#40 Brr

Winter is coming (brr)

Two days ago, I felt cold again for the first time since last winter. Just a few weeks ago, we were still burning under the sun; but now, summer feels like a long-forgotten memory. You should see me in the morning: wearing multiple layers, a scarf around the neck, warm socks and still feeling slightly cold.

Our house doesn't have any heating system except for a wood stove in the living room. And come on, it is actually warm inside — as in 20°C, we don't need to light a fire yet. (Do we???) I think my body might just need time to adjust — hopefully.

We went to a board game festival

A climbing friend (surprise) invited Robin and I to go to a local board game festival^[1]. In the last few years, we have started to play a lot more, especially in board game cafés when traveling. Searching for board game cafés is actually on my to-do list whenever we discover a new city.

Back to the board game festival, we arrived close to the end of the event but were able to play a few new games.

• A two-person game to be played with dice, where the goal is to be the fastest player to find an "itinerary" between points A and Z. (Ok yeah, it's not clear at all. But I didn't love that game, so that's it.)
• In the Footsteps of Darwin: A volunteer paired us with a family of three and started explaining the rules to us. Once you thought the list of rules was coming to an end, another one was added on top of it all. It was slightly overwhelming at first, but the game itself was actually nice. It reminded me of Azul, the mechanics encouraging you to create your little collection on your side, without being too openly agressive towards the other players. Overall: a relaxing game.
• Quoridor: A beautiful game where your goal is to be the first to cross the board. Everyone also has small wooden walls that they can use to add obstacles on the paths of other players.
• Twin it! poster: An A1 poster that you can use as a decoration... and mean of torture for your guests. It is filled with different (but very similar) patterns; your goal is to find five "twin" patterns. Good luck.^[2]

I got a new phone

...or more like Robin got me one. He was doing some research for himself, and as I also needed a new phone^[3], we now have twin Samsung Galaxy S22 that we bought second-hand. A few things that convinced us to get that specific phone model is that:

1. It takes excellent pictures (which we thought would be extra-nice for our coming trip).
2. Since the S22 model, Samsung guarantees 4 years of software updates (which is great).
3. It is affordable in second-hand and not too old (so chances are that I won't need to replace it for longer).
4. ...and other things Robin probably thought about.

Other things I did

• I made my first solid shampoo a few days ago. I haven't tested it yet, but the process was much easier than I had expected! Once I had the ingredients ready (not that many, not that weird), the full recipe only took 20 minutes and simple kitchen equipment.
• I browsed for hours on searchmysite.net, a search engine that only goes through personal websites, the small web, digital gardens and so on. Sites are ranked higher when they have no ads.
• We watched A Haunting in Venice, the new Hercule Poirot movie by Kenneth Branagh. It is much darker that the first two movies, which I really liked. ⊙