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My field season is definetly coming to an end. My traps no longer seem to catch many invertebrates and yesterday, I ordered a plane ticket back to Oslo. I’ll be leaving on friday the 12th of september and I’m really looking forward to seeing Christiane again as well as my other friends in Oslo. I’ll also treat myself to a short vacation to the south to see my friends down there. Hopefully, they still remember who I am.

Before I leave, I have heeeaaaps of work to do in the lab. I am strugglig a bit to keep my motivation up at the moment because I’m guessing I’ll have to work through the weekends if I want to be done with most of it before I travel back to Oslo. I can also bring back labwork with me I guess, but I would much prefer to be done with it before I leave. Oh well, less than three weeks to go!

To keep me motivated, I will think of all the nice things I can do when I get back. Here’s a short list of some of the things (also thanks to Christiane for some of these suggestions) :

• Attend my own “welcome back to Oslo” party - with lots of good friends, beer and whisky
• Go to a restaurant with Christiane and have some nice food
• Overnight camping trip with Christiane - includes some freshwater fishing
• A trip to Askimbadet, a nice place where you can enjoy a hot bubble bath outdoors
• Skating! I wanna get back into it. I heard they’ve tidied up a skating spot not far from our apartment.
• Going to a concert with The Residents
• Record songs, just rehearse or play concerts with our band Gladlaksene or other band-projects
• Attend my own “welcome back to Mandal” party - with lots of good friends, beer and whisky
• Play “Rock Band” with my friends down south. Appearantly, they need an able drummer.

Seeing Sam again, having good dinners and evenings with Christiane, getting back into some Age of Conan-ing, hopefully getting an office at the zoological museum at Tøyen and other minor things also make me long for the mainland. I guess what I really should do is to make a list of things I want to do on Svalbard before I leave to motivate me to stay here a bit longer!