Recently in August '24

Uff, I wanted to write this before the end of August, but I’m still on time. August is over and it’s starting to feel a bit like autumn to me. Quite excited, as it will become a bit colder, hopefully, and it’s also one of my favorite seasons. Very colorful! But now, let’s recap August!

🍄 Life

In the beginning of the month, I checked one more item of my “impossible list”. It wasn’t one of those items that are very hard to tick, I just needed to go to Amsterdam on the weekend. I traveled on the line 20 of the Museumtramlijn in one of the old trams. One of these days I should do line 30 too.

Two weekends ago I also went to Limburg, but I already talked about that a few days ago. Too long, didn’t read: it was very nice, there were hills, visited a three-country point and the highest point in the Netherlands. During the same weekend, something else happened: it marked my 4th anniversary living in the Netherlands! Four entire years!

Some friends and I went also for a Chinese Hot Pot restaurant this month. I had never done that before, but it was quite nice: we had a non-spicy soup and a slightly spicy soup, where we could cook the things we ordered. We tried meat cuts, dumplings, vegetables, noodles, mushrooms, fish cuts, etc. Very delicious!

💪 Health

Not a lot of updates here, still managing the injury on my left wrist. It got better, then got worse, and it’s now on track to improve again. I’ve also visited a doctor and a physiotherapist and apparently my wrists are slightly unstable, meaning there’s more space between the joints than average. That makes them more prone to injury. Now I’m working on strengthening the surrounding muscles in order to prevent future injuries.

With this, I have been doing less at the gym. No more kickboxing for the time being, and less upper body exercises. What’s annoying about upper body is that almost everything needs my wrists. As a consequence, I’ve been feeling a bit “bad” in the sense that I’m not feeling very challenged. That made me think: maybe I should add something else next to weight lifting, maybe swimming or running. I should just try it and see how it goes.

📚 Reading

Last month, I started reading Before Your Memory Fades. The book has three chapters, and I read the first two very fast, but I think I’m now procrastinating reading the last chapter of the book. Let’s see if in September I’ll get enough inspiration to end this book. It’s not bad, but most times I just find something else to do.

🍿 Entertainment

On the entertainment department, this was quite a full month. Let’s start with series. We binged the first four seasons of Dertigers, a Dutch series based on a Belgian series, which follows the life of a friend group whose members are around 30 years old. It was nice. Apparently there’s a fifth season, but this has a new cast and a new friend group. Obviously the dertigers from the first seasons are now veertigers.

I also watched the last season of Young Sheldon. I didn’t realize it was the last season until the last two episodes, but it makes sense: Sheldon is getting older. In addition, we watched the second season of the House of the Dragon. I don’t have strong opinions, besides the fact that I didn’t enjoy the gigantic cliff hanger at the end. But I guess that’s what they always do.

Finally, and still within the series, we watched the last season of The Umbrella Academy. I saw a lot of mixed opinions about this one on the Internet. I agree that it was not as good as the first ones, but that’s something I wouldn’t expect either. Despite not being my favorite season, I think the ending was quite something: and also the obvious solution.

Now, regarding movies: I went watch Deadpool & Wolverine at the beginning of the month. It was funny and quite meta. More recently, we went watch MaXXXine, which is an horror movie. We also went to an open-air cinema to watch Love Lies Bleeding, which was quite weird, but enjoyable.

In the same cinema, but now indoors, we watched Kinds of Kindness. The film has three parts and is three hours long. No breaks and it was late. Sadly, I fell asleep during the last part. Nevertheless, I think the movie was quite nice.

Until soon!