Nienke

To the Sixties and Back

Leave a Comment

Monday I saw Man from U.N.C.L.E. with Gert. It’s a fantastic movie, I love it 😀 It’s campy, and a glorious throwback to the sixties. In terms of plotting and general vibe it reminds me some of Kingsman, but then with Americans and in the past. It earned itself an immediate spot on my want-on-disc list.

After this we went straight on to The King’s Garden (aka A Little Chaos). This is a period film about the gardens of Versailles. It features Kate Winslet as a female landscape artist who gets hired to design and build a part of the gardens. She has to face her own insecurities, contempt and sabotage by other male landscapers and navigate the budding romance with the head landscape artist who happens to be married. It’s a cute film, with very good locations and a very nice Alan Rickman as King Louis.

Wednesday it was time to see The Fantastic Four with Nienke. It’s a fairly bland movie. I liked that the way they got their powers was different but other than that… I like the 2005 movie better and that one isn’t good either.

20150828_192052Today was market day in town so I took a gander with Mom. Bought some jeans on sale for €5, which was a steal. It’s a nice model with some flare around the ankles and a three-button close instead of a zipper. I also got this cute, light blue, stoneware pitcher. It’ll look nice with some flowers in the spring, or as a general decoration in the bathroom once I have adequate furnishings there.

At the end of the afternoon, Eva and Jarig came by with Feije. We briefly strolled around the market some more and then headed to La Sicilia for dinner.  We ended the day with a quick cup of tea at home before they left for The Farm.

This Sunday should be fun as well, it’s my cousin’s baby shower 🙂

It’s On!

Leave a Comment

20150810_174854The past few days have been exhausting, but so worth it.

I got the keys to the new house five days ago. I had taken that day off work so right after that we got the show on the road. My Mom started cleaning, and then shortly after Joran arrived to help move. We’d borrowed a little handcart from Eva so we could go back-and-forth across the hundred or so yards between the old and the new house. Joran and I spent the day moving big cabinets and related stuff to the new house with the handcart. At the end of the day, we had another barbecue with the left over meat from Nienke’s birthday.

Over the next few days we just moved things whenever we could. Me around my work hours, Nienke throughout the day. It’s damned convenient she’s home right now 🙂

And whenever we’re not moving things over there, we’re moving things in the old house from upstairs to downstairs.

20150811_112700 20150812_222146

20150812_222151

Today, the 15th, was the big moving day. My aunt and uncle came to help, along with their big cart and toolbox. We moved even more big stuff, including the sofa’s and beds. Tonight is the first night we’re sleeping at the new place!

20150815_164512

Paper Towns, Little Prince, Ant Man

Leave a Comment

Gert and I planned to go see Paper Towns so I wanted to read the book before hand. I did the same with The Fault in Our Stars so figured I’d continue the practice. I really enjoyed the book, it was fun, a bit weird sometimes, and still felt realistic.

Wednesday afternoon was the day we planned for movies. We started with The Little Prince. This was a very sweet movie, but I was still a bit disappointed. I was expecting something a little closer to the book. Instead it was a new story where an eccentric old man meets his new neighbour: a serious, studious little girl. As the summer vacation progresses, she spends more time with the old man and he tells her stories of his travels. In those travels he met the Little Prince. Now, he wants to go back out and find him. So he’s building a plane in his backyard to do so and then weird adventures happen.

20150805_160627Paper Towns was next, but we had some time to kill in between. So we ended up on the market square and enjoyed the sun before heading back to the cinema. Paper Towns was a pretty good movie. The ending didn’t match the book, which is a shame. I felt it lost some of its impact this way.

Thursday I hit the cinema again, this time with Nienke. We went to see Ant-Man, which is a great movie. Not quite up to Guardians of the Galaxy standard, but I had a lot of fun watching this.

Afterwards, we decided on a whim to do another movie and headed for a re-watch of Jurassic World. ‘t Was a great night 😀

High Tea

Leave a Comment

IMG-20150725-WA0020

Today was a very good day 🙂 Nienke and I went for a High Tea at the cafe/gift shop in town. The weather was not great, but okay enough to sit outside. We each got a small tea pot and cup with our chosen flavour of tea. Then a stand with delicious goodies was brought out. Unfortunately, there were quite a few wasps nearby who also liked our jam. After being accosted long enough, we withdrew to an inside seat. There, free from black-and-yellow menace, we enjoyed the rest of the tasties 😀

20150724_144030 20150724_144036

20150724_144133 20150724_150216

20150724_160044 20150724_161240

Minions and Music

Leave a Comment

Minions snack pack

Bananaaaaaaaaaa! Thursday I went to see the Minions movie with Ingrid and Nienke. I love Minions 🙂 And to keep in the spirit of things I had a kid’s snack pack to go with it. Tiny packet of popcorn, tiny packet of candy, a capri sun and a tiny toy.

Friday, Gert and I went to the Oosterpoort. A little while ago Gert showed me an announcement for a free concert at the Oosterpoort. It was a graduation performance for the National Master Orchestra Conducting. The two people graduating each conducted two classical pieces played by the North Netherlands Orchestra.

NNO Master ConductingThe first candidate was Huba HollĂłköi and he conducted Bela Bartok’s first violin concerto and Tchaikovsky’s Romeo & Juliet fantasy overture. Then, after the break, Konradin Herzog conducted Dutilleux’s Sur le mĂȘme accord for solo violin and orchestra and Schumann’s Symphony no. 4.

