Relieved to see, that my posts seem to make it through. It is amazing what makes me nervous these days… I have become an anxious person.

Puppy Fever

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I have a bad case of puppy fever. It’s true. For years it has been this way. After moving to Finland in September 2019 and starting this brand new remote job, I thought now’s the time. But: No happy news, yet.

I have to tell myself that it takes time, that you need patience and that you have to try every opportunity that presents itself. It doesn’t help that my Finnish is not yet strong enough to write an application email, or even make a call to a breeder with a new litter. My girlfriend tries to help and pitches in from time to time, but it’s a stressful and anxiety inducing thing, like writing a job application. That’s why I took over, writing emails in English.

One thing that limits our chances of getting a dog is that the breed of dog we can both agree on is a Corgi. My partner had them as a child growing up (familiarity is important to her) and I read that their intelligence, activity level and size, the general healthiness of the breed and the degree of difficulty to train them - all are within acceptable parameters. But corgis (Pembrokes and to a lesser extent Cardigans) are trendy at the moment. As are smaller dogs in general. The Corona pandemic made this even more pronounced and I can’t blame people. If people can’t leave their homes for a long time it becomes more likely for them to focus on improving their immediate surroundings, their environment. I could see that this reevaluation might lead to wanting things to stay different: More people wanting pets is a probable result, I think.

Having a pet is a nice thing, I imagine. I grew up with a Labrador Retriever called Lucy. Notice that I said “grew up with”, not “had”. Not because I want to underline that Lucy was a family member (she totally was), but because it was not my dog. It was my dad’s dog. I can’t fault him, but it always hurt me a little. The way he told stories about his dog. The way he took his dog with him after the divorce. I got it and I get it. But this observation made me think “I wanna have a dog, too!”

Many years passed where having a dog would have been impractical, irresponsible or outright impossible. I buried the idea for almost a decade. If I referred to this wish of mine I said “When I’m 30 I’m gonna get a dog”. Getting closer to the end of my time at university, around 27, the wish resurfaced. Unclear where I was going to live and with what I was going to make my money, this little itch came back. I want a dog. And not just since yesterday. Now I’m 35. I feel like it’s time.

A little boat trip on the upper part of the Oulankajoki - About 15 km. Our bodies were so sore the next day. We weathered two small rapids and also almost keeled over! We laughed a lot last Sunday.

I said a while ago that my GF and I switched from Youtube Music to Apple Music. While she is back with YTM, I’m enjoying Apple Music a lot more. I am working from home, though, listening to music through my laptop, while she has to deal with a lot more different environs.

I am introducing a new collegue to the project and it is a joy to notice how much I have actually learned myself over the last few years.

Teamflow is a kind of virtual office, in which every worker has a “video” bubble, that others can interact with. This seems like a surveilance tool to me. But trust and management are polar oposites.

I wonder if @baldur has a take on stuff like this?

Colors of the ruska season in the Riisitunturi Nationalpark

Just upgraded to MB premium! Reasons forthcoming.

The maxfun show story break is gonna end their run in 5 eps. Damn. Not one of my regular shows, but just goes to show that projects we love might end sooner then we‘d expect.

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The Netflix movie Kate, which we just watched, is amazing. Check it out if you haven’t already.

(I should really pledge to interact with people here, every day, a little bit.)

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What a nice thought: My mom sent me a Google Nest Mini for my birthday. But: In Finnland you can’t use it for Apple Music (Why?). Siri won’t work with it (e. g. can’t put tasks into my Things inbox) either. So I now have a very smart, barely usable bluetoothspeaker on my desk.

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Kinda surprising: The recommendations on library thing are very very good. I’m tracking my read books here, since this is were I write about them, but I also track them there, because library thing somehow really gets online recommendations.

Working with heavily linked notes shows that one unexpected value of a link is not the link but its usefulness as an alias for what you are actually looking for. Quite often I don’t find the title of the note, but a link to the note I was looking for.

When I think about it, it is very fascinating to think that my body can metabolize food and drinks. I can alter the state of my mind through what I do to and with my body. But how do you find the right food that makes you want to write (undercomplex perspective, I know.)? ;)

Jeez. Somebody blocked the ventilation slits above almost all of our windows in our apartment (probably a freezing previous tennant?) with insulation wool instead of air filter material. We have been living here for two years.

Hm. For how much I dislike when a discussion gets derailed, I tend to do it quite often. We had such a nice evening. Argh. Hate the feeling of when a loved one shares something and all I have is critical remarks. ☹️

This vacation has me the most motivated about writing in a few years. Have to transform it somehow into a steady thing.

Accidentally opened twitter. Ugh. I want to be enlightened and able to say: You can have or be part of a „positive“ social graph over there, but I’m not so sure.