Category: weeknotes

a week in aveiro, another in the algarve.

in the north we worked and settled in. we set up our new desks in the office corner, and it’s good to finally stop working from the dining table. i registered for the local swimming pool and trialed a skills class — just half an hour and not a lot of swimming… but it could be interesting to help me get proper form at some point. the joy and convenience of having a pool (and a library! and shops!) so close to the house hasn’t worn off yet!

i had a pair of good shorts that a cousin accidentally painted some dots on with a pink sharpie… which is pretty permanent. so i bought a fun patch on vinted to hide those spots and voilá: my new lowly worm shorts!

reading is still meh, and i’m procrastinating finishing my current “big” books… but i finished guy delisle’s hostage and jumped into muybridge. i also scored michael ende’s momo at a small book fair in my hometown — a book that has been recommended to me over and over by german friends as a childhood favorite of theirs. i’m keeping it for little niece, but will read it first.

the week in the south was brought on by an AC that has been leaking into the wall of our bedroom and needed to be fixed. in an unlikely turn of events for the busiest season of the year, a construction worker, a plumber and a painter were all quickly procured to fix the problem, and now things are ok again. hurray!

the painter turned out to be a super friendly guy from brazil who talked our ears off about his home country and even came around with a tupperware of açaí for us to try — how cool is that!

we celebrated postcrossing’s 21st anniversary in the middle of the dust chaos with a 16 hour community call/livestream and some pizza. and the rest of the week has been mostly catching up on housework, seeing friends, picking up the mail and just surviving the blazing sun.

in a twist of unexpected good news, our cholesterol levels are great! for a few weeks now, we’ve been reducing the amount of saturated fats we eat (and wow, there’s saturated fat in everything! 😱), drinking daily plant sterols, eating extra fiber as much as possible, drinking paper-filtered coffee, walking… basically anything the internet says might help bring things down. and it worked! i’ve never had numbers that are exactly within the right range, and paulo’s are even a bit lowish. so now the challenge becomes trying to maintain a low level, while making the diet a bit less restrictive. naturally, we had to celebrate with the worst best dish possible…

and last but not least — look at this magnificent sunset we saw from ayamonte!

i have to say, it’s been pretty good lately. i hope it lasts!

a full week in the north, without going anywhere… feels good to settle down, at last.

we finally went to ikea and got ourselves a myriad of things that make a home. plus some desks, at long last! now that we’re not working from the dining table, things feel a bit more real somehow. the office is an awkward corner of the house with walls at odd angles and not much light, but it’s something! next on the list: some plugs and chairs, maybe lamps.

in other good news, my leftover thyroid is doing ok! i’ve been feeling “something” in my throat for some time now, and wanted to get it checked in case it’s something new… but no, the technician said it’s probably just something that feels off because it was touched by the surgery — i can live with that.

there was a big fire going on nearby, and the smoke from it has made a very hot week even worse. the air quality is terrible, and there’s ash everywhere, with the skies being extra dramatic. none of it matters of course, not when compared to the terror that the local people must be going through.

the new apartment is holding up well though, barely heating up when it’s over 35C outside. ah, the miracles of modern insulation!

finished reading jason polan’s the post office, which deserves its own blog post. struggling a bit with i deliver parcels in beijing, and also listening to jenny odell’s how to do nothing (has some good points, but is filled with other, less interesting stuff). i guess overall i’ve been in a streak of bad luck with reading lately – it happens.

yesterday we kidnapped little niece for a bit, so we could entertain her while her parents were busy. even though we don’t have any toys in the house, we still did lots of things: “wrote” and mailed a postcard, played with stones in the rooftop garden, checked out the trains in the nearby station, rode the artsy cows, cooked and cleaned… everything is a game and a new adventure with a small child!

a couple of weeks back in portugal. the first week was spent in the north, mostly checking in on family and catching up with work.

and then we came south to catch up on friends, vitamin D, the salt pans and their birds, the PO box mail, our favorite restaurants, the neighbors’ spectacular bougainvilleas…

it’s such a beautiful time of the year to be here! the harshness of full-blown summer hasn’t arrived yet, and so the days are just long and bright and (mostly) mild. the city is gearing up for the santos populares next week, and there’s a kind of eager anticipation in the air.

and also, it was my birthday this week! i turned 44, which is not a very lucky number in chinese… but i kind of like the symmetry of it! also, it’s half of 88, and i hope to be so lucky that i get to 88 someday. :)

i got some nice gifts, all bird-themed! they made me happy.

i’m still reading leviathan wakes, but in the meantime i squeezed in a quick read of roald dahl’s charlie and the chocolate factory, in a very battered copy that i picked up from the bakery’s bookshelf. i enjoyed it, and then we watched wonka, which i wasn’t even aware was a musical, but turned out to be the perfect choice for a birthday movie. yay!

just before the week ended, we packed up the car and drove back to aveiro again. we ended up driving quite late in the day, and were pleasantly surprised at how empty the main highway was. if we have to drive, we might do it in the night… but i’m actually hoping we can start taking the train again, using cp’s green rail pass. the only hiccup is that, when you use that pass, you need to wait until the day before to book tickets, which feels a bit risky. but maybe we’ll give it a try, stay flexible, and see how it goes!

a quiet week, getting settled in aveiro. everything feels very temporary, with plates, cutlery and other things borrowed from family. but at the same time, the city is all new and fresh, with surprises (and ovos moles!) around every corner.

we registered for the buga bike scheme and i rode them around town on a couple of days. what a beautiful thing, all this infrastructure on our doorstep, ready to be used! :D

we spent a couple of days with family, picking (and eating) even more cherries straight from the trees! friday was “international day of family” and our seniors’ daycare center invited us to attend a little party they were having there — now we live close enough that we can just go and attend these things. :)

i haven’t had much time (or energy) for reading, but still finished a prayer for the crown-shy (the second book of the monk and robot series) and nana upstairs and nana downstairs these past few weeks. i’m digging into leviathan wakes now, a space opera that my czech friend recommended. it’s been fun!

i had another look at my cholesterol levels, and although they’ve improved a bit since the last check, my LDL levels are still highish. they’ve been that way since forever, and i think everyone would be more comfortable if they were actually within the limit. but how does that work, if we’re already not eating much meat at all, and close to no dairy/cheese…? well, the ovos moles might not be helping, but this feels like a complicated jigsaw puzzle without a happy solution in sight. sigh.