Food

Sunshine Day

Leave a Comment

april2-1

Went in to work a little earlier today so I would be free at noon to meet Gert for a movie. We had lunch at Subway and then crossed the street to sit in the sunshine with coffee and cake at TOET. I can definitely live with moments like that, it was an hour well spent. The we crossed the street again to hit the cinema since our showing of The Monuments Men was at 13:30. It was a pretty good, fun, movie. Insofar a World War II movie can be “fun”. I liked the characters and the actors playing the characters. It was also interesting to watch and get a glimpse of what the real guys were doing back then. I missed a good through line. There was no real plot, it felt more like several vignettes that featured the same characters. Not in itself bad, but not really good either. The movie is saved by its casting.
Tonight I tried yoga at the gym. I’m used to Pilates, and figured yoga would be calmer and more zen and stuff. Instead, I died o.0 It’s crazy intensive and much more challenging than Pilates is. Although it did end with a nice couple minutes of meditation.

april2-2Yesterday I finished After Earth, the book of the movie. Now, the movie was really bad, but the book is actually pretty good. It helps it was written by Peter David. This is also what convinced me to take the book when I was over at Kim’s the other week to rummage through her box of books-to-get-rid-of. I’ve read several Star Trek tie-ins that Peter David wrote and I really enjoy those. He’s a good writer. Which was evident throughout the book. Of course he has to follow the script but he really managed to make it his own and work in a lot of extra background info about the world of After Earth that rounded out the story. The book is much better than the movie.

Long Weekend

Leave a Comment

Quiet start of the free Friday. Kim came by later in the morning for tea and book talk/borrowing. In the afternoon it was time for singing class. I’ve been growing frustrated with singing the last few months since I’m on T. I definitely notice vocal changes and it messes with my ability to sing in that I can’t reach what I could before and in the lows it doesn’t do what I want it to do yet.
I finally expressed (some) of this during class. We decided to focus more on excercises and easy stuff to ease the frustration and such. We’ll see how this goes.

Even so, I’m not sure I want to continue with this beyond this year. I like singing very much, and I learn a lot, but I’m just not that invested and I notice I’m loosing my desire to sing. I don’t sing as much freely anymore, and when I do work on stuff for class, I’m so focused on matching the timing and such rather than being in the song. I’ve always liked either singing along with the artist, or doing it by myself without music best anyway. I’m in it for the lyrics mainly 🙂

Saturday morning Mom and I went to Uithuizen for groceries and some other errands. Bought some decorative stuff at the Action and various tasty things. Then we went to the florist to get a piece for my aunt and uncle’s fiftieth anniversary. We’d been invited to the celebratory dinner that evening. I also bought a beautiful fake floral arrangement. Big blue vase with various forms of greenery in the top and some twigs.

march29At the end of the afternoon, the Parents came back to the house to pick me up and we drove to Assen to eat at Yankee Doodle. It was a very fun evening. I hadn’t seen most of my cousins in quite a few years, so it was really nice catching up with them and trying to figure out which kid went with which cousin since they were wee ones (or not even born) when I last saw them. The youngest of the kids nicely had everyone dancing to her tune as most everyone ended up being face painted. Don’t I make a pretty tiger?

Today I slept in and finished the little explosion book I’ve been making of Tessa. I wanted a photo book of her for myself too, ever since I made Mom and Dad the giant ass one I gave them for St. Christmas. But instead of doing another print on demand thing, I decided to make one and settled on the format of an explosion book. This is made from three squares of paper and ends up being this cleverly folded thing. There’s an excellent tutorial in my pinterest pins somewhere. Ah, here. Watched The Little Mermaid and The Emperor’s New Groove while working on it. The Emperor’s New Groove was funnier than I was expecting, good movie.

Scooooooooones

Leave a Comment

Spent last Sunday messing about with my bedroom and the craft room. Moved the sidetable I use as altar space to the craft room to serve as main table. It’s much better for that because it’s large and has drawers on the sides. I turned the shelf unit back on its short side so the other table that was there could be in the corner next to it. It’s gonna take me some days to get all the stuff back into all the cubbies and drawers.

While setting up the new, temporary, altar (I’ll be replacing it with a new chest of drawers soonish) I realised Athena’s been trying to get my attention the last few months. I’m noticing an abundance of owls in my consciousness and also in what I buy. While generally owls are not my thing. Late last year I bought a decorative hanger, owl. I also acquired a candle, shaped like an owl. And recently when I was in the city I bought a set of those can’t see, can’t hear, can’t speak statuettes in the form of owls. And normally I never would have bought that, but now it just spoke to me. So, you got me, lady, I’m here 🙂 Let’s see what this brings in the future. I gave her a space on my altar to begin with.

