{maique}

☀️ Celebrating the fact that tinyMovieStar has battled, and won, the fever (she now has a cough and running nose, yay), we had lunch at my parents, and then made our way to my in-laws. Joking, of course, this is the usual weekend routine, as I’m sure you’re well aware by now, if you follow these weekly updates (and I’m assuming everyone does, of course)! An aunt (my mother-in-law’s older sister) has moved next door, and now we have a couple of new cats, and another uncle (mother-in-law’s brother). This one, in particular, is a very special person. He has a severe disability, and he’s over 80 years old. His relationship with tinyMovieStar is incredible, and she’s gotten used to him over time. It was not easy at first, as he mumbles, and yells, and has serious issues to move around. And the little one always takes 15 minutes to get relaxed around new people anyway. But, after that initial period, it’s really cute. This was also the weekend when she had a full meltdown when the time came to leave, and that was not cool. At all. We were all pretty tired from spending a full week with her at home, sick, very demanding, and having this at the end of Sunday was just the… what’s the opposite of “cherry on top”?? It took her a couple of days back at kindergarten, with her routines, for us to have our little one back.

🕺 On Thursday we attended a dance class at kindergarten. It was great exercise, but the best part was the look on tinyMovieStar’s face the whole time. We knew we were in for a happy moment when she, for the first time in ages, jumped out of bed as soon as she woke up, and couldn’t wait to get dressed and out the door. I carried her all the way to kindergarten on my shoulders, we walked in, took off our shoes, and it started. She was laughing, and looking at us the whole time. We had a blast. At the end, there’s a song called “Doing Nothing”, we’re all just lying on the floor, relaxing. She opened her arms, mom on one side, myself on the other, and she held us for the longest time. It was awesome. Of course she cried a bit when she figured we were leaving after that.

🍿 We managed to watch an entire movie. But it was Paw Patrol: The Movie.

📺 F1: Drive to Survive is ongoing, finished Vice Principals, and started The Night Agent. This one is kind of meh… I’m now going through Schitt’s Creek at a slower pace, as I don’t want to finish it too soon. I’ll miss it.

🎙️ The Naked Emperor, a new show, and the usual suspects. Not a lot of time for podcasts this week, I spent some of the allotted time listening to music instead. Nice change of pace.

📷 In Micro.blog Photo Challenge news, I was unable to keep to my original idea, and had to resort to the archive for some photos. This week was the last one, and the missing photos were posted. Uff… it was hard to keep up the pace on this one. Days 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, and 31. Already looking forward to the next challenge. These are a lot of fun. And we did get a LOT of great photos to look at. I believe this was the best one yet. Not for me, but as a whole. The community really stepped up. And, in the end, I did include a photo of the movieStars, something I tried to not do throughout the whole month. I guess they’re unavoidable!

📱 Hipstamatic, Fiery Feeds, and TV Forecast. Enjoying all of them. It’s been fun to get reacquainted with the fun photo app that started the whole iPhone photography craziness. The new Hipstamatic X is far from perfect, true, very glitchy and slow at times, and all around buggy. But I managed to get a three month trial period, so I’m using it for a bit longer. I still have issues with over-processing photos, and still want to keep the originals available, but, at least, I can shoot with the normal camera, and apply the filters afterwards. If you’re in there, feel free to say hi. As far as Fiery Feeds, I thought I might give it a try, well aware that Reeder will probably, again, win my heart in the RSS reader apps. I cannot find another app that works as well for me as this one, and I’ve tried a few. Fiery Feeds is cool though, and has some nice touches. The yearly subscription price was low enough to get my money. I’m on week 1, let’s see how long that lasts. Lastly, TV Forecast, another app I heard about on AppStories. I’ve said if before, but here it goes again: the guys at MacStories are responsible for me spending a LOT of money over the years. They did it yet again! I’ve been using TV Time for a while, to track my tv shows, with trakt.tv as syncing service. I went through a few apps that connect to it, but none felt great. I was satisfied with TV Time, but not enough to pay the subscription price. This new one clicked almost instantly. Simple, thoughtful, design and feature set. Not an expensive subscription fee. I’m in for a year.

💒 We attended a memorial service for a friend’s family member, and it turned out to be a lot less depressing than we thought it would be. Also present were some old friends, ones from decades ago, since high school, and we had a great time talking over beer. There was also a playground in the area, so the whole family was happy. I still wish these events were, like in some other cultures, happier, with food and drinks, celebrating the life of the ones that left us, instead of the somber thing we have to do here.