Friday, December 15

 

 

I woke up to find heavy snow falling onto yesterday’s ice. It had obviously spent much of the night falling, since it lay thick on the ground.

Leaving the house I walk down to the bus stop and wait. The snow blows hard and comes down so heavily that I capture it on a photograph with my iPad for the first time. I use no filters or effects to show the snow; neither when taking the photo or when processing it later in Pixelmator. The snow shows only because the sheer amount falling has reduced visibility to almost zero.

The bus arrives eight minutes late, by which time I have begun to doubt whether it will arrive at all. I sit at the front, and when it continues its journey slowly I will realise just how much the snowstorm has made it impossible for the driver to see.

On the way to Arcada I will get money for India out of an Otto, and when I get there I will download this month’s Mastercard statement, using the new code app Irma suggested that I start using. The old physical codes-on-paper will cease working at the end of the year.

The snow will continue all morning. I will look out the window at it regularly as I attempt to finalise all my work for this year.

I will write a lengthy advisory mail to an MA student who sent me what he considers a first draft of his thesis. I will point out areas in which he needs to think more clearly and list a number of references that I think will help him do this. Frida will drop by totally unexpectedly, to bring me up to date with her research. She will ask what she should do over the holidays and I will make some suggestions. Among these, I will suggest that she should write directly to the researchers whose paper she has found, and tell them what she wants to do. They may well offer some help or advice.

I will talk to Mirko and Tomas about things we will do in 2018, and then walk downstairs for the final lunch of the year: greek-style chicken breasts.

In the afternoon I will finally finish and upload a version of Topic 9 for the Nobanet e-learning course that seems as good as most of the others. I will also work with Jessica and Jolanda on a final (and very interesting) problem with their WordPress theme. It will take us ninety minutes to figure it out and, even then, some cosmetic details will remain unaddressed.

With Topic 9 on the web for all to see I will leave work with a clear conscience.