Visited aunt and uncle (uncle had the blueprints for my new place, which I wanted), mightily amusing night. Aunt and uncle had re-found loads of old family pics, which were mightily amusing to look at. Also loads of funny family-stories, apparently my mum used to whisper to me all the time when I was a baby, which made me scream whenever my grandfather visited (he was deaf and talked loudly). Gladly she managed to correct that in the end :-)

Uncle gave me loads of new ideas for the place, let's see if I'll do anything with those. (Probably depens on my dad's will to break down stuff )

Worked, visited the Hague (work business) and spent the evening watching tv with girlfriend.

Slept in, thought of house-stuff and visited parents.

Was supposed to be in Cologne, celebrating the carnival but all my mates chickened out (well, Sabrina, Marlies and Nicktor did) so girlfriend and I ended up needing to do something on a Saturday afternoon, before all hell'd break loose. Last night we had decided that it would be Luxemburg, last minute I found some places to visit in Luxemburg on the internet and after 3.5 hours in a car, we found our first castle in Luxemburg, then moved on to a second castle and an Abbey. (Must have accidentally stumbled into the:"Castles in Luxemburg"-website. Had loads of fun and eventually made our way back home past Brussels and an Indian takeaway restaurant.

Note to self:"Next time do this in summer and camp somewhere overnight, driving 800 kms in one day is a bit silly". Still, I had never been in Luxemburg before so I can cross that one of the list now :-)

Found out why there are no Buena Vista Social Club-cds in my cd collection. Still a free concert (tickets provided by employer), so I shouldn't complain. And at least now I know what to expect in Cuba :-)

Girlfriend made pancakes, I chopped stuff.

Looked at lots of paint, and other DIY-stuff, while preparing for next Friday (when I'll finally officially get hold to the keys of my new place). Then chatted the rest of the evening away on the internet.

Visited parents' place to cuddle the cat. Did just that. Got told off by neighbour for not closing the kitchen cupboards. Blamed sister :-)

Kid sister blew up her car. Actually the throttle got stuck, which made driving it somewhat interesting. Got appointed as:"Drive me from garage to parents' place so that I can steal mum's car"-guy. Did well. There may be a career in this for me if my current job ever falls through ;-)

A great moment in history, today I filled the first cardboard box to prepare for me moving in a month and a half time. I bet I'll be needing my cds within the next 2 days now :-)

Went to girlfriend's grandmother's 80th birthday party with loads of people I had never met before. Fortunately most of girlfriend's family members appear to be meeting eachother only once every 5 years and they all appeared to be spending most of their time re-introducing them to eachother. Amusing.

And in other amusing news, we're apparently attempting to go to the carnival in Cologne next weekend. At first we were going to sleep over but all hostels were booked, now I volunteered as the driver in exchange for all the drinkers helping me out with painting my new place but we're 1 place short. All sorts of tactical games are now played to: 1. Assure a place in the car I'm driving. 2. Make sure that they're not the people who have to drive the other car back home :-)

Am starting to get more and more anxious about the moving-thing. Just sitting and waiting till I can finally do something is starting to get somewhat annoying. Spent the largest part of the afternoon staring at furniture, I guess I'm now able to form opinions about certain types of furniture (wahoo)

Another night in, watching Crackerjack

Got to take the train to the Hague for a project meeting. Found out that I'll probably be spending some more time there over the next couple of weeks.

At night girlfriend and I spent the night in with me playing San Andreas and she reading book. Managed to progress quite a bit futher.

Mystery solved, last night I was somewhat annoyed at the idea that while I had been trying my best to save loads of money, my bank-balance was exactly the same as last month. During the night I remembered that I had to make a 250 euro advance payment for my house, this afternoon I found out that I had actually made the payment twice. This means that I'm doing even better in the saving money department than I had expected. *Yay!*

Visited girlfriend at night and.... Am writing this while still at girlfriend's place so I may have to fill you all in on any highlights still happening after pressing "publish"

Was supposed to go out and see Spats Malone (Arnold's band) play. But got a last minute phonecall that their gig had been cancelled. Had McR and Nicktor pop by instead and made loads of progress in San Andreas. Well... at least I got out of the Ghetto and at least I got dumped in RedNeck county :-)

Am inclined to admitting that installing "Monkey Island" on my PDA was one of the highlights of my day but obviously girlfriend would castrate me for saying that seeing as it was valentine's day. Then... waiting for the lava-lamp I bought her as a present was more fun than I should be admitting.

And back to the classroom again. This weeks classes are a bit dull, especially when you just spent the past year and a half doing exactly what you're getting taught this week. Or do I really have to start worrying about bikini-season??

