A busy street scene at night with a person walking in the foreground, a street performer in the middle ground, and an ornately decorated building covered in festive lights in the background. The ground features a traditional black and white mosaic pavement.

Back in town. Back to regular life. And what a week it was!

  • πŸŽ„ Weekend, regular. Not much to say. Next one should be livelier, with yet another birthday party. Around fifty people attending, so expecting a lot of fun, and food. By now the houses are in full blown Christmas mode, with a huge competition going on about Christmas decorations. Photos on the next report.

  • πŸ‘©πŸ»β€πŸ« Monday was back to school day, after a week of sick leave, and another of traveling. tinyMovieStar eager to share the news of the trip with her buddies. We saved one of her boarding passes, and a couple of Turkish bank notes, as well as a boat ticket. She had asked us to get a tiny souvenir for her teachers, so she took that as well. She was happy to be back. We noticed that at home as well, when we got back: she would not stop playing with her toys, in her room. Felt great to be home for her as well.

  • 🧸 tinyMovieStar being tinyMovieStar, she got in her head that she’d love to have the Grannies, from Bluey. These are relatively secondary characters from the show, so it’s not that easy to find them. I went out and looked everywhere. Everywhere! Nothing. Hours later I accepted there was no way I would be able to get them, and found the book instead. Bought that. She was thrilled. I was relieved.

  • πŸ–Ό I then had the opening of our latest exhibition, and a couple of beers before that. Done. It was good, I managed to get up to speed with an old friend I don’t see that often anymore. I’m sure my photo will not be sold, so we’ll have a huge print at home in a couple of weeks.

  • 😫 Week felt very odd. Trying not to do much, but having so much to do at the same time. I’m not the best at these balancing acts, it seems.

  • πŸ’ͺ🏼 The dislocated arm episode! This week, on Wednesday, we had a curious event. The movieStars were playing on the bed. Suddenly the smaller one was about to fall off (Five Little Monkeys style), the bigger one grabbed her as fast as she could. Turns out a bit too strong, and the little one complained about pain in her arm. She couldn’t move it that well. A little crying, not too much, but we did get to call the doctor after all. We even drove to the hospital, to have her checked out. While in the waiting room, we gave her a bag of chips, and her mood improved immensely. Also, plot twist, she started using her arm (yes, that one!) to fish the chips out of the bag! We just looked at her, she laughed and started waving her arm about. Back home we went.

  • πŸ“· Oh, and I did work this week! One thing only, but I did. And it was for the paper, so extra exciting. Doing a story on a HUGE construction project in the city. I love big construction yards, with custom made machines, and stuff all over. Plenty of interesting subject matter for me. And I also got to send a resume, for a position I’m sure I don’t want. Fingers crossed they don’t even get back to me. Best part of the work week? It was time to get paid by a few clients.

  • 🎭 We had theatre tickets (thanks, movieStar), and thought we might as well make it a date night. Walk for a bit, have a beer, get some food, move on to the show. As we were walking by one of our favorite places, we went in. It was WAY too early, but the place was packed already (bless you, foreigners). We got a table, and ordered. Thai for me, a shrimp thing for movieStar. Beer, and cocktails to go with it. Of course karma is our friend, so the tables on both sides of our own had very small children. A baby, and a toddler. Of course. I’m not going to dwell on how bad the play was, but it was pretty bad.

  • πŸŽ…πŸΌ xMas Party at the kindergarten was something extraordinary this year! We all gathered at the usual location, a very cool venue owned by the parents of one of the kids. One where we parents would often go before having kids. We then moved to the school grounds, as lunch with the kids was next on the program. That’s when Santa showed up. Instead of the usual Santa (Ana, the office manager, with the cheap Santa costume), this time we had the most amazing Santa! A professional Santa. I can tell you parents were the ones freaking out, a lot more than kids. A selfie had to be arranged. The day ended with movieStar leaving for her office Christmas dinner. The rest of the family stayed back, having fun on our own.

  • 🧡 Threads is back! I’m back there. Finally with the EU crew. Some like it, some hate it, some don’t care about it. I was looking forward to it, again, and I’m happy.

  • πŸ“Ί Slow Horses. Watching these as soon as they’re out.

This is the Slow Horses way: the hero is a kebab-loving, chain-smoking, drunken slob who claims to be terrible at his job but is actually embarrassingly competent.

  • 🍿 **The Audition **. Never heard of this one before, showed up on Tik Tok. Found the whole thing on YouTube. Short.

  • πŸ“š Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations, the book I picked up while traveling. Still going.

  • 🎨 Still trying to fix sticker spotter’s social.lol account. Sorry for taking so long. RSS still works, of course, but this is something I’d to sort. Mastofeed does not appreciate posts with no titles, so that’s that. Sent the developer a message on Mastodon, no reply. Moving on. IFTTT doesn’t play nice with something else. When I was about to give up on the whole thing, Jeannie came up with a solution: I should use Micro.blog’s crossposting feature, of course. That would mean that a few of you would see the photos twice, but that was it it. Turns out the solution isn’t that simple, so I’m still figuring this one out. It should not be this hard, that’s all I’m saying.

  • 🐸 I have mentioned Lillihub before. But I have to do it again. Incredible M.b client by heyloura. Go try it, it’s really nice.