1. full motorcycle license (thanks, neptunia!)
2. yoga/gym/run/some combo every day that I'm in London (wonder when my gym membership expires?) and maybe a yoga retreat/workshop to make some progress I can commit to.
   
3. spend time, here or there, with my friend Janet (who is having a cancer flare up)
4. get swimming lessons for the kids
5. get my sewing maching fixed. (This website and the accompanying book just made some neuron (mis)fire and has made me want to make funky modern quilts and aprons!  Stop me before I sew again!)
6. check out a couple of the italian hotspots I never seem to make it to (Saturnia, L'andana)
7. maybe a cooking class at Leith's??

I've always been entrepreneurial and a bit of a job-hopper.  I think 3 years was my longest job.  I never have trouble finding something new and lucrative - I have a good CV and I've got a good patter about it. 

But I wonder at what point age starts to get in the way of that?  One ex-colleague tried to move back to Geneva at 50 and found it very difficult to find a job.  Another friend is in her late 40s in Paris in my same industry and she urges me to keep my age (42) to myself because it will not work in my favour!

For years and years I looked way too young for the jobs I had, and I still look younger than my age (though I seem to be catching up these days!) - so I've never had a complex about this.  I'm not bothered at all about getting older, life just gets better and better as the years go by! 

But I am wondering what other people have found regarding age and job mobility, particularly in Europe. 

Obviously it depends on the specific situation - but at what point have you found it to be an issue?  What do you think drives it?  The fact that you don't "look the part" anymore?  The fact that younger people have skills that you don't (or are so perceived)?  The fact that younger people are more willing to travel, work long hours etc than you are at this point in your life?  The fact that you get senior enough in your career that there just aren't that many jobs?

This article pretty much explains my views on the Clinton/Obama debate - I don't agree with all of it, but it kind of captures the way I see it at the moment, esp the parts I've put in bold:

What Hillary Wants Most, Hillary Won't Get: Margaret Carlson
Commentary by Margaret Carlson

June 5 (Bloomberg) -- ``What Does Hillary Want?'' Hillary Clinton asked herself on election night. She didn't say. If Freud were answering his own question, he would say ``to be loved,'' which translates, in Clintonland, into winning.
She's not going to get that, yet even after Barack Obama had reached the magic number of delegates needed for the Democratic nomination, Clinton was introduced as ``the next president of the United States.'' She congratulated Obama but not for clinching the nomination. She directed supporters to her Web site, as if there were yet more primaries to contest.
By not making a concession, Clinton diminished Obama's victory. When Matt Lauer held up the New York Times on the ``Today'' show, Clinton campaign Chairman Terry McAuliffe refused to acknowledge it. Within 24 hours, Clinton's most ubiquitous surrogate, former White House counsel Lanny Davis, launched a petition drive to make her the vice presidential nominee.
Clinton dominates the stage now the way an upset toddler about to break into tears holds a room of adults hostage. Obama can't fully engage John McCain until he fully dispenses with Hillary Clinton.
Clinton and the women who love her deserve great respect. If you owe the bank $100, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank a million dollars, you own the bank. Applied to the Democratic primary, the million dollars would translate to almost 18 million votes. That can't be ignored.
Josey Six Pack
The New Clinton could be a big help to Obama. Late in the campaign, she turned from Ivy League feminist lawyer into Josey Six Pack. (ETA: this is one of my big problems with her, though this article paints it as a good thing!) She found a following among working-class men and older women who know what it's like to have the smooth guy pass you by on the way to the corner office.
Obama hasn't been able to pull off such a transformation. He's too cool, too thin, too unruffled. He's Whole Foods not Safeway, Starbucks not Dunkin' Donuts. You want to yell at him ``Eat the taco! It won't kill you and neither will the funnel cake. Be Bobby Kennedy not Adlai Stevenson.''
On the other hand, Clinton brings problems, not all of which were obvious in the primaries because the words impeachment, Monica, Travelgate, Paula Jones, pardons and multiple grand juries never passed Obama's lips. The past was out of bounds except for her gaining as much experience from being first lady as Al Gore did from being vice president. Will Republicans accept that no-fly zone if she's the veep nominee?
Blowing Her Lead
She also managed to take a seemingly winning hand and blow it. She had the party establishment, the big-name strategists, worldwide recognition by first name only, and a sleek fundraising machine. She had Elvis, who never seemed so devoted.
When those advantages didn't play out, she blamed everyone but herself. It was the calendar. It was party rules, even though the Clintons ran the party for eight years. It was the failure to count her wins in Michigan and Florida, even though Clinton had originally agreed they wouldn't count. It was the media being captivated by the new, new thing. It was sexism from which she's benefited as much as she's suffered.
Representative Charlie Rangel, the dean of the New York delegation who was on her side, said yesterday he was unable to explain the behavior of the ``favorite daughter.'' Until now, he believed she was just playing out the primaries to, as she said, give everyone a chance to vote. Now he wonders.
Search for Meaning
``What does it mean when you say that you are not endorsing?'' Rangel asked. ``It's inconsistent with wanting a Democratic victory and not endorsing the Democratic candidate.''
If Clinton were just any candidate with a passionate constituency, putting her on the ticket would be a one-step unity event. But she's complicated that by letting her desires be known, as does husband Bill. There was always an unknown that doesn't have to be confronted now about what it would be like to have an ex-president a pillow away from the president. What about an ex-president and vice president a few miles and a heartbeat away?
Just this week, Bill upstaged any dignified exit by his wife when he announced he was making his last campaign appearance. He then outdid himself for finger-waving anger by calling Todd Purdum, the husband of his former press secretary Dee Dee Myers, a slimy, sleazy, scumbag for a story in Vanity Fair magazine.
The Clintons may be so angry they aren't thinking clearly. They didn't realize they had stretched to the breaking point the patience of their followers for putting their own well-being above that of the party.
Debts Owed, Paid
Saying she had a ``decision'' to make rather than endorse the winner was one bridge too far. As senators and congressmen peeled away yesterday, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said that Clinton will host an event in Washington later this week ``to thank her supporters and express her support for Senator Obama and party unity.''
No one who hasn't lost something they desperately wanted, who worked for it for as long as three decades, who knows almost no other life than a public one can know what it's like to be Clinton now. Wolfson's announcement came as she was throwing an 89th birthday party for her mother at her Embassy Row house. You can see Dick Cheney's place from her back lawn.

With those candles blown out, the best thing Clinton could do for herself is let the world know she doesn't feel she's owed anything. The biggest favor Obama could do for himself is to recognize that she is.

Seen at a shoe repair stand near my office:

Time Wounds All Heels

hee!

(oops can one not change the font on here??)

and recommend me a good, not too expensive hotel in HELSINKI!
The only cool one I see is the Klaus K but it might be out of my budget....