6/19 To consider a thought of yours a sign of getting older is, in itself, a sign of getting older. Better be a contrarian of yourself getting older.

6/18 In the world of the Challenger book, the things we do in a few seconds with a few keystrokes are spread out over desks, stacks of paper and business trips. Phone calls. To reach somebody, it was a good guess to call them at their desk during business hours.

6/17 Of all the books I am trying to sink my teeth in, only to get repelled by most of them, the one about the Challenger accident – a story which I know in its entirety, and to which it only adds detail after detail – is the one which I devour, page by page, hour by hour.

6/16 More than what the changes in my life actually changed, they make me gasp at the vastness of this life, having gone through all those changes.

6/15 The word e-book has lost its meaning for me. It sounds wrong to even consider a book to be an e-book. It’s just a book.

6/14 Getting magic cards in the mail from remote small towns all over the country, almost every day, feels like a glimpse a few decades back, maybe a ham radio operator collecting postcards from people they’ve talked to. Just this week: Dickinson, North Dakota. Frederick, Maryland. Winter Haven, Florida. Rio Linda, California.

6/13 My naturalization is on July 12. This means we’ll be celebrating it with the children. Turns out though, that I can no longer travel without a US passport after that, and I need to bring the children back to Sweden on July 20. The earliest I can get the passport is July 23. I asked, and got permission to return the kids July 24. Rebooking flights.

6/12 When I told my son about the rocket fuel I invented when I was his age, a fuel with which you could travel to Jupiter in a one-seater spacecraft in barely a day, he told me about his communication network that is faster than light, based on some kind of interaction between orbiting neutrons, and about his propulsion technology that works by collapsing space in front of the ship. He certainly did his homework.

6/11 In the pictures of our wedding we laugh in a way I’ve never seen me laugh. I can’t remember any of the things we laughed about, and I can’t even believe I am capable of producing and perceiving so many laugh-inducing moments in such quick succession, ever. I would estimate my throughput at maybe one or two jokes a year, on average. Apparently not. Also, tonight, in the writing group, I literally had a rolling-on-the-couch laughing moment, yet I cannot remember what it was about.

6/10 Looking at the elections in Europe and over here I wonder if the world has become so radically smaller that what we’re getting is a predictable, inevitable reaction of re-establishing boundaries. We are not aware of this total collapse of all distance because it still happens over decades, over a lifetime, and even if you grew up in years before the internet it all seems as if it has always been like this, but it hasn’t.