Nysse is willing to sleep on any softish thing on a flattish surface. Sofa, someone’s lap, carpet, a fleece hoodie thrown somewhere, even a newspaper. I put a folded-up quilt on the sofa table for him, to make him leave my Saturday newspaper alone.

The only thing he completely refused to sleep in was the soft, pretty cat bed that I bought for him. I ended up giving it away because he wouldn’t even give it a chance. Perhaps it smelled wrong?

The explosions are pretty annoying. Or rather, the explosions themselves are kind of cool but everything around them is annoying. The loud alarms before and after – and then the horrible clatter of large rocks being thrown into a metal container. The latter goes on forever. One single explosion makes for a lot of rocks to be cleared away.

The neighbours clearing their yard for building a house are about to start blowing things up. Red things that I associate with explosions are sticking up from the rock in their yard.

An inspector of some sort came by earlier this week to inspect our house and install some kind of device to measure vibrations. Apparently we’re close enough to be in the danger zone for vibration damage, theoretically.

Board game night at work (Urb-it, not tretton37). I brought a bunch of games and we ended up playing Robo Rally, Dixit and Dream On. Robo Rally was chaotic because everyone was distracted. We played a bit, then someone got a phone call, then we played some more, then the food arrived, then we played more… Towards the end of the night we picked Dream On, which people were quite sceptical about because of how simplistic it sounded. And they played like Adrian did when we first got the game: throwing out cards more or less randomly, aiming to get as many cards played as possible. Which led to a miserable but entertaining failure when it came to remembering the cards afterwards.

From mice and baby squirrels, Nysse has moved on to birds. He carried in a dead bird and set about to play with it, like with the squirrel. We did not want dead bird all over our floors, so we separated Nysse from the bird (despite his protests), took them both out into the garden and closed the door. Once he got his trophy back, he stopped fighting us and started playing, swatting and pouncing. When he tired of it and came indoors again, it didn’t take more than a minute for a magpie to pick up the leftovers.

I have very mixed feelings about this. I hadn’t expected quite this much killing. But I’m also not prepared to lock up the cat and let it live in misery the rest of its life.

I dropped my macro lens and now it doesn’t focus properly any more. :-( I hope it can be repaired.

I had very little energy for gardening last season. I planted one peony and one plum tree. The above-ground parts of the peony turned yellow and died earlier in the season than most perennials, so I was worried that I’d let it die by not watering it enough. I’m happy to see it’s back this year. I didn’t kill it after all. (The little plum tree is also still alive.)

Summer afternoon rains make rainbows in the perfect direction to be seen from the living room.