Nothing New Under the Sun

^{My days (and nights) this week have still felt very much focused just on keeping doors and windows open or shut, balcony parasols up or down, various fans around the flat on or off, and myself in or out, active or passive, depending on 1/ the sun and heat, 2/ the possiblity of rain, and 3/ a neighbour's screeching bird, barking dog + loud phone conversations in some foreign language (on the balcony)... And someone - possibly not the same neighbour but another one also has a squeaky balcony door...}

^{These words from the book of Ecclesiastes keep coming to mind:}

⁵ The sun rises and the sun sets,
    and hurries back to where it rises.
⁶ The wind blows to the south
    and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
    ever returning on its course.
⁷ All streams flow into the sea,
    yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
    there they return again.
 ^---
9 What has been will be again,
    what has been done will be done again;
    there is nothing new under the sun.

(from Ecclesiastes chapter 1 - New International Version)

I think it was on Monday we had warnings of thunder, hard winds and torrential rain. Not very much came of it, though. There were indeed one or two very strong gusts of wind in the afternoon - which made me haste to take in my outdoor flowering plants from the balcony over night. No thunder, though (that I heard), and the rain that followed was gentle, fell straight down, and soon evaporated again after hitting the ground.

Tuesday was Too Hot again, but also offered another light shower or two. I can't recall the details - it was also One Of Those Days (described above). I think that's when I took the photo of the leaf with the raindrops, though. (Which indicates that I must have gone out at some point. I think probably towards evening, after the rain...)

Just now, trying to check up on photo details, I accidentally managed to do THIS on my phone (just by pressing my finger on the photo):

(Okay. Maybe that counts as "something new"...??)

Where was I?!  Wednesday (yesterday) was sunny and too hot again, but I managed to get out for a short walk before noon. The afternoon was Laundry Day, but in between it was mostly quiet, so not too bad from that respect...

Today I woke up to overcast sky and lower temperatures, and was able to go for a refreshing rainy walk in the late morning, to the supermarket + pharmacy for a few things. Actually quite a lovely experience! Again it was the gentle kind of rain, and a rain jacket + umbrella was enough protection. (I also had to change my trousers when I got back in, but never mind. It was worth it!!)

All in all I've been staring at the TV quite a lot, but without much recollection of what I've been watching. I'm re-watching the classic series Friends on one of my cable channels in the evenings,though (two episodes per night) - that's about the right level for me at the moment, not requiring any effort to keep up with. Even on Kindle and Audio I've mostly been "re-reading" books too, rather than trying to get into something new.

Quiet Midsummer

 

Midsummer in Sweden is a popular holiday weekend, with Midsummer Eve always celebrated on a Friday, which is not officially a public (bank) holiday, but generally treated as such a day anyway. Traditionally it is celebrated with people gathering in the afternoon and/or evening to play and dance around a pole decoraded with leaves and flowers. City centres are practically deserted, while the coast and anywhere near a lake is likely to be crowded.

Sometimes in the past I've visited afternoon midsummer celebrations at our museum park with old cottages; but not since the pandemic. The only photo I'm able to find just now is this one below, from 2014 (possibly even older).

They had a similar event in that park this year too, in the afternoon of Midsummer Eve; but I was tired and did not feel up for neither the walk there and back again, nor for mingling with a lot of people. Although this weekend hasn't really been excessively hot, I still soon get enough of being out and about during the hottest hours of the afternoon.

What I have been enjoying this weekend though, is the (relative) quiet that comes with quite a few neighbours being away... Not all of them: there have still been kids playing in the nearby football field until late in the evenings. But, for example, a wall-to-wall neighbour and their 'menagerie' (consisting of a frequently screeching bird + a sometimes howling/barking dog) have been away for four days, and that does make a difference... 

And a general fire/barbecue ban (because of the drought) also means no one has been throwing parties on the lawn just outside my building. 

My own balcony is still way too hot all afternoon, though, so I've not been out there much except to water my plants (usually late in the evening).

The flowers in the top photo, with the flag, are not mine; it's a photo I snapped during one of my walks. They belong to an apartment complex (condominium kind) down by the river.