Later in the afternoon, Nienke and I did a High Tea. We made some brownies, muffins and scones, and added extra chocolate and fudge and cake and chocolate chip cookies. And tea, much tea. And jam and whipped cream. Nommmmmm. We ended up with so many left over that we brought my parents a box of tasty as well. Plus some of the soup I had made the day before.

1798171_10152001128588155_680996025_n

Monday I went to the gym, with Kim, sort of. We agreed to meet there at the same time, and then mainly did our own thing. Chatting whenever we ended up on machines next to each other. Fun thing to do, plus it gives just that extra bit of pressure and motivation while still doing your own thing.

I heard from Webcare, I’m through to the next round, which means I get to come in for an interview this Tuesday. Exciting!

Today I went over to Kim’s for tea and to check out her box of books destined for the thrift store. Had a great time chatting about everything and meeting her cats. And I came home with a rather large bag of new mind-food 😀

Grand Adventures

Leave a Comment

Had a check-up at the hopsital this morning to test hormone levels and such. Check up was a breeze. Bit of small talk with the doctor about how I was (splendid!) and did I have any questions (nope). Then it was on to the Needle Folk to take a couple vials of blood. Results in two weeks.

Then went to the mall with mom. Bought a book about Groningen between 1780 and 1850. Then we picked up Nienke after her exam and headed for the Hema for breakfast. Then we went to Ikea to look for new sofas.

We sat on many and finally decided to go for Ektorp after all. I decided we should get two three-seaters, since our living room is so huge, as well as the comfy chair that goes with it. I also bought a night stand and a chest of drawers for my socks and stuff like that.

With that being done, we headed for the check out and made an appointment for delivery of all the stuff. We got lucky, they could come and deliver the next morning! Afterwards we headed back home. I took a little nap and then got ready for the team outing. We went for dinner at Pappa Joe, then bowling. I had a great time, and even managed a couple strikes and spares. After our time was up, we headed out to go drink some more. I tagged along, but since that is really not my thing, I left pretty soon after together with two other colleagues. Halfway to the station I realised… I had no key. Nienke had a key. I contemplated going back, but figured I could stop by the Parent’s place and get their key, it wasn’t that late. So I went on towards home, and stopped at the Parents. Where I spent 40 minutes ringing the bell and calling them before mom woke up… She hadn’t heard anything. It turned out Dad had, but thought it was the phone and doorbell of the neighbours……….

After all that time I was rather pissed and freezing so I took the key and went along home to go to bed. Only to get up fairly early the next day because…

Sofa delivery day!

ikea1

That is indeed ten packages. The  two big ones are the sofas, the smaller big one is the chair. The three on top are the sofa and chair covers. The long one on the floor is Nienke’s new Billy and the two flat ones below that, the doors for said Billy. Finally, the bigger flat one below the doors is my chest with drawers. Of course I know that Ikea is king of modular furniture and that this would also apply to sofas. But somehow I hadn’t actually thought of the fact that I would be getting lots of boxes instead of ready furniture 😀

Nienke hadn’t come home until the early morning and was still very hung over when the sofas came. So I just left her be and started building, while occasionally sending her a photo. I started with the chair, on the premise that it’s the smallest piece so probably the easiest. And that it was, indeed. The back and the seating are attached so they just folded open. Then it was only a matter of putting some screws in to attach the arms to the frame and the feet to the bottom. Then all it needed was its cover, and done. Monkey approved 😀

ikea2 ikea3

The sofas had the same process, but it took a little longer because of size. Monkey approved of this, also.

ikea4

ikea5

ikea6

We stuffed the old sofas in the garage and then I spent the rest of the evening building the chest of drawers while re-watching Star Trek: Into Darkness. Then today I skipped Pilates, and built the night stand after which I hit relax mode for the rest of the day to finish Last of the Guardians.

Hnnnnngh…

Leave a Comment

I am so completely dead. Went to the gym for the first time on Monday, and O. M. G… I was going for the half hour of Vario Sport, wherein you do something else every week. This first week of the new season it was mainly twenty thousand forms of hopping about. After doing that, I felt fairly good. And so I was easily convinced to stick around for the half hour of Tabata that follows on it directly. Tabata turned out to be a high intensity interval training where we did all kinds of exercises rapidly for about thirty seconds and then another and then another and another and a 30 second break and again a series of the same exercises. Combined this killed me sooooo dead.

I made it home afterward, fell down on the sofas and refused to get up until it was time for bed. Which was a bad idea in itself because…
The next day I could barely walk, my calves hurt sooooo bad 😀

After work I made a cheesecake for the team, from scratch, just like with Christmas dinner. Started a bit too late though, it was after midnight when I took the cake out of the oven… So late, that I didn’t get around to putting up the raspberry topping until the next morning before work.

