Category: just life

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just life weeknotes

weeknotes, 34/24

the big news this week is that i got us an inflatable swimming pool. it was cheap, but it’s surprisingly roomy for a couple of adults. the boy is not a big fan of it, but i love it! taking a dip in the middle of a scorching day is just bliss!

this week we went to quinta do lago, to check out a trail our friends are fond of. we saw a lot of birds, including a few new species like little bitterns and black-headed weavers. our bird count is now up to 149 different species — not bad!

in turn, we took them to a local japanese place that opened this year that we really like, and they became fans of it as well. they do a bit of everything, but the bubble tea and the egg waffles in particular were a big hit.

also this week, our friend J discovered sugarless jello, a game changer for her as a diabetic. apparently, jello is not something kids eat in austria… who knew?! jello is so familiar to us, such a beloved childhood dessert, that it’s mind-boggling to think there are grown-ups out there that never tried it. so she went on a spree and bought all the flavors in the supermarket. 2024’s summer shall be known as the summer of the jello!

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just life weeknotes

weeknotes, 33/24

what a nice week. our friends and our dogs arrived, and they’ll be spending some weeks here with us. i’ve been stocking up on all the dog cuddling time!

our friends gifted me a pocket thermal printer — the cutest thing! i’ve been printing little pictures and to-do lists on it, and it gives me a lot of joy.

the boy had his first injection at home! after doing a few of these at the hospital, he can now pick them to do at home. soon he should be able to pick a few of them at a time, so that we don’t have to go to faro once a month.

the yearly outdoor cinema festival took place in tavira, and we saw 2 movies: miyazaki’s the boy and the heron, and nanni moretti’s a brighter tomorrow. the first was pretty, but also confusing and a bit unsettling… the latter was just a joy, a love letter to cinema itself, featuring all of moretti’s quirkinesses. note to self: make sure you have a nap before these night sessions… ?

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just life weeknotes

weeknotes, 32/24

hoooooome! we returned south this week, to our home sweet home. the main train got delayed by some signal malfunction in alentejo, forcing us to catch the very last train connection home, which meant we had to switch to a bus in fuseta because of the nightly electrification works of the south line. it was a looooong ride, but we made it!

i read a lot on the train, and ended up finishing 3 books this week: wintering, the thursday murder club #1 and contos da montanha. they’re all so different, but all interesting in their own way. i don’t remember if i had ever read anything from miguel torga beyond loose poems, but contos da montanha was a fascinating (and depressing) trip into early 20th century rural portugal, featuring a lot of the stories and vocabulary one hears from their northern grandparents.

in other news, the tomato plants have gone wild and the big surprise is that we now have soybeans! we got the seeds in the netherlands, and i planted them just for fun, but it seems like we can do this! right now they’re tiny, and i’m curious to see if we can grow them to full size and eat a dish of edamame. that would be cool!

summer is the time when we end up seeing friends who are holidaying nearby, and this week we had dinner with 2 different groups of friends and their respective children.

i had forgotten we had booked tickets to david fonseca’s concert, which was this past wednesday! it was a retrospective concert, looking back on his 25 year career, and it was a whole thing, with quirky video effects and lots of dancing and shouting the lyrics of songs that we’re very familiar with. it was so much fun!

so it’s maybe hard to believe that despite all of these things, the week was mostly a quiet one, hiding from the heat and trying to catch up with work. this is the run-up to world postcard day, and there is so much to do. it was go go go!

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just life weeknotes

weeknotes, 24-25/24

the most exciting thing these weeks was probably bike upgrade. i’ve taken it on several rides, and it’s just pure joy!

because it’s the end of the school year, the chinese teacher thought it would be a good idea to do an exam on the last week of the course, and it was a disaster. i don’t know if she realizes the only reason i do ok in the classes is because i spend hours preparing for each of them, meticulously looking up every word in the lesson that i might not know. ? anyway, the class is now over, and in the summer ahead i want to try to focus on speaking practice, because i feel it’s the area where i am less good at. i can read ok at a basic level, and i understand when people are explaining things to me… but speaking is a whole other beast.

speaking of chinese, this week we were watching the 3 body problem on netflix, and i understood this screen that showed up!

i guess most of the time i don’t feel like i’ve been doing much progress at all in this language learning journey, because the process is just 99% work and frustration… but then, 1% of the time something like this pops up and it feels like magic!

also these weeks, the boy had the second shot of the miracle injection™, and it was my birthday too! i turned 42, had brunch with my brother, and then kidnapped niece LJ for 24 hours, so we could kiss those chubby cheeks to our heart’s content. ?

she’s still the most chilled baby ever, and loves tomatoes with a passion but can’t quite manage the tiny ones yet… more for me! :D our tiny raised bed in the backyard is now entering tomato season, and i’ve planted some soy beans after the last peas were gone. hoping to have some edamame at some point!

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just life

bike upgrade

i’ve been riding my bike more and more in recent years. even with a car that rides electric up to 40kms (which is enough to go into town a couple of times), and even with knowing the battery is charged with renewable energies, it still doesn’t feel right to drive it on a whim for short distances. plus, all the time it takes to remove the car cover, deal with gates, finding a parking spot… blergh. so, bike it is! a few times a week i take it to go swimming in town, or ride to cabanas for knitting club, and it suits me fine.

the ride into town though, while not particularly challenging, has a small hill that demands the lowest gears of my órbita, and is just… annoying. sometimes it’s annoying enough that i don’t want to go swim at all because of it. i’ve been hearing about electric bikes for ages, but the price tag on them was always a little too daunting for me to consider one. plus, it felt… lazy? in my head, only older people were allowed electric bikes, for some reason, and i barely knew anyone my age who had one.

lately though, i got over it. i tried a very basic electric bike in the netherlands for a day, and like craig wrote, “I went to climb a hill and it felt as if a giant had gently placed his hand on my back and pushed me forward.” YES, exactly! i realized that i wanted that ease every day, so that my head did not add this extra friction to the trips i wanted to do with the bike. i wanted to use it more!

i looked for one OLX for some time, but then by chance, i found out a friend had one in her garage that she wanted to get rid of… so i guess the universe was telling me to go for it, and i did! meet the new kid in town, a foldable conor maui:

normally, this wouldn’t be the kind of bike that i’d go for, as i prefer the comfort that curved handlebars and bigger wheels give… but it was practically new (a mere 180kms on the odometer, and barely a scratch!) and the price was a steal. plus, it’s kind of cool to try a small folding bike that i could potentially bring with me on the car or the train. for now, it’s just been such a joy to ride it, and i find myself picking longer or uphill routes just for fun.

i just realized this is the sixth bike i’ve bought as an adult — the love affair for this kind of 2-wheel transportation continues! :)