Weeknotes 203

A quiet and surreal week of working from home while the Americans are away for Thanksgiving.

My back’s better.

It’s cold in my flat but the heating’s not on yet.

Over the weekend I took a train down to the coast to see my parents, then a rail replacement bus partway home, watching brake lights through fogged windows.

I started the first episode of Boiling Point but, unlike The Bear, it’s more stressful than it is compelling, so I didn’t stick with it.

For years my carpet has been kept superficially clean by a robot vacuum cleaner. A Black Friday sale tricked me into buying a non-robot vacuum cleaner and the sheer quantity of additional dirt it removed from the clean-looking carpet was satisfying and horrifying in equal measure.

I popped into my local Amazon Fresh shop for the first time in ages to return a package and was confused to discover they’ve changed the system for entering and exiting. It used to be that you authenticated on the way into the shop and walked straight out when you’d finished; now, you can walk straight in but need to scan the app (or a payment card) when you leave instead. To me this seems less convenient as well as less impressive than the old way, but maybe performing some token interaction when you’ve finished shopping is less anxiety-inducing for people who are trying it for the first time.

Sorry for the barrel-scraping dross about floor muck and shop semantics, but without them this weeknote was half the length of the next shortest one and I didn’t want that to accidentally seem significant. Fortunately I’ve worked my magic and you’re now completely unaware of it.

I’m not sure where my time’s going, to be honest. I’m still tired a lot and can’t face much. Maybe it’s the dark.

Three months at the new place. It’s going medium.