Hello, my name is Karla and I will be your Dumbass for today

I wonder about myself sometimes. Like, seriously? I am my own worst enemy. I'm ALWAYS hurting myself, doing stupid shit, getting in trouble. Now? My latest "aw shit" activity?

A black eye.

OK, pick one of these possible explanations as to how I got my black eye:
1) I was at a metal show and got kicked in the face in the mosh pit.
2) I was trying on clothes and my necklace flew up and hit me in the eye.
3) I popped myself in the eye with the earpiece of my glasses in a badly aimed attempt at putting them on.
4) I got a little overexcited during a facial and scrubbed too hard when removing my eye makeup.
5) I don't actually know how it happened.

The answer? 5. I don't frigging know HOW I got this black eye. But I'm telling everyone at work 1, because it is less dorky than the rest. (2-4 are all possibilities.)

My trip to Bergen was interesting. It was definitely helpful from a work perspective, I learned alot. So that was good.
There was not much choice in hotels as I booked pretty late, so I stayed at a place called the Clarion Hotel Havnekontoret, right along the Bryggen in Bergen. I can say, I highly recommend the hotel. Great breakfast (with a little grill for cook your own eggs and bacon...sweet!). Waffles in the afternoon as a snack. A "light dinner" in the evening, enoughto fill you up, though I was still full from the waffle so passed on dinner. (Weight Watcher's, you know. Can't have a waffle AND dinner, it was a kind of substantial waffle.) They had a little library where you could borrow DVD's for free, so I watched Gosford Park and have to admit it was just as boring the second time. There is this cool tower you can get a key to access, and you get gorgeous views of Bergen. (Well they would have been gorgeous views had it been daylight and not raining like crazy.) The staff was even really really friendly, which is unusual in Norway. Even in some of the best hotels I have found the staff to be very offhand and brusque, so it was nice to have "American" style service.

Plus I got treated to an aural (that means SOUND, people) sex show as the people in the next room were obviously getting to know each other in really interesting ways. At first I thought some dude next door was watching porn, but then, when the wall behind my bed started shaking, I knew it was live. My my my, the sounds they made. (The hotel might want to think about soundproofing the walls a bit more...) Maybe I got my black eye from them having sex? Maybe they rattled the wall so hard it injured me. Maybe it was more fun on the other side of the wall, now that I think about it.

The train trip back from Bergen was great, very beautiful it snowed the whole way. At one station, Finse, people skied right up to the train, and skied right off it. They skied along right next to the train on the platform. That was cool to see.
I sat with a very nice Norwegian lady who told me about growing up in Norway in the 50's, and across the way were a very VERY posh older English couple who sounded like the Queen and Prince Charles. They talked the whole way about very erudite and esoteric topics. I think he was a Lord of some sort. His gardener was mentioned offhandedly as were many discussions of travels of yore. They'd break into perfect French and Spanish occasionally, she also spoke perfect Norwegian and I could swear they threw in some Latin for good measure.
He was rather fascinated by the books I had brought with me , which I didn't realize until too late were titled "Vice" and "Wicked Pleasures". I can only imagine how I looked to him, this Texan with wild red hair, biker boots and jeans, a black eye, a tattoo on her lower back and two books with such titles. At the end of the trip, I put my book away in my back pack, and he said something along the lines of "Ah, the American has put her Vice away", to which I replied (finally a bon mot at the right time!), "Ah yes but a lady always keeps her vices well hidden."

I would have paid money to accompany them for a while to learn their stories.

Have lost 3 lbs on WW so far. Seems like alot of work (and a black eye!) for a small payoff, but I am sticking with it goshdarnit, and see whare I end up.

In my last little bit of news, I am starting to get REALLY worried about our trip to Thailand. I fear we are screwed. If they don't get this solved in two weeks, we might not have a holiday!