Author: ana

about me

weeknotes, 29-31/25

aaaaaah… there was too much going on and i missed a few weeks. let’s see if i can recall what happened.

week 29 was a really good week. we celebrated postcrossing’s 20th anniversary (can you believe it?!) on a monday, and spent the whole day on a call/livestream with other postcrossers that miraculously took place without a hitch.

the rest of the week was just quietly recovering from that, but also enjoying the last art lesson of the season and the yearly outdoor film festival that started this week. we only caught one film (black dog) this time, but it was interesting because it showed what was happening on a very different part of china at the same time we lived there.

the local book fair was taking place too, and we checked it out and stocked on even more illustrated books that we’ll eventually gift to little niece and other children. it’s always a pleasure to discover the classics and also new ones – i should write a post about my favorites!

weeks 30 and 31 were spent in the north, celebrating family’s birthdays (the boy’s dad turned 88 and little niece turned 2), enjoying the summer bounty and suffering from a mysterious itchiness that came out of nowhere (and thankfully seems to have mostly abated now).

towards the end, we spent a couple of days in aveiro, to scout the city and see how we liked it. i’d like to spend more time closer to little niece, and we’re kind of considering potentially living in the area in the future… but i confess i didn’t fall in love with the place at first sight. :( we’ll see what the future holds!

my brother bought a super cool electric bike though and thus joined the e-bike gang. he’s been using it quite a bit and the kid likes it too!

media wise, i finished the fourth wing saga, and then devoured atmosphere in a few days — probably my favorite book of the year so far. maybe i’m in a “space stories” phase, because i’m currently listening to andy weir’s project hail mary, and being blown away. also read nem todas as árvores morrem de pé, a portuguese book for a change! and we watched nobody wants this on netflix, which was sweet.

weeknotes

weeknotes, 28/25

aaaaaah… a full week at home! there was a lot of work in preparation of the 20th anniversary of postcrossing, but the quiet contentment of being home made it all ok.

the boy had to go to faro to do some lung exams, and i went along to give blood — my first time giving it since the thyroid shenanigans earlier this year. and i got some new birkenstock sandals, from a tiny shop in town that has all my favorite brands of summer shoes! ?

other than work, we went to town several evenings in a row with different groups of friends to catch the circus/theater shows taking place this week. as usual, it’s a bit of a mixed bag with the performances, some better than others, but they haven’t disappointed so far. and i ate the first fartura of the year, always a happy moment!

we watched the last few episodes of murderbot, and i finished reading the iron flame (book #2 of the fourth wing trilogy). of course, i immediately jumped to the third book in the series, but also started reading one of the paper books my brother and his wife got me for my birthday. :) i read a bit of it today on the little rubber pool we put out on the garden, and it was bliss!

weeknotes

weeknotes, 26-27/25

sometimes i delay the writing of these words, and then so much takes place in the span of a couple of weeks that it’s hard to remember what we did. but let’s see…

on week 26, we went north by train, to see the family again, as it was my mom’s 70th birthday! she has been saying she’s going to retire for a few years now — first, when little niece was about to be born, then on her 70th birthday… but guess what, she’s still going to work a couple days a week, splitting her time between porto and celorico. :D well, as long as she’s happy!

we spent time with other small cousins and little niece too, and took care of some bureaucracy and doctor appointments with the boy’s parents. my brother and his wife officially sold their house while we were up there and moved to aveiro! our old car, forever parked in my parents’ garage, came in handy to move a lot of their stuff back and forth. i feel like tavira and aveiro are kind of similar in some ways (both are flat, waterfront towns, and both have lagoons with lots of birds), and i kind of like the symmetry between them. maybe someday we’ll consider spending some more time there.

anyway, after the week in the north, we came down and settled back at home, at long last. it felt really, really good to finally sit down properly at my desk and work, without other distractions. i’m still running behind on my tasks, but i’ll get there. it was a big week for postcrossing, as we finally launched a product we had been working on for ages. everything went really well, and we sold out of it in a few hours. now we can make more!

now that things have quieted down, i went back to art classes and to the gym as well. it feels really good to lift some heavy stuff, and to see the weights slowly increasing! i don’t exactly have concrete goals, other than to feel a bit stronger and stave off the osteoporosis threat that comes with age.

i’ve been reading quite a bit too, but mostly chunky books, so there’s not a lot to show for it. i read craig mod’s japan walking memoir things become other things, and also the first book of the fourth wing series, which it was surprisingly good — like diving into a harry potter-like universe again, but with sarcastic dragons! i’m making my way through the second book now. we also watched king richard and went to town at night for the first street performances of the year, a really nice, alien-like performance.

summer is definitely on now, and our temperamental AC seems to have called it quits, without a possibility of repair… so we’re getting new ACs soon. in the meantime, i’ve set up the little pool outside, and i shall splash to my heart’s content for the next couple of weeks. :)

just life weeknotes

weeknotes, 24-25/25

we were back in tavira and then immediately hosted my brother and his gang, including little niece. she’s almost 2, knows lots of words and her favorite is a very clearly enunciated “não” (no). she likes ice-cream (frozen banana whizzed with yoghurt), pizza and blueberries, making soap bubbles, listening to stories and going to the slides in the park. she does not like to walk by her own 2 feet and demands to be carried everywhere, like a tiny tyrant princess.

other than that, i just feel stretched very thin and in need of some quiet weeks working at home to recover. i never seem to learn the lesson that i need buffers of time between stuff — it’s always too tempting to cram things, to batch trips together and make traveling more efficient… but the result is that everything seems to overwhelm me and fall apart. *sigh*.

in finland in sweden weeknotes

weeknotes, 22-23/25

in short: two weeks in sweden, with a detour through the åland islands to attend a philatelic forum. it’s been good.

i have trouble putting the experience of being here into words… i guess most of all, stockholm feels civilized — that’s the word that comes to mind. but it’s also quietly beautiful: streets are clean and parks are taken care of, everything is green and birds we hadn’t seen before crossing our path with their broods in tow. the nights are barely nights and the light wakes us up very early, but it’s hard to mind when everywhere we look there’s light shimmering in the water. we scored a house swap within walking distance of most museums, a cozy place with overflowing bookshelves. the owner became a mini penpal of sorts, emailing often with questions about recycling, the lack of black people in the south of portugal or the range of electric bikes. it felt like a pleasure, through and through.

we saw the vasa ship and the postal museum, and revisited dear old friends that we’ve known for 20 years, each of us settled into a different country. they look the same, only now they have cute kids that speak different languages and look a lot like them.

åland felt pretty special. the ferry is a whole thing — comfortable cabins, supermarkets, live music, restaurants and gaming rooms for the children… the trip lasts 5 hours but it flies by. mariehamn itself feels human sized — you can walk it from end to end. we grabbed some bikes from the hotel and cycled around, into the wetlands and across tiny islands. i’ve always liked islands, the size of them, the geography and terrain. åland has the kind of islands that are just a smooth weathered rock jutting out of the sea — the kind that tove jansson used to spend her summers in (the kind i dream about sometimes, when i’m tired of the world and want to escape). it feels like half of sweden or finland has a hut somewhere, on a island or in the woods.

maybe i’ll write more about the trip at some point… i have some sleep to catch up on, to prepare us for a busy month ahead.