a week in aveiro, another in the algarve.

in the north we worked and settled in. we set up our new desks in the office corner, and it’s good to finally stop working from the dining table. i registered for the local swimming pool and trialed a skills class — just half an hour and not a lot of swimming… but it could be interesting to help me get proper form at some point. the joy and convenience of having a pool (and a library! and shops!) so close to the house hasn’t worn off yet!

i had a pair of good shorts that a cousin accidentally painted some dots on with a pink sharpie… which is pretty permanent. so i bought a fun patch on vinted to hide those spots and voilá: my new lowly worm shorts!

reading is still meh, and i’m procrastinating finishing my current “big” books… but i finished guy delisle’s hostage and jumped into muybridge. i also scored michael ende’s momo at a small book fair in my hometown — a book that has been recommended to me over and over by german friends as a childhood favorite of theirs. i’m keeping it for little niece, but will read it first.

the week in the south was brought on by an AC that has been leaking into the wall of our bedroom and needed to be fixed. in an unlikely turn of events for the busiest season of the year, a construction worker, a plumber and a painter were all quickly procured to fix the problem, and now things are ok again. hurray!

the painter turned out to be a super friendly guy from brazil who talked our ears off about this home country and even came around with a tupperware of açaí for us to try — how cool is that!

we celebrated postcrossing’s 21st anniversary in the middle of the dust chaos with a 16 hour community call/livestream and some pizza. and the rest of the week has been mostly catching up on housework, seeing friends, picking up the mail and just surviving the blazing sun.

in a twist of unexpected good news, our cholesterol levels are great! for a few weeks now, we’ve been reducing the amount of saturated fats we eat (and wow, there’s saturated fat in everything! 😱), drinking daily plant sterols, eating extra fiber as much as possible, drinking paper-filtered coffee, walking… basically anything the internet says might help bring things down. and it worked! i’ve never had numbers that are exactly within the right range, and paulo’s are even a bit lowish. so now the challenge becomes trying to maintain a low level, while making the diet a bit less restrictive. naturally, we had to celebrate with the worst best dish possible…

and last but not least — look at this magnificent sunset we saw from ayamonte!

i have to say, it’s been pretty good lately. i hope it lasts!

a full week in the north, without going anywhere… feels good to settle down, at last.

we finally went to ikea and got ourselves a myriad of things that make a home. plus some desks, at long last! now that we’re not working from the dining table, things feel a bit more real somehow. the office is an awkward corner of the house with walls at odd angles and not much light, but it’s something! next on the list: some plugs and chairs, maybe lamps.

in other good news, my leftover thyroid is doing ok! i’ve been feeling “something” in my throat for some time now, and wanted to get it checked in case it’s something new… but no, the technician said it’s probably just something that feels off because it was touched by the surgery — i can live with that.

there was a big fire going on nearby, and the smoke from it has made a very hot week even worse. the air quality is terrible, and there’s ash everywhere, with the skies being extra dramatic. none of it matters of course, not when compared to the terror that the local people must be going through.

the new apartment is holding up well though, barely heating up when it’s over 35C outside. ah, the miracles of modern insulation!

finished reading jason polan’s the post office, which deserves its own blog post. struggling a bit with i deliver parcels in beijing, and also listening to jenny odell’s how to do nothing (has some good points, but is filled with other, less interesting stuff). i guess overall i’ve been in a streak of bad luck with reading lately – it happens.

yesterday we kidnapped little niece for a bit, so we could entertain her while her parents were busy. even though we don’t have any toys in the house, we still did lots of things: “wrote” and mailed a postcard, played with stones in the rooftop garden, checked out the trains in the nearby station, rode the artsy cows, cooked and cleaned… everything is a game and a new adventure with a small child!