Had a bit of a suit-situation, where the trousers weren't exactly fitting anymore. Amazing how they shrink when they're not being used. Mum managed to fix this one but is now afraid that they might rip. All keep your fingers crossed for this Friday when I potentially prance around half naked in front of a customer in the Hague :-)

Urgh! Hangover! Managed to appear almost lifelike and even did useful stuff such as measuring my kitchen (it's apparently 6x3 meters). At night drove towards Almere and didn't even throw up or fall asleep. Pretty proud of me :-)

A pretty productive day. In the afternoon I had planned on dragging my mum along to decide on some colours for my new place. Have to say that I failed somewhat in that department. We did buy a kitchen floor though and we also bought a clothes dryer, a dishwasher, a stove, and a refrigerator. Or actually, mum bought them, I just pointed and said:"Want that"

At night it was Annemarie's party at girlfriend's place, loads of drinks, me going wild with girlfriend's camera (check over here for the result) and McR showing his behind on camera. *yuck!* Lots of fun!!

Highlight of the night for me was Nicktor's party trick of accidentally stabbing a knife through a bottle of coke while he tried to cut a net of lemons. His reply:"Hmmm... Guess I'm Sticky Nicky now"

I'm pretty convinced that I did plenty of stuff the past couple of days but then I kinda drank too much tomorrow and forgot all about it. The only thing I can remember about last week through the alcoholic haze is that my geek friends dropped by today, we chatted, drank lots of beer and had the neighbour downstairs bang the ceiling. And we weren't even that loud!

More course... and then even got round to working at night. *Eeek!*

The first day of my new course, left a bit on the early side (say 2 hours before everything was supposed to start) and was making a record time towards 's Hertogenbosch (without traffic jam it should take me just under an hour). And with only 12 minutes of driving to go on the PDA, I hit some traffic. Better said, I spent the next 50 minutes staring at a PDA which was telling me that it would only take me 12 more minutes. Arrived just in time and learnt loads of new things. *Yay courses!*

At night I found out that girlfriend is unwilling to write her bachelor thesis about me. Booh! Hiss!

Woke up, lazed around for a bit and eventually kicked into gear. Accomplishments of the day:"Emptied the paper recycling bin, did my laundry, visited parents, shouted at them for telling my cousin not to get me a hamster for my birthday and entertained myself for the rest of the night playing with the python programming language. Python is a really cute language to program in, both quick and readable, wooh! Does this mean I'm a geek now?

Visisted a book fair with girlfriend. Bought a dictionary and Umberto Eco's "name of the Rose" for the next time the urge to read books in dead tree-form pops up. After loads of calculations girlfriend had decided that tonight would be our 1 year anniversary if she hadn't gone to Helsinki. Always a good moment for a celebration I'd say. Celebrated. I'm now the poud owner of my own custom fortune cookies. *yay!* girlfriend!

Also matched the guardian top 100 book-list against project Gutenberg to see what else I should be pulling off the net. Then girlfriend would probably complain that I'd mention an evening of romance and books in the same entry. Apparently I need to sign up for romance-classes, ever since my romance tutor took off for Siberia I've had to figure out everything myself, I fear :-)

Sat on couch, read (e)-books. Project Gutenberg is brilliant once you combine it with a PDA with a good resolution! Yes, I may still need to pay for any new books I'd like to read, but now I get to brush up on my classics for no cost at all!

The book of the moment is How I found doctor Livingstone by whom other than Stanley himself. The hardships of the African jungle tend to get a bit repetitive after a while but who wouldn't be intrigued by an expedition into the inlands of Africa where one of the main concerns still is how much cloth and how many beads to bring to give to the African tribes. Apparently even the kind of bead matters, some beads are highly valued by one tribe, while they would be near worthless at the next tribe. And there's plenty of other brilliant books out there for example how about Thomas Steven's book about how he rode around the world on a bicycle in 1884?

I'd kill for commutes like these for the rest of my life! Made some sort of roadmap to go with decorating my new home. Next saturday I'll start having ideas on colours :-)

At night picked up a monitor for girlfriend at Sabrina's boyfriend's parent's place. (They had a spare). It turned out to be a pretty nice one as well *for free*. Seeing as girlfriend's monitor had more or less imploded, she's now a happy camper again.

First day at the new project, which is only a 10 minute tube-ride away from home. Woohoo. Then this did make me realise how frustrating it is to have a copy of the key to my new place, to know that it's currently empty and will be until I move in and to know at the same time that they'd grab you by the nuts and run around the block twice if you'd start decorating before you "officially" get the key.

Yep, for some reason it takes about 2 months to get all the paperwork to work out and I don't get the keys till the beginning of March. And I'll have to move out of my current place before the first of April. That leaves me only about 3 weeks to get the whole new place up and running. *gaah!*. Fortunately my dad will have 2 weeks of in March so with a bit of luck he'll be able to get some work done for me woohoo!