Cauliflower and chickpeas curry Sunday, 01-Nov-26 21:22:05 CET

Sunday, 08-Nov-26 21:53:54 CET

It is getting darker

This week I had to adjust to darker evenings.

Monday 2 November

The sun is visible outside the window. It feels like it's been a week since the last time. On the ground floor, the robot vacuum cleaner pulls off little mischievous stunts, like sucking up the shoelace of a shoe DS forgot when he lived in our house during our holidays. It is lovely, really.

DW makes coffee, and our cat Merida is sleeping on the platform above my work laptop. She loves the heat produced by the Intel i7 processor and the 32 GB of RAM. From above, she looks like a well-connected cat.

It would have been magnificent if there were an Nvidia graphics card too, but that is not the case.

Outside, the sheep are happily munching on the last green grass of the season.

I make it sound idyllic, and it is, but I also had a brief migraine this morning. I honestly have no idea if this is a short episode in my life or something that will escalate further. Am I worried? Not really. I think worries should be useful. They should make us act and do things about the situation. All other worries are useless. I will keep an eye on how this progresses in my life.

Tuesday 3 November

Today is the day the US votes in the midterm election. In Europe, it is just a normal November morning. I really hope people go to vote, whatever it takes. Whatever political view you have, it's important that everyone votes. The fewer people voting, the easier it is to influence a democracy. Those were the things tumbling around in my mind when I started preparing the breakfast smoothie. I left the US and started concentrating on my morning tasks.

The special ingredient in the smoothie today was frozen gooseberries from our own garden. It is always nice to include some berries or fruits that have been frozen, as this makes the smoothie colder.

DW and I got to the city in time because she had to be on time for her in-person meetings at the office. I brought the car to the garage a second time. This time, they would replace all four spark plug cables.

Walking from the garage to my office, I had a chance to take a couple of photos. It is the little detail that catches my eye, like in this case: a skyscraper at the focal point of treelines with fallen leaves in bright colors. I used leaves from nearby trees to frame the picture from the top edge.

Nearby, at a canal, I took a photo of the calm water with the trees reflected in it. Reflections are great for photography. It would have been even better if the sun had been filtering through the leaves, shimmering on the water.

We were promised sun today, but the day started slightly overcast. I captured a tree in shades from red to yellow, with a glimpse of a bridge over the canal in the background. A good image needs contrast in color, light and dark, and in the softness of textures. This works not only in photography but also works well in paintings. It even works in knitting patterns.

As much as I would like to walk around endlessly in the parks and take more photos, I was essentially walking from the garage to the office. I had to stop and conclude that I had taken a couple of nice photos; it was time to get to my office.

I had a lot to do, and I wondered if I could finish my tasks in time before more came in. In a way, I know I don't need to wonder, because the number of things to do is imaginary. There are always thousands upon thousands of things to do, but I am busy with only a few at any moment. No need for stress there.

You know, if I can complain about tobacco smoke in the ventilation system of the office building, then I am always keen on talking about it for a long time. Today we had a new experience: People not from the building, essentially kids from the city. They decided to smoke a joint at the ventilation intake. It's a strict no-marijuana-smoking area, what the Dutch call a "no-blow zone", so I could have called the police, but I asked them to leave instead, and they did. They realized that having an entire office building notice their smoking activity is not a clever thing, and they were more or less delighted to be asked to leave instead of having the police come.

After work, I picked up the repaired car. I went to the kiss-and-ride parking at the train station and waited for DW. It was the perfect moment to take a picture of the sunset behind a skyscraper in the city center.

Wednesday 4 November

The weather was nice and sunny today. DW went to the office, and I worked from home in the morning. I was supposed to stop working at noon, but I got so into the task that I kept going. At 2:00 p.m. I realized I hadn't eaten lunch. I had to get ready to go to the food cooperative to help distribute vegetables to our members. I also realized I needed to maintain my bike lights because it was getting darker. Not only had I misplaced my bike lamps, but I had completely forgotten how to open the old lamp and replace the batteries. I banged it open with a screwdriver and a hammer. Only then did I discover how to open the thing for real by pushing a red button to the side.

I arrived at the cooperative well on time. The same coordinators were there as last time; this time, I brought a speaker.

The work at the cooperative went well, and the atmosphere was good. So that was great. The barn where we are distributing the vegetables has a disco ball. One day, when I am a grown-up man, I'll have my own disco ball for my DJ sets.

After we finished distributing the vegetables in the crates, JP and I chatted. He offered me a beer and brought peanut snacks. He told me he'd been upgrading servers during the PHP2Shell crisis. It had been a lot of work, but none of his clients had been hacked, so he was fine.

More people arrived to be introduced to the cooperative. The coordinators explained the concept: How the week cycle runs. How payments are handled, etc. The cooperative regularly sells at 25% below regular grocery store prices. We didn't sell any vegetables through the cooperative this season, but we did last season. It is a fantastic initiative for bringing people together in the neighborhood.

Coincidentally, we were a group of five people biking home. The new members also lived in the same direction as us. I think it was cool that we all came by bike. It was dark, so the bike light was essential.

Thursday 5 November

This morning we had a similar sunrise. It is going to be a clear, chilly day.

I am on the bike to work today! I have not been biking for ages. The sun had just cleared the horizon when I passed the high farting canal on my way to work. The forest roads were slippery because of farm traffic.

