Wednesday, March 27

New bag, new system, I say. I adjusted the contents a bit, to make access to my wallet easier for me and harder for others, and set off for Arcada.

I got there to discover that the Adobe installer had failed and no updating had happened. I resolved to learn The Gimp properly, to test OpenShot as a replacement for Premiere, and to use Scribus the next time I need to lay out a leaflet.

I then processed Episode 13 of the Miaaw podcast and uploaded it to Soundcloud to discover, after I had done it, that I had accidentally created a secret track. The 32 minute episode had another twenty minutes of silence followed by two minutes of Sophie laughing that I had forgotten to delete. The file was therefore 54 minutes long.

I then spent twenty minutes removing the silence and giggling from each stage of the process. Finally everything worked properly.

I followed this foolishness with an MA tutorial for a thesis on meme theory. I followed this with an hour’s planning with Sophie in my Zoom room.

Next came Nathalie and my annual development meeting. This turned into a genuinely interesting conversation in which we both made a lot of interesting points.

Later I tried to find a way to get some funds to take Micke and me to Odense for the Nobanet meeting, and finally figured out a plan.

At 16:30 I put my laptop into my new bag and left. If this works then the rucksack has passed its final test.

Irma will arrive home just as I let Sunshine out to tell me that her mother has gone to hospital in an ambulance. Marja’s death has overwhelmed her.

We leave to see her. As we find somewhere to park near Meilähti Hospital I pause to take an architectural photo.

we will find Irma’s cousin Anne at her mother’s bedside and she will stand there watching carefully as we talk with her.

A nurse will arrive to say only one relative can sit there at a time. Anne and I will leave in such a way as to ensure she does not have to talk with me.

I will wait outside for almost three hours as Irma talks with her mother, doctors, psychiatrists, and more. Thanks to the wonders of wifi, and the organisational power of Todoist, I will spend that time doing a number of things I should have got down today, and some things I should get done tomorrow.

By the time we leave I will have the recording session for the next podcast agreed, a short paper written, and comments on two theses written and sent.

We will arrive home exhausted and dispirited by some of the things we learned, and some of the people we learned them about.

The cat will finally arrive home and we will crawl into our beds.