Did stuff, then did more stuff on beach and got my toe kicked in by girlfriend during a football match. Went out for dinner, then did even more stuff at night.

Argh!

Spent the morning shouting abuse at ENECO people. Actually as usual they were really friendly but somewhat clueless. Eventually (after 15 minutes) managed to get somebody to the point where she actually understood my problem. She promised not to shut me down and also promised that somebody would call me in the afternoon.

Spent the day taking a pretty interesting course and eventually drove to Port Zelande with girlfriend for a weekend with most of her family *eek!*. Drank loads of beer and eventually passed out. No phonecall just yet.

Fun with ENECO

Got back home and found a letter from everybody's favourite gas/water and electricity company to tell me that they had been on my doorstep to shut off water, gas and electricity but that unfortunately I wasn't at home so that now they were going to shut it off on their side.

Wait a sec, this sounds familiar, didn't this happen before? Ummm... yes. Didn't somebody visit last week to make sure that this wouldn't happen in the future? Ummm... yup. Did it work? Apparently not really. Shouted some words that I won't repeat here and went to bed.

Watched football on tv, read a book and worried about a presentation that I'm supposed to be giving next week. Due to me attempting to do multiple things at once, I probably failed at all three of them.

Napoleon Dynamite

Watched Napoleon Dynamite with girlfriend. Fun!

Paris

Only a month till I'll be in Paris to celebrate my 9 year e-niversary with Crissy. Completely clueless about who'll be joining me though. Kid sister might or might not hitch a ride to come and visit a friend in Paris, girlfriend may or not come along. The only definite person appears to be me. (And hopfully Crissy)

Happy birthday

Visited kid sisters' birthday party. Failed to bring a proper present. BOoh!

I am sailing

Went sailing with girlfriend + plenty of colleagues. While the weather was really rainy in Rotterdam, we went without rain all day on the IJsselmeer. Recommended!

Another day of work in Rotterda *yay!* Bought a garden gnome for kid sister's birthday and then teamed up with McR to go to the release party of the new Blind Justice (a dutch metal band) cd , with everybody's favourite hip-hop act the Osdorp Posse as a support act. Really a brilliant concert, very much recommended. Tried waking up girlfriend when I finally stormed into my place but she failed to acknowledge my existence. Booh!

The missing days

Kind of forgot what I did on Tuesday and Wednesday. Probably books, girlfriend and guitar playing but I'm not entirely sure, in all honesty. Somebody help me, please?

Had to work in Rotterdam on Thursday and managed to work till past 7 which meant I got back home even later than usual. All my fault though, I got caught in my own arrogance, I fear.

Oh, yesterday was kid sister's birthday, I called her

Mum's the person of the day

My mother probably already regrets ever having children. Today she once again got to spend an afternoon at my place, this time to receive somebody who came to fix a leak in my heating system. She had already spent an afternoon at my place a week and a half ago to have somebody diagnose my leak as:"Yep, it's leaking" but today they fixed it. Sadly for her they also found something else that needed fixing but for which they didn't bring any parts.

Was also somewhat succesful with the water/electricity/gas company, who I now finally managed to convince that "yes, it really is only 1 house with two house numbers". Somebody even noticed that the meter numbers on number 119 and number 120 were exactly the same. Now all they need to do is send a repairman to check whether that's not a mistake in the computer system. *Gaaah!*. No, I'll take this one, mum can stay at home for a change :-)

Home alone

After girlfriend left me to go to the cinema, i got to entertain myself. Walked into town, did some shopping and walked back. Definitely need to practise more in the self-entertainment part of life.

Played with vmware at night (if you don't know it you don't want to know anyways). Doing geek stuff is fun!

Bicycle

Rode bicycle in one direction until I suddenly got to Gouda and realised that this was almost 30 kms from Rotterdam, then had to bike back another 30. Felt somewhat tired afterwards, in all honesty, I already felt tired while biking back, I definitely need to ride my bike more often.

While riding my bicycle back home, I planned on asking girlfriend whether she could do the shopping because I was too tired. Chickened out in the end and dragged myself shopwards anyways.

Watched "The Kebab Connection" at night. Funny

Infadelic

Saw Infadels play Rotown with girlfriend and McR. Brilliant concert, which had everyone in Rotown jumping up and down within notime. Afterwards had drinks with Maaike's sister and Walter. Ended up a bit on the drunk side of life. Spilling a glass of milk because you actually miss your mouth while aiming is probably not a good sign.

