This week marked one month in quarantine. It was a better week work-wise than the previous one (more focus) but with my hormones kicking in my mood has been all over the place. Luckily it has been sunny and even the rain on Saturday turned our garden all lush and green. Did you have a good week? In any case, I have 7 more activities that you might want to try out in the coming week(s)!
Monday: cut your other half’s hair
Desperate times call for desperate measures. My boyfriend’s hair was getting a bit out of hand so we took our relationship to the next level and he/we cut his hair. The part where I took the scissors to hand wasn’t that bad, but when the clippers came things got a bit more difficult. All in all I think the result could have been a lot worse, but I’m sure my other half will be happy when he can visit his hairdresser again.
Tuesday: read up on digital photography
On Tuesday I digged up this book on digital photography I’ve had for ages. My camera has been around for a good number of years, but to be honest I always just use it on the automatic settings. I’d like to explore the manual settings more and try out different things, but I mostly use my camera when on a trip or for a festivity with family or friends. In those moments I don’t want to go through trial and error, I want to do it right. But maybe this is a good time to read up on it more and try out some shots on my daily walks?
Wednesday: virtual museum tour
Usually my boyfriend and I have lunch together. But on Wednesday he had a last-minute video call for work, so I found myself with nothing to do while eating my salad. Then I remembered something I spotted on social media about virtual museum tours. You can walk around in some of the great museum on this globe thanks to Google Arts and Culture. Flemish magazine Humo took it one step further and made a small documentary about the current Keith Haring exhibition in Brussel. I really wanted to see it and thankfully it has been extended until 21 July so fingers crossed!
Thursday: imisstheoffice.eu
Alice Tate is one of my favourite people to follow on Instagram. On Thursday morning I spotted her post about imisstheoffice.eu. It’s an office noise generator, mimicking the sounds from an office environment. You can play around with the number of people, and pick specific sounds, like a water dispenser or the printer/copy machine. Great little initiative if you are missing the rustle and bustle of your office. I played it in the background Thursday morning and found it quite soothing to be honest, so definitely worth a try!
Friday: take-away pizza
We might be a little late to the party with our first take-away 5 weeks into quarantine, but in normal life we don’t do it very often either. On Friday however my other half mentioned he didn’t fancy cooking and asked whether we could maybe get some Pizza Hut. I had a little look around on the interwebs to check out the options and found a good-looking local Italian restaurant with delivery options! If we were going to have take-away I’d rather try to support a local business than a big chain. And their pizza’s did not disappoint, so we’ll be ordering there again next time!
Saturday: reading suggestions from Flow Magazine
After a long day of cleaning, a run and hormones going in overdrive, I carved out a quiet moment for myself. I threw some pillows together and got stuck in a few old copies of my favourite magazine: Flow. In every edition I come across at least one book recommendation for a book I’d like to read, but I usually just forget about them later. As I am running out of Dutch books to read here at home and our local library is still offering ‘take-away’ service, I figured it was the perfect time to make myself a little list of books to read.
Sunday: bake a sourdough bread [1st attempt]
Oh the joys! I found some rye flour and when I fed my starter on Friday I could behold the magic I had been waiting for: that rise! I was planning on feeding it throughout the week and then attempting a bread next weekend, but when I did a succesful float test (testing if a spoonful of starter floats in warm water) I decided to try a bake today. I did some research and went for this recipe by Mary’s Nest. Unfortunately I didn’t get much rise in my dough and, though pretty from the outside, it came out as a brick and still quite doughy on the inside. I’m disappointed, but not defeated. So I’ll give bread-making another go next weekend.
The Belgian government prolonged our lockdown until 3 May, so you can at least expect 2 more of these blog posts. What happens after that? We’ll see, I guess. In any case, despite it being more work publishing one post every week, I’ve been enjoying this and it has really helped me to stay sane in this challenging times. Hope you are getting something out of them too though. And in the meantime: stay safe!
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Annelies Explores 