The return of girlfriend. Spent the morning cleaning up me and retrieving lots of things that girlfriend might want to have, then eventually picked up Annemarie, drove to Schiphol airport and picked up girlfriend. She still recognises me and wasn't wielding a Finnish boyfriend called Yari *yay!*.

Got blindsided by Annemarie when I had to drive past my place to pick up girlfriend's bedsheets, right before I closed my door, she apparently asked me:"Bring weed". Which, if not expected can apparently be a pretty puzzling sentence. Spent a whole car-ride trying to decide what she wanted me to bring. In the end decided that she probably did say weed, after a quick visit to a coffeeshop and a quick check at girlfriends' place it turned out that I had missed a whole conversation about smoking pot on NY-eve.

Did the first part of my NY-eve in Rotterdam and then took off for Leiden with Nicktor and McR. (Girlfriend didn't feel like coming and we had already decided that we were going). Great party, loads of drunk people, McR managing to spoil Nicktors chances with every girl (and guy) in the room and me sober for the whole evening. Still wondering how that happened, after all I had already arranged for my car to be taken back by McR. A phonecall around midnight to girlfriend taught me that all the weed had already been smoked (the phonecall consisted of 20 minutes of laughter from the other side).

Eventually drove back home, tried to drop off McR at his place, failed, then dropped him off at Nicktor's place and drove girlfriend-wards. Strangely enough she hadn't even passed out :-)

My last night as a single person, well okay, semi-single. At least... girlfriend returns tomorrow. What did I end up doing? Well... there was this weather alert with loads of snow and I already had loads of trouble making it back home through said snowstorm. (The closer to Rotterdam I got, the harder it became to drive in a straight line). Spent another night with my Playstation.

At the same time all the trains in the Netherlands stopped running, Kaz' friend Katherine (who was visiting from Paris) got stuck in Amsterdam with her boyfriend and had to pay 250 euro's for a night in a hotel. (Yes, that's somewhat steep)

Had Cindy over for food, drinks etc. Great fun.

Spent the whoe evening playing San Andreas.

Fabienne has been back in the Netherlands for a while and with all the roads people-less due to the Christmas holidays it even sounded like a feasible plan to pop by right out of work. (She's staying at her parents' place somewhere in the east of the Netherlands)

Nicktor (who works more or less around the corner) joined in for the fun as did McR who would be bringing Lorraine and Arjan. Eventually all made it to Fabienne's place (even though Lorraine looked a bit shaken from the car-ride). Had food, had fun and then drove back home again.

Christmas at aunt's place. More presents, loads of food and loads of fun. Did forget to bring back a grinder for my bike-lock though. Arse!

Christmas! Weird, it feels a lot less christmassy when you wake up all alone in a house without christmas decorations. Threw all the collected christmas presents in the back of my car and took off for parents' place to replace them with new gifts. Got lots of clothes a book with household tips ranging from the useful to the blindingly obvious to the almost surreal ("Do you unexpectedly find yourself without a leather maintenance product?") *Yay!* presents.

Also now the proud owner of 3 packages with girlfriends' name on them. One is cylinder shaped and feels soft-ish, one is square, flat and soft and one is box-shaped and by the feel of it contains a cardboard box. Girlfriend come home, there's presents for you here!

And then Kaz and Martin took off and I got a sympathy christmas dinner from my mum because I didn't have nowhere else to go :-)

And tonight somehow Ellen made me cook her dinner. Ellen always makes me do things I'm not particularly good at (from riding fun fair rides and almost puking afterwards to ordering me to make food for groups of 30+ people). Nicktor joined in for the fun and I managed to make a passable Thai-ish curry. Got joined by Lorraine, and Sabrina later on and celebrated an early new year's eve. (Especially early seeing as the champagne bottle already got opened at 11pm)

Seeing as both Ellen and Lorraine are in the country, we all descended on "Sorgh and Hoop" for food and drink. Even Ruben showed up, Nice to have everybody together again. We are all getting old though, before 1am Ellen, Nicktor and me were the only ones left, with Nicktor being half asleep.

Distressing news of the day: Lorraine hasn't forgotten about the bet I have with her boyfriend about being the fastest to ride a skippyball from her parents' place to mine. I should start training for this match but how does one train for a skippyball contest without receiving the laughter from everybody out on the streets?

Girlfriend is currently in Lapland, she can text me but she can't receive text messages from me. She's taking her time realising this herself, while texting more and more agitated text-messages on the way. Thought this was cute.

Then tonight girlfriend gave up and decided to give me a call to check whether I was dead yet. Failed to pick up the phone in time but got to tell her in the end that I was probably still alive.

Had a meeting in Rotterdam which ended at 7:30 and then I realised that all shops were open for Christmas and that there was nobody walking around. Completed my Christmas shopping in less than no-time, which means I won't have to fight people all day on Saturday in overcrowded shops. *yay!*

Game Time! Spent the whole evening killing dealers, shooting gang members and running over innocent bystanders. Playing San Andreas does make you wonder why everybody in the US started rioting when they heard there were pornographic images to be seen if you modded your game.

