Primrose vs Harrier - Troll Challenges

Update: I have received an email today, reporting that our instructor/examiner has recovered, which is great news. There have been talks about our rescheduled exam, of course, and the suggested date is December 10th, at one hour earlier than usual. This would be next week's Sunday.

I'm always ready, of course, and I am glad that we will be able to wrap this up before Christmas in this case. I also like that it doesn't have to be this weekend already. As long as everyone else is on board, I will be on board too.

This means that I can plan my other challenges around this as well.

Once again, we will have plenty to get to in the next few days, but first, I need to get another nomination out of the way...

Troll of the Day

If you were unlucky enough to be stuck behind me during the morning rush hour recently, you might think that the troll would be me... and fair enough, I am a troll. In this case, however, the real troll is not me this time, but my 2009 Škoda Octavia.

Sample picture

Originally a purchase by my late father, this fine vehicle has guided me in and out of traffic for many years now, and it didn't cause any trouble - until late last year, when it suddenly decided to switch to some kind of "emergency mode" every now and then without prior warning, slowing down to a crawl, while displaying this symbol on the dashboard:

Normally, this would be something about the glow plug... though I will admit right away that I'm about as much of an expert on cars as I am on NL Hold'em cash, I wouldn't know the first thing about them, so I can only go by what I read in the car manual and online resources.

There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the glow plug, however - and if there was, I don't think the problem would go away as soon as you restart the car, which is what usually happened ever since this issue re-emerged a few weeks ago. Until this week, that is, when this car decided to really become a troll... It is now in this "emergency mode" almost permanently, with very few exceptions, which are still down to luck.

On certain downhill sections, I may eventually be able to hit a decent pace, but if it is going uphill, I will be limping along at around 60 km/h with the pedal to the metal on a country road. This morning, I was stuck behind some kind of service vehicle going maybe 40 km/h, but couldn't do anything about it, because I knew that I wouldn't be able to properly accelerate to overtake it. And as I mentioned, this is pretty much the rush hour, when the streets are busy, so I do feel sorry for the people behind me who are getting trolled... but I can't help it, I'm so sorry. I might be more annoyed by it than they are.

Just get it fixed, right? Well, contrary to all stereotypes about German efficiency, the repair shops are currently starved for skilled workers and struggling under massive workloads, so the earliest appointment to be found anywhere nearby so far was in early January. It looks like I will have to take it slow this December... or take the bus, which I once did. It's possible, but inconvenient, and would even require me to tinker with my work hours.

Get a new car? It's not really in the budget right now... but it remains to be seen if the repairs will be, when we do finally get to them. I'm still asking around among my colleagues, some of whom might be able to help me out, but either way, I may have to get used to this new "momentum-based driving" for a while, trying to exploit any downhill section to the fullest degree in a desperate effort to pick up some speed. Maybe I will eventually resort to the Freddie Flintstone method and just push the car myself.

I am definitely looking forward to my big Christmas vacation, with nowhere to go for a few weeks. Let's try to stay safe until I have Primrose sitting next to me one more time before the holidays, knowing that the only driving left to do for a while will be done by sassy, spiky-shelled cartoon turtles on my TV screen, who can wreck their vehicles all they want.

Well, it's back to the streets one more time tomorrow before the weekend - I hope you don't intend to travel in the same direction as me at that time. But for causing me and my fellow commuters so many headaches recently, for the odyssey of car repairs yet to come, and for making me take the bus last Tuesday, my Škoda Octavia has more than earned its title of "Troll of the Day".

Originally posted by Harrier88
Troll Trivia of the Week

We're glad that Primrose had a nice birthday last week. But what was her special birthday meal?

1) Sushi
2) Burgers
3) Pizza

3 pizza 🍕

Congratulations of the raffle🤑🍻

Troll Calendar 2023!

Can you believe it is December again already? And as I have announced before, the Troll Calendar will be back for its 5th season!

In case you haven't seen the previous versions, the Troll Calendar is a simple advent calendar, where we draw a Kinder Surprise egg (I assume everyone is familiar) every day until December 24th, and do a little show-and-tell with the trinkets inside. It is inspired by commercial Kinder Surprise advent calendars that I have sometimes used as a kid (and once as a university student, for the sake of nostalgia), and also by homemade ones that my parents used to prepare back then because they were cheaper than the commercial kind.

The first iteration of this was done in 2019 in a now abandoned private Skype group outside the forum, the 2020 and 2021 versions were done on my own blog, which will once again have its own advent calendar this year, and last year's version was done right here on the Troll Challenges blog, where it shall return now.

I always enjoyed them, but I felt that they kept getting worse as time went on. The first two seasons were fine, where I was using special four-packs of Kinder Surprise eggs which included some Christmas-themed ones, while still having some standard stuff for variety. They also had special "girly eggs" marketed at a young female demographic, which I always liked to include, if nothing else for our cute grindette, who has been with us ever since the 2019 season in that Skype group. It resulted in a nice mix of girly, boyish and Christmassy toys.

