Tag: art

weeknotes, 8/25

this week, we changed our work schedule to be a single block in the mornings, starting quite early. getting up early is not a problem, but the single block does push lunch to later in the day… which in turns pushes sports towards the late afternoon, which makes me more likely to skip them. i’m not 100% sure i like this better than our previous afternoon blocks, but we’re giving it a go!

it’s been a good week for movies. we watched the six triple eight, a movie about the true story of the black woman army corps batallion that sorted mail in WW2. i knew the story already (we wrote about it on the postcrossing blog some time ago), so it was nice to see the movie. and we also watched don’t die (which was half-interesting but mostly weird…), trevor noah’s afraid of the dark, and flow (the cutest!). speaking of entertainment, i’m stuck reading a court of wings and ruin, and enjoying it less than the previous 2 books in the series… but now i feel like i’m too into the thing to quit halfway through. *sigh*.

apart from the occasional shower, the weather has been amazing lately — it really feels like spring. today we went out for a run (4kms!) and felt grateful for the blue skies and sea of yellow bermuda buttercup flowers.

currently knitting the popular sophie scarf, which is starting to look like a cute little croissant. got a super nice deal on the yarn, some alpaca mohair that a lady in town was selling in bulk. it’s extra fuzzy, which makes it a little tricky to knit with, but i’m muddling through.

had a nice time at art class this week, painting with white crayons and acrylic on dark paper. i copied some old photos of sophia de mello breyner, focusing on the light. i think they turned out nice! :)

weeknotes

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.

in spain weeknotes

weeknotes 42/24

i confess i had no idea one could see so many famous works of art in madrid. the museums really are world class, with the kind of paintings everyone has seen on books at some point. picasso, dali, goya, caravaggio… it’s enough to give you stendhal syndrome :|

so our strategy has been to savor these in small bites after work, and not try to get to everything. we’ve seen bits of the reina sofia museum, the gallery of royal collections and the natural sciences museum, which is always a highlight. so many taxidermied birds and insects! :D and dinosaur bones!

we’ve also managed to rent some bikes and ride around the retiro park, to give the boy a rest from all the walking. he has been increasing his training to prepare for his next race and now has a case of shin splints… :/

in taiwan

taipei manhole covers

ok! so we’re in taipei, and i’m going to try to document our time here like i did in thailand, with one short post for every day. just simple stuff, whatever has been making us look. and first up, we’ve been looking down at manhole covers!

manhole covers are a form of art in japan, where they have hundreds of different ones on all kinds of topics. some years ago they came to taipei too, with a few commemorative ones spread around the city. for me it’s always exciting when someone has taken the time to make a bit of boring infrastructure less boring and more special, and this is just a great example of that.

i feel like going around town hunting for these, adding them to a collection. the colored ones are great, but even the more simple covers are beautiful here. makes you want to roll some ink over them and stamp them on a t-shirt!