Legends of the Sun Pig

Alex had his first day at work today. I drove him to Station Noord in the morning. I picked him up again shortly before 6. He was exhausted, barely able to talk. He ate a stack of pancakes and then collapsed straight into bed. Maybe tomorrow he’ll tell me what it was like.

This afternoon I scattered some peanuts and seeds in the back yard, and closed the curtains on our new sun room space to turn it into a makeshift blind. The magpies sent in some scouts that took a quick peek and then flew away. About ten minutes later the magpies arrived in pairs to pick the place clean. Then the crows showed up and took control. (They’re the Men In Black of the bird world.) They didn’t attack the magpies, but they certainly asserted their dominance.

I had my camera set to shutter priority with a speed of 1/4000 to try and catch the birds in action. Even though there was a good amount of light, I’ve been taking pictures with a lowered exposure compensation, and a lot of the pics came out dark and mushy. (I discovered the zebra striping feature on my camera, and I think it has been leading me astray.) I have an idea for setting up a blind in a different position tomorrow, if the weather holds up.

Daily self-care checklist:

• Sleep: terrible. Found myself unable to fall asleep & was awake until after 02:00. Got up early to take Alex to the station. Came back and had some more sleep, but it wasn’t great either. Paul recommended the book Why We Sleep a while ago, and I ordered it last week. It was delivered at 12:00 today, ironically waking me from my slumber.
• Walk: no
• Bass: 10-15 minutes.
• Photography: yes, quite satisfying. The magpies around here are very skittish, and the answer to photographing them is lots of patience.
• Snacks: I cleaned out my private stash of chocolate kruidnoten. I really shouldn’t have them around.
• Meat: no. Big plate of scrambled eggs for dinner.

Quiet day. Read, walked, cooked. Disabled the email forwarding that copied Abi and me in on Fiona’s email. We disabled Alex’s when he turned 13, but Fiona was in a bit of a different state when she hit that same age. She’s back on top of life again now, though. She can fly solo now.

Daily self-care checklist:

• Sleep: good.
• Walk: yes, a roundabout route into and back from the village centre, picking up errands on the way.
• Bass: no.
• Photography: ducks! They crowded around me and quacked adorably on my walk. One of my errands was to go to HEMA to pick up some poster-sized prints of some of my favourite photos from Pictober. On nice glossy paper, at 30×30 and 30×45 size, they came out beautifully.
• Snacks: banana bread, chocolate kruidnoten
• Meat: no. I cooked roast potatoes and grilled steaks and roast potatoes for Abi and Alex for dinner, but I made charred mixed peppers for myself.

Spent some more quality time with Vodafone this afternoon. (That’s four visits to a Vodafone shop so far, and about an hour on hold and on the phone to customer service.) Alex came with me. We were going to cancel his order for a Nokia 8 Sirocco and buy one from a different shop, because Vodafone don’t have any in stock, and don’t have a date for when they’ll be available. But the sales assistant suggested that we take a look around the shop to see if there were any acceptable alternatives that were in stock, and Alex decided that he could live with a Note 9 instead.

Unfortunately it now appears that after both being upgraded to the “Red Together” family plan on Tuesday, my account control panel now shows that Fiona’s and my subscriptions have reverted to the standard “Red” plans we had prior to Tuesday. So I suspect I’ll be back at the shop again soon.

It’s Frites Friday, and I made some dhal this evening as an accompaniment to the chips. It was good and tasty, but it was also an experiment to see how my digestion will cope with an infusion of onions and garlic, because they normally trigger IBS symptoms.

I’m enjoying The Labyrinth Index so far. It starts fast, and accelerates quickly.

Daily self-care checklist:

• Sleep: pretty good.
• Walk: does a walk to the chip shop and back count?
• Bass: no.
• Photography: not really. I set my iPhone on a timer to take the shop above.
• Snacks: some chocolate kruidnoten.
• Meat: no. Dhal!

Abi is back from Berlin, and Alex had an orientation session at his new job. I moved some admin tasks along, and made falafel for dinner.

Daily self-care checklist:

• Sleep: good, but not quite long enough. Earlier to bed tonight.
• Walk: eh, out to the pharmacy and back, to request a new prescription. No more than 20 minutes.
• Bass: yes, practicing scales
• Photography: minimal, but the view above came out okay
• Snacks: koffiebroodje, and a chocolate muffin that Alex deemed overbaked.
• Meat: no. Store-bought falafel for protein, yum.

Daily self-care checklist:

• Sleep: pretty good, for the first time in quite a few days. Although I didn’t get go to sleep until after 01:00, I slept all the way through until 07:30, and then was able to fall back asleep again after that. I think my sinuses have finally dried up after their snot party.
• Walk: no. Had a quiet day around the house, tidying, archiving, cleaning, and challenging some negative automatic thoughts around tasks I’ve been putting off.
• Bass: no.
• Photography: accidentally snapped some nice pics of Fiona in the evening.
• Snacks: smoked almonds and banana bread. Felt enormous protein cravings just before dinner time, while Alex and I were out at Ikea. Dinner was an informal affair, and I made myself a giant pile of scrambled eggs.
• Meat: no

I went along to the hospital with Phil again this morning for his follow-up appointment. He is doing a lot better, and was actually able to utter a few words this morning. After that, I headed back to the Vodafone store to mostly finish off the transaction I started on Friday, tried to revert on Saturday, and was told I couldn’t continue with on Sunday. Fiona has a new phone now, and Alex’s is on order. Yay! Despite these hiccups, the adviser who helped me was lovely to deal with, apologetic, and very helpful.

(Just before hitting the shop, I bought a snack and a drink, and sat outside for a little while to watch the birds and take some photos. The jackdaws were a lot less skittish than they tend to be around our garden, and they were almost coming up to take crumbs from my hand. The gulls are bullies, though.)

This week the gemeentes Zaanstad, IJmuiden, and Beverwijk are running a week of activities highlighting the rich industrial heritage of the area. (Week van de industriecultuur.) I was late in booking my tickets, and some of the tours I would like to have taken were all full up. But this afternoon I got to see around the Nauerna site of waste processor Afvalzorg. They gave us a presentation, and then drove us around the site.

After separating out recyclables, Dutch household waste mostly goes to incinerators. Afvalzorg deals with the next step in the chain. They take the rubble and ash from the incinerators, and process it to extract and clean metals and varying grades of landfill material. They contract with gemeentes throughout the country to literally make new land for parks and any other construction projects.

On the opposite side of the canal the indoor ski slope of Velsen Zuid is already built on landfill, and the Groene Schip site will be opened to the public in 2019. The main Nauerna site is going to continue to be filled until 2022, after which they will start landscaping it. In the end it will consist of a brand new mini-mountain, 40m above sea level, with fantastic views out over the harbour and surrounding countryside. I was very impressed!

Daily self-care checklist:

• Sleep: rubbish. Woke up at 04:00 with a blinding sinus headache, and I stayed awake until about 05:30 when the painkillers had knocked it back enough. Then dragged myself awake at 08:00 again.
• Walk: not really. I had though that the Nauerna visit would involve more walking, but they took us around the site in a bus.
• Bass: no
• Photography: yes, lovely. Birds are my favourite subject right now.
• Snacks: Pain au chocolat, banana bread, smoked almonds.
• Meat: no. Had a couple of crispy “cheese schnitzels” for dinner, which are like self-contained grilled cheese sandwiches. I think I’d prefer an ordinary grilled cheese sandwich, though.