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📷 Another week, another batch of assignments. Slower week this time around, I got two days off! Starting with a lifestyle thing, the worst possible thing you can have me shooting! I thought I was going to shoot glamorous photos of bacon and avocado, pancakes and kombucha, for a brunch place, and found out two days before that they were presenting a new line of skin care products AT a brunch place! Not very cool. Anyway, I did it. I also learned about skinfluencers, a special kind of influencer. Later in the week it was marathon time, and I mean a real marathon, with runners. The yearly Lisbon Marathon even was upon us, and I would be shooting for one of the main sponsors, like last year. This time I also shot a little video, with the phone. Not my favourite thing to do, and the reason why I had to do it is pretty shitty as well (smaller budget, no money for proper videographer), but I do get paid extra, and they don’t seem to mind the subpar video quality. As agreed beforehand, if I can’t do both anytime, I’ll stick to photography. I do love the marathon assignment, though. Fun times, fun people. Waking up too early, but riding that convertible double decker on bridges, and getting infected by the energy of thousands of runners, is a good way to spend a few hours. Also plenty of opportunities to get a few shots on the way there and back.
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👯♀️ First ballet lesson for tinyMovieStar, and I was away, on the silliest of all assignments. Darn! movieStar told me that parents are not allowed inside while the class is happening, but… Next week, next week I’ll be there. Outside, but I’ll be there.
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😢 Speaking of tinyMovieStar, she’s going through a phase where she will cry every day, when we’re dropping her off at kindergarten. Every day. She’s fine a couple of minutes after we leave, but it hurts to see her going through these moments. I’m now taking her alone, no mom, as we hoped it would be easier for her, but she’s doing it with me as well. It breaks my heart. She literally climbs to my arms, and won’t let go. A good ten minutes later she will finally relent, I’ll leave, and get a message from school saying she’s happy as can be, playing with her buddies. Even before getting back home, and it’s only a 15 minute slow walk.
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💬 I feel I’m posting a lot less than I used to. August is the usual culprit, as we’re busy on the road, vacationing and working at the same time. Lots of things to do all day long, lots of people to talk to. September came, and went, we took some time off and we’re away as well. Just now getting into the rhythm of things in town. I try to keep up with M.b, and Mastodon (usually just my 🦄 list, and social.lol local timeline), but it’s hard. Mostly lurking, still reading a lot of the posts, but not posting as often.
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🍿 Quite a few movies this week or, at least, a lot more than I usual watch. The Sisters Brothers. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. , delicious. Bottoms, very fun, loved the different take on the high school genre (Thanks, @sod). The Ringleader: The Case of the Bling Ring. Sue me! I was browsing HBO, this one came up, I’d heard about the case before, and watched the movie while doing stuff around the house. I did miss Paw Patrol, The Mighty Movie. The movieStars met a few cousins and went to the nearest movie theatre for that, but I was… you guessed it, working.
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📺 This Fool. A couple of episodes, maybe it will stick. The Morning Show had another episode, so I watched that too. I actually wrote the previous sentence before finishing the episode, and had to force myself to watch the darn thing. I believe I might be dropping this one soon. Also two episodes of Patriot, on Prime. It has a cool IMDB rating, so it seems, and that was enough to talk me into watching an episode. Liked it. A spy show with a few odd twists, and SO many familiar faces on the cast.
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📱 Tested Holafly. I didn’t have to, of course, but I wanted to check the service out, since I’m planning on using it on our next trip. Not cheap, but handy. This week I had the Marathon event, and that means a lot of images, and videos, being sent from the phone, on the fly, so why not test the unlimited data this way? eSIM are just an awesome idea, and I’ve been a fan since the first time I tried it, on the French island. Since then I swapped my physical SIM for an eSIM, and then I actually changed mobile operator, after decades with the same one, and all this without leaving home. Made possible by this great feature. The idea of Holafly (and many other services) is also great, as it allows you to always have a connection, jumping from operator to operator, always finding the strongest signal. No local number, true, but you’re not stuck with a single company in the country, you get to use them all. Other services have marginally cheaper plans, but the “Unlimited Data” on Holafly’s offer really appeals to me. The test went beautifully, I had a super fast connection anywhere, and didn’t have to use a single byte of my limited data plan. For this kind of days-long assignment, with the new to transmit from the venues, it’s probably a good idea to start including this expense in the budget.
