My days used to be all the same, with some slight differences in the type of workload between work and weekend days. You can’t shake off unfinished work, health problems, or general stress just because it’s a weekend day. Most problems are sticky, like tar, and unrelated to the day of the week.
What changed?
I’m not sure how but between the daily steps, kids growing up, and the discovery that I can occasionally shut down Slack, a new experience became available to me: the afternoon nap. I’m taking a nap every Saturday afternoon.
I had a walk today and according to some of the photos, the sky was actually visible. It felt sad and gloomy.
Mladost
This is from my neighborhood, I want to go to that place and just paint over. However, there’s a school nearby, so it’s a lost cause.
This is what I think about the weather
Essentially me.
Moskva
Moskva means Moscow in Bulgarian. The owners didn’t dare to remove these socialist signs. This was once a cinema. However, when I first went to a cinema in the mid-80s, I think it had already closed. There used to be another cinema on the opposite side of the street, which functioned until the early 90s, and was fine. It’s now a supermarket.
Overall, had a nice walk of almost 15K steps. Couldn’t capture any optimistic photos but I think these are pretty in their own way.
I set my annual reading goal to be 71 books. I picked 71 because it is a prime number and is also right below 72, which is 6 books per month. 6 is a good number of books to read per month. It won’t stress me out and will let me finish some of the thicker books on my shelves. I have plenty.
Goodreads, despite being less buggy with the Reading Challenge this year, doesn’t have a good estimation for how ahead of schedule I am. Their two screens argue that I’m either 2 or 3 books ahead. The mobile app also thinks it’s 3.
15.96 days have passed, and 15.96/(365/71) = 3.1. That’s the number of books I should have read by now. Since I’ve read five, I’m 1.9 books ahead. And 1.9 books is not quite two or three books. It’s not that bad, compared to last year, when it announced I’m 70 books behind schedule on day 1.
A good reminder about the old truth that are only 2 hard problems in programming – naming things, cache invalidation, and off-by-one errors.
I see you’re reading these so, allow me to take us on a journey back to 1986. Turn on the imaginary Sepia filter, because it’s both time and location appropriate.
Football was very big at the time, partially because our team played fine, but also because we didn’t have much else to do. Kids would collect photos of strong teams, cut out of newspapers, and adults would gather near the park to agressively discuss games. We also played it, many of us, even some fathers.
1986 was a World Cup year. The same World Cup that Maradona dominated and eventually single-handedly decided by scoring a dubious goal with an arm, the Hand of God, as he said.
The World Cup was during the summer break, and we were not at home. My grandfather booked a 20-day vacation with the kids in a mountain hut-like “resort”, called Eagle’s Nest, where there was supposed to be a TV. I was excited to go there because it was close to two very famous places – Shipka and Buzludzha.
However, to everyone’s surprise, Eagle’s Nest was affected by the electricity shortage, common for the Communist Bulgaria. It had no power most of the time. No electricity meant no TV, and no World Cup. We had other fun things to do, like preparing oil lamps.
Thankfully, the adults discovered that the nearby hut Temenuga somehow solved the problem, perhaps had a generator. Their TV worked. We could be their guests.
So every day with games, a large group of adults of all ages, their children and grandchildren, would walk to the other hut, now closed, to watch the games. We would gather around the CRT TV, and watch players with colorful jerseys, exotic stadiums, and listen to commentary that sounds like coming from a tube.
Bulgaria drew two games and lost to Argentina, which made the championship a bit less interesting but then we rooted for Argentina because, if we lost, at least we lost to the World Champion.
I had lots of fun at these late evening trips through the forest. My memories for the individual games are gone. But the forest stayed with me. I’m sure I’ll find the paths between Shipka, Eagle’s Nest, Temenuga, and Buzludzha even today. I can close my eyes and be there.
It took decades for me to discover that the World Cup was a month after the Chernobyl disaster and we should’ve stayed inside. The dark forest wasn’t safe.
Veselin.blog 