Disjointed Blather from the Netherlands

Well that was a pleasant long weekend, if (sadly) the last one here in Holland before Christmas – and it was punctuated with some highs & lows. Aside from the usual routine of shopping & cleaning, we managed to get a lot of other tasks completed including hanging the mirror (for the first time in 2 years!), changed the light bulbs to low-energy ones, de-lichenified the garden path and still had time left over to go on a 20km bike ride, watch the Last King of Scotland & pick up a Dutch book for me.

 

I’m particularly happy about the book - it’s for six year olds & I’m finding it difficult, but I’m making good progress with it – practicing my Dutch reading & doing a live translation to English. Ok, its probably not very impressive, but I think that Its definitely what I need if I’m going to reach my goal of reading Harry Potter by the end of the year…!

 

We also got an estimated bill for our energy use in the new house, and its about €100 a month above what we expect, or have been charged previously. The only explanations we can come up with is that either there’s something wrong with the boiler (unlikely, it seems ok) or that the previous (Italian) occupants enjoyed a Mediterranean climate, even in the dead of winter. The latter seems more likely, given that last month we used one-sixth of the estimated monthly gas bill (42 cubic meters compared to an expected 248 cubic meters). Which begs the question how were they using that gas? I mean, there’s a strange gas pipe in the outside shed that’s got a valve on it, so I presume that it has something to do with the grossly inflated bill, but… its something of a shock!

 

In other news, I cant go with C to a family gathering in the UK on the 8^th July - something that I was really looking forward to :o( Its quarter-end over here I would have to be back in the office early & the only cheap flight to get me here before (say) mid-day has me checking in at 4am. Given that we’d be partying until midnight, it wasn’t a goer, tbh. I was really looking forward to that, and I’m not best pleased about it, as it seems to have set the tone for yesterdays 'arranging holidays'. I’m still going to investigate flights to see if I can get there, but it doesn’t look good. I also noticed that the Jet2 website wouldn’t let me book flights to Leeds after July – is there something going on that I should know about? Is the air-bridge in danger?

 

Also, I couldn’t play in Guild Wars last night as my computer kept on locking up; after several scans etc, it turns out that I had a tracking cookie that was trying to connect to the net. Its gone now, but it took me several hours to get this resolved. Most irritating. 

On a more postive note, weight down to 86 kilos, down 1. I put it down to the 3 hour bike ride & yesterdays 2 hour lichen-removal aerobics workout that almost killed me!

 

S