Note to self...

5 cloves of garlic in an omelet is a bit much. Don't kiss people for the next couple of hours.

Happy New Year!

Somehow I completely managed to forget to mention a Malaysian colleague visiting in the previous post. I wonder what I'll forget in this one. 3 days of work, which I had planned on doing with my eyes closed but turned out to be more crisis-filled than expected, then a visit from Karen, my Australian friend, who currently lives in London and a pretty successful NY-eve party.

At the start of it all there was some worry that it might turn out duller than planned but when eventually everybody got together, there was plenty of party for all of us. Possibly even a bit too much party for some of us. Karen decided she couldn't handle Nicktor's cocktails and after midnight girlfriend decided that passing out and throwing up (in random order) would be a nice way to end a party. (Note to self, buy more sheet-covers) All NY-eve photos can be found at my flickr-site.

Massive hangover (for some people) and cleanup for others on monday, a walk through Rotterdam at night with Karen and that already gets us to today, where I dropped off Karen at the ferry to Harwich after a bike-ride through "het Kralingse Bos" and shoe shopping.

Oh and UPC digital tv sucks even more than I thought. I've been trying to get rid of it ever since October and I still haven't succeeded. My current problem:"They promised they'd come and pick up my digital receiver today but they kind of forgot" Argh!

Slacking off

I know, I've missed loads of days over the past month. Lots of stuff happening, mostly to do with projects. Lorraine visiting, going clubbing with Ellen, spending lots of time in Lelystad. Really I'm still doing lots of stuff, I just appear to be too busy to write about all this. New years resolution:"Revamp this diary". Merry Christmas to all of you!

And another Sinterklaas-day, this time in Almere. Got a Remote Control-car and various other "little" presents. Cool!

Got a christmas tree with my mum, somewhere in the east of the Netherlands.

Tried arguing with the tax-people but it looks like they're right :-( Went for drinks at the PointLogic bar in the evening. Nice to see everybody once again. Ended up at my place with Adriaan and Remco after food at 'Cafe de Paris'. Both of them now know that 'all women get their periods'

Not sleeping much and waking up early apparently isn't my cup of tea. Hrmpf! Came back home only to find a note from the tax-people that they'd like to see 862 euro's because I ticked a wrong box in 2004 eek!

Celebrated Sinterklaas with parents, drove up and down to Brussels as well. Note to self:"Don't drive up and down to Brussels in one day!" Still had the annual sinterkaas-fondue with sister, Martin, mum, dad, aunt and uncle.

Spent day trying to write sinterklaas-poetry and doing some final shopping. Girlfriend was out most of the day, watched "Deadly Weapons" at night. Brilliantly terrible!

Yep, I've been somewhat busy lately due to which I didn't really have time to experience exciting things. You can probably best fill in all the gaps in the diary with:"Work". Went to the "Nacht van de Wansmaak" film-night at the cinema (which probably best translates into "bad taste"-night) with McR, Martina and Nicktor. Brilliant terrible trailes. Bought the "Deadly weapons" -dvd (with Chesty Morgan) and a compilation one as well.

McR and Nicktor are getting old though, both of them kept falling asleep, McR even during hardcore porn. What's wrong with these people?

Saw Muse play in Den Bosch. Brilliant light-show, good show, sadly they didn't play any Showbiz-songs though. Still had loads of fun. Got stuck in a traffic jam on the way back home, traffic jams at 11pm, WTF?

Worked in Brussels, drove back, felt tired.

Slept, went to the Finnish church to buy flour (don't ask me, ask girlfriend), did some grocery and tea-shopping (bought 3 new teas, *yay!*) And then realised that I wanted to buy a photo-printer. Have been considering which printer to buy ever since. (Some choices are just too hard )

Then I also need to start saving for Ruben's wedding and there's a whole list of gadgets I need to start buying (on it are guitars, game-consoles, PSPs, LCD tvs) Yep you're right, I appear to have recovered completely from buying this new place.

Road to ruins

Had a primary school reunion, the last one before they tear down the old primary school building. (There goes part of life) Spent evening chatting with various old schoolmates. The main realisation of the day was that I've been blessed with my hair, half the people around were either bald or balding. Should do this reunion stuff more often.

