december 2025

in portugal 🇵🇹 and building a calendar 🗓️

Jan 16, 2026

welcome and happy new year!

portugal

Most of my free time in December was spent preparing for and enjoying a trip to Lisbon. The whole family went together over Christmas.

Here’s a little trip slideshow :)

My favourite Portuguese words are tranquilo and muito bom.

gridcalendar.ca

During the trip I started updating last year’s calendar. In the middle of fiddling with Adobe Illustrator, I stumbled onto this calendar.

It got me interested in the idea of making the calendar open source…

Anyways, that’s what I did! and now it’s free to print 😁

I’ve put it up at gridcalendar.ca. If you’re interested, go to gridcalendar.ca and follow the instructions (you can change the colours too!).

sunsets

I find it hard to see the sun this time of year (we don't get much of it in Victoria winters). It often gets dark without me noticing at all. Depressing.

A few months ago, I made a calendar that schedules a sunset walk each day. It looks like this:

It’s helped me notice when I should go outside, so I’ve made some versions to share:

Vancouver/Victoria
- 3 months ahead
- 6 months ahead
Toronto/Kingston
- 3 months ahead
- 6 months ahead
Halifax
- 3 months ahead
- 6 months ahead

Turns out there are many ways to add these events to your calendar. Here are some instructions!

The new calendar should be added under a name like “sunset times..”

one battle whistle

You’ll be interested to know that after watching One Battle After Another, I’ve been obsessed with learning how to whistle. Specifically, Leo's whistle in the movie:

This tiktok also contributed to my motivation. It’s a whole new medium of communication. Really impressive stuff.

So the last few weeks of December were spent incessantly whistling while walking around Lisbon. Like constantly. It started happening subconsciously after a while.

I’ve gotten pretty good at it. I’ll let you know when it comes in handy.