It’s been since I’ve rattled off the musings in my brain so I figure it’s time to do a brain dump of what’s going on in our lives. Welcome to August’s musings.

[Warning - the following is, like most of what was said at the RNC, inaccurate. While it doesn’t rise to the level of outright lying, which was also prevalent at the convention, the information is out of date.]. We’ve finally received word that the repairs on the Cap Jackson have been completed. I wish I’d taken a screen shot that showed her in dock getting her repairs, but alas, I’m a negligent blogger. We did, however, manage to get a 24-hour track showing her leaving the dock and joining the other vessels in queue for the Panama canal.

Apparently securing a reservation to go through the locks is very costly, so most vessels hang out in the first-come-first-served queue. Then, it’s usually a 7 - 10 day wait. We’ve been told that the vessel is headed to Algeria, and then to Portugal. For now, the ETA is September 14th. Not bad, only a 10-day or so delay due to an engine fire. Let’s hope that’s the last of our adventures with our household goods. [As you can surely figure out - this was written before the Cap Jackson set sail. But we were so excited that she was on the move that we loaded up that post before this one.]

While our household goods are sitting out in the Pacific Ocean, it’s not as if we’re living in a totally barren house (ok, some rooms [but no longer entire floors] are without furniture . . .), we’ve managed to slowly accumulate at least a semblance of a household. As we’ve discussed before, we’ve definitely gotten our dining accommodations settled.

Ann did decide that, at least for now, she prefers the kitchen island to form another counter top. She’s already asked if I have a preference one way or the other (I don’t, but probably because I’m not doing a whole lot of cooking), so I’m not sure how long it will stay this way. But that’s why we have an island we can move!

Ann continues to make some improvements to the kitchen. Word of advice - never, never, never put white glass tile in the kitchen (or anywhere else for that matter). It will show marks the first time you walk on it after you’ve spent all morning cleaning it. That’s probably the thing we like least about the place - looks great, horrible to live with. So we’ve looked around for some kitchen rugs in the heavily treaded areas. The first, smaller rug we got at . . . guess it . . . IKEA. Gray is the theme. Ann wanted a longer rug and we found one at Leroy Merlin.

Now, getting the right color was the primary goal on that quest, but as luck would have it, we found one that reiterated one of our passions. And in English to boot!

Although without our usual stash from Equator Coffee, I can’t honestly say that we have the best coffee in town. Our coffee’s not bad (we buy Sical coffee - a Kenyan ground for the espresso pots, and their Classic beans for the french press), but it’s not Greg’s stuff. Oh yeah, and the rug looks great in-place.

If you looked carefully in the background, you’ll notice we’ve acquired a wine rack (actually, two and we’re likely to add a third, if not more). We’ve gotten into the habit of seeing €10-15 bottles of wine for €3-4 and buying a few bottles. Given how infrequently we drink wine (or how long a bottle lasts), they’re accumulating. But that’s ok. If we want wine, we have good wine. The white wine is in the fridge downstairs (oh, yeah, we gave up on going European and bought a US style fridge that’s downstairs. We’ve cut down on the number of grocery trips because we can now buy more fruits and vegetables than we could before. Might as well use the extra room for wine!). And I won’t go into the scotch. Ok, yes I will.

One of the drawbacks of having alcohol in the food stores is you see some very interesting things as you go through the aisle. Let’s just say we’re expanding our COVID-19 anti-viral experiment to see if it’s valid for more than just Macallan (we’ve only found the 12-year special here so far) to include A Glenfiddich 18 year Special, LaGavulin 16 year and Oban 14 year. So far it’s working. There are a few more bottles I’ve been eying (all highly rated on websites, but most priced for things like birthdays, Anniversaries and Christmas, . . . and New Years [which means four off my list by the end of the year]).

And then there’s Sr. Gomes, our landlord. Folks were delivering some furniture (more on that later, I’m really into the alcohol right now) and Sr. Gomes (someday I’ll start calling him by his first name) stopped by (to water the plant he gave us) and handed me a bottle of White Port. One of the delivery guys said, “That’s good stuff. He’s your proprietor? Nothing like any proprietor I’ve had!” (Yes, we are very lucky.) We haven’t tapped into it yet, because we’re trying to figure out how to drink it (you can drink it straight or mixed, and usually white is a pre-dinner drink whereas the red is an after dinner drink). Given that the shelves of scotch and other liquors are surrounded by the racks of Ports (and the aisles of wines), I figured we’d better get educated on Ports too. So I’ve recently acquired a bottle of red too - a Graham’s The Tawny (a 10-year port) that I’d tried during our trip to Porto (it was the waitresses favorite) that goes well with desserts. And in case you’re wondering, I keep it to a serving a day (well, sometimes two), and go plenty of days without alcohol. So nothing to worry about. (Ann says to tell everyone that she doesn’t really participate very much in the drinking of the scotch, and that it’s really “Your little problem.” Yeah, well she started it and while she’ll say she doesn’t want her own glass, she often [well, at least a couple of sips, especially if it’s Macallan] reaches over for my glass [well, not for the Lagavulin - Ann hasn’t quite acquired a taste for peat]).

As you can tell, our kitchen area is filling out nicely.

