Thursday, November 22

 

 

Today, for the first time this week, we both got up together: normaali, we shouted. The weather remained cold and I shivered as I cycled to the metro station, keeping to the main road to avoid the stones on the unmade pathway. Since the men ripped the pavement up, nothing has happened.

Perhaps they merely intended to play a contractor’s prank.

As I approach Arcada I see the light pouring out of the building into the colourless morning. I stand for a minute and photograph it. Then I hurry in through the door and into the warmth. Monica arrives thirty seconds after me.

I will email Arlene about the details of our transatlantic interview next Monday, and then settle down to continue working on my paper for the Max Planck Society. My conversation with Scott yesterday proved very useful, in that I woke up at 3:00 this morning with a head full of ideas, which I actually got up and wrote down. This morning I will feel very glad I bothered because they will turn out to exactly fill the holes in the current structure.

I will fill out my Scrivener outline, break up the presentation into seven questions, the last of which asks “Why does this presentation have this title?” and makes the title into the punchline, where it works best. I will start writing into the various Scrivener text files, happily adding quotations.

I will go for a brief, cold walk at lunchtime to buy some karelian pies. I have taken a fancy to having three of those topped with non-dairy herb spread from Greece, and fresh tomatoes from Finland for lunch this week.

In the afternoon I will give advice to students who want in in the CMS session in another head-spinning session. I manage to write a loop for Julia, and promise to write complex loops for Amanda and Emilia on Monday afternoon. Emilia’s poses a very interesting problem and I wait with interest to see how I solve it.

At 16:30 I will start Block 2 of the Digital Mediascapes course. Today we will have less lectures and more exercises. In fact we will have no lectures at all except for an impromptu rant at the end that I throw in because I feel that I haven’t said enough.

I will get home at 21:00 and have a shower, as much for warmth as for hygiene.