The pieces were really good, but I preferred the works chosen by Herzog.

Food Coma

Leave a Comment

Almost no words needed.  Friday I went out with a bunch of colleagues to this all-you-can-eat-style Japanese restaurant. Lots of sushi, but also other Japanese food. I don’t like fish, so I never really had sushi. However, they also had sushi with meat or veggies so I had some of that along with regular meat and such. It was fantastic, I wanna go again. I’ll let the images do the talking.

20150626_184113

20150626_190657

20150626_195949

20150626_200337

20150626_195731

20150626_203146

20150626_203527

Dinosaurs, Immortality, Food and Quakes, Oh My

Leave a Comment

jwI love my cinema subscription, three movies in the last two days 🙂

Tuesday, Nienke and I went to see Jurassic World. It was an awesome movie! Chris Pratt is great, the more I see him, the more I love him. I knew him from Everwood, and he was good there but after that I didn’t really see him in anything. I understand he was in Parks and Recreation, but I don’t watch that. So seeing him in Guardians earlier this year was a very pleasant surprise. And now with Jurassic he just reaffirms how much of a joy it is to watch him play.

The movie itself was fairly similar, plot-wise, to the original Jurassic Park. It was a very decent film. Not many surprises, but great fun and nice nods to the original.

aoaYesterday, I met up with Gert after work. Our first movie was Age of Adaline. I’d seen trailers and the combination of immortality, the decor and the fact that the other main part was played by Dutch actor Michiel Huisman triggered my interest. Unfortunately, the movie didn’t quite live up to my expectation. The pacing felt off and the interaction between Adaline and Ellis was awkward at times. More awkward than the story called for. Separately I liked both of Blake Lively and Michiel’s performances and I love the visuals and decor. Harrison Ford was a pleasant surprise as Ellis’ father.

After Adaline we had quite some time left before our planned second movie, so we went out for dinner. Strolling around the city we settled on Hemingway’s for Cuban inspired tapas. It was glorious and it was much. So much even that I ended up taking a bread home.

20150624_193908 20150624_202701

The second movie was San Andreas, and this one exceeded my expectations. I had seen trailers of this also, and was going for two hours of random disaster and The Rock saving the day. That’s exactly what happened, but there was also a plot that wasn’t completely ridiculous and that sort of coherently pulled the movie together.

sa

Staycation

Leave a Comment

9533378As of a few days ago, I have a holiday 😀 Ten relaxing days off, no work, no plans, no pressure, just chill and have fun.

I celebrated the start of the holiday by finishing my current book, Hounded, by Kevin Hearne. It’s the first book in a urban supernatural fantasy series called the Iron Druid Chronicles. The main character is an immortal, 2000 year old Druid who has imbued himself with the essence of Iron so as to better fight of faeries. He’s being hounded by various Celtic deities who either want to kill him or help him (although mainly for their own good). Throw in his vampire and werewolf lawyers, his occult/magic shop and him being able to talk with his dog and you have all the ingredients I like. Because of this, I expected to like the book, and I did. In fact, I love it. I’m looking forward to getting the other parts and reading more about the adventures of Atticus.

10429349_10153032689903155_5508640791118138324_nYesterday I went to see Mad Max: Fury Road with Jasper and Nienke. It was a glorious movie! Very little plot, but after seeing the trailer a few times,  I was prepared for this and totally pumped to see it. All I expected was two hours of racing, chasing, fighting and sheer ridiculousness, and that is exactly what I got and I wanna see it again.

17332969Today I finished another book, The 100, by Kass Morgan. I was intrigued by the premise of the book: Earth is uninhabited after a global ecological crisis. The survivors have lived in a trio of generation ships in orbit waiting for Earth to become habitable again. When the clock starts ticking, 100 juvenile delinquents are, instead of killed, dropped on the planet as test subjects to see if it is safe. This also ticks a bunch of my boxes: young adult, sci-fi, dystopia; but I found the execution a bit lacking. I’m missing substance. I liked the flashbacks that showed what life on the ships is like for the various social classes, but overall it felt very light, and not enough time was spent furthering the plot.

Since this is the first in a series, I expect this to pick up in later parts, but I’m not in any hurry to get them. I am curious, though, of the TV series made of it so I will be watching that sometime.

Off Pitch and an Irishless Coffee

Leave a Comment

Monday after work I had a movie date with Ingrid and Nienke. Getting off work I headed for the cinema where Ingrid was already waiting. Nienke, who came by bus, showed up a little while later. First we went into the cinema to get Nienke registered for an Unlimited card, and then we got our tickets. Since we had more than enough time left before the movie, we then sauntered up to Subway for dinner.

Afterwards we went back for the movie, which was Pitch Perfect 2. I had high hopes for the film, since I really like part one. Part two had a lot of good things, but I missed spark for about two-thirds or so of the movie. I’ll probably watch it again if it’s ever on TV or something, but it’s not a favourite.

Coming out of the theater we had some time left before our bus would go, so we decided to have a drink. At first we decided on a coffee place further up from the cinema, but it was closed 🙁 So we settled on a Spanish themed cafĂ©-restaurant called Cerveseria Catalana. With the others going for some beer and wine, I chose an Irish Coffee. I always like that. Too bad, though, there was decisively little Irish in that coffee. Kind of a shame, considering the price…

While we were enjoying our drinks, we figured it was a good idea to take a later bus and sit and chat some more. So that’s what we did 🙂