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🌻 We had planned on changing our weekend routine, but ended up in the same spot. There’s some construction work going on at my in-laws, and family moving into the house next door to them, so things are a bit hectic, but the little one would miss her grandparents so much, we just went. It was a good as the ones before. Brothers-in-law visited, the little one loves it when they do. Having a full house is something she lives for.
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👨👩👦 Father’s Day. A couple of presents from tinyMovieStar, and all the love a father could wish for. It was awesome, our baby is, and I’ve said it before, the sweetest.
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🌡️ tinyMovieStar has a fever for a couple of days. She’s not one to complain, so it’s a bit harder to figure out what’s going on. She just gets a bit hot, and when asked if something hurts, or feels odd, she says “No, everything is fine”. She gets to spend the whole day at home, playing with us and napping, and she loves that. If the thermometer could be tricked by a three year old, I would suspect foul play.
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📺 Yes, Schitt’s Creek. It’s a long show. On the YouTube front, Hot Ones, with Pedro Pascal. Also some Seth Meyers, and a few clips from The Daily Show. Vice Principals, saw a few episodes, and will come back for more. And we did manage to move along with F1: Drive to Survive. We watched 2 1/2 episodes, not bad!
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🎙 Hacked, Really Specific Stories, with Gaby as guest. Swindled has a new episode out, and it’s also a good one, as they usually are. Dynamite Doug still going. Still have a few waiting around, but it’s harder to listen to them when tinyMovieStar is home, not going to kindergarten.
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💴 Actively trying to find more work, now that one of my clients went out of business, and the rest of them are having a lot less assignments. Inflation is a bitch, and I also decided to play fair with the apartment rent, and kept the old rent for the new tenants. So, not an ideal situation.
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🛒 The Shop is open. Don’t think I’ll get a lot of foot traffic, but it’s on. Later, if things work out, I’ll get a domain for it, and pay for a tier where the platform keeps no commission on sales. Would be great, but can’t afford that tier now. If you’re looking for a photo to hang on your wall, feel free to visit. If there’s one you’d love to have, but it’s not available in the shop (still working on setting things up), get in touch, I’ll add it. Trying to figure out how all this works, but I think I might have done this a while back. So far, not a single one has been sold, so… maybe I was right.
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📷 Micro.blog Photo Challenge is on the second half. Some hard ones this year, since I’m trying to get them for the challenge, and not pulling them from the archive. Quality, on mine, is lower than on previous attempts. Photos for days 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, and 24, have been posted.
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💬 ChatGPT. I had to play around with it. Everyone is talking about it, even family members who usually pay no attention to tech stuff. It is fun, I’ll say that. And they seemed to have a lot of use cases for it, including replacing them on a few of their work task. It’s great when you actually witness people making themselves obsolete.. Will probably mess with it again, it’s fun.
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📷 Newspaper conferences. Got a call late in the evening, and it only came through because my editor is on the vip list, that bypasses the notification ban of my sleep focus mode. Anyway, a full day shooting the yearly conference the newspaper organizes on its birthday. A couple of other things to do later in the week, for the agency, so it turned out pretty good in the end. Hopefully these will become regular, as the struggle is real.
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🥰 tinyMovieStar’s godmother visited, from the UK. It’s always a thrill when she’s back, we miss her a lot, even though she’s been living there for quite a while now. Thankfully she flies back often, but of course not as often as we’d like. The little one loves her, and she get all sweet and cuddly when she spots her coming after months without seeing her.