At the carrot field, the harvest had taken place, and the field was newly plowed. On 16 April, I spoke to the farmer, and he told me it was the Commander carrot that had been sown in this field.

I had a really deep math problem at work today. I experienced almost no external distractions, so I could really concentrate on the math. We caught one brief whiff of tobacco smoke. That was not so terrible.

By the end of the day, I solved my math problem, and I actually feel excited about the result. So that's my mood: I am excited but exhausted. Tomorrow I have a day to tie up loose ends and do some more testing. I want a really robust solution. I will also work on deploying the solution, which is also a fun task.

I am glad I fixed my bike lights yesterday because it's dark and a little cold, to be honest.

It is empty in the forest. There are animals in there, but they are more afraid of me than I am of them. I can see the stars tonight. I even managed to take a night shot over the canal. Who would have thought I couldn't be a photographer in a night-lights situation?! This photo is from the high farting canal. I know the name of the canal sounds ridiculous, but it is just my joke name for the canal.

Friday 6 November

The weather is still lovely and clear. At this time of year, that means it is cold at night.

DW had the day off, and I worked from home. My project on math formulas ended, and a new, shorter project started. I was busy finishing it before the weekend, and I succeeded!

DW biked to the hairdresser. She doesn't like biking through the forest in the dark. She asked if I could bike to meet her. I had just finished work for the day, so that was okay. I hurried to get to her before it got completely dark, and we didn't have time to stop and take pictures. When we met in the forest, we continued to the grocery store and bought pizza for our dinner. When we left the grocery store, it was really dark.

DW prepared the garlic in the bed C1 and C2. We had potatoes there this season.

Luckily, our house is properly heated now, so we didn't need to fire up the wood stove this evening, although lighting up the fire stove is cozy.

DW brought in the pepper plants today. We are not far from overnight frost.

Saturday 7 November

We had a simple task this morning: fetching some roof panels a neighbor wanted to get rid of. We hooked up our large trailer to the car. Well, it is not entirely our own trailer. We share it with some neighbors. It is lovely to have neighbors we can share a trailer with. Then we drove the plates home and set them on the ground next to the atelier entrance. I didn't feel like continuing the rain roof project today. Now we have the boards. I can figure out how to use them.

We moved the sheep from the northwest side of the property to the northeast side. We also want them to graze in front of the barn, but that is a separate project because how are we going to do with the car and the bikes? We'll solve that another day.

We met other neighbors who had recently had a daughter. So we had to look at the little wonder. She was lovely. The mother was still a little taken by the birth, but she will be fine.

Two neighbors were also still working on their house. Their house renovation is progressing at a relaxed pace. They have hens called Barnevelders. They were beautiful animals, with each feather showing beautiful patterns and colors.

In the afternoon, SIL and BIL visited. They brought a 90-watt scroll saw with a 42 cm throat (about 16½ inches). This is a great addition to my woodworking workshop. BIL didn't need it and had nowhere to put it. I think the sun was busy today, and we overshot the heat pump settings, so I dialed it down a bit in the evening. We will see if that works.

We also exchanged the latest news about holidays and family developments during the visit. BIL and SIL went home.

Somehow I was tired in the evening. I didn't blog or do anything creative; I just sat and scrolled on my phone all evening. It was not satisfying. I read about the results of the midterm elections in the US. That sounds like a special moment in the country's history.

Sunday 8 November

This felt like the first normal "free" Sunday in ages. We went to Sweden, visited family, and I went to music events. It was lovely, although it was completely overcast.

Was this the day when I put together the new rain roof? Now I decided to leave the roof plates on the ground. They obviously can't stay there if it gets windy. I have no idea what I should do in that case.

DW used the time today to prepare for the wool event she will attend next Wednesday.

I harvested eight butternut squashes weighing 15.6 kg. We will keep these for ourselves. They can be stored for a long time, which is great. We still had three squashes from last year. It is unclear how well preserved they are. They look okay on the outside.

Next up, I cleaned the corn bed. We were not good at harvesting the corn in a timely fashion. I suggested to DW that I should bring a couple of kernels, especially to Erica, one of her daughters, who loves homegrown corn. DW had suggested we keep them to ourselves, and now they were still hanging there, half-dried.

Then I got the idea that perhaps I could offer the corn to our neighbors with Barnevelder chickens. I biked there and gave them all the half-dried corn. They also had other neighbors visiting them, and they got some corn as well. We're a bit skeptical about keeping chickens ourselves, but other neighbors are into it, so let us not spoil the fun by talking about forever chemicals and PFAS bioaccumulation. They loved the gift of corn!

I picked a couple of the carrots I planted this season. Almost every carrot is shaped like two legs or swirls around another carrot. They are a big mess. They taste good, though. Now and then I will harvest a couple of new carrot figures.

DW made beetroot risotto. We got plenty of beetroot growing in the garden. They appear to handle freezing really well. The risotto looks spectacularly red with the beetroot. On top of the risotto, she sprinkled roasted nuts and grated Parmesan cheese. It tasted great. It is wonderful to have all these things in the garden that we can still harvest after freezing.

We also got celeriacs, or knob celery, in the garden. It can also handle frost. We haven't tried a single one, so we have no idea whether they are a success or a failure. At some point, we will need to find out.

Here ends this week's blog. It is a strange time of year. Winter feels close, yet the sheep are still happily grazing outside. Welcome back next week.

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Here is an in-depth analysis of the blog made with Google Notebook LM. This week, I don't think they used the word mundane even once. Impressive!