Family: It’s been a great week. We went on holiday together. Monday to Friday in Holland. Spouse and I took s2, s3 & s4 to Duinrell Holiday Park for the 5th or 6th time over the last ten years or so. Pretty sure this will be the last time we visit. We had a wonderful time. The place was as good if not better than it’s ever been. This was a ‘one last time’ visit at the request of s4. Maybe the boys will go back one day when they have kids of their own. Thinking of that gives me goosebumps. In a good way. s2 left home some years ago and s3 at uni for the last two. Lovely to spend time with them both. Shame s1 did not come along.
Football sideline duty on Sunday. s4’s team won the match, 1-0, a penalty shot a few minutes before the end.
Work: Bank holiday on Monday and annual leave for the rest of the week. I’ve taken at least a week off in May, June, July and August. Just a week or so left to take before April. That’s not including bank holidays. Wondering how that will work out. Routine I guess. That’s not a bad thing.
Cycling: Of course I took the bike with me to Holland. Four rides of around 60k each. Out yesterday for a similar distance. I’ll get another one in before today ends. Close to 380k for the week. As much as I enjoy the cycling infrastructure in the Netherlands I love the varied landscape and countryside we have in England. Riding on roads with traffic has never bothered me much anyway.
Photography: Feeling like I am beginning to use settings more intuitively and composing pictures more deliberatly. Enjoying the learning process and testing different things out.
Listening: Some of the boys tunes in the car. Interesting to hear what they’e listening to these days. Given how relaxed and laid back they are I was a bit taken aback by the angry and aggressive music and lyrics they played. I suppose a lot of music and lyrics are angry and agrresive.
Spouse won a couple of tickets to see Misty in Roots. Very much looking forward to that in October. I remember listening to the album Earth soon after it was released in 1983. Loved it then, still love it now.
Screen time: It’s the last day of Blaugust2025. Its been a good experience. The biggest plus has been making the best use of a feed reader for years. I swapped using Feedly with NewsBlur at the start of the month. It’s working out very well. I like the different ways it has to read feeds including the option to read posts rendered as intended by the sites creator i.e the original design. I like the UI. The features to save and share posts. Planning on starting to use them more liberally if only to refer back to in future Week Notes. The free account limits the number of sites you can subscribe to, to 64. This meant it’s been necessary to curate rather than hoard. I don’t have anything unread. I like that. It feels purposeful.
Other business: Second week of intermittent fasting. The 16/8 method is working well for me. Following it every day. Only eating between 1.00 pm and 9.00 pm. Keeping it as simple as that for the time being. I look forward to eating and am enjoying food so much more. It feels empowering to exercise control over my eating habits. Really unexpected.
Thinking about it now there are similarities with what I have found with a free NewsBlur account. In using the X-T4 to take pictures. Deliberate and intentional.