Yellow water lilies are in bloom in the river itself.

 

Before the weekend, I bought some ice cream. My vegan favourite when I can get it is vanilla ice cream made from oats (brand called Oatly). Not only because they sometimes come with "questionable words of wisdom" hidden under the lid... ;-) The other ingredient in the glass above is a mango/passion sorbet (of other brand). - What's your favourite?

An Offline Day

Earlier this week, I posted about "screen time"... Kind of ironically, yesterday, I woke up to find myself without wifi internet connection. And the basic trick of restarting the router did not help (as it often does if there's just been a temporary glitch). 

Strange how this immediately makes me feel oddly disconnected from the rest of the world these days - even with electricity, radio and TV still working...!

Not least my morning felt a bit odd, because for one thing I nowadays subscribe to my morning newspaper online only, and for another, after breakfast it's in my usual routine to check various other online things (emails, blogs, my daily Duolingo Spanish lesson, and whatnot). 

When the internet still hadn't come back on after a couple of hours, it dawned on me that I could still connect to the world by turning on mobile data on my phone, though. I rarely use mobile data as I'm rarely away from home for more than a couple of hours at a time. So I don't subscribe to very much of it - but I also had hardly used any of what I did have...

So I checked my broadband supplier's website, and found that the problem was affecting all their customers in my town and that they were working on it. I kept checking in for updates during the day. Around noon they had established that the fault was with the "cooling system" at their local subcontractor... A couple of hours later, that the subcontractor had had to order some replacement equipment. Next update (around 3 pm), that the equipment would not arrive until around 7 pm. Around 8 pm, I noticed that I my wifi connection was back on again - and the website informed me that it had been fixed since around 7:30.

As adventures go, not much of an ordeal to brag about! However, it did make me consider that it may be about time that I exchange my prepaid phone card for a monthly subscription (also including a little more mobile data). Even if just to feel a bit more secure when things like this happen. (My broadband phone, from the same supplier, was also not working during this outage.) Besides, one's phone number is demanded for so many things these days that I'd hate to lose the number just by perhaps missing to renew my prepaid period on time. (That's never happened so far, but after all I'm not getting any younger...)

The Importance of Water

 

Some time early on in the history of my almost daily walks around and across the old cemetery close to where I live (since 15 years now), I recall wondering to myself why they kept the taps at their "watering stations" in such bad repair - always leaking...

Just as I'm not sure when I first asked myself that question, I'm also not sure how long it took me to come up with the answer: It is of course for the birds inhabiting all the big old trees. And other small animals, likes squirrels. And even the insects...

This very dry summer, it all seems a lot more obvious!

 

Insect hotels (photos from 2022)

 

“Thousands have lived without love,
not one without water.”
– H. Auden

“When the well’s dry,
we know the worth of water.”
– Benjamin Franklin

 

Screen Time

 

At the beginning of each week, my new phone (the one I bought back in March) keeps presenting me with statistics of my "screen time" for the previous week. I've not yet bothered to figure out if there is a way to turn off these reports, even though that thought does pop up in my head every week too. It's also a weekly reminder of the famous quote about lies and statistics... You know: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statitstics..." (Often ascribed to Mark Twain, but I seem to recall reading somewhere that it was really someone else who said it before him.) 

To return to my phone statistics, they are all lies as all they might show is how much I've been checking my phone screen. It obviously has no idea that I also own a tablet, a laptop, and a TV - which I look at a lot more. Moreover, the phone doesn't even tell the truth about how much I use the phone, because it obviously also does not count all the hours that I spend listening to audio books from it (with the screen black). 

Which all just makes me wonder why they bother about these "digital health" statistics at all. Because I'm pretty sure that even most kids probably usually have access to more screens than their own phone during the week...

Ah well. Just a reflection towards the end of another hot summer day that I've spent mostly indoors with various screens, between turns to the laundry room...

PS. I also haven't got a clue where the phone statistics go once I've seen them; which is why I can't include a picture of them. Instead, I give you a photo of a 'dog rose' from the cemetery. (More worth staring at for a while than the statistics, anyway...)