Author: ana

– rain, at last! a couple of stormy days early in the week brought on lots and lots of rain. it’s definitely good news for our poor neglected garden… but bad news for all the infiltrations we haven’t taken care of yet. sigh.

– after watching one too many mark rober‘s videos, the boy wanted to give it a try making elephant’s toothpaste, so we grabbed some hydrogen peroxide, soap, food colouring and yeast, and did it! the result was a super pretty foam.

– this year’s edition of the rota do petisco has started, and we’ve timidly ventured to a couple of restaurants to try new dishes. we’re not quite at ease with eating out yet… but we’re slowly coming out of our shells and getting there.

– we made the hot and sour soup! i looked very convincing, but confess i didn’t enjoy it all that much… i guess sour soups are not my thing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

– dani, the last of our summer guests has left. the house is super quiet and it feels a bit like summer has ended. there’s less than 2 weeks left for world postcard day though, and much to get done… but today has been declared a day-off, so hurray for that! :)

– 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!