Adrian has been walking around with a big hole in the knee of his favourite trousers. And “favourite” in this case means “he won’t wear any others until these start to smell”.

I asked if I could mend the hole. That’s not a given – he likes the holes in the toes of his socks, where his big toe can peek out.

He said yes, and asked for something green.

This is the state of our garden right now. A giant ditch cuts right through the front of it, from the street to the house. It does not just cut through the garden – it also cuts right through the retaining wall that we only just got done, and the newly planted hedge behind it…

We were just going to renovate the kitchen this year. But the mess of water pipes and water meter in the cupboard under the sink was seriously hindering that project, so the conclusion was that we needed to move the incoming water supply connection from the kitchen to the basement. It was only in the kitchen for historical reasons – if a builder tried to put it there today, it would never get approved. Plus the incoming water supply pipe is many decades old, made of galvanized steel, and probably not in a very good shape.

So in came the builder and the diggers and the plumber, and they measured and they planned and they consulted and discussed. And they dug, until the garden looked like a giant mess. As a small consolation, at least they didn’t have to dig up the paving between the stairs, or my planting in front of the house. I do hope the cherry tree survives this – quite a number of its branches and roots had to be cut.

Did I mention that the water pipe was old? And probably not in very good shape?

In fact it was in such a bad shape that all the digging and poking around it was enough to break it. I wasn’t here to see it happen; it must have been spectacular with water everywhere. By the time I got home, the water had been shut off and a temporary replacement pipe was in place. But only authorized Stockholm Vatten personnel are allowed to touch the valves of the municipal water supply, whether for turning it off or on, so we still didn’t have any water… (There are substantial fines for breaking that rule, so our diggers and plumbers didn’t even consider doing it themselves.) We had pizza for dinner – the kids were happy about that – and I made a visit to the neighbours to fill up some plastic cans so we could wash our hands and brush our teeth at least.

Finally late at night a Stockholm Vatten van turned up and we got our water back.

It was a long day.

Adrian is turning into as much of a gamer as Ingrid. Fortnite is his favourite. He’s just spent 150 kr of his savings to buy a funny skin for his character. Go figure.

Several of his classmates also play, and now they agree on a time when they all come online to play together. That often leads to a lot of shouting. They all just have to say their thing at the same time, and one raises his voice to get through the noise, and then the next boy raises his a bit more, and soon they’re all yelling. I remember Ingrid and her friends doing the same at her age, shouting so loudly that it was seriously uncomfortable for me, even though she was upstairs and I was downstairs and we had a closed door between us.

We don’t iron much. The things that do get ironed in this household are dress trousers, hankies, and kitchen towels. Also linen tablecloths, but that only happens after major holidays when we have festive meals with guests.

I especially do not iron much – mostly Eric takes care of it. But he is away in Canada for a week, and I have a runny nose, and I am all out of clean hankies.

Eric usually combines ironing with watching a movie. I prefer books to movies, and reading + ironing is a somewhat difficult combination. I tried doing it his way but watching a movie, or even a documentary, on my own is not much fun.

Adrian making “juicy water”. This is a mealtime drink that we came up with years ago, that’s now become a staple that we always have available. One part apple juice, 6 parts (ish) water – just enough juice to give the water some flavour, but not so much that the drink becomes sweet.

The best apple juice by far for this drink is Coop’s own label juice. Tropicana sort of works as well. Coop’s apple juice is on par with milk, eggs, butter and cheese – there should always be some in our fridge.

Somehow this drink got named josavatten, which is a total grammatical abomination, but the name stuck, so that’s what it is called.

For years, we all drank “juicy water” with dinner, daily. Then Eric got a Sodastream machine as a gift and switched to carbonated water. Ingrid then discovered the sugar-free flavourings that can be added to carbonated water and switched as well. Neither Adrian nor I like bubbles in our drinks, so we still drink our juicy water.

Celebration! Ingrid was accepted to the school she most wanted.

Solhemsskolan only has grades F to 6, so Ingrid will be attending a different school next year. There is a fair amount of choice, both run-of-the-mill schools run by the city, and “free” schools with various profiles.

Several of the more promising-looking “free” schools accept children based on a queue and we would have needed to sign Ingrid up shortly after she was born to have any chance to get into those. We weren’t planning quite that far ahead…

Luckily the school closest to us – even closer than the kids’ current school, which is just a five-minute walk away – is also one of the best city schools this side of town. And even better, that school has a special class with a math/science focus. Ingrid is very much into those subjects, so she applied to this class, and was really hoping to get a place there.

Normally kids get allocated a place at a city school based on distance only – not necessarily at the nearest school, but optimizing so that no child has to walk more than 2 (?) kilometers to school. But because this class has a specific profile/focus, students wanting a place need to have good grades in the relevant subjects and also to attend a group interview where they discuss math and science-related topics. (At an info meeting at the school we heard that most years, students with As in both math and science would be guaranteed a place, but there were more applicants with double As this year, so even with her great grades Ingrid was not 100% sure to get in.)

The interview was a good while ago and Ingrid has been anxious to find out the results.

Yesterday Ingrid got the great news that she was accepted.

Today we celebrated with Ingrid’s most favourite food ever – sushi, of course.

Happy day! Finally, finally, after more than a year, I got a second monitor at work. The company is very sensible and progressive about most things but for some reason the standard setup only includes a single monitor. I think it may be because most of the developers who sit in the office are between projects, and those who have a project are mostly at the customers’ offices, using whatever equipment is there. In fact this is so non-standard that the desks barely fit two monitors.

Other important things on my desk:

A pad of sticky notes.
A Pilot gel pen. (Ballpoint pens are abominable.)
A “Red – Green – Refactor” TDD pyramid.
A mouse pad with wrist support. I’ve had it for so long that I can’t even remember when I got it. It, and the mouse on it, have been following me from office to office since 2008 at least.
A Valrhona chocolate bar.

We’re getting ready to play Just Dance – going through the fiddly process of connecting all the controllers to the base station.

Spring snow on daffodil shoots.

My non-digital, paper-based GTD system, consisting of sticky notes on cardboard. Plus small piles of loose papers and post-its on top for quickly getting things out of my head and onto paper. Still going strong after more than twelve years!