Girlfriend and guitar, that's probably all.

Where's the cheese??

Went to see:"Miami Vice" with Lorraine. Plenty of violence, plenty of fast boats/cars but it was really lacking in the cheesiness department.

The future's bright

All sorts of rumours about what I'll be doing at work for the next couple of months. (The Rabobank project is ending at the beginning of October). Heard some big names being mentioned, it should all be fun.

Cleaning

Cleaned out my little car, which still had plenty of holiday-cruft lying around (not to mention all the food stuff that Nicktor managed to drop on the floor). Had help from the parental unit with this (don't really know why). They were great help but... note to self:"Don't let your father near your car with carpet cleaner, your seats are now somewhat soggy".

On the upside:"The car stopped smelling of Chianti!"

Birthday!

Girlfriend decided to celebrate her birthday at my place. This meant stress testing it with shitloads of people (both girlfriends' family, my family, friends, eek!). Found out that the house can contain that many people.

At night girlfriend showed her excitement by talking to people in her sleep. Usually I'm a pretty solid sleeper but when somebody shouts:"Hey! Welcome! Come in!", I have to bat an eyelid to find out who the visitor is :-)

Beer!

Discovered that I've got boring friends. Was supposed to go out for lots of drinks with lots of people ended up with Lorraine, girlfriend and Nicktor. Still worth it, especially because I got most of my beer free because I managed to get the internet working on Lorraine's phone *yay!*

May need to ask Nicktor for a urine sample, he scared us all by talking at twice the volume, twice the speed and 10 times the volume of his usual self. Eek!

Friday night

Played guitar. Main objects of study are Keith Richards in the 60's and Chuck Berry. Still need a lot of practise.

Guitar hero!

Bought my guitarport today. Really a brilliant piece of equipment. For $7 a month you can download guitar lessons online (+ backing tracks), download new guitar sounds, etc. etc. Had so much fun that at 22:00 I realised that I was completely forgetting to eat and made myself pizza.

Guess I'm now on my way to becoming a rock star.

Gotta love that pub smell

Went to supermarket, bought wine and pizza's (I've been known to buy more exciting food-things from time to time). While driving back home from the supermarket, I realised that my car smelled a bit like a pub. Apparently 1 of the wine bottles broke and spilled in my boot! Gaah! Guess I'll have a car smelling of chianti for the next while.

Rode bicycle and played guitar in the evening. Expect me to do a whole lot more guitar playing once the guitarport arrives. I'm planning on having fun :-)

Birthday!

And obviously the day after the anniversary it's girlfriends' birthday. Managed not to forget about this one but failed to come up with one great present. Thought up 3 pretty good ones though so now girlfriend gets to point out which one she wants herself.

Ended up having artichokes for dinner.

Anniversary

... and before you know it, it's two years later, you're two years older and still with the same girlfriend. *Yay!* Celebrated with a Japanese dinner at Fugu in Rotterdam. Really nice food!

Garlic!

The plan for the day had been: Garlic soup! Leading up to this plan I Did some food shopping with girlfriend (mainly plenty of garlic). Discovered that while 11 clovers of garlic in soup is survivable, trying to make your own garlic bread with 6 cloves of garlic would be considered "overdoing it" in some regions of this country.

Played lots of guitar at night. Have decided that I may need to own a line 6 guitarport. They're actually really affordable and sound great fun. Until I discovered that the toneport is for some reason actually cheaper in most Dutch shops, while it offers more functionality. Guitar gadget + laptop could mean fun. Expect one to show up somewhere before the end of the year.

Actually I'm about to buy this straight away, the only things keeping me from doing this are me walking into a 77 euro speeding ticket (20 km too fast, *argh!*) and some birthdays (sister, girlfriend) and other events happening this month. Add Paris and London next month and I may wait till November before buying this one.

--edit--Obviously the second I posted this comment, I got an e-mail from somebody selling a guitarport online, to tell me that he was accepting my 70 euro bid. Guess I'll be buying one this month after all :-)

Shopping

Threw another housewarming. This time Lorraine was in the country and she hadn't attended a housewarming yet. Nice to see Lorraine again, nice to have loads of people over and nice to get a Barbapapa toilet seat cover. What you ask? Check the pictures if you really want to know.

You can even check the video, you may need to tilt your head though.

Housewarming

Annemarie's housewarming, cocktails, plenty of people and then being able to crawl back home afterwards. Nice!