After that it was quite the adventure to get the cake in the bike crate, it only just fit. It survived the bumps on the way to the train station as well as the ride to the city. Left the cake with the team leader for handing out during the daily meeting. At that point I was gone, though.

I had to grab the train back home right after finishing at one, to make it in time for the appointment for my second T shot. It went well, I tried to keep the leg even more relaxed than I did with the other for the first shot in the hope that this would be less painful and for a shorter time. I think it worked, as I only felt it for a day or two. The calves, though… Man, they’re still driving me nuts.

Also on Wednesday, my shiny, shiny iPad Air arrived. I went to check on my old iTunes account and all my old apps are still there. And, joy of all joys, all my progress in Magic Piano is still there as well as my more than 160 songs. I did spend some money on that back when I still had an iPhone, so nice to know it’s all still here.

During singing on Saturday I noticed some first subtle changes in my voice. It’s starting to get a bit scratchy a bit sooner. And then it didn’t help I was doing How You Remind Me 😀 Am very curious to see how this develops.

The rest of the day I dumped shit in the attic and I worked on the carpeting for the front hallway. Also had a nice evening with some friends coming over.

Today I did go to Pilates (I skipped body pump on Thursday) and that was great fun. I always liked Pilates back in Leicester, so I’m glad I went here, too. Spent the afternoon in relaxation watching Sherlock again as well as my new blu ray of Les Misérables. I love that movie <3

Blog About Me [21/52] Five Favourite Foods

Leave a Comment

Oh, I love food very much. It’s the ultimate sense experience. You see all the different colours and shapes, you smell the things, both individual items as well as their mixtures when cooking, and then, as you pick it up to eat you feel the texture! Ideally with your fingers first and then with your mouth. And as you eat, you hear the sounds the foods make as you break and cut it into pieces and eat it.

My favourites are many, but I hold the following things especially in the highest regard.

In fruits: Strawberries, Raspberries and Blackberries. Sweet with a sour tinge and the most intriguing textures. The outside seeds on the strawberries, the fuzzy hair on raspberries, the bulbousness of blackberries. Delicious!

In meat: Chicken. Especially a juicy grilled chicken fillet or breast with a lovely marinade, nom nom nom.

In vegetables: Spring and Red Onions. I like onions in general, but the tastes of these two jump out. Red onion has that spicy flavour I like and spring onion is so versatile and gentle.

In dairy: Goat Cheese and Aged Cheddar (chunks, not slices). Goat cheese is especially good with honey. I love how it breaks apart so easily in chunks and how salty it is. And when you then mix that with honey, mmm! And Cheddar just has a very special taste, and it breaks so easily.

In breads: Croissants and Toast. Croissants smell delicious and are so fluffy and light. I love them both as is or with a sweet (jam) or savoury (ham ‘n cheese) filling. Toast smells delicious in a different way and has the most satisfying crunch. And the same deliciousness with sweet and savoury toppings, especially when it’s still warm and the cheese melts.

I also love other things like Lemon Cheesecake or chocolate-caramel toffees, but since I’m limited to five and I already cheated by turning it into five categories…

Blog About Me [11/52] Some of My Favourite Things

Leave a Comment

I love many things. And my favourite things change often. However, have here a few of my enduring favourite things, and a few current favourite things (that might end up being enduring favourites 😀 )

Books

There is nothing material that I love more than books. Books are my friends, my escape, my dreams, my refuge, my calm in the storm and my storm in the calm. Without books, I cannot be.

Words

Not actually material, but words are what shapes my world. I love many other forms of expression, colours, music, but words are my preferred form and through them, I am.

Texture

I’m a very tactile person. I always have this need to touch things, to experience them, and in that, few things delight me more than all the different textures of the world. I marvel how two things that are basically the same, can feel so different. How my one cat has a more coarse feeling fur and the other feels silky smooth. How minor things can completely change how something feels. One stroke of paint on a canvas can feel completely different, even though made with the same brush and the same paint. But the paint may be slightly thicker, or it might be in a slightly different direction.

Postcards

On to slightly more mundane things. I love postcards. Both to keep and look at, or frame and hang, and to send to people. They’re the perfect size to let someone know you’re thinking of them, and in choosing which card to send, you give thought to the person and who they are. I always try my best to find cards that really fit a person. I have a small pile of cards that I particularly love. Once moved, I will be able to hang these so I can look at them more

Hoodies

I love to take my bigger hoodie and put it on, especially when it’s slightly colder, and to just let myself disappear in it. Hoodies are warm, and comfortable and protective. They’re the embodiment of hugs.

