doesn't require so much hard work. I did get some berries, but it actually didn't feel very good to be upside down.

As for the cabins, yes, I think we are serious. It would be nice to have a place where you could rest and occasionally write something with a typewriter and read books you don't really have to read and that are too obsolete to read in a city. And pick up mushrooms and berries. Unfortunately we wouldn't be able to afford a place by the water, which would of course be ideal for the Finnish dream: hot sauna first and cold, crispy lake afterwards.

I was going to write shortly, but hey, didn't Goethe say: "I won't have time to write a short note to you, so you'll have to deal with the long one."