Booking Through Thursday

Quick–what are you reading right now? (Other than this question on this website, of course.) Would you recommend it? What’s it about?

The question comes from Deb at Booking Through Thursday

1. The Mystery of Lewis Carroll by Jenny Woolf
This is my “slow read” book at the moment, which means I’m savouring it in small portions.  I’ve only read about 1/4 yet; but yes, if ever you felt curious to know more about the author who wrote Alice in Wonderland, I’d recommend it.

2. Dandy by Jan Guillou (Swedish author) – second in a series about the early 20th century. Just started listening to it as audio book. I’m not sure if even the first part has been translated into English yet (or will be).

With the first part – Bridge Builders – I found some of the historical perspectives and details interesting, but characters and relationships kind of flat, not really leaving much of an impression behind. I suspect I’ll probably end up feeling much the same about this one. Reviews I glanced at vary between finding the book(s) a great literary achievement vs. “unnecessary”…

The first book starts with three brothers born in poor circumstances in Norway, but offered the chance to go to Germany to become engineers. One of them afterwards did what was expected of him, and went back to Norway, engaging in the building of railways. Another went to East Africa, and the third to London. The first book was mostly about the first two brothers; the one that I just started on focuses on the third brother who went to England. It seems that besides engineering it will be about art and literature and especially the Bloomsbury group. I’ve not read far enough yet to decide what I think.

Not A Good Morning

I don’t really like to complain; and yet here I am, feeling the urge to complain about having had to start my morning with a list of complaints…

First I needed to send an email of complaint to the caretaker of my building - about Anonymous leaving heavy objects in places where they shouldn’t be. (Like furniture outside my storage room in the basement. Besides more or less blocking the way to my space, it’s against fire saftey rules to leave/store anything in the corridors.)

Then when I turned on the computer, I found that Blogger has now suddenly taken the final step to turn off the Old Dashboard. Okay, okay, I know it’s not “suddenly” but I still don’t like it…

Many of you probably switched to the New Dashboard long ago. If you are happy with it, and don’t feel a need to join in the kicking and screaming - please feel free to just skip the rest of this post.

Besides finding the new layout and colour scheme less good from visual impairment point of view, one of my major complaints is that I can no longer scroll the list of blogs (left) and the list of posts (right) separately. I can’t see how this is an improvement for anyone as it means a lot more scrolling back and forth.

So every time I enter the New Dashboard I feel an urge to send complaining feedback to Blogger (and have already done so twice this morning); which delays me and puts me in generally grumpy mood… Sorry about that… I’ll do my best to try and get over it… (Hrmpf!)

What’s New?

I bought new curtains for the kitchen – decided I needed a “treat” after all the work put into getting my home back to normal after the change of windows.

A friend came by on a surprise visit yesterday and insisted that she wanted to buy me flowers - she didn’t want to buy them before she came as she wasn’t sure I’d be home… So I ended up going with her for a short walk to the nearby florist’s and got to choose which ones I wanted. I picked the cheerful orange chrysanthemums for a bit of autumn colour.

The white cyclamen I got from another friend three weeks ago… Last Friday, she moved to Australia! (It has not quite sunk in yet that she’s actually gone…)

Here, autumn is upon us now, with the trees changing colours from one day to another…

 

Today has been one of those days when the weather shifts from minute to minute  - and we even had sunshine and torrential rain simultaneously!

The last three photos are from a short walk this morning (in rain and sunshine).

Home Sweet Home

My home has been “upside-down” the last week…

“Factually” I was only expelled from home for about eight hours on Thursday (because of a change of windows in my flat, see previous post). It was a fine early autumn day at that (chilly winds, but sunny), and I tried to make the best of it. And yet it felt like an awfully long day (with nowhere to lie down for a bit of a proper neck-rest); which made me realize how lucky I am, not only to have a place to call home at all, but one where I feel at home, and normally quite like to spend as much “hometime” as I usually do/need to.

I don’t mean “realize” like in never having thought about it before (because I have); it just hit me a bit more forcefully than a normal day, as I found myself aimlessly wandering some unknown streets in town, with Paul Simon’s “Homeless” popping up in my head…

So when I got back home in the late afternoon, to my upside-down home, and was met by another realization – that new windows do not equal clean windows, but windows that need extra cleaning before anything else can be done – I decided not to complain but just take my time about it… and be thankful… First of all that the building is being kept in good repair; and second that the timing was “as good as it gets” with this kind of thing. (I much prefer September to December, which is probably how long it will be until they get through all the buildings on the estate.)

I was actually back on wi-fi already on Friday, but my computer has remained “off” the whole weekend, as I’ve been putting my energies towards restoring my home to normal.

Now I’m off to the dentist’s; life goes on…

Windows Upgrade IRL

I’ll be “off blog” for a couple of days, because of a change of windows. Not Windows, mind, but windows!

Just spent a day taking down all my curtains and removing flowerpots and “stuff”, preparing the way for the Big Job which is planned for tomorrow.

Before I got started I told myself not to panic.  There’s not all that much stuff just in front of the windows… the only heavy piece is the desk in the study… and if I take out the drawers… and getting curtains down is less of a problem than getting them up again… I can do it…

Half way through, I wondered: Where does all this stuff come from? And, more importantly, where am I going to put it?? Because they’ll be doing all four rooms… And not only do they need elbow room when working at the windows, they also need to be able to get to the windows (carrying windows!)…

Phew. Well, it’s Wednesday evening, and now there’s a strange echo from the keyboard because of no curtains and carpet in the study, and I just sincerely hope I won’t need anything from the bottom desk drawer as the drawers are piled up in a different corner of the room than the desk itself, which is shoved to the side (I hope I don’t need anything from the bookshelves either).

Later tonight I’ll disconnect the modem and the router, because they “live” close to a window too.

In the kitchen there’s just space enough for me now to have breakfast at one corner of the table tomorrow morning before I make myself scarce (going to the rehab pool – and after that I’d probably better have lunch in town).  Before I go I shall have to make my bed and take down the bedroom curtains and place those on the bed because that’s really the only space left I can think of…

Wish me luck. I can only hope they do get all four rooms “done” tomorrow, or I might end up spending tomorrow night on the sofa, draped in curtains…