These packs were not available to me anymore in 2021, so I had to fall back to other mixed packages, which did not include any Christmas-themed stuff at all, and often didn't even really have a clearly noticeable distinction between the "boy and girl" eggs, which made things less interesting. 2022 had the opposite problem, where I went out of my way to get Christmassy eggs only, resulting in a small pool of toys, loads of repeats and absolutely no boy-girl distinction at all.

In order to hopefully avoid these problems this year, I had another idea. We will have an 8-8-8 mix with our eggs: Eight "Christmas eggs", bought from the store...

These should be comparable to the ones we had last year.

Eight "regular eggs", ordered online...

Those have a "NaToons" theme, which is a line of Kinder Surprise egg toys with an animal theme. They were usually among the better draws in the past, but according to the description, some of those eggs should also contain other stuff, which is good.

And finally, we will have eight "girly eggs", also ordered online...

Those are supposed to be based on Disney's Frozen franchise, which I have largely ignored by now, never having seen any of the movies. Once again, they should have other toys too, let's hope so.

Only problem... those online purchases haven't arrived yet. I ordered them last weekend and received a confirmation email yesterday, saying that they are being shipped and should arrive in 1-2 working days. I was hoping they would arrive today, but as long as they arrive tomorrow at least, it won't be a big deal. If they take any longer, however, that would throw off our mix quite a bit already, early on...

Ah well, let's just see. Long introduction once again, sorry about that, but we should be ready to start.

Troll Calendar - Day 01

Fair enough, it's December 1st already, so we should have our first draw, even though not all eggs have arrived yet... but we just need to work with what we have.

Naturally, it's a "Christmas egg", in this case.

Awww, look, we got one with a squirrel!

I wonder what's inside?

Looks like a reindeer! Say... doesn't this look a little familiar, though?

Yes, I'm pretty sure I have seen this one in a previous version already... was it last year, or the year before?

Well, I had a look, and sure enough, we drew it last year - twice in fact. Once on December 17th, and once on December 19th. They were not completely identical, as they had a blue instead of a green snowboard, and the hook on top of the figurine was a little different... but other than that, they are virtually indistinguishable from today's draw.

Oh, and in case you're wondering what he is carrying in his little present box, it's just a sticker sheet, folded up. It came with the figurine.

Originally posted by Harrier88
Troll Trivia of the Week

We're glad that Primrose had a nice birthday last week. But what was her special birthday meal?

1) Sushi
2) Burgers
3) Pizza

Solution:

The steak meal was not even a cheat (most of it clean food).
But the booze afterwards was ......

Well, I told you there would be a lot to post about these days... let's get a mostly personal thing out of the way first.

So Primrose and I have been learning Russian on Duolingo for a few month now, for me it was a bit longer. It remains our main focus over there, but I have been adding several other languages too, mostly out of curiosity. These include languages with limited usefulness, like Yiddish and Esperanto, which are interesting nonetheless.

Primrose follows a more pragmatic approach, only having added Spanish recently, since it is another widely spoken language. When I challenged her to also pick up some Japanese right here on this blog in October, she wasn't entirely on board. She was still struggling a little with Russian and didn't want to lose focus.

Well, just a few moments ago, she started a Finnish course there. She knew it had some similarities to her native Hungarian language, and got curious. And now after having taken a few more lessons, she challenged me to take it too. I don't really feel like this language is relevant to me in any way at all... but I said that I might be willing to do it - if Primrose in turn agrees to pick up Japanese, as I challenged her before.

Primrose accepted. ♠_grin: It's a deal! So, in order to make this public and hold the two of us accountable, here it is: The Trolls' Finno-Japanese language challenge. Oh boy...

Primrose finally starts taking Japanese lessons on Duolingo...

...and I get started with Finnish lessons over there.

Well, best of luck... to both of us.

And I still haven't posted about the Japanese dish I made this week, have I? Tomorrow, maybe. We have a ton to get to...

Terve!
Finnish Unit 1 completed! All perfect lessons! Can you keep up? ♠_biggrin:♠_cool:

Okay, I admit, Russian is SUPER MEGA HARD!

I´m pretty much struggling and wanted to pick some "easy" languages besides Russian! Spanish is great, because I already speak French and Finnish is also great because I already speak Hungarian.

Originally posted by Primrose6789
Terve!
Finnish Unit 1 completed! All perfect lessons! Can you keep up? ♠_biggrin:♠_cool:

WTF? You literally just started, and you plowed through an entire unit already?

No, I don't think I can keep up, if this is the pace you're setting. I know that Duolingo tends to go easy on you in the first few lessons, but I rarely go through any of my courses in such a pace.

Originally posted by Primrose6789
I´m pretty much struggling and wanted to pick some "easy" languages besides Russian! Spanish is great, because I already speak French and Finnish is also great because I already speak Hungarian.
Well, easy for you, maybe. I have little problems with the Romance languages either, but Hungarian is a extremely tough for me! So far, only Turkish was worse. Russian is not all that easy, but no match for Hungarian, as far as I am concerned. I doubt Finnish will be any easier...

One espresso, then I'll give it a try...

