– one week of treadmill desk, and going well so far — a steady 1.5-2km/h pace, about 10K steps in a workday, which isn’t bad at all! i get still tired after a couple of hours, and step off to give it (and my legs) a break. i dread the initial inertia of getting up there and walking… but once i start walking, it’s actually easy-going and i manage just fine. still figuring out what to wear on my feet.

– last week we had my parents staying over, now we’re hosting dani for a few days. the house feels like a whirlwind of activity the whole summer, we’ve scarcely been alone. i like it though — it’s a nice change of pace from the winter months, and it’s nice to have company when we can’t really go anywhere.

– because of dani and the boy’s desire for hot and sour soup, we went to the chinese supermarket in albufeira to source some ingredients. we manage to find about half of the stuff, but a few ingredients remained elusive. so i showed the shopkeeper my list of things, and then we had a conversation about which kind of pepper i was looking for. alas, they didn’t have it, but it was still nice to talk in chinese to someone for a bit. :) the soup is currently cooking… wish me luck!