Thursday, August 24

 

 

Today I let Sunshine out and five minutes later it raced back in. I fed him and he wandered out again, to return in five minutes. I went outside and realised that the wind had risen more than any time this week. Sunshine does not like any wind above a slight breeze.

I had noticed earlier in the week that we began living in this house exactly ten years ago today but, with Irma and Naa on holiday in the sun, I could think of nothing to do with this information and put it to one side.

I cycled to work wearing long trousers for the first time since the start of summer. Half way to the metro I decided that I should have put a jacket on as well, but then remember that the forecast promised that the day would heat up.

I began my work day entering a number of Matthew’s new students into Lynda’s database. Since Matthew came to find out how the process worked when I first started doing this, simply because he likes understanding how the systems he has to use actually work, he now has a unique position as the only lecturer in the entire university who sends me correctly formatted Excel spreadsheets that I can just feed into the system.

The rest of the day passed with me trying to work through well-intentioned and often genuinely important interruptions. I experimented with various software, had several Skype chats with Jutta about technical details concerning Foundation 6, to make sure we intended to approach teaching it in the same way, and made some notes for a meeting tomorrow.

In the afternoon this came together when Emilia asked me how she could best simulate a server to test her prototype website and I enrolled her in Cloud9 and showed her how to set up a workspace. She got what she needed and I got to run through what I will shortly teach.
The forecasters didn’t lie. I left Arcada to find an almost blue sky above warm air.

When I get to Puotila I notice that vandals have played with one of the windows at the rear of the cycle stands again. I can see traces of the previous effort from the missing half of the icon of a cycle. The result has an aesthetic appeal in that the splintering effect creates a visible pattern, but I suspect that whoever did it intended to break the glass not sculpt it, and that makes me momentarily sad and irritated.

I will arrive home at about 15:50 and as I enter our road the wind will rise suddenly, as though someone has just issued a stage direction. Once I have let him out of his room, Sunshine will race to the door to try to get out, see and hear the wind, and race back in again.

At 17:00 I will have a Nobanet Skype meeting with Asle in Oslo, who will also have gone home to do it.