Category: weeknotes

weeknotes 30/21

– i’m fully vaccinated! :D had my second shot on monday, with zero side effects apart from a slightly sore arm. hurray! feels great to be doing my bit to mitigate this pandemic.

– i managed to burn my hand twice, once by touching the oven, and once by steaming my fingertips (ouch!).

– after releasing the bee-eater, we drove north to catch up with the family. it’s fresh up here, and i’ve been wearing trousers and coats for the first time since azores.

– the medicine is working its magic and the stupid nail fungus is on its way out, woohoo! it’ll still take some months for the whole nail to grow clean, but i can already see the improvements. plus, how amazing is it to be able to just call a doctor, send them some photos and blood tests via email, and they’ll call me back with a diagnosis and a prescription? we have a private health insurance “just in case”, but sometimes it’s really freaking convenient.

just life weeknotes

weeknotes 29/21

this was a half week, work-wise. we have friends and dani staying over for some time, and as they had a few days off from their work, we took some time off as well to accompany them to the beach, make crafts and jigsaw puzzles. it felt really good to just take it easy and catch up. some other highlights:

– paulo took the second dose of his vaccine, with barely any side-effects at all. hurray! mine is coming tomorrow, and i can’t wait.

– to celebrate his full vaccination, we ate a bola de berlim. :)

– we met not one, but 2 chameleons in manta rota!

– unexpectedly, we were gifted a second-hand camera with super zoom, which is perfect for bird-watching! here are some little terns, black-tailed godwits and flamingos we saw this week in olhão. the image is really clear even at maximum zoom, and you can even read the code on the ringed flamingo we found!

just life weeknotes

weeknotes 28/21

week 28’s notes are being written a bit late, but i didn’t want to let the week pass without marking the fact that we finally did it — we bought a house! :)

we drove all the way to lisbon not quite sure whether everything would work out in the end, but it was fairly straightforward: the legal person read the text out loud, we signed underneath, and passed over the check. we then paid some fees on the way out and done! it felt surreal how quick the whole thing went in the end (despite us having to wait around quite a bit of time). i guess we’re now the owners of a little piece of cement in tavira, and no one can kick us out!

i still have mixed feelings about it. on one hand, i’m reasonably sure this is a good investment, and i’m relieved we won’t be kicked out in the near future as the market is crazy at the moment. on the other hand, so much of our savings are stuck in this house now (and we still owe money to family)… my mind is filled with “what ifs?”: what if the market goes down? what if we need the money suddenly? what if we have to move north?… none of these are unsolvable, but being solvent definitely gives us more freedom to move — which is something we’ve treasured all our lives.

for now, i guess we’ll enjoy this newfound feeling of stability, of knowing where we’ll be for a little while. we’ll finally install some heating in the place and fix the infiltrations, and i might even revamp the garden at some point. looking forward to this new chapter!

just life weeknotes

weeknotes 27/21

it’s been an eventful week around here!

– deers! 😍 we went walking in the local park today, and the guard let us feed the deers, which seem to have significantly multiplied since the last time we were there, a couple of years ago. they were super curious and came over afterwards to check on our picnic too.

– i finished reading a beautifully foolish endeavour, which was a great sequel to an absolutely remarkable thing. it reminded me that i like fiction, and should probably read more of it.

– the bamboo is still shooting upwards, now growing at a rate of 10cms/day… whoa.

– we helped both an 80 year old and a bee-eater this week! the 80 year old was slumped on the side of the road, having fainted from the heat after a bike ride in the midday sun. after the ambulance people declared him well-enough to go home, i gave him a ride and the boy rode his bike back. the bee-eater (one of the most beautiful birds you can find here) was found by the boy on the side of the road on one of his runs. he ran past him, and when he came back he was still there… so he came home, showered, and we drove by again — still there. :( the little thing was having trouble flying, so we picked him up before he was run over by cars, and drove him to RIAS. hopefully he’ll be in good hands and back flying soon!

just life weeknotes

weeknotes, 26/21

– 50% vaccinated and feeling great! :D was sitting on the chair in the school gym that they’re using as a vaccination center here and thinking about how much the whole thing felt like waiting for the sorting hat to sort us into one of the houses of hogwarts. i ended up in “house pfizer”.

– this little blog is now running https, thanks to the boy’s never-ending patience for keeping bits of software in tune with the times.

– my phone was most definitely drowned and dead… so i got a new one — an iphone 12 mini, thank you apple for making small phones again! it came on thursday, and although it’s fun to play with new things, i’ve actually enjoyed the feeling of not having one for a few days. the only time i missed it was for reading at night — but as a result, i’ve read more real books and less fanfiction, which is always a plus.

– seeing friends and their kids after a long time. omg, sometimes you don’t know how much you miss someone until you see them again and get flooded by all the feelings!

– this week, we noticed our bamboo plant is growing shoots at an astonishing speed! i knew that bamboo grew fast, but we’re noticing a jump of 5cm from day to day, and it’s just mind-boggling. we could almost sit there and watch it grow!