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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Back in a warm hotel room drying out clothes (the heating cranked up to dry out those clothes) after a good pizza and browsing books in a bookshop. I love a good bookshop, even if 99% of the books are in a language that I don’t understand. I still came out with a book…in a language that I understand. 📚 🍕
Well I just got a whole lot wetter than I thought. It is pouring here in Lisbon and I didn’t think that I would be dealing with wet clothes. It seems that I did not pack appropriately. The next 24 hours will be fun - squelch, squelch.
