✱ This week didn't start as the brightest one of the year. Far from it, actually. I went to work in person again on Monday, as the final presentation of the Obeya room we had been working with — to our CEO — was finally going to happen. While on the one hand everything went smoothly and turned out well, thanks to a nicely executed work during the past weeks, culminating with much praise received from him, on the other hand I was struck by a very unwelcome and unneeded depression attack. Looking back on it I do know where it came from and why, and had I had this knowledge then, it would have avoided so much unnecessary misery. Thanks god someone noticed what had happened and talked me out of it in time to avoid ruining my day — and week.

✱ With heatwaves coming and going in my city all the time lately, I finally decided to take action and improve home life quality a little bit. I bought a gigantic — if you can call a 60 cm diameter gigantic — turbo max fan, which thankfully arrived overnight and, as soon as I had it assembled, took it to my living room which currently doesn't have air conditioning setup and turned it on. This purchased proved worth from the first refreshing seconds. And, as it's portable, I can carry it around freely, as much as I want. It will be very welcome, because the only two air conditioning devices I have are in my bedroom and the children's.

✱ I'm a true crime genre fan. This week, along with my wife, I've watched the Suzane von Richthofen's real crime movie trilogy. Suzane murdered her parents in 2002, during the Halloween night, helped by her boyfriend and his brother, in one of the most shocking Brazilian murder crimes. As a result she was sentenced to 39 years and 6 months in prison, leaving it on parole in 2023. The 3 movies were created as biographical representations of the period around the crime, based on information collected by the Justice department and the police during investigations and trials. The Girl Who Killed Her Parents and The Boy Who Killed My Parents, both released in 2021, tell the facts according to Suzane's boyfriend's and Suzane's point of view, respectively. The last movie in the trilogy, The Girl Who Killed Her Parents: The Confession, was filmed in 2022 and released in 2023, depicting the first days after the crime, the investigation, the confession and trial of the perpetrators. All in all, I liked the movies and learned a detail or two about the crime.

✱ I reviewed my reading list this week, as I started to feel overwhelmed. To me, a person who would swap non-fiction for fiction anytime, this sensation was worsening because of the growing number of non-fiction books I was simultaneously reading. I needed to make peace with my reading, so I ended up declaring one book finished with and (temporarily) abandoning other two. That not only opened time for resuming my fiction reading — what I desperately needed as a much welcomed scape valve —, but also and mainly brought me peace of mind.

✱ November second was All Souls' Day in Brazil. Thus I've had a shorter work week, which ended on Wednesday. This year, as I usually do, I remembered my maternal grandmother, Amélia, who left us in 2012. She helped raising my sister and me while both my father and mother worked. I have so many good memories of her and I miss her so dearly that I'm lucky to be Brazilian and, this way, be able to use the word saudade, maybe the most Brazilian and Portuguese word, to describe what I'm feeling. Love you, granny, and I always will.