Sortera, where I am currently on assignment, is a company after my taste, in many ways. Environmentally conscious, relaxed and informal, focused on providing great service.

Sortera is also the first company I’ve seen where there is a “shoes off” policy in the whole office. In most places I’m the only one who changes out of outdoor shoes into indoor ones every day. It started at their waste sorting facilities – nobody wants garbage-covered shoes walking around on office carpets – but then spread to the administrative offices as well. The IT department has a little cubby for our outerwear and shoes, and almost everybody has a pair of slippers or sandals waiting for them. Or fancy Italian loafers, for some.

Adrian and Ingrid both cook dinner once week. Ingrid saves favourite recipes on TikTok; Adrian sticks to trusted favourites.

One of his favourites is a simple but delicious pasta dish with oven-roasted cherry tomatoes, cream and mozzarella. I’ve always thought of it as an ordinary, everyday meal, but when I was shopping the ingredients today, I realized that with current grocery prices, it’s become a luxury dish. Even just the 800-900 grams of tomatoes cost over a hundred SEK, and the cream and cheese are another fifty SEK.

October came, and with it, colder weather, as if it was following the calendar. A frosty morning, and a chilly afternoon. It’s time to turn on the heating.

He’s nearly crying with the desire to go out, but attacks the leash when I try to put it on. I guess our plans to only let him out during daytime were not entirely realistic, and I hope he’ll be careful.

This weekend was going to be a scout hike for Eric and Adrian, and a long overnight hike for myself as well. A weekend with good weather at the end of September is not to be wasted. But then Adrian fell ill and our plans all fell through. He’s much better today than he was yesterday, so I could go out for a day walk at least, and complete the Stockholm Signature Trail.

On Gärdet I saw an interesting apartment building that I’d heard and read about. It was less green in reality than in marketing photos, but was still quite striking. If I had to live in an apartment, I wouldn’t mind having one here.

Kaknästornet is a contrast to its surroundings. It was built as a TV tower in the 1960s and is still in active use for telecom. The top parts used to house a restaurant and viewing platform, but those were permanently closed about five years ago due to security concerns.

Djurgården hosts a pet cemetery. Sweet and sad. The oldest gravestones date back to the 1930s.

At the eastern tip of Djurgården I felt like I was out in the archipelago already.


Djurgården is full of expensive villas with double security gates and private piers.

Southern Djurgården had lots of lovely sculptures. Old and new, whimsical and classical. Wooden sculptures of various kinds around Rosendals Trädgård, and modern, playful sculptures towards the northern side.

It started with needing glasses for sewing with black on black in bad light, and now I actually wore reading glasses for reading for the first time.

The text was sharp with glasses, but somehow vaguely distorted. Perhaps it’s time to get something better than the generic off-the-shelf glasses from the pharmacy for 349 SEK.

Embroidery club. We explored the herringbone stitch.

I wish I had taken photos of some of the others’ samples. We didn’t know in advance what stitch we’d be working with, so everyone used whatever materials they had, and the choice of fabric and thread made a huge difference. Herringbone stitch is often used to fill in an area, but that didn’t happen at all with my thin thread on light fabric. My stitches hover ethereally over the fabric, like lace, instead of covering it. Some of the others had much thicker thread and their herringbones made a completely different impression.

Went to the office to meet my colleagues and collaborate with my teammates. It was nice, but also quite unproductive due to all the noise.

Back in my days (haha) or even back in our previous office, people used to go into a meeting room or a phone room for longer online meetings. Now everyone was just doing their meetings out in the open working area. At one point I was literally surrounded by meetings, sitting in the middle of a triangle of meetings, plus there was one person who was listening to music on speakers. Like of course everyone wants to hear your music while they’re trying to work. And when people have got their headphones on, they’re usually even louder than when talking to someone right next to them, probably because they don’t hear themselves. It was like trying to work at a train station.

I wish I could use headphones but they give me a headache. And in my mind it’s the people making the noise who should adjust their behaviour in an office environment, not the ones who want some quiet.

I feel like an old curmudgeon. It’s not like I can tell everyone to just please keep it down, people are working here. Although I kind of wanted to.

It was very nice and quiet after five, though, when most folks had gone home.

Nysse had his six-week post-surgery follow-up today. He got his gait and other movement assessed, and his legs and hips stretched and squeezed and prodded. Everything looked very good, he’s moving well, but he has lost some muscle mass on the right side.

There was no X-ray, which is what they had told me before was what we’d be there fore, but I guess that’s only good. The half-hour consultation already cost 2000 SEK so I don’t even want to think about what an X-ray would have cost.

The vet’s advice was to gradually increase Nysse’s activity levels, but to keep him on a leash still outdoors. The idea is to not let him out on his own until he is strong enough to e.g. defend himself or run up into a tree in case some other cat (or dog, or fox) attacks him.

Both of these seem like good advice at first glance, but are also entirely unrealistic. Take increasing activity levels, for example. According to the vet, a cautious rehab schedule would increase activity 10% a week, but since Nysse is looking strong, we can do 20%. How on Earth are we supposed to measure his activity levels, and estimate a percentage increase? Nysse is not a human whom you can ask to take 20% more steps per day, or 20% more reps of a rehab exercise. He is a cat; his activity is about running and pouncing and climbing. Hey cat, can you please pounce just about 20% harder this week? Can you please stay out for no more than two hours?

The same goes for getting him strong enough to climb trees. The only way to practice his tree-climbing muscles is to climb trees. It’s not something he can train indoors, or while on a leash. (Although he did try the latter a few days ago, when he suddenly started climbing a tree while we were out on a leashed walk. That was a bit scary. I wasn’t afraid of him falling, but of him pulling the leash from my hand and climbing up high and then getting the leash tangled up in the branches.)

I guess all we can do at this point is trust him to more or less know his own limits. So we’ll be letting him go out again during the day when someone is at home and awake to let him back in when he gets tired and comes back. Hopefully he won’t overdo it.

There’s work ongoing in and around the electricity cabinets at the corner. A couple of months ago one of them was damaged somehow – possibly hit by a car. It looked all dented and crooked and got fixed up temporarily with webbing straps. Now I think they’re fixing it for real. But also there is a ditch on the other side of the street so maybe this is something to do with the newly built house there.

In any case, we will have no power for 4 hours in the afternoon, which makes WFH a bit complicated.