We do our pumpkins the opposite way to what most other people seem to do. Instead of cutting an opening at the top, around the stem, we cut a hole in the bottom. This makes it super easy to put in the light. Instead of trying to get a candle inside the pumpkin, we just put a candle on the ground, light it, and then put the pumpkin over it like a hood. (For fire safety reasons we have a heat-safe plate underneath if the pumpkin lantern is going to be on the stairs.)

We got more trick-or-treaters yesterday than today. Every year some people in Sweden get confused about what day Halloween is celebrated. (Come on, you could just google it.) In part it gets mixed up with All Saints’ Day, which is a moving holiday in Sweden and always falls on the Saturday before the first Sunday in November. But since that’s next Saturday, not yesterday, I don’t know what they were thinking of yesterday… I guess maybe some parents just find a Sunday Halloween impractical (with school the next day) so they just ignore the calendar and send their kids out when it suits them. Luckily for them we had gone out and bought candy yesterday, so we didn’t send them off empty-handed. Although I was a little bit tempted. But it’s not the kids’ fault that the parents make weird decisions.

We carved pumpkins.

Ingrid is the artistically inclined one in the family and has spent hours not just drawing and painting but intentionally practising both. Unsurprisingly she took this way more seriously than I did. She created something with actual artistic merit, whereas I just went for a low-effort design. But honestly I was mostly here to get the project started and provide some company. I think I spent more time with my camera than with the knife.

Adrian drew a toothy design that he then realized he wouldn’t be able to realize, which upset him. He went off to his room for a while to calm down and finished his carving later, on his own and in peace and quiet.

A ballet evening in three parts.

Jiří Kylián, Bella Figura. Lovely baroque music, but I never quite managed to connect to the dance. The movements were too intellectual, too artificial. I couldn’t relate. It was as if each movement was a signifier of something important but unknown, but they made no sense without knowing the significance of each one.

Mats Ek, överbord (woman with water). Seen it before, and it was as striking and compelling as last time. A woman and a table and a glass of water, and it is as if she is meeting both of them for the first time.

There was also a man, but he felt almost like an afterthought. He flitted through, dressed in a black suit, poured water for the woman, but didn’t feel like a part of anything. I see from the photos that he was there last time as well – I had completely forgotten him and even thought he was a new addition in today’s version of this piece.

Forsythe, In the middle, somewhat elevated. About ten dancers in green and black. Their movements and poses are classically strict and very athletic. Groups emerge, cohere and dissolve, merge and move apart. Mesmerizing and utterly compelling.

All photos (c) Kungliga Operan/Carl Thorborg.

I’m getting used to occasionally working in offices again. Wednesdays at Urb-it and Fridays at tretton37. It’s really nice to see old colleagues face-to-face again, and new ones I’ve never physically met. The commute is my least favourite part but I get through it by reading all the way.

Ingrid has crooked teeth. She’s old enough to start fixing them, with adult teeth all in place where needed. (Except for one baby tooth which she’ll get to keep for life, because there’s no adult tooth developing underneath it. I had no idea this was a thing, but now I know.)

Her teeth are too many for her jaw and simply can’t fit, so the first step is to remove some. To me, pulling out teeth feels like a very drastic step, but the orthodontist was very sure and very convincing about this. So today Ingrid had two teeth pulled out.

I’ve never removed any teeth. All I’ve seen is dozens of baby teeth – both my own, decades ago, and now Ingrid’s and Adrian’s. Lost baby teeth are just nubs, but Ingrid’s two teeth have substantial roots. I hadn’t pictured them as being so long.

They’re a bit bloody so I’m hiding the image from any squeamish readers. Just click this text to view it.

Nothing photo-worthy happened today, so here are the pumpkins posing for me again.

Today’s strength training: carrying home 15 kg of pumpkins from the supermarket.

I’m buying the pumpkins early this year. Last year I made the mistake of trying to buy them on Halloween and by then they were sold out. Other years, when I’ve also waited too long, I’ve had to drive elsewhere to hunt for pumpkins. Not making that mistake this year.

Python code beaten into submission, another pair of socks finished. A good day at work.

90% of the code we have at Urb-it is .NET. Whenever I have to work with any of the remaining 10%, it takes hours to even get started. It took me three hours on my own, and then another two hours together with two more developers, to get the python project to build and run on my computer. Even though I’ve done it before on that same computer. Some damn package gets updated somewhere and boom, there goes my afternoon. But that was yesterday, so today was pure productivity.

Ingrid’s puberty growth spurt is tapering off, with her just a few centimeters short of my length. She’ll probably catch up in a year. Meanwhile Adrian is pulling further and further ahead of Ingrid at the same age.

The quince is done. Now we’ll line them up on oven racks and dry them, and then we’ll have enough sweet candied quince to last us a year.

I wish I had weighed them before. Eric could probably tell me how many kilograms of sugar we’ve pumped into them, but without knowing the original weight, it’s hard to relate it to anything. I know we’re talking kilograms in any case, because “sugar 1 kg” has been on the grocery shopping list several times recently.

I also wish I had taken before and after photos. I kind of did, but not in comparable lighting. I know that the quince and the syrup around them have a much deeper colour now, a dark amber instead of the original bright gold, but want to really see it.