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weeknotes, 6/25

went back to the swimming pool after a long absence and it felt great! despite the long break, i didn’t feel a big difference… some of the early morning swimmers are even the same! :)

also went to a new art class in town, and spent 2 hours drawing a gargoyle. i did it upside down, with my left hand, with different kinds of materials… it was fun, and the teacher seems open to just letting me explore things. honestly, i think i just wanted space and time to create.

on the weekend, we laced up our hiking boots and walked the stretch of coast between quarteira and albufeira. we’re almost done with the big walk, all the way from vila real de santo antónio to porto covo, just 20kms left or so. this wasn’t my favorite stretch of the walk (too many detours inland), but we still found some nice cliffs.

how to live on 24 hours a day is probably the book i’ve read the most times in my life. every time i start feeling overwhelmed by everything, or feeling like time is escaping through my fingers like sand, the boy will say “is it time to read mr. bennett’s book again…?” and it usually is. it’s amazing how something written 100 years ago can still feel so poignant today. it’s short and sweet, and delivers the kick in the butt i need to deliver me from my own periodical fits of nonsense.

anyway, besides writing books, mr. bennett was a fan of a particular omelet that was created for him by a chef at the savoy, in 1929… so we decided to replicate it, and it was delicious. naturally. :)

speaking of books, i somehow dipped my toes into both midnight in chernobyl and the seven husbands of evelyn hugo at the same time. both are relatively chunky books, so progress has been slow.

and last (but not least), can you believe conversion therapy hasn’t been banned in all EU countries yet? it’s past time we did something about it.

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weeknotes

january 2025 — one second everyday

despite this being the month in which my thyroid got chopped in half, it wasn’t bad at all. the first half had a lot of friends and family, and the rest saw us back home, recharging, back to our old routines. so far, so good, 2025!

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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, 1/25

first week of the year!

ringing in the new year with friends (and their overactive puppy) near arouca was really nice, and i think it won’t be the last time we’ll visit this quiet corner of the country. the mountains and the views were perfect, and we had the first beef day* of the year, featuring doc arouquesa meat.

…but then it was back to the reality of postponed work, family stuff and thyroid shenanigans.

my biopsy results came back inconclusive, which means the half of the thyroid where the nodule is will have to be removed for testing. if it’s benign, then i’ll keep going with half a thyroid. if it’s cancer, then we’ll take out the rest of the thyroid and replace it with synthetic hormones.

the path is pretty straightforward at this point: a simple “if A then B else C” kind of situation. it makes me grateful for competent doctors and a health insurance that lets me speedrun through all these appointments and get things done quickly. i’m feeling fine (physically and mentally), eager to get this done so that i can go home.

also, this marshmallow got a kind of wooden jungle gym for christmas and has been doing her best athletic impersonations. i’m keeping these photos for when she wins some olympic medals and the media wants an interview about her childhood. :D

(*) we eat so little beef these days that i plan to count how many times we eat it this year.