Weeknotes 24:17

May 9, 2024

Week of April 21–27 and April 28–May 4

This was a very exciting two weeks. My long anticipated trip to Europe became a reality. I flew from Atlanta to Barcelona on Thursday, April 26. I had a reunion on Friday morning with my son who has been studying in Barcelona since January. He gave me a grand tour of the city later in the day. On Saturday (April 28), we flew on Ryan Air to Budapest and spent 5 days in Hungary before returning to Barcelona for three full days. It so much fun traveling with my son.

I loved being in Hungary again. I got to meet up with some treasured friends and we enjoyed exploring the city. And I loved being able to see the city that my son has called home for the past five months when we returned to Barcelona.

I started writing about our trip this week. At the time of this post, I have have written about the first two days. I am trying to write a post each day so check back for more if you are interested.

Gutenberg on my phone

While in Budapest, I wrote a post about returning to Hungary. I did not have my laptop with me so I decided to see if I could do it from my phone. I was very impressed with how well the Gutenberg editor worked on my phone. I was able to upload photos and had no problem adding new blocks to the post. I was so excited that I could do all that on my phone. It was a fun technology experience for me. And I was glad that I could share some thoughts while they were fresh.

Articles I read

• When Mandisa Forgave Simon Cowell
• Fire and Flour at 02:00
• On having no visual memory (Rachel Andrew) – I cannot imagine what this is like. So much of my memory is tied to visuals. I can even “see” things in my memories like my notes during a test.
• Reading Old Comics (Tyler Sticka)
• Why My Shepherd Carries a Rod – This article was very relevant to a discussion I had in my small group about Psalm 23 and understanding the rod and the staff that the shepherd carries.
• What is Motion Sensitivity? How to Design Accessible Web Animations – I read this on my phone on the train back from Montserrat on Friday. Unfortunately, we had to stand the whole one-hour trip home.
• My Perfect CMS (Robb Knight) – Another article I read on the train.
• Heat Death of the Internet
• The perfect site doesn’t exist (Michelle Barker) – I enjoyed this one from Michelle. It gave me more food for thought as I continue to evolve this site.

What I watched

• White Collar (Netflix) – My wife and I needed a new show to watch and decided to give this one a try. We had seen some of the episodes on TV in the past.
• Somebody Feed Phil (Netflix)
• Gilmore Girls (Netflix)
• The Bad Batch Season 3 (Disney+)
• Cheers – I watched 3 or 4 episodes from the first season on my flight to Barcelona.
• Captain America: The Winter Soldier – I watched this one on the flight to Barcelona and just finished it as we were landing.
• Avengers – I watched part of this one on my first night in Spain. It was in Spanish, which I do not speak.
• Part of an NBA playoff game between the Thunder and the Pelicans. The commentary was in Hungarian
• Fiorentina vs. Sassuolo (Italian soccer) – There were 5 goals scored in 12 minutes, 4 of which were for Fiorentina. I felt more like a FIFA video game. It reminded me of a Premier League game that my son and I watched in December which had 3 goals in 20 minutes.

Books I am reading

• Gentle and Lowly (Third reading)
• Necessary Endings

Walking

• April 21 – 3.28 miles in 1 hour
• April 23 – 2.38 miles in 43 minutes
• April 24 – 2.38 miles in 44 minutes
• April 26 – I think I walked around 4 miles on my first day in Barcelona
• April 27 – I think we walked around 6 miles around Budapest
• April 28 – Google Maps says we walked around 2.4 miles which seems fairly accurate. But we also climbed a lot of stairs so that gave us more exercise
• April 29 – We walked close to 7 miles and had to walk up several inclines as we climbed up to the Citadella in Budapest
• April 30 – We walked about 5 miles through Budapest on this day
• May 1 – We walked almost 4 miles in Budapest and later in Barcelona
• May 2 – We walked around 6 miles in Barcelona as we explored the Gothic Quarter and later visited Sagrada Familia
• May 3 – Google Maps says I only walked 1.3 miles. A lot of that included inclines as we were exploring Montserrat.
• May 4 – We walked 5.3 miles according to Google Maps. We had some inclines to climb as we made our way up the Bunker to look over the city.