This Praying Mantis was there to greet us when we returned home yesterday.
😩 Jet lag sucks. Needing to sleep. Trying to stay up so that I don't wake up in the middle of the night...which I inevitably do anyway. Trying to function, get things done, but not really. Finally surrendering and just going to sleep, to wake up whenever the body feels it's ready to....only to feel wiped out again in the middle of the day!
😩 Jet lag sucks. Needing to sleep. Trying to stay up so that I don't wake up in the middle of the night...which I inevitably do anyway. Trying to function, get things done, but not really. Finally surrendering and just going to sleep, to wake up whenever the body feels it's ready to....only to feel wiped out again in the middle of the day!
💦 I'd forgotten how humid Maui can be.
💦 I'd forgotten how humid Maui can be.
Surfacing and Reflecting
Wednesday, November 1, 2023
This piece started to take shape towards the end of the summer. It is now the last day of October. I was just coming out of recovering from pneumonia, which I had contracted in Portugal though at the time I did not know what I had, and wanted to document for myself what had happened to me over the space of a few months over the spring and summer. Why? Because the experience had been so…so many things to me…debilitating, frightening, humbling, helpless.
Welcome to America. An espresso in Portugal is €1.20 give or take a few cents. San Francisco airport $4.50 (before tax) 🤯
I was in a coffee shop in Lisbon and I noticed that there was a young woman reading a book. Maybe nothing unusual about that, except she was totally engrossed in the book. She didn’t look up as others came and went, as there were noises of activity around her. I am so used these days to seeing people on their phones or computers in a coffee shop (looks at himself), that this was a very refreshing sight.
Finished reading: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan 📚
Adeus Portugal. Até à próxima. 😢
🌧️ Today has been off and on wet, but it is really coming down now. I hope that we don't sail away.
🌧️ Today has been off and on wet, but it is really coming down now. I hope that we don't sail away.
I understand people’s annoyance at the clocks going backwards and forwards twice a year. However, I do like that time once a year when the day feels that little bit longer, or at least the morning does.
Though it normally takes me a week to get over the clocks jumping forward in the spring!
I think that I’ll look to have a notebook beside my bed to record the dreams that I have. I seem to forget them so quickly and easily once I am awake. Last night I had a dream about my late dad that I wanted to tell my mother about. I can’t do that now. The dream has vanished into the ether.
Photographs from Estremoz Saturday Market
Friday, October 27, 2023
Some more images from last week’s visit to Estremoz Saturday market.
Hopefully I’m not posting some political or subversive message here? “Go with the flow,” would suggest not. Spotted while in Lisbon.
Well apparently the sun is rising right now…7:54am. Perhaps it’s time to get up? Portugal seems to have this effect on me. I can’t get up?!
I don’t receive a lot of eyes on my website, but views in the last few days had dropped to zero…or so it seemed (I subscribe to @vincent’s wonderful Tinylytics service). I was pottering around on the backend of Micro.blog yesterday morning and found out that somewhere along the line my Tinylytics settings had disappeared. I’m guessing that they got lost in a recent update, and I didn’t think to check on them. A reminder to myself going forward to check the settings of Micro.blog plugins that I update.
Books in Lisbon
Wednesday, October 25, 2023
I returned home yesterday from a couple of days in Lisbon with an unplanned cache - four books. Three of them came from a new discovery, a small bookshop that only carries books in English, Salted Books. The shop has only been open for a month, but apparently they are doing very well. Long may that continue. While I was looking through their selection of books, there was a clattering of bottles going on behind the counter.
VPNs
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
When to use a VPN and when not to, that is the question? So here I am, sitting in my hotel room in Lisbon. I am on the hotel’s WiFi network. I do not have a VPN fired up. In fact most of the time I do not use a VPN. When I do it is Mullvad. I did use Nord VPN but the longer contracts, it is possible to pay for Mullvad on a monthly basis, did not play well with my ambivalence towards using a VPN.