Had an interesting meeting in Rotterdam, then rented some dvds, which I failed to watch because girlfriend was going through a "little mermaid"-phase. Played guitar and tinkered with computer instead.

Urgh!

Had a meeting in Utrecht late in the afternoon, spent 3 hours driving the 60 kms to get back home. I should probably swap the car for a bicycle. In the 'yay!'-department:'Mum and dad fixed the couch!'

Election day, voted in the morning, watched the results come in at night. Guess people'll have a hard time creating a coalition over the next couple of weeks/months.

Girlfriend visited, girlfriend tired. Watched Freek de Jonge's election show on tv. Pretty brilliant but not half as funny as when I saw it in the theater a couple of weeks ago.

Amsterdam

Worked in Amsterdam all day, still weird to be back again. Spent the evening playing guitar, with the amount of practise I've been getting lately, I may become somewhat skilled somewhere in the next 20 years!

Moving

We'll blame the whole vomit-incident on McR's pre-moving stress because today was the day where we moved McR's stuff to his new place. Had loads of fun moving stuff with loads of people. Surprised at how fast we managed to do this moving thing, considering the amount of stuff not yet in boxes when I arrived.

A day spent toilet cleaning.

Woke up to a house smelling faintly of vomit, did quite a bit of hungover mopping, cleaned the toilet once again and left with part of my couch (did I mention yet that it crapped itself again last night?) to show my parents. (As in:"Mum, dad, is broken, please do something about it")


Eventually returned to a place still smelling of vomit and went to take photos with girlfriend. (She needed pictures of inter-cultural signs if I'm not entirely mistaken, if I am then she'll probably correct me in the comments. Eventually got back home and cleaned the toilet
once again, this time using bleach. After this mopped the toilet.

Surprise!

With Nicktor turning 30 next weekend, we obviously needed to do something for his birthday. We had already dropped hints that we were planning something weeks ago so Nicktor was on high alert and was planning on watching his back day and night starting at the day of his birthday and ending once he had spotted our plans.

Unfortunately he had forgotten that we could plan something before his birthday as well. Lured to my place with the excuse of a guy's night out, Nicktor found loads of friends, family and even colleagues drinking cocktails and shouting "Surprise!" at his entrance Check the photos and especially the little film at (Arjan's site) and my photos as well for a quick scoop on what happened.

Had loads of fun with loads of people all night with McR being very enthusiastic about all the different cocktails living in my fridge. Unfortunately eventually these cocktails got a bit too much for him. I found out about this when I went to take a leak and found myself up to my ankles in vomit, surrounded by vomit stained walls. (Apparently hitting these was easier than aiming for the toilet bowl). This did explain the moronically grinning McR outside the loo.

Did some drunken cleaning at 2 in the morning and continued partying. McR passed out with a bucket besides his head and didn't move for most of the night. (Apart from the stretch where we tried piling stuff on top of him)

Bought Metal Gear Solid 3 for my PS2 looks like I'll have some fun with it over the next couple of weeks.

Taught class, had girlfriend over at night.

More traffic jams. Then spent the night trying to figure out how to teach a class tomorrow.

Monday 13th meant traffic jams, loads of them. Took forever to get back to work, then took forever to get back again. Yep, I'm back @ ING.

Saw the Kaiser Chiefs play live in the Melkweg in Amsterdam with girlfriend and McR. Brilliant show, even their opening act was cool. Home late

Somehow managed to leave my carkeys at the counter at the supermarket. Somehow managed to not notice this till 5 hours later. Did I mention that the keys to my house were attached to the car-keys yet?

Borat!

Decided that I wanted to go out and see: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan with girlfriend. Asked Mcr to come along but he said he was busy studying *boring!*. For the third time this week McR picked the wrong activity to do. Saw the most painfully funny film I've seen in a long time. Plenty of:"No, please don't tell me this is happening"-moments but did spend an hour and a half crying with laughter while watching it.

Church

Went to see 'sacred selections' in the Laurens-church in Rotterdam, a project by Matt Stokes, who had Northern Soul, Happy Hardcore and Black Metal transscribed to organ. Once again got dumped by McR, who claimed that his homework was more interesting.

I suspect he was wrong, the crowd was very mixed (from 65+ year old organ-fanatics to leather clad metal-heads) and the performance was pretty cool. On top of that:"Yay! I've finally seen my first organ-concert".

