Another day in Uppsala, getting my brother’s apartment in order. The cleaning is done, now we’re fixing miscellaneous stuff – putting up some shelving, oil treating furniture, etc. It feels good to be pretty much finished with this project.

Lunch was a hasty affair at the nearest burger place, to make the most of the hours we had.

Last weekend’s hike was unsatisfying. New attempt today.

I had planned to go out on my own and try out the first two sections of Sörmlandsleden. But earlier this week I stumbled upon an outdoors-themed meetup at meetup.com, and they just happened to have a hike today, and it happened to be in a place that I was interested in, so I joined the group instead.

We walked from Flemingsberg to Häggsta cliffs and to Flottsbro hill. Häggsta is a tall cliff popular with climbers, with beautiful views over Albysjön. Flottsbro is the tallest ski slope in Stockholm, all of 103 metres!

70+ people had signed up but only 36 turned up, which was a good thing. I thought 36 was a large crowd – I cannot even imagine walking with 70 people.

Walking with a large group like this was a new thing for me. It had its benefits: someone else did the planning, found a nice destination, looked up the best way to get there. But on the whole I prefer to walk on my own. It’s like with the donkey in Mercantour: this was a perfectly nice group of perfectly nice people, and I totally understand that some might like to have that kind of company while walking, but for me it was a distraction rather than a benefit. There were people wherever I looked, instead of forest. All this talking all the time. And having to walk at other people’s pace, not being able to stop for 10 minutes when I want to take photos rather than just a snapshot or two.

What it comes down to is this: some people go on forest walks to meet people. I go on forest walks to get away from people.

A nightmare of a day at work.

We have a major release planned for 17:00. Four hours before release, key functionality that we really, really want to get out to customers is still not release-ready.

The web site is down already when I get into the office at 8. Infrastructure issues at our hosting provider. At 15:40 the application, the thing our customers are paying for and the thing we want to upgrade, also goes down.

At this time I go out for a long walk to clear my head of all the frustration, and take some photos of the neighbourhood.

(When I come back, all the servers are still down. We take a pizza break and start preparing ourselves mentally for having to cancel the release that we’ve been planning for since before summer. At the very last moment, when we are minutes away from cancelling, the servers come back online and we forge ahead after all.)

(It’s Harry Potter 4.)

Plum wine, adorned with bracelet.

The wine is from last year’s plums; it’s been fermenting and then maturing until now. This year’s plum harvest has been as extraordinary as the cherry harvest. We have no plum trees in our garden but our friends and neighbours do, so I’ve been stuffing myself on them. The ones I like best are Reine Claude. By now they are overripe, nearly falling apart, tasting almost like marmalade. Wonderful.

Writing birthday invites.

Admiring the view from the east side of Kärsön, towards Nockeby…

… and doing the same from the west side of Kärsön, towards Drottningholm.

Kärsön is a small island in lake Mälaren, mostly covered with forest. It is easy to get to by car, has a lot of walkable paths, and offers nice views in all directions. All set for a day of great walking.

The kids weren’t super excited about the idea of walking to begin with, but also did not want to stay at home, which was an option for Ingrid at least. They got markedly less excited the longer we walked. So instead of a relaxing nature walk I got about three hours of “are we done yet”. (The first hour was OK, with little to no complaining.) The net effect was a slight negative. So I still need my dose of peace and quiet and nature, so will be going for a new hike next weekend, with no kids.

Once every summer we clear out all furniture from our living room and thoroughly scrub the floor. It’s an untreated pine floor: wonderfully pleasant to walk on, but takes an effort to keep clean.

Today was scrubbing day.

Once the floor was more or less dry, but not dry enough for the carpet (and therefore the furniture), the kids realized they had a large empty room to play in.

Their choice of toy – marbles – was probably the one thing I myself would never choose in a large room with no carpet. But it worked.