Raindrops never go out of style.

The lock on the garage door stopped working. Eric managed to get it out, but not to fix it, so for now we are lockless. We came up with a pretty clever workaround, if I say so myself – we just parked the car with its nose right up against the garage door. Getting a bicycle in or out of the garage is a bit of a hassle (or a two-person job) but it’s only for a week or so.

I was reflecting in Slovenia that the locals there probably stop noticing the stunning mountains around them after a while. Just like I was so charmed by the greenery in Spånga when I first saw it, but now rarely think about it. So here’s me paying attention to it again.

Also, taking an evening walk to get my daily exercise in.

Today is our 20th wedding anniversary. Happy anniversary to us!

Another Wednesday in the office, another reminder of there being a wider world out there, outside my own four walls. This time in the shape of a bunch of protesters blocking all traffic on Sveavägen, one of the main thoroughfares in Central Stockholm, by glueing themselves to the zebra crossing and refusing to move, thereby – in their eyes – drawing attention to climate change. In most everybody else’s eyes they were causing traffic chaos, delays and irritation, to put it mildly. I don’t really understand how they believe their methods would gain them any support or positive attention.

The pause in posting was mostly intentional this time. We were gone hiking for 10 days, but Ingrid preferred to stay at home on her own, and I didn’t want to publicise the fact that she was on her own here. Not that I have any untrustworthy characters reading this blog but it still felt better to be safe. Now that we’re all at home again and I’ve spent 2 days acclimating to work, I’ll be catching up in no time!

Our cat’s pose, in our cat’s spot, but not our cat.

There are so many cats in the neighbourhood that I sometimes wish there was a Facebook – in its earliest incarnation, when it was just a set of personal profiles with photos – for them all.

Adrian managed to scrape up half his shin in a kickbike accident and got an impressive bandage. He could feel the edges of the adhesive tape more than the (superficial) wound itself, so now he limps.

Full of energy after ten days of activity, I’m making a renewed effort to start exercising daily again.

We only had half a day at our disposal before it’s time for queueing at the airport, and a forecast of rainy weather, and a forecast of traffic jams on the A1. With all of that constraining our options, we went to the Ljubljana Technical Museum, which is in fact not very near Ljubljana at all.

It turned out to be a wonderfully eclectic agglomeration of exhibits. Housed in an old convent, the site itself was quirky and fun to explore.

Inside and outside, the museum’s collections ranged from old pieces of machinery with no labelling whatsoever, through collection of items with minimal labelling in Slovenian only, to very detailed and pedagogical exhibitions about the history of a particular branch of technology.

Our time here was limited so we didn’t have time for more than some cursory browsing and the occasional deep dive into a random area. We enjoyed an exhibition about the history of cars and other means of motorized personal transportation. I naturally spent a fair bit of time in the exhibition about the textile industry. There was also a surprisingly interesting and well-presented one about the history of forestry, where we learned about different methods for “first mile” timber transportation, including rafting, sledding, wooden timber chutes, and simply shoving the timber down the side of the mountain.