Author: ana

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weeknotes

weeknotes, 5/25

chinese new year! i always feel excited for CNY — it feels like we’re being given a second chance to start the year again, after the dreadfulness of january. and this year we even did a special lunar new year theme for postcrossing, illustrated by our friend shao-hua! :) at home, we had 2 chinese dinners with some of our favourite staples.

after some frustration with my old treadmill, i upgraded it to a more expensive lifespan model. it comes with a fan to cool down the motor, and it’s built to walk for several hours in a row. the walking goes smoothly and the treadmill has a couple of nice features, like stopping automatically when you step off it, and resuming the last speed you were on. i’m pretty happy with the upgrade!

the week was rather fragmented otherwise. i took off the stitches from the surgery‘s suture (which looks fine) and got some new drops for my right eye, which is still giving me a bit of trouble. there’s a new art hub in town, and i signed up for their art classes once a week. and we tried out an advance review copy of the postcards board game with friends, which was pretty cool!

the game is beautiful, with many small pieces (which i like). it’s not that straightforward to figure out the best strategy to win, which makes it more interesting. and it has postcards, stamps, bicycles and trinket souvenirs! i think this is going to become a favorite in our future game nights. :)

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weeknotes

weeknotes, 4/25

another good, full week of recharging and catching up. there was a lot of review and planning for work, a lot of rain outside… but not much else, which suits me at the moment. wintering is in full swing around here!

for christmas, my brother gave me this “egg storage thinguie” that he 3d printed, and it’s brilliant! it holds lots of eggs and saves space on the fridge. knowing someone with a 3d printer is the best of both worlds. he also 3d printed these bookmarks, which i find really pretty:

i don’t know if you can tell, but the colors are printed in layers, so there’s texture to them:

i love them so much! i feel like reading a paper book for a change, just to have a chance of using them.

this week, we cooked this squash and tofu dish that was featured on the to vegetables, with love newsletter and it was very tasty! i also got the ingredients for the addictive cabbage they mention. next week is chinese new year, and so we went to the chinese supermarket in albufeira and got lots of nice things! i’m excited for the feast ahead, but also for a chance to re-start the year at home, mindfully.

last year, we noticed we were having pizza a bit too often, so we started a new rule: we only have pizza once every 2 weeks. we were due one this week, but then noticed our local pizza place was closed for holidays… so we decided to go to town for it, and then noticed we did the exact same thing last year, on the same day! so we’ve started a new tradition: january 21 is pizza-in-town day. :D their pizzas are actually not bad, and they dust some kind of cornmeal on the crust that makes it extra crunchy. nice!

one last thing about food: at the moment, our raised bed does not have the same exuberance of january 2024, but we still have plenty of chard, lettuce and radishes — including these funky ones! aren’t they gorgeous?

paulo sent me a link to this talk about the aging programmer, and i saw myself in a lot of what is being said in it. i believe in planning ahead, and there’s a lot of good advice there — even for those of us who are not strictly programmers.

we watched ainda aqui estou (i’m still here) at the cinema, and it was a punch in the gut — especially looking at our current politics and imagining where things might be headed. how quickly humans forget history. :(

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weeknotes

weeknotes, 3/25

good news: IT’S NOT CANCER!! :D it was just a stupid benign tumor growing inside its stupid little capsule, and which was completely removed with the surgery. hurray! everyone i talked to told me the possibility of it being cancer was small, but it’s still nice to hear that was the case. the final diagnosis was NIFTP which stands for “non-invasive follicular thyroid neoplasm with papillary-like nuclear features”… which is a mouthful! a decade ago, it was treated like cancer, but has since been de-classified due to being super lazy and not really needing all the aggressiveness or radiation that cancer treatment requires. all you need to do is getting it out — and that’s done.

this week brought on a surprisingly smooth surgery recovery, with the the worst part being a nasty rash from the adhesive dressings… but after a few days without them, everything seems to be looking better. i have regained neck mobility and aside from some pain when swallowing, the rest is all good.

we returned home mid-week, and it was just such a relief to be back here, in this quiet corner of the country, with our stuff around, blue skies above and without any external demands on our time and attention. i think what makes me miss home so much is the feeling that this is the only place where we can control our time. so it’s been a week of focus and recovery and just appreciating the quietness. i think i really needed this to recharge my “introvert batteries”.

i’ve been deep into the whole court of thorns and roses saga, which reads a lot like fanfiction and feels quite addictive. but in between that, i finished reading little witch hazel, and it was very cute. nicely illustrated children books are always a big favorite!

this week, i learned that in order to produce vitamin D, your body needs UVB radiation, and UVB radiation does not pass through glass… so you really need to go outside in the sun for a bit everyday, in order to get it. i feel like a foreigner suntanning in winter, but it’s actually not that bad. :)

there was a little street festival in town on saturday, and we sat in the sun with some baklava and knafeh, just soaking it all in. life is good.

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one second everyday

2024 — one second everyday

here we go, a whole year in 7 and a half minutes!

this year, i was sick quite a bit, but paulo recovered from his ailments thanks to the magical injections! we saw tiny niece transform into a toddler, and my other godchild got married and moved abroad. my brother got married too! it was the year we explored a bit of the south of france, as well as madrid and lisbon, and also the year we returned to utrecht and bielefeld. there was a lot of pizza and a lot of potatoes, but also tomatoes, cabbage and peas we grew ourselves! we made an effort to stay in touch with faraway friends as much as possible, and also walked quite a bit. it was a year of multiple elections, with a lot of chinese studying. we finally caught covid! also, i cut my hair short, got an electric bike and an inflatable swimming pool. and the bubble tea place in town opened and quickly became our favorite!

ah… so many good memories, such happy times! :) may 2025 be just as interesting!

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just life

weeknotes, 2/25

so… how does it feel to have half a thyroid? not that bad, actually!

the surgery went well: the nodule came out, my parathyroids (the glands that regulate calcium levels in the blood) were preserved and they didn’t touch the nerves that go to the vocal cords, so my voice is still the same. hurray! i stayed in the hospital for a night, and everyone was super friendly and helpful. the hardest part of the surgery was to find a good vein to put an IV line on my hands… several different nurses and doctors tried, giving up after many painful attempts. in the end, i received anesthesia via a mask instead, like they do for the little kids. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

apart from a little pain while swallowing and some discomfort moving the neck (and apart from the scar, which i haven’t even seen yet), i’m mostly back to my normal self. so now we wait to hear back from the pathology results.

in the meantime, because of all this i found out i had a vitamin D deficiency. it’s hard to believe that someone living in algarve could have low vitamin D, but apparently it’s relatively common in southern mediterranean countries. it’s kind of scary because it feels like it is rarely tested, but vitamin D levels impact so many aspects of health — there are even studies linking it to alzheimer. so i’ll be having supplements for a few months, and making an effort to sit in the sun everyday. we’ll see!