It’s my last day on my current project and I am in fact spending most of my time preparing for the next one. The new project utilizes technologies that I’ve never worked with (Docker and Kubernetes) so I’m getting familiar with them at least in theory.

I find video tutorials difficult. I get bored and lose focus. (I also never watch Youtube videos for fun, or TV series – I only do that as a mostly social activity together with Eric or the entire family.)

The biggest problem with video lectures and all other videos is that they happen at someone else’s pace. When I read, I decide how fast I go. I read fast most of the time, and slow down to re-read bits that are important or interesting.

Luckily this platform had controls for playback speed so I could do the same here. I started out at 1.25x speed, quickly moved on to 1.5 and then settled at 1.75. The speedy delivery, combined with knitting to keep my hands busy, got me through the day quite productively.

Real winter seems to have arrived all of a sudden. Masses of snow, and below-zero temperatures as well, so we might even get to keep the snow for a while.

I spent a good while cleaning the snow from the stairs and the driveway. I learned from painful experience, early in my days as homeowner in Nordic climes, that you cannot leave snow until later and clean it when you feel like it. Any place that you want to be snow-free at some point needs to be kept snow-free from the very beginning. If you wait, the snow will compact and freeze into an unmovable mass, especially where people walk on it, so the best thing is to shovel as soon as possible.

Everyone knows that paths and driveways need shovelling. Other things that need cleaning, that I had never thought of until we moved here, include rubbish bins and the mailbox.

The car took the most time, by far. Yes, we have a garage. Technically we even have a double garage. But the door on one side is effectively unusable, and we use the other side for bicycles. If we put the car in there, it’s nearly impossible to get the bikes out past the car. Short of lifting them over the car, which is about as convenient as it sounds. We drive very rarely these days (what’s there to drive to in these corona-affected times, anyway?) so we prioritize the bikes. Still, just in case we do end up needing the car for something, I got most of the snow off of it.

Christmas break is over for all of us and we’re back to our usual routines. I went back to work last week. Eric started working this week, and Adrian’s school term started on Monday as well. Today Ingrid’s school term also started.

We get up shortly after 7, although I sometimes stretch it to 7:30 since I have no particular hurry in the morning. I’m winding down my engagement in my current project (this is my last week) so I have no urgent tasks. And with no commute, I can be at work by 8 even if I sleep to 7:30.

Ingrid and Adrian both leave just before 8. School starts at 8. Ingrid has a three-minute walk to school; for Adrian it takes less than 10 minutes. Eric cycles to work and would much rather do so in daylight, so he waits until sunrise which is happens around 8:30.

They all have breakfast before leaving. I’m not fond of early breakfasts, so I start working first and break for breakfast around 9-ish.

All of us read while eating breakfast. Eric reads Dagens Industri. Adrian read Kalle Anka Pocket. I read Dagens Nyheter. What Ingrid reads I don’t know but I’m guessing it’s Snapchat.

Another month, and the sun will be up when I get up.

Having a calendar at all for this year feels rather pointless right now. There is nothing on the horizon or beyond it. The long-awaited ski trip to Norway that got cancelled last year will not happen this year either.

Oh well. I guess we can look forward to celebrating one year of covid-19 some time in March.

We threw out the Christmas tree yesterday, but no further than the wooden deck outside the living room. With some fresh snow on it, it looks much less bedraggled. It looked so pretty that I almost started considering planting a spruce or a fir somewhere in the garden, even though I’m not a big fan of conifiers – but then realized that the number of days when it will be beautifully ornamented with fresh snow will be very, very few.

With the ground covered in snow, it’s like I’m getting up an hour later in the morning – the world is so much brighter.

We finally got a proper snowfall, and the fluffy snow landed very prettily on the Viburnum buds.

I would be perfectly happy to stay on the sofa all day, just reading, getting up only for meals, bathroom visits and a workout. But I gathered all my strength and got off my bottom for long enough to change the sheets. So there.

The Christmas tree is looking dull and droopy, and its needles are curling up. Time to throw it out.

It’s funny how much Christmas cheer it can bring when we put it up, and after two weeks it feels just like another piece of furniture.

Fresh wet snow on the frozen ground makes for slippery slopes in Spånga.

The weather has finally gone from muddy to crisp so we went out geocaching again. Eric and I could and do walk for hours without any extra activities, but for Adrian geocaching makes all the difference. A boring walk turns into a game. This time we went to Järvafältet, near Akalla, and picked up eight caches there.

This part of Järvafältet is quite fun to walk around in, because it’s so scruffy and varied, but still easily walkable. There are paths everywhere, but the paths go up hills and over rocks and in between deadfalls and marshes and ditches. You have to be alert and look where you put your feet. It was a good thing the ground was frozen today – one of the caches was in the middle of a marshy area that would have been really muddy otherwise.

Adrian took care of navigation today, with only a minimum of help. He’s been learning map reading both at school (where they’ve done some basic orienteering in gym class) and with his scout group, so now he actually knows what he’s doing.

With a GPS it’s mostly enough to look at the blue track line and make sure the dark blue triangle moves towards the cache rather than away, which doesn’t take much in the way of map reading skills. But he could also use the GPS map to figure out whether we should turn left or right on the next track we hit, so he can clearly relate the map to reality. When I pointed out some contour lines on the map for him, he took a look around and concluded that the cache would be at the top of the hill.

It was good for all of us to get out of the house, but Adrian seemed to need it most. His friend M has been away during most of Christmas break so he’s been sitting around the house more than usual and really needed to move and run around for a while.

Had I been here on my own I would have stopped to take photos of the pretty patterns in the ice, but today was not a photo outing.