Couch!

After getting back home from Brussels I attempted picking up the fixed couch-part at my parents' place. Failed miserably because my parents had already dropped it off and fixed the couch. Yay! Couch!

Brussels!

Went to Brussels for a change, in the evening ended up having dinner with some Polish colleagues.

Freek

Went to see Freek de Jonge's "de stemming", which was brilliant. Was supposed to go and see it with Martina and McR but in the end McR decided that a basketball meeting was more interesting and sent his dad as a stand in. He was wrong. Martina proved this by locking her key in the house and having McR wait for the locksmith while he was supposed to be at the meeting.

Apparently later on this moment turned out to be the most expensive 10 seconds of McR's life.

Football

Went to see a football-match (Feyenoord-Vitesse) at the local football station for girlfriend's dad's birthday. Feyenoord probably hasn't done worse in the Dutch football-competition in the past 10 years so it proved to be an interesting evening. Fortunately Feyenoord won in the end, had plenty of fun. Had food afterwards, strangely enough.

Oh and girlfriend's sister and her boyfriend announced they're getting married in 2008. Another wedding-party.

Free!

Girlfriend gave me the day off to do whatever I wanted. Shopped for guitars, dropped off the broken part of my couch at mum and dad's place and did some other stuff. Then failed to think up what to do in the evening so I ended up reading a book and playing with my computer. Need to practise this:"Time off"-thing more often.

Spent Thursday night in a hotel in Brussels, had a brilliant Thai Curry in the Thai restaurant round the corner.

On Friday I had planned a test-drive in a Citroen C4 coupé, for some reason some dimwit had decided that because their coupé was out I should go for a drive in the Citroen C4 Picasso instead. Their reasoning:"It's got the same engine." Gaah!

Spent the remainder of the night playing with my dad's new computer.

End of project meeting for my Rabobank project. Went out for food and go-karting, unfortunately the petrol fumes made me feel somewhat sick during the second go-kart lap due to which my laptimes sucked.

Back where I begun

Got to go back to ING today to celebrate my colleague's last day at work. On and off I'll be spending time here for the next couple of months

Brussels!

The subject says all I fear. Hopefully my last attempt at driving up and down in one day. Then fortunately it is a school holiday in Belgium so the roads were fairly quiet.

Couch!

Took couch apart put old couch back. Booh! Hiss!

Installed surround sound system. *yay, sound all over the place!* At the same time:"Geez, look at all the wires!" Then dad visited and we attempted to buy a laptop *fail!* and bought Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys.

At night Nicktor, McR, Laurens and Annemarie visited. Unfortunately my couch crapped itself.

Brussels, brussels, brussels

Found myself working in Brussels almost all week. Unfortunately working in Brussels and having a life at home at the same time proved to be taxing at best. From now on I'll book a hotel. (Taxing as in 2.5 hours 1 way, 2.5 hours the other way). I actually like driving in my car, even for long stretches, but not if there's 8 hours of work in between those stretches.

On Friday visited Shiwa for food and stuff. Had loads of fun but did almost fall asleep nearer the end of the night. Shiwa had bought a new surround sound system and I bought her old one for 30 pounds.

Brussels

Checked out from hotel and straight away went back to the car. Seeing as we had parked it in a shopping center parking garage, we were somewhat afraid that people might have blown up/moved/whatevered our car. Fortunately this didn't happen :-)

Unfortunately we completely ran out of diesel 10 kms out of Holland and had to get 5 euro's worth. Arse!

Was forced to eat takeway curry at night because girlfriend ditched me for dinner. Poor me :-(

One large beer please

One large beer please
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Last time girlfriend and I were in Paris, girlfriend promised me that she would let me visit the Louvre next time we'd make it to Paris. This time she claimed the Louvre sucked balls and that she didn't want to go there.

Cried, made a puppy face and off course girlfriend could resist my charming personality. At least provided it wouldn't be too busy, girlfriend added. (Probably thinking:"Not busy on a Saturday, Hah!". Fortunately for me, indeed:"Not busy on a Saturday, Hah!" Enjoyed the afternoon in fairly un-busy Louvre.

