Today we spent a little time getting Heather settled in– a friend brought over a bike that she can use while she’s here, and we got her signed up at the local gym– then despite my knowledge of Saturday insanity in town, we bought some lights for the bike and did a little food shopping.

As a result, I cooked my first real meal since I got here: a kind of Asian fusion stir fry tikka masala, with rice. (We had had dinner at an Indian restaurant the night before, so I was kind of thinking about Indian food.)

dinner ingredients, via flickr

We have a small kitchen, but it’s certainly functional, and I’m figuring out where things go, and can go.

the kitchen, via flickr

After we finished, and spent some time talking to our son on Face Time (most of that was spent talking him through how he could add audio attachments to his iTunes library) we went out. Going out for a walk after dinner is the kind of thing adults do, or so we’ve heard.

We walked around our neighborhood for a while, then made our way along Victoria Road into town. We stopped at Clowns of Cambridge– where I went my first night here, but Heather had never been– for coffee.

clowns of cambridge, via flickr

After that, then headed through town, made out way down to Mill Lane and the river, then along Queen’s College and back home.

mill lane, via flickr

We’ve figured out the heating system, and it turned out that the heat was on for about three hours a day, just enough to keep the pipes from freezing or something. Now it’s more habitable.

I spent the rest of the evening settled into the literature emotion and HCI, and how different approaches think of emotion in scientific/computational terms (i.e. as something that can be read through signals like pupil size, flushed cheeks, and other involuntary reactions or microsignals), and one that argues that emotions are, essentially, socially constructed. Interesting stuff, though as much for the disagreements it inspires as anything.