Wednesday is office day, which also means a restaurant lunch. I had a vegan burger for my lunch. And I don’t know what they put in there, but it gave me so much gas that I was basically laid up for the rest of the day. I managed to get through the afternoon’s work, tottered home, and then stayed horizontal as much as I could in the evening. I haven’t felt this awful since I went lactose-free. If the burger hadn’t been vegan, I’d maybe have suspected milk – but you can’t even squeeze that much milk products into a simple burger, so I’ve no idea what was in there. I won’t be going back to that place any time soon, in any case.

I’ve been collecting coins since high school. Whenever I travel to a new country, I come home with coins from that country. I also have coins from Eric’s travels, and my mum’s. Some I’ve swapped for, when meeting people from other countries. But all are naturally, organically acquired – none are bought.

These days I rarely get new ones, so it’s a low-pace hobby now. All sorts of forces work against my collecting. Most of Europe uses euros. I travel less, and avoid long flights which might otherwise take me outside of Europe. And cash is becoming less and less common – faster in Sweden than in other countries, and in Slovenia we did run across places that only accepted cash, but nevertheless cash transactions are getting rare. Who knows – in another few decades, the whole idea of coins might be a quaint, antiquated one.

The coins that I’ve had longest date back to before I was collecting – old Soviet rouble coins from my childhood piggy bank.

The newest coins are three euro coins with Slovenian designs on the rear. Euro coins do travel to some extent, and I have some from countries where I haven’t been since they switched to the euro, but it’s still most common to get the local country’s designs.

It feels like it was just a week ago that we had 25-degree weather and were enjoying meals outside. But now all of a sudden it’s 12 degrees outside and I’m wearing socks and actual shoes! The change of seasons was very abrupt.

There are ghost footprints on the deck that come out when it rains, from when someone sprayed their fancy retro sneakers there.

We saw the Hallwyl House Museum’s exhibition of Lego houses. It was smallish, and very much a mixed bag. The houses ranged from a construction of (literally) 15 Duplo blocks plus a propeller, done by a 5-year-old in 5 minutes, to intricate artistic creations and meticulously crafted large-scale community builds.

We were somewhat disappointed in how the constructions were presented. Almost all were surprisingly badly lit – either not lit at all, or only lit by a large light from above. Without Eric’s little pocket LED torch we would have missed out on a lot of detail, especially on the inside of the buildings. The one exception was a model of a museum, built by someone who (unsurprisingly) worked a day job as a museum photographer.

It was interesting to see the different scales used by different builds. There’s the minifigure scale, whereby a standard Lego minifigure is the size of a human. But there were also builds using much smaller scales (which I now know are called microscale), and one of the churches was scaled specifically to 1:100.

I’m always struck by the creative uses that Lego model constructors find for bricks, especially for architectural details. Scorpions become gargoyles; the butt of a Lego poodle looks like a marble bust; croissants get to play the role of baroque curlicues; fences become lattices for stained glass windows.

We were sitting on the deck, having dinner, when we noticed an unpleasant burning smell. Not the usual smell of barbecuing meat (which can be pretty unpleasant to a bunch of vegetarians – seriously, it makes me think of burning flesh) but something more chemical or plasticky. When we also noticed a smoky haze in the distance, Eric went off to investigate and potentially call emergency services. That turned out not to be necessary, because they were already on their way.

The cause was an electric bike battery that had caught fire while charging, two houses away from ours. Bike batteries can apparently be really dangerous and have caused major fires in Stockholm recent years. I remember websites advising people to not charge mobile phones overnight for safety reasons, but I haven’t seen that advice for a few years now. I guess phone battery technology is more mature. But for bike batteries, that advice is still applicable – charge during the day, and not indoors. Bike batteries get more bumps and hits (which is really bad for them) and obviously they’re also quite a bit larger than phone or laptop batteries. Plenty more firepower.

The internet has now also taught me how dangerous large lithium ion batteries are to transport, and how many shipping companies don’t even want to touch them, and how they require special certification.

In this case the incident was judged serious enough to warrant two fire engines and a police unit to manage the site, and the police decided to cordon off the streets around the house in question. Luckily nobody had been injured. The situation was quietly resolved later without any further excitement.

Last time we had a fire near us was seven years ago.

I got a notification yesterday that Alewalds, an outdoor gear shop right next to the 13|37 office, would start their annual end-of-summer sale today.