The same can be said about our living room. We began a quest for a media center for our on-the-floor TV and wound up at a local furniture store (Portuguese made). Lo and behold, they were having a 40% off sale, and when the salesperson said if we wanted the floor models, it would be 50% off. While it wasn’t cheap, good heavy (very heavy) furniture for 50% off, exactly what we wanted, and side tables for our bed to boot, we went for it. So here’s our living room set-up for now.

Excuse the crooked sound-bar in the image above - we were in the middle of fiddling with cables when I decided to make the photograph.

And we haven’t stopped there. On one of our trips to IKEA we decided to get a folding table and chairs for the balcony so we can sit outside and enjoy the morning (the evenings get a bit sunny so that likely won’t happen until it cools down a bit - which it has - or better yet, the intensity of the afternoon sun dies down).

As you can see - a nice and easy pace of life.

We’ve continued our walks and have increasingly explored the side roads and/or extended our walks to parts unknown. Still, most days our walks are fairly routine, but not everything we see is routine.

For example, we were blessed with a rainbow the other day!

With our walks comes lots of conversations about any number of things (we try not to make it about the election every walk). Perhaps one of the strangest statements - with no elaboration - came out of the blue.

Ann, “Some say that Fado is the sound of Portugal. They’re wrong. It’s dogs barking and roosters crowing.” I had nothing to say. She was right.

On our walks we’re starting to distinguish between places that are truly old (did you know that Portugal has a Stonehenge-like ring of stones that pre-dates Stonehenge by 2,000 years?) and places that just look old. Often one will ask the other - how old do you think that is? On a recent walk we passed by a stone wall. It obviously was new given . . . well, just look at the photo.

On our wanderings we’ve also answered one of the big questions we’ve had. From our home I can hear church bells from two different neighborhood churches. From 7:00 am to 10:00 pm they also ring on the quarter, half, three quarter and full hours, along with what time it is on the full hour. Wandering around, you can see the church bells, but also big speakers around the spires. Do the bells actually ring (it sounds like they do) or is it an amplified recording.

Well, about a week ago we were walking by one of the churches and the clock started ringing. We walked around and saw a giant hammer hitting the side of the bell. There was our answer. We headed on down the road while the time (4 ding dongs for the full hour, plus 7 heavy strikes for the hour) was being rung. All of a sudden the bell started ringing, and ringing, and ringing. So I ran (yes, probably the first time in years I’ve ran for something other than to make a photograph) back to take a video of it.

Here it is:

Another topic of conversation on our walks is what a strange and crazy year this has been. WARNING!!! IF PROFANITY OFFENDS YOU, YOU MAY WANT TO STOP HERE AND END THE POST WITH THE JOYFUL SOUND OF RINGING BELLS IN YOUR EARS.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

No, really, some people really don’t like profanity.

Ok, you asked for it.

One of the things we’ve decided we needed is a banana holder. It seems bananas go bad faster here than at home (who knows why). Ann has also been reading up on how best to ripen fruit. So last week we made a couple of trips into town to get a break from things and to go shopping (because the world does not live by IKEA alone).

One of the places we like to go to is a store called The LivingRoom (yes, in English). If you recall, it’s the store where we bought our nifty door stops at. Anyway, we made the mistake of going there on Assumption Day, a Portuguese holiday. They were closed. The chrome Alessi banana hanger would have to wait.

However, we did spy something in the showroom window:

It may seem a bit of a joke. But just the day before I’d seen a Facebook meme that said, “Now for August 2020 . . .” and showed a photograph of a toy Gremlin about to be placed under a faucet [if you don’t get it, watch the movie Gremlins]. Sure, the calendar was a good laugh. But since then what have we seen? Fire tornados in California? A double hurricane about to hit the Gulf States? A case of bubonic plague in Mongolia? And just recently, news that an asteroid may skip off our atmosphere the day before Election Day. As Ann said, “Wouldn’t surprise me in the least if aggressive aliens decide to invade from outer space in December. . . . and they’re hungry!”

But despite the fact that it might just be the end of the world as we know it (thank you REM), life is slowly settling into normal, if not entirely quite yet. How do I know that? Well, there are good days and bad, just like normal. And last Monday was . . . one of those Mondays. At one point late in the afternoon Ann suggested, “Dan, why don’t we go to that craft brew house, the one that makes Letra, we’ve walked by?” She didn’t have to ask twice.

And guess what was playing when we walked in - REM and “It’s the end . . . . .” Immediately followed by U2. As the new Scotty said in Star Trek, “I like this ship!”

So I had a red ale, “Letra d”, and Ann had an oatmeal stout, “Letra c”. In case you were wondering, Letra is Portuguese for “letter” and they give their ales letter designations.

Here’s their placemat:

My word of the day became “lúpulos” which is Portuguese for “hops” [come on, “maltes” is obviously “malts” and “álcool” “alcohol”]. And I was particularly proud of the fact that most of their ales use malts from the USA (“EUA”) [how many of those from the Willamette Valley?], although Germany (“Alemanha”) was there as well for most of them.

Now if I can just get back to making studying Portuguese part of my daily routine!

August Musings

Thanks for visiting!

August Musings

The way things go

The CAP Jackson is on the move!

Thanks for visiting!