After our museum visit, we teamed up with Crissy and Dan + Crissy's sister, brother in law and niece. Had a beer somewhere and learnt the lesson to enquire first what the exact size of a large beer is in a certain pub. Wasn't really expecting the liter pint of beer they gave me as "the large pint". Had somewhat hazy fun.

Drunk? Me?

How hard can it be?
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Today was the day where girlfriend and I would make our way to Paris and team up with
Dan and Crissy. Did just that and even managed to get rid of our car somewhere in a shopping centre. Unfortunately we were somewhat undecided on whether our car'd still be there when we'd get back but hey, at least we had parked.

Got to our hotel (not too bad for a cheap-ass hotel), checked in, and eventually walked to Louvre pyramid where we were hooking up with Dan and Crissy. Have to say that they don't look anything like a butt-plug (Crissy claimed otherwise).

After a stop at the Canadian pub for poutine and a 9% beer before this poutine *hic*, we had beers in another pub with a wairess who was obviously new to the waitressing-business (yay, cheap beer!), girlfriend and I stumbled back home. Actually I was a whole lot more sober than I look in this photo, I was just having issues keeping my eyes open :-)

A whole week spent working doesn't make for interesting writing, I fear. Did work in Brussels on Wednesday, due to which I got to travel 300 kms in one day. Wooh!

the Hangover

Did hangover for most of the day, then went to a little festival for an hour, where I saw beardyman play. Most easily the best beat-boxer I've ever seen.

Then had to rush back to the airport again because I still had a flight to catch. Arrived at the airport 1.5 hours before my plane was supposed to leave. Entered queue for customs and left that one 5 minutes before my plane was supposed to leave (something had them give everybody a full cavity-search) *gaah!* Then still had to take a train to gate , which had me arrive at my plane 10 minutes after it was taking off. Fortunately it hadn't. Fortunately I wasn't the only person that was late either.

I want to drink your blood!

00029.jpg
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

The reason I came to London was Kaz' birthday party, which is a beast and monsters fancy dress-party. (See my flickr page for all the photos) Spent the day in the supermarket and preparing for the party. Party was a big success, though Kaz probably can't remember most of it

Did pretty okay alcohol-wise myself, I thought, until... I woke up at 6 in the morning to find people trying balance stuff on me. After waking up, I noticed that they had been at it for at least half and hour and that they had made photos as well. (Un)fortunately not with my camera. Maybe they'll still show up.

Decadent workaholic

Worked all day and then took off for the airport to fly to London. At the London side of the North Sea, Kaz picked me up for her birthday party weekend. Started off well by giving Kaz the Join-me book as a birthday-present right after she spent 15 minutes talking about how she wanted to read that book.

Got some some beers and drank most of them. Then managed to watch 164 John and John
comic strips on the internet. We're sad!

Holiday

Packed stuff for holiday, eventually got joined by girlfriend, who was too tired to function.

A company meeting. A bit less beerful than the previous meeting.

Haircut!

Started work in the ARINSO offices, tried working at my place for a short while and eventually ended up working at a colleague's place. Interesting!

The fun of helping my completely disorganised aunt with her computer. "Q: Do you know the password to your e-mail aunt?" "A: Why should I?" "Q: Could you give me the cd for..." "A: Where are they?" SO yes, it basically was an evening of:"Hunt down stuff". Fun

Did some shopping but failed to buy stuff. Does that make me a failure? Oh wait, yesterday I already bought stuff for Kaz' party next weekend. I'm afraid I'll be having fun there in London :-)

Cocktails at Nicktor's place. Biked there and behaved pretty well. Unlike some of us, I have to say :-) McR basically had to carry Sabrina to his car.

Had a copy made of my cellar-key. It didn't work.

D-day

Gave presentation, did well, was funny without resorting to uranus jokes. Drank a bit too much beer afterwards with colleagues. *hic!*

Order

Finally got my sheets in order, I should be fine tomorrow.

Multitasking take 2

Attempted to get sheets for wednesday's presentation organised while watching tv. More or less failed at both again.

Pool

Went to the swimmingpool, yay! Yay! Pool! Also fell asleep near a swan. Got photos of the whole weekend up at my flickr page actually so does girlfriend's brother's girlfriend.

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!

update

Spent night updating web-diary and chatting with Crissy and Anna.