Well, Spanish and Finnish are no big deal for me, indeed!
But I´m struggling with the Russian grammar VERY VERY MUCH!

Spanish & Finnish:

Me learning Russian:

So far so good, I got through about half of that first unit already. Only one mistake so far, because I once mixed up "kippis" (cheers) and "kiitos" (thank you). Well, some people do say "cheers" to express gratitude...

I will get back to rest of the unit soon, but first, I have some good news about the Troll Calendar: The package with the other eggs did arrive today! Very nice, now we can do the rest of the calendar as planned after all.

Here are the eight "girly eggs":

And here are the two four-packs of "NaToons" eggs, which will be our "regular eggs", or "guy eggs".

Hey, they even had some special promotion where you could buy six Kinder Surprise eggs and get a NaToons card game for free. Well, we got 24 of them, but this was for retail stores, where you would need to upload your grocery bill afterwards. Also, it only lasted until the end of October. Also, we don't really care anyway.

Here they are...

And now, we can finally continue with our Troll Calendar as planned.

"Kiitos" = "Köszönöm" (= Thank you)
The word "kuka" (=Who?) also exists in Hungarian, but means something completely different! "Kuka" refers to a person who is a bit "clumsy" (and not in a really nice way).

Troll Calendar - Day 02

Get hyped - we drew a "girly egg"!

Umm... what exactly is this? I can make out an elephant, but not much else...

The instructions suggest that it may be some sort of bracelet...

The elephant thing is some sort of sticker that needs to be attached to the top part.

Surprisingly clean for a first attempt.

I already attached it to one of the other plastic things, now we still have this string. How does this go?

I assume you have to somehow twist the narrow parts around those openings. Sorry about my not so attractive looking "worker hands".

And then the other end too. The toys from the "girly eggs" always seem to be such a project... the guy toys are more like "cars go VROOOOOOOOM!".

Put the other things on top, and... I think we're done. We got a bracelet - maybe poker didn't go so poorly this year after all.

Now, I would love to wear it for a photo, but this one is just way too small for me. I can fit it around three fingers, though.

Better yet, Sherman the Pokerstars shark can wear it around his tail fin. That works much better.

Or even better, I could give it to that elephant plushie that Primrose once gave me as a birthday gift... because I can sometimes be a little "elephant" too. (the German version of the phrase "bull in a china shop" translates to "elephant in a china shop").

It's a bit wide for his trunk, but maybe he could have worn it around one of his legs.

Well, we still need a few more of those before we have caught up with Phil Hellmuth...

How cute!
Could be something for Wendy Koopa or the mermaid?

Now, about my running challenges, I might be able to squeeze in a timed run at some point in the middle of a week, assuming that the "Trollympic Stadium" stays accessible, but the "Quest for Arnsburg Abbey" could turn out to be more complicated, since it would probably need to be done on a weekend, due to early sunsets.

Sunday next week is the planned date for my lifeguard exam, Saturday after that has my company's Christmas party in the evening, and the week after that, it's already almost Christmas. Maybe I can do it Sunday after the party...

Tomorrow could have been a good day too, but not anymore, because I already went for a practice jog to keep my progress, which was before I thought about when to fit in those challenge runs.

It was great nonetheless - I love running in the snow.

No intervals this time, just 20 minutes or so of jogging, with the occasional short stop to take a picture.

Taking no walking intervals in-between is not so bad - there is a so-called "runner's high" that may eventually set in, giving you an extra push of energy. I think I experienced a version of it today.

Also, I couldn't resist the urge to climb one of those "hunting towers" that I have always passed by during my "Road to 5K" challenge. I believe they are called "raised blinds" or "raised hides" in English?

It was higher than it first looked, I assume 3-4 meters, making me have second thoughts as I approached the higher rungs, especially with the snow and all... but I didn't want to chicken out, after having taken the picture and all. Besides, I'm a former firefighter, I have been through much worse in training... and since when is a squirrel scared of climbing?

You are safe now, my fellow woodland critters - the squirrels have hijacked the raised hides.

I wonder what else we can snipe from up here...

Lovely bit of winter fun, and there was more to come later on... but we will get to that tomorrow.

All right, then... but you will order the next round of sushi, Prim.

As expected, the course starts off slowly, and it is quite manageable early on. Which is good, I suppose, because I'm not sure if I knew a single word of Finnish before.

Well, you can warm up to things over time, like with people...

In the end, thanks to Primrose pushing me with her determined grinding, I also made it through Unit 1.

Well, kiitos.

I guess we will be back tomorrow. Don't forget about your Japanese lessons, Prim.

I did it! And you know what? It´s not even THAT bad. Not as bad as Russian!
Got Unit 1 all Legendary in Finnish, not a single mistake! Well, that means paljon onnea, Prim?

Originally posted by Primrose6789
I did it! And you know what? It´s not even THAT bad. Not as bad as Russian!
Spoken like someone who likes to drink her vodka with orange juice.

But sure enough, paljon onnea, Prim. (which, I think, is also said to wish people a Happy Birthday)