Got asked by Erwin to join his pub-quiz team in Leiden. I'm one of the guest players whenever the usuals can't make it. Failed to make a good impression this time though. I did suspect that the suez-channel didn't have any locks but couldn't back it up so got overruled and the only question I knew that none of the others did was the title of the Brian Adams greatest hits album. And let's just say that I wasn't too proud about knowing that one :-)

Didn't even have to work on Sunday *yay!* Unforunately did have to do Christmas-shopping. Managed to spot some of the gifts I needed to buy but then decided that the queues were far too long and left town again. Actually.... the only gift I did buy was a copy of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. But then that one was for me, and one can never have enough mindlessly violent games in ones gaming collection, right?

Popped by parents place and then failed to game all night because I ended up chatting with girlfriend. (Who was having her last day in Helsinki before taking off Lapland-wards for christmas)

Worked from 9 till 6:15, on a Saturday. Not the best idea ever, I have to say. Had food at Bianca's guest-parents place. Bianca is au-pairing in Rotterdam at the moment, lovely house, after which we hit the clubs in Rotterdam.

Had an interesting night trying to install cable internet at McR's place. Had loads of fun with McR and Arjan trying to get everything to work, at one point we even used a vibrator to check the network cable. (Arjan could work as McGyver) All brilliant ideas to get everything to work turned out to be useless in the end, Mcr had thrown away the letter with the internet-passwords.

Today and yesterday, two more days of business, followed by sleep. Really, there isn't anything else to say about it, I fear.

Good news, had my half yearly evaluation with my practice-manager. They still like me at work, they're letting me stay. Didn't do too bad in the pay-department either. All in all a happy camper. Celebrated by staying at work till 8. Note to self don't check something when you've almost left the place, it will turn out to be broken and you'll have to fix it before you leave.

Cocktail-parties suck, mixing drinks is stupid, hangovers end up somewhat massive. Urgh! Let's just say that I got out of bed at 14:30 and leave it at that.

Out for a team-dinner at night. All did a DIY cooking class, where we had to prepare food for eachother and then all eat it. Apparently the keyword was garlic. Glad that I didn't have to kiss anybody or anything when eventually I made my way back home :-)

The weekend should be for sleeping in... not tod though. Somebody had decided that it would be a funny idea to ask Nicktor whether he'd have food for us if we'd pop in at 7 (yes, that may have been my idea). And sacrifycing ourselves for a good joke, McR and I indeed showed up at Nicktor's place at 7 (am). Unfortunately the promised pizza and chinese food weren't there so we had to improvise him some breakfast. Nicktor looked a bit puzzled, I have to say.

Went back to bed afterwards, bought tickets for the Posies concert in Rotterdam on the 29th of januari. And eventually showed up at Nicktor's place for his birthday cocktail party. My little:"Hey, let's coordinate the alcohol everybody brings"-plan worked out great, many different cocktails were had by all. Amazed by Bianca's talent to think up weird:"Bianca special" cocktails. Also nice to see Oliver again after years and years. Stumbled back home late. Yay for cocktail parties.

Games night at McR's place, with Nicktor. Gamed till late.

Wednesday and thursday were very much alike, so lets put them in one entry. Work till late, home late, not much afterwards. Busy??? Why? :-)

Somebody at work decided that we should try out the stress thing. Interesting but I prefer life without. Home late, straight to bed.

Had the annual "cheese fondue on Sinterklaas"-day with parents, sister, Martin, aunt and uncle. Great fun, found out that 1 of the headlights of my car wasn't working. Have to get that fixed tomorrow.

The magic word of the day:"Sleep". (And trying to find back my bicycle-keys). Succeeded at the sleep part, failed miserably at finding my bicycle keys. I wonder where they are. May have to borrow the grinder again.

Left a chocolate letter in my neighbour's shoe at night (a Dutch tradition, chocolate letters, that is, not leaving them in neighbour's shoes). She'll be puzzled, I guess.

Still feeling far from super. Spent the morning looking at houses on the internet. Not that I'm in that big a rush to buy a place and move out of the current one still it doesn't hurt to keep informed. At the same time I wouldn't be terribly suprised if I were to buy myself a place before the end of this year. Obviously you'll be some of the first to know :-)

Bought a christmas present for my father in the afternoon, did some food shopping, had dinner and watched Madagascar. Not a big fan. Went to bed ridiculously early for a Saturday night. Seeing as Nicktor didn't pop by, I suspect he's out having plenty of drinks, while I feel like I a 29 year old. That's not fair! He's the 29 year old, I'm only 28! Guess I'll go to bed now.

Still not feeling great, unfortunately I get 2 days off extra next year if I'm not ill this year so I'm not going to skip any days of work in December because of me being ill :-) On top of that... When I get up at 6:30 in the morning I'm usually too asleep to notice that I'm even feeling ill :-) Eventually made my way back home and stared at the tv all night.

Startef off pretty well, then at the same time I something which felt half as if I was getting a cold and half as if I had the flu came up. Obiously that's the moment things got hectic. Drove home on autopilot and fell asleep at 9.

While yesterday I got out of work at 8 and found out that the only thing I could have for dinner was a terribly basic pizza with onions, ham and piles of garlic stacked on top of it, today I didn't get out till 7 and had to do my shopping by the:"Dash through the supermarket-method". Yes, I know that getting out of work at 7 isn't that shocking, but once you combine it with the 1 hour absolute minimum commute, your working days do get kind of long.

Oh well, at least I didn't have to eat pizza tonight :-)