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All Aboard The Train To Mexico
I’ve never really played a lot of tile placement games. Before moving to Portugal I played online Mahjong Solitaire, the occasional game of Carcassonne, and Upwords (which feels more like a word game). Andrew generally favors games like Blokus more than me. We didn’t own dominoes and none of our fellow board gamers in the…
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Happy Birthday To Us!
My birthday is July 1st and Andrew’s is August 12th and for 2025 we decided to try something new. Although we dined out in fancy restaurants on our respective days, which is our time honored tradition, instead of getting separate gifts we agreed to shop together. We debated about whether our splurge would be something…
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The Tour And Tiny Bricks
I hadn’t given much thought to the Tour de France prior to moving to Europe, but after catching snippets in several Olhão bars and cafes back in 2022, my curiosity was piqued. I started with the Netflix show Tour de France: Unchained (I highly recommend it), and was shocked at how nuanced and complicated this…
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We Tried Our Hand At Speed Puzzling
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On The Road To Recovery
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Surgery Day
I arrived to inpatient check in at Hospital da Luz Guimarães, which is separate from the standard appointment check in desk, just before 9:00 the morning of January 31st. I felt a bit disembodied, floating around in a near dream like state. I had been struggling with my knee for such a long time that…
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Cooking Up A Storm And Hanging With ACNH Homies
Attending 2 months of physical therapy was a blessing in disguise. It allowed us to plan ahead for when Andrew would have to manage caretaking for me, wrangling all 4 pets, and household management during February when I would be hobbling around on crutches. The first thing we did was stock our freezer to the…
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Torn ACL! Now What?
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Navigating Healthcare Abroad
Access to quality healthcare that is also affordable was an extremely important factor when we started considering early retirement and a move abroad. Our 911 occupations in Oregon provided us with a “Cadillac Health Plan” and our employer paid the lion’s share of the expenses. We had become exceedingly spoiled, especially since we were double…
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Holiday Celebrations
Andrew kicked off our preparations by lugging all of our holiday bins in from our still quite full garage. We planned to pull out all the stops and REALLY decorate this year. When seasonally bedazzling our home in Oregon, everything had its place, but we had to start from scratch here in Urgezes, having only…