5/4 Slept unbelievably well this weekend, and the only explanation is that I went completely without alcohol. We will see how the jetlag tomorrow, the harmless, westward one, will turn out.

Son and I ran together for 2.4 miles, went geocaching around Harlanda Tjärn, played several games of Magic, happy that his first self-built deck, the Relentless Rats deck, is picking up momentum. Wanted to do another telescope night, but it won’t be dark until 11.30pm, and that’s just too late. Cleaned the house, very little left to do before we leave for school, and I for the airport, tomorrow morning.

5/3 Got detailed commentary on a mission in KSP, particularly how to establish trajectories and burns. (“Even before I knew KSP, I knew that at launch, the moon has to be ninety degrees from the point where you’ll reach it.”) Watched Back To The Future, none of us really for the first time, but for the kids it was almost beyond the childhood amnesia horizon. Several Magic games with exciting deck-tuning experiences. Watched videos of my daughter singing while playing guitar. Showed and explained to her my first jazz standard that I’m working on for my lesson on Tuesday. Drove her boyfriend to the ferry, which we almost missed, and which unnerved me, because teenagers, but I was able to gain two minutes on the twenty-six minute drive, and we arrived as the ferry gates closed, and reopened for him so he could get on.

5/2 Daughter opposes my wrong understanding of a rule in Magic with expected fervor, we need to call J in Plattsburgh to settle the dispute. Her boyfriend stays for the night. Son studies astrodynamics on Wikipedia at bedtime. Differential equations. I can sympathize well: at long last, you are not served simplifications.

5/1 Shopping with my daughter in a weirdly empty Gothenburg the morning, a run to the lake with my son in the afternoon.

4/30 Gothenburg, weirdest Walpurgis ritual. By the hundreds, the Swedes gather around a fire by the lakeside, arriving literally minutes before it is lit, and leaving minutes after it burned down. We are aliens watching it, and perplexed.

4/29 To Sweden, upgrade to business class. Where people cough who have not been raised to cover their mouth and mute the sound.

4/28 Woman on the subway shuttle from Grand Central to 42nd, texting and laughing – as intense as if the person she was laughing with was in the same room, yet silent as if not.

4/27 J makes an album of our wedding pictures, I wish I knew just a little more how to deal with physical things. Back when I still had physical books I was unable to buy paperbacks, I only wanted hardcovers. Definitely something odd going on with me.

4/26 First year of our marriage ending. It occurs to me only now that while to me, our marriage means looking at her, and thus she is what our marriage looks like, it must be opposite for her, that our marriage must look like me. – Also, it feels like having a new birthday together.

Greater Newburgh Symphony tonight: Mahler Second. Two-hundred and fifty people on stage. Realizing that even by becoming an audiophile and putting some high-end equipment together, I would not be able to reproduce what it feels like hearing an orchestra perform it, even just the sheer dynamic range. As a matter of fact, listening to this before the concert fell unusually short of what I would hear during it.

4/25 I fell asleep on the train, and when I woke up, I saw the sign of Beacon outside, wondering for several precious seconds why the train had apparently reversed track and gone back to the station I had come from, missing a full two days from memory.