I’ve been thinking for a while (literally years, by now, I believe) that I could do with a better rucksack for longer trips. The Lundhags rucksack I have is a solid workhorse, robust and reliable, but it’s also quite heavy. It’s an older model so I can’t find the exact specs online any more, and I’m not curious enough to go down to the basement to actually weigh it, but a similar but newer Lundhags rucksack weighs 2.7 kg. That’s a fair lot of weight to carry before I even start packing. But rucksacks are expensive, especially lightweight ones, and the Lundhags works, so I’ve been hemming and hawing. Do I really need another rucksack?

Logically knowing that I would probably find it very useful if I could make myself splurge and overcome my underbuyer tendencies, this time I decided in advance that I would go there and buy one, and not let myself postpone it because I can do without. Walked in there, tried some out, and walked home with a new rucksack from Osprey that is a whole kilogram lighter than the Lundhags, despite being the same size.

The light weight is due to a fancy (and expensive) lightweight materials, but also to the absence of everything extraneous. There are no side pockets, no inside pockets, no rain cover pockets, no dividers, no front opening. Basically it’s one large top-loaded compartment, plus a pocket in the top lid and hip pockets on the hip belt. And both the lid and the hip pockets are removable, if I want to slim it down even more.

Using this bag is going to require an entirely different approach to packing than what I’m used to. I always have a plan and a purpose for all the pockets, for things I may want to reach in a hurry – water bottle in the side pocket, knife and first aid kit in the front outside pocket, gloves and hats and sunglasses in the top lid, rain suit in the bottom compartment. Now I’m going to have to relearn.

Time to start planning for an autumn hike!

Still energized after my vacation, I’m making a new effort to get my energy levels up and improve my mental health. The quarantine years messed me up, and the end of quarantine didn’t magically fix things.

Some good habits come easily to me. I go to bed before midnight, and I get up before 8, even without an alarm, even on weekends. I eat regular, healthy meals. I keep up my hobbies: I read and I knit more or less daily.

What I’ve lost is the ability/energy/habit to do things that require planning and preparation. I have barely been out walking since last autumn. I’ve hardly been to any cultural events. I haven’t been to the gym even once since quarantine rules were lifted.

I know what I need for my well-being: exposure to nature, exposure to culture, exercise, creativity, novelty. (Not in equal amounts or with equal frequency.)

Commitments do the trick for me. The public commitment to work from the Urb-it office on Wednesdays has been entirely voluntary but has gotten me there every single week. The daily workout challenge at 13|37 did the same for exercise. So I’m going to commit a lot more now.

I’ve bought tickets to a concert series for myself and Eric.

I’ve signed up for a short embroidery course and a short crochet course. (Without Eric.)

I’ve installed a habit tracking app to make sure I get at least 15 minutes of exercise every day. 15 minutes a day is ridiculously little but since there have been days when I haven’t even set foot outside the house, it’s going to be an improvement. Start small. Something is better than nothing.

The other habit I’m already tracking is daily blogging. I know I want to do it, and I know I can do it because I’ve done it in the past, and it isn’t even hard, but sometimes I just don’t, for no particular reason at all. Thus far it looks like the nudging is working very well. I don’t even need the app’s notifications to remind me – the mere knowledge that it’s there and I can say “Done” at the end of the day is enough to make me do it.

I still need some kind of commitment to nudge me to get out in nature regularly. Still figuring out what and how I can commit to, to make that happen. I dislike hiking with strangers, so signing up for any kind of group hikes would be counterproductive. And I enjoy nature a lot more when it’s “proper” nature, not just a small nature reserve in the city, but longer outings require some advance planning. Maybe the new habit I need to get into is not “go out and walk every Saturday” but “sit down every Thursday and plan a walk for the weekend”.

Nysse is two years old today. I was in the office today so I didn’t seem him during the day, and he basically just came home to eat and sleep.

Now that the nights are getting darker again, he’s not gone all night, every night, and has been known to spend the night indoors instead.

It’s election year in Sweden. Election ads this year seem particularly inane. Lots of vague statements that say absolutely nothing about what that party is promising or intending to do. Some are statements of vague wishes such as “Shorter queues in healthcare” or “No young person shall become a criminal” that at least say something about the party’s priorities, though not its policies.

Others say nothing of substance at all, but just string fine words together, such as “Freedom is worth defending” or “Together we can make our Sweden better” or “The whole country is needed”. Nobody would argue against any of those statements, so what is the point?

Moderaterna (M) seem to struggle with basic grammar and Swedish language. “Fler poliser. Mer kameror. Mindre droger. Färre brott.” treats cameras as an uncountable noun, and promises “smaller drugs”. “Nu får vi ordning på brotten” promises to “bring order to crime”.

And the ad by Kristdemokraterna (KD) doesn’t even bother to promise anything, just straight up says “We’re ready to govern”. Don’t worry about our policies, we just want the power!

None of this inspires any hope, really.