Girlfriend

Showed girlfriend the highlights of the bad taste film. May be catching a cold.

New hair

Got my hair cut and had Cindy visit to pick up an orange cowboy had (don't ask)

Not mucn

Had planned on doing nothing but reading a book all night. In the end Nicktor popped by to make a copy of his passport and we watched a "bad taste night"-highlights dvd. Saw some pretty bad film trailers. While Zombi Holocaust would probably already rate as somewhat distateful to some people, crippled masters really made me wonder how people come up with film-ideas like these.

Demolition man

Helped McR take out his kitchen. This turned out to be a piece of cake so I did some painting afterwards as well. Watched a film at night.

Weehee!

Went car testing with McR in the morning (he needs to pick a new company car). Tested both a simple 1.6 Seat Leon as well as the 175 hp 2 liter version. Guess which one we liked best? :-) While my own car isn't exactly underpowered, I wouldn't mind swapping it for the 175 hp-version. Neither did McR, apparently it's now gonna be a 2 liter 150 hp one, which should be plenty fast. Needed some effort to convince McR that the sport seats were more important than sattelite navigation but after some longer seating exercises, I managed to convince him.

Visited parents in the afternoon and went clubbing with friends at night. Fun! Friends are sissies though, at 3 am everybody had left already.

books galore

Spent night reading a book. Girlfriend did the same though with another book.

Argh!

So... Why did I forget to take the day off today again? Drove work-wards in a possibly not entirely sober state of mind and suffered a feeling of spinning for most of the day. Nearer the end of the day I felt a whole lot better and joined in the Wednesday Night Skate fun.

It being the last one of the year, we all got to skate down the Maasboulevard, right along the river. Really awesome! Fortunately I got back home only seconds before it started pouring down with rain. Too bad I still had to bike out to my sister's place to pick up her mail. (she's on holiday)

Still holiday-ing

Fortunately I had taken today off as well for I'm still not feeling 100%. Spent the day unpacking stuff, doing laundry and buying a wireless network-card so that now I can finally use my wireless router. (I gave up on somebody fixing it at work without losing my laptop for a long while) Played with wireless for most of the afternoon untill I fell asleep again. Oh and while I was waiting at the police station to report my missing passport, Nicktor gave me a call to tell me that my passport had been sent from Austria by the camping-people. Yay! Camping people!

Joined up with Remco, Adriaan, Ronald and Remco's colleague Rik for the annual bierloop. (A sponsored pubcrawl basically held around my place). This one didn't even do too badly on the list of "best bierloop". They had proper beer-mugs, they had t-shirts, entry was cheap and on the way out Remco stole another stamp-card so that we had to down 24 pints of beer with 5 people. (At this point I started to suspect that my plan of only drinking 3 pints might not work this night).

Sadly for the bierloop people they left us a phone number to call in case of an emergency. And call we did. With some interval, 4 of us claimed that the local Belgian beer-pub (and a stop at the bierloop) had completely run out of beer. The organisers believed us and promised us more beer. Then by the time we made it to Plan C, it had closed as well, which gave us even more beer. By this time I was starting to suspect that the:"Yay! Loads of beer!"-sound in the back of my head would tomorrow probably be drowned out by a severe hangover. When did I have to start work again?

Back home

After packing our tents (yay! dry again!) and taking buses and trains, eventually Kaz and I arrived back at my place mud-caked and dead tired. Had pizza and worked on invitations for Kaz' birthday party in October before I eventually got to drop her off at the airport. After getting back home, I more or less passed out, dead tired.

Muddy waters

... and some more
Originally uploaded by selmerv.

Completely forgot to mention that yesterday afternoon McR and Marlies went back home again. McR claimed he wanted to do house related stuff, Marlies went back home to take care of her husband, who somehow broke his hand while falling of his bicycle.

Sadly for them they missed out on a whole day of fun in the rain and mud. Note to self:"Don't wear crocs in mud, you'll end up stumbling around with mud-filled crocs". Highlights of the day for me were the Arctic monkeys and Johan, even though Muse was pretty good too. Pennywise somewhat less so, I've heard them play better.

Failed to join in with the mud-sliding people. Danced the night away till late once again. Music wise I've seen better editions of Lowlands but fun-wise we're doing pretty well, I believe.