• Apr 8

Geniuses…

Think alike :-)

Walking on Geneva airport yesterday, I remembered that I *NEED* a watch, I’ve been going without it for about two years again, and I just keep forgetting to buy me a nice one. I found Body and soul, a self winding watch of good quality (I know someone who has used it for 6 years or so without any problems).
I was so happy with my purchase I couldn’t stop myself from sending an sms to muffin decapitating boy to tell him I finally bought a Swatch… Then the reply came, I expected something along the lines of “great babe”, but instead, I got “Oh nooooooo! That’s what I got you! :-(“. As MDB can sometimes be a bit of a joker, I called him, to judge wither he was kidding or not over the phone. He wasn’t. He got me a pink one.
(This generated style options, so that was good)

When I arrived at his place yesterday evening, we did the customary “here’s your presents”-thing, I got him cheese, more cheese, Swiss flag sweat bands (as a joke for running), an Engadiner nusstorte (my favorite pie in the whole wide world), a big bar of chocolate and a small Swiss Army Knife (so that it’s easily carried in pants pockets for every day use) from Switzerland.
He got me an awesome pink New York (as he had been there for work) t-shirt and… a Swatch, a Pinksea to be exact :-)
It’s a very pretty watch! I know for sure that if they would have carried this model in the shop I was at, I would have bought that :-)
It’s great to have someone thinking about what you want and need, even if you hardly realize it yourself :-)
It’s soooo awesome, I now have two watches to choose from, one more feminine, the other more roughy toughy style! The pink one will go really nice with most of the clothing I made myself :-)
I’m extremely happy with both my watches, and I have no idea which one to wear when, because I like both so much :-)

Mind you, I still wonder why a guy in New York buys Swiss stuff for his chick in Switzerland, but I’m incredibly happy that he did ;-)

  • Apr 6

Life is gooooood!

I’m sitting in a very comfortable kitchen, capuchino maker close by, laptop with Skype to muffin decapitating boy whom I missed dearly as he left for NYC on Wednesday (and I’m only returning from Switzerland on Monday!). On the table is a book, Northern lights, by Philip Pullman. Next to it, a coffee cup, my phone, an iPod and cable, and of course, a laptop.

For some reason, every time I’m over here, I want to stay. Luckily, my uncle gave my grandmother a digital camera yesterday on her birthday. She was asking me to come over again soon and explain it’s mysterious workings to her. My steph father (god bless his heart) replied by telling her that she would have to pay for the ticket to come over then :-) She immediately agreed! Huray!

Today the planning is to probably go to CERN, and afterwards a boat trip on the Rhone with the entire family and a nice big family dinner tonight.
Tomorrow my cousins’ kindergarten is having a Dutch week, so we brought them wooden shoes, dutch flags and stuff like that.
Hopefully I’ll get some time to do some shopping tomorrow. I promissed muffin decapitating boy I would bring him some raclette cheese.

Shit, my youngest cousin (was running a fever yesterday) is apparently going to hospital now, on account of a probable infection. Hmmm, will see about the CERN plans, might stay here… For now, breakfast, shower and we’ll take it from there :-)

  • Mar 31

Blurgh

I wanted to write a post about my great weekend, my finished jeans and my awesome cabdriver Eduardo…
However, nothing came of it, y’all can take a rain check, I’m too busy! ;-)

  • Mar 28

Up selling?

OK, I wanted lip balm, my favorite, Blistex Lip Relief Cream.
So you walk into your standard drug-store, in this case, an Etos and go to the register, where they have a nice little stand with all types of lip cream imaginable to man.
You can’t find yours immediately and ask if they have it in stock.
Next thing you know, the sales lady is being kind enough to tell you that you should get one with a sun-protective shield or something ridiculous.
At this point, me being me, I was getting slightly cranky and told her I was a nerd and I never came outside.
Apparently this didn’t deter her, she refused to answer my question, and kept telling me that it was really bad not to get one that doesn’t shield my lips from the sun.
At this point, I got really annoyed and told her I wanted my favorite, she reluctantly pointed it out to me, notified me again of the fact that the other ones were better and with visible aversion sold me two tubes of the stuff.

Up selling lip balm? How far can we go in this country?
I’m a consumer, but I know perfectly well what is good for me and what isn’t.
Any stick type of lip-balm goes horribly wrong on my lips. Any dryness will get worse and I’m allergic to Vaseline, which is in most of the stupid things.
Did this woman honestly think she was doing me a favor by pointing out to me that I should get another type of lip balm than the one I was specifically asking for, or would she get a commission on such a small purchase?

