“Remoted” Workday 214 / Day 324 (Wednesday)

Rough trip from Helsinki.

On Tuesday, I was anxiously awaiting a package from Finland. Ok. “Anxiously” is overstating it, and more for dramatic alliterative effect. It was more like “looking forward to receiving” a package. It was ordered last week from varusteleka, a company in Finland that sells a variety of clothing, military surplus, fun stuff, and food products. The magic of modern transport had the order leaving Helsinki Thursday, January 28, and traveling to Germany, Cincinnati, Boston, then Lowell. It was scheduled to arrive on my doorstep Tuesday, February 2 “by end of day” (whatever that means, my clock only has numbers), but the blizzard held it up in Boston for a day with the status of “Delayed.” 

The box showed up this afternoon, looking a little travel weary. Luckily, it contained nothing breakable. The Finnish military surplus faux fur hat seems to firmly indicate I now have a new obsession with Finnish military hats. It would have been handy for Tuesday’s snow shoveling escapades, but this weekend includes snowshoeing plans, so it can come out to play then. I got a can of the “Fish Cock” which is salmon baked in a rye bread and packaged in a can. Maybe that will be my special Valentine’s dinner for one. Perhaps more interesting is the fact that the ham version is “not allowed to be sold/shipped to [my] country.” What do we have against Finnish baked pork products?

Finnish stuff!

There are also some embroidered patches. There is a patch with the Finland lion and one for Vaasa, the city on the west coast in Ostrobothnia where Grandpa Ray was born. The same juvenile that is fascinated with fish cock ordered a patch version of the Gadsden flag that says “Don’t sneeze on me,” and one with a Finnish swear word that I don't know how to pronounce because after 212 days of Duolingo Finnish lessons, I still have learned no swears. The magical curse word is “Perkele,” which Wikipedia says is “a popular Finnish profanity. It is most likely the most internationally known Finnish curse word.” It is often shown translated as “devil” which has zero pizzazz. 

Tonight’s entertainment involves watching  Traveling Robert from Miami who does RV trips all over the world. The show has the absolute cheesiest theme song that sounds like tired tape recording from the 70s with a guy singing, “I'm riding … riding … riding in my RV.”  Nordic Road Trip 2018 has Traveling Robert on a two-week trip driving through Finland, Norway, and Sweden. It’s June, so there is no sunset and he keeps trying to see the midnight sun. This is being watched while wearing the Finnish faux fur military surplus hat, because why not? 

I haven’t seen any of Traveling Robert's other trips, but the Nordic show is hysterical because it is so normal. The poor dude is always pulling into towns hungry and no restaurants are ever open. He arrives at a place "that sometimes has a guide" except for when Robert arrives. He keeps miscalculating distances so getting anywhere takes him longer than planned, so it's basically every vacation of my youth. The roads he is traveling are all narrow and I am pretty sure I will not be a driver when I go to Finland. Which is no surprise, really, I don’t even like driving here.