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🌞 Hello, 2023. Dinner with friends, stayed up late, slept in, drove to in-laws. Nothing else. I do not like NYE, for a long time now, and it’s usually followed by a miserable Jan 1st, when we have to deal with a whole day of trying to handle things while extremely tired and suffering from lack of sleep. This year, I’m happy to say, the same thing happened. Glad it’s over. On to the rest of the year.
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💻 This year starts with me using IRC again ¯_(ツ)_/¯ omg.lol has a server going, bye was kind enough to provide an account at their The Lounge install, and I’m there. I was using Igloo as IRC client, but I’m not used to the _you only see stuff that happens when you’re online routine anymore, and The Lounge solves that. Also, since I suppose a few others aren’t that used to IRC as well, a Discord server was also launched, and now we can use both, as they are mirroring everything. It’s not perfect, but I guess it works.
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📺 The White Lotus, second chance. We’re loving it, after almost giving up on episode 1. Glad we stuck with it. Season 1 is done, we’re now on Season 2 of the show. We didn’t get too far, both fell asleep while trying to talk tinyMovieStar into it. A few times this week.
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🏝️ The preparations are still ongoing for the upcoming trip to the island. While I’m a little nervous about this one, I’m very much looking forward to it. Still a ton to do, but we’ll go in the end. I miss the people, the island, but I’m anxious about doing it with tinyMovieStar. We had a good routine there, both of us working, both of us together the whole time, and that will be no more. I’ll be left with the little one most of the day, in a place that really isn’t prepared for little ones. Many (all?) of the food items we’re used to are not available (someone paid €20 this week for a bar of butter!); there is no support network from family; there are no cafes/restaurants where we can go for food, or even a toilet when we’re out and about; the transport situation is dire, with no taxis, or buses, or anything remotely appropriate… We’ll be stuck in the very little city, away from the beach, and away from everything that could make things a little easier. Anyway, glad to go. Also, almost 7 hours on a plane will certainly be a challenge for our baby girl.
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📜 The passport situation is solved. We have our travel documents.
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💬 On the Mastodon front, I’ve decided that it’s not worth to keep my instance alive. It’s been very fun, and I cannot thank Vincent enough for setting it up, and putting up with me. At this point in time, though, I’m really REALLY trying to cut down costs, and there were also a couple of things I missed from my times at social.lol. I had kept both mrBatsu and the stickerspotter accounts there, and now I moved my main one back to the original place.
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😴 It was also a strange week when it comes to sleep. The little one would go to bed, with us, we’d fall asleep way too early, then wake up in the middle of the night, unable to fall back asleep. When that routine changed, she had a fever, and we couldn’t sleep again.
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📚 Still trying to get going with Unreasonable Behavior by Don McCullin. Books.app letting me know I’m at 2%. Brilliant. I have 5 days to finish it, somehow I don’t think I’ll make it.
💬 Finally testing Beeper. For fun, my chatting life is not that busy.
💬 Lots of chatter going back and forth, Lisbon and London, regarding very specific details about Bluey toys.
Still no luck on the grannies front, I’m afraid.
💬 No Chat For You!
WhatsApp for macOS is getting an update, and I’ll have to use it on the browser from now on. My laptop will not support the required OS without some shenanigans.
thingsThisWeek #69
Again, a busy week. We had a national holiday thrown into the mix, and had to sleep away from the girls. Work to do in the city during the weekend, and it would be unfair to them to force them to stay behind, and miss out on all the weekend fun. They got on a train to the beach, then a lift to the countryside, and I picked them up after the weekend work was done.
thingsThisWeek #46
💬 Et Tu, Carrot Weather?
thingsThisWeek 35
Note: next week’s thingsThisWeek will be posted, if everything goes according to plan, from the island. Probably still on the bigger one, so we should have no issues with access to a reliable Internet connection. Still…
💬 Also… IRC!