  • Mar 27

Big plans

Sometimes you have one of those days, where you just suddenly realize what you want to do about something, a bit of inspiration here, a little bit of time there, and before you know it, nothing comes of any of your good plans to do one thing or another and you’re working away on something different…
Garden designToday it was all to do with gardening. I don’t know what set it off, but I’ve been tossing the idea of re-doing my garden around in my head for ages. I couldn’t determine what I wanted though, so it never got any further than just thinking about possibly one day thinking about it some more and what different features I wanted in the garden.
I’ve always knew I like the idea of a cottage garden, but I never knew how to implement that in my relatively small garden (just over six by just over seven meters).
As I was walking Jael, it hit me, the perfect design (I think) incorporating all the elements I wanted in there, while leaving enough space for a terrace a vegetable patch, loads of herbs and a space for the rabbits…
Click on the picture to the left to see a slightly bigger version of the design. I’ll redo the sketch in color, without the errors and in more detail when I get home and re-scan it sometime soon.
Also I’ll make some extra drawings that will show the side views, and not just the lay-out.

  • Mar 27

Archery

Yesterday was the official last night of our archery course.
archery certificate thumbnailI’ll admit that Muffin-Decapitating-Boy missed two more lessons than me because he had to work late , so theoreticallyI had a four hour practise head start. To my great surprise, I didn’t come in last, actually, I came in 5th! (6 points and one “place” higher than M-D-B) out of about 20 contestants…
Some of those had just taken up shooting again after a longer period of time, some of them had done the course like we did, and everyone was shooting with different bows.
Mind you, I had the “easiest” bow, I was using a compound, as opposed to the recurve and bare-bows I was shooting with before…
We’re going to take out a candidate membership for our archery club, Concordia, (Dutch) to see what we like shooting best, after three months, we’ll hopefully be able to buy our own equipment and become full members :-)
I’m still in doubt between shooting any bow that’s out there, as I haven’t had enough experience to tell which one I like yet. Mind you, compound is sooooo easy and comfortable, I think I’ll stick with that, as I don’t have to work so hard :-)

  • Mar 25

Yay!

I like sewing, and I picked it up again recently. Liessa got the brilliant idea to do a sewing course (Dutch), and after that, I really got the virus back.
I’m half way done with a denim dress, only I killed the zipper accidently, so now I have to buy a new one and sew that in (again), after which I think it’s about two hours of work…
I finished a hot pink (non shiny) version of this shirt, and I’m making that one again for my father’s girlfriend in a lovely greenish blue with flowers on it. The flowers are not printed, but sewn on with an extra layer of fabric, so it’s a bit raised.
Furthermore, today I drew patterns for a skirt, trousers and a jacket. (Sorry, no pics of that, I *could* scan the magazine and put the pics online, but I won’t, because I’m lazy :-) )
I’m going to make the jacket twice, once in a silk (with matching skirt) and once in Denim (with matching pants), hopefully I can finish the jacket and pants before my holiday is over, because it would be cool to be able to wear something home made to work when I get back :-)

After those are finished, I’ll be making a skirted suit (perhaps with a slightly longer skirt) and four more dresses, this one in white, with see-through heart fabric over the skirt and in a lovely shimmering pink-purple-grey-ish fabric with a pink and a grey overskirt.
This one I’ll do in a cherry fabric (smaller cherries and more of them than in the picture) and in a black fabric with skulls to compensate for the sweetness of the cherries…

Hopefully we’ll get a good summer, otherwise I’ll have to go to the southern hemisphere for winter, just to be able to wear all of it :-)

  • Mar 24

As good as it gets?

So someone linked me to a speed typing test (also available in Dutch for those who don’t want to have to think about English spelling)

Your score: 363 CPM (that is 73 WPM)

Congratulations! You typed all 56 words correctly!

(CPM is characters per minute and WPM is words per minute)

I must admit, this was with Dutch spelling, when I did the English version, I made two spelling mistakes.
I’m definitely going to try again and to beat my own score, as I’m very competitive with myself ;-)
(Oh, and I used a qwerty keyboard, maybe one day I’ll switch to dvorak, and *really* improve my score :-) )

Please, y’all give it a go and leave your scores in the comments :-)

  • Feb 15

I…

I… don’t blog enough…

Plenty that frustrates me, or excites me, or moves me… But hardly any time to sit down and blog about it…
Next week I’m starting two courses, so I don’t know how much time I’ll have after, but it should be good fun, perhaps all the extra activity will give me something to blog about in the near future.
Otherwise it will be about this weeks big frustrations, the up-selling of lip balm and the attitude some people have towards dogs…

  • Jan 2

72% geek?

72% Geek :-) How’s about you lot?

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