Archive for December, 2010
A very very very fine house
Our house is astonishingly quiet – even the sixty-cycle hum is barely audible. Our house has wood floors in the great room, with just enough scratches already on them that you don’t have to be always worrying. Our house has places to be alone and places to hang out together. Our house has my books […]
the long version
I am REALLY not going to want to go back to the Netherlands and work next Saturday. For one thing, getting here was such a nightmare that I’m worried about the return trip. And it’s been such a nice vacation, with a good mix of quiet time to ourselves, time getting stuff for the house, […]
getting ready (and also, bad holiday music)
Grr. Airline website is not letting me check in, despite the cheery “You can check in now!” email. Liars. Once I got partway into the process, but mostly I haven’t gotten that far. I suppose it doesn’t matter that much, with assigned seating. (I’m never actually convinced that checking in ahead of time provides *any* […]
Challenge-ing and preparing
Holiday Challenge status: 137764 meters down, 62 km to go. I have just checked the record: this will be my 8th time, not 9th as I wrote, to complete the full 200,000 meters. I did my first one in 2001; in 2006 I only did the 100km challenge because of lack of access to a […]
the international shopper
I’ve just realized that today’s outfit is unusually international, even for me. It’s just a sweater over a t-shirt, cords socks, clogs and unobtrusive jewelery, but I acquired the various parts of it in London, Milan, Taipei, Eindhoven, and the US (hard to be more specific on that last, since they were ordered online). And […]
a visit from Sinterklaas
Before I forget, yesterday I did reach 100,000 meters on the Holiday Challenge, so yay! for being half done. And then I went to knitting. Holy craftwork, Batman, we’re not in America any more! My local Stitch’n’Bitch group had our SInterklaas present swap last night and it was unlike anything I’d ever seen. In the […]
Just in time for the last candle of Chanukah….
… comes this year’s Chanukah poem. I guess every writer of any kind has a few themes they return to: mine are the moon, the water, and flames kindled in the dark of winter. (Here are a few older ones.) The First Candle The blanket of winter darkness fell early this year- the world was […]
boxes and more boxes
It has been a Weekend of Packing and (mostly) Unpacking – on Friday all of our stuff from Taiwan got delivered, except of course fort he comparatively few things I bought with me in April. Since our furnished apartment here is much more completely furnished than the one in Taiwan (came with pots, dishes, sheets, […]
… it was a rare thing, fine as a beeswing…
We weren’t too surprised when we got snowed on in Germany over the weekend, but it was a bit surprising to get it here, on Monday. It’s still on the ground, which means we’ve seen more snow before the end of November than we got the whole year we lived here before. There may be […]