Cheesecake

This is the pinnacle of deliciousness 🙂

LZW12

Leave a Comment

Oops, turns out I put this post on ‘save draft’ instead of ‘publish’, so pretend it’s Thursday as you read it 😀

Yesterday I went to the Libelle Summer Week with The Mom one of her friends and a friend of the friend. We went last year as well, and that was fun so when Mom asked if I wanted to go again this year I said ‘sure!’.

The actual content of the gigantic fair that it basically is, is not of that much interest to me, but it’s always nice to hang out with Mom. Plus I like her friend a lot too (the friend of the friend was new, and approved 😀 ).

We went with an organised bus trip so we wouldn’t have to think about parking and all such things, so we had to be at the departure point quite early. We lucked out with the driver, he managed to avoid all the traffic jams by taking shortcuts and smaller roads to go around them, and ended up being one of the first buses to arrive.

We followed the same kind of pattern we had going last year, where the ladies go all around and I function as sheep herder to keep them somewhat together and roughly going in the right direction. The layout was better this year: instead of several square paths with connector lanes they now had one giant rectangle path with little squares added here and there to sit down and rest or eat/drink something. This meant we could just follow the road and we’d end up at our starting point eventually.

Right from the start we focused on the stands that offered samples (most of them food/drink related), which was much fun. We’d go from one tasting and start walking again and one of us would spot another sample area to head for. In between we bought some minor things, did much chatting and occasionally paused to sit down and have a drink.

I bought sausages, two little stone cats and a set of water colour postcards and bookmarks of horses and cows. I also collected a load of brochures and little pamphlets for museums and other touristy things around the country. I’m gonna spend some time this weekend to see if there’s anything I wanna go to this summer.

Unlike last year, we managed to do a full round and see all the stuff there. We even had about 45 minutes left before we had to head back to the bus so we sat down some more for a last drink and chat. Around four we started to  make our way back to the bus so we would be there in time for its departure at 16:45 sharp. It wouldn’t do to be left behind after all 😀

 

The theme this year was China Town, so everything was dressed up with Chinese things, including the welcome girls 😀

 

There was a dragon and the main square had this huge decorated tree in it for people to sit under and around.

 

Mom and the ladies.

And along the way we came across this ‘Beautiful Man’, yours for only €14,95.

 

100 Things That Make Me Happy [1/10]

Leave a Comment

What with the dour weather today, here’s the first installment of my 100 Things blog thing.

1. Sitting at the edge of a body of water, with the sun on my shoulders and my feet dangling in the water.

I was thinking about recent years the other day and this one summer day popped into my head. I wasn’t sure when it was, but I remembered myself and Eva and Nienke, sitting along the canal, our feet in the water, enjoying the sun. I knew I had pictures of this, I remember them, too. Unfortunately, twenty minutes of going through my photo folders later, I still haven’t found those. I do have, however, unearthed a video of that day. Just a short 30 second clip of the three of us. I think we’re discussing summer clothes.

2. The smell of freshly mowed grass.

I love living around a big field of grass. Every time the county’s gardening people show up to mow it I detest them for it since they also come early and use a little tractor type mower that makes a lot of noise and wakes me up. But the smell afterwards more than makes up for it 🙂

3. My cats.

Monkey’s a cat with a definite attitude, but at the same time he can be such a love bug. Tonight he spent a few hours sleeping on my lap, clearly showing the trust he has in me. He was so far gone in sleep he even turned over and showed me his pretty belly, which he almost never does.

Milo makes me smile with with his playing (something Monkey never really does). I love how he enthusiastically plays soccer with various cat toys until he bats it under something where he can’t get at it so he sits down and looks at it with this puzzled expression until I grab the toy for him.  And his high pitched squeeky voice always makes me chuckle. Miew!

4. Lying comfortably outside, in the grass, with my eyes closed, in the spring sun, with just a touch of lukewarm wind.

Related to the first point, there’s just something so relaxing, and safe, about lying there and letting spring invade my senses.

5. Books.

I can’t live without books. It’s that simple. They feed my mind, my imagination, my dreams, my ambitions. They are wings and an anchor, a window and a door, friend and family. They help me make sense of the world, and they allow me to escape; whether it’s a one off that I’ll read once and might have forgotten a year later or an instant classic to me that will stick with me forever.

6. Waking up and realising you don’t have to go anywhere or do anything, you can just lie there and BE.

I love being able to enjoy the quiet and avoid the world for a while in the morning. Especially when it’s early enough that the sun is still coming up. You can hear (and see) the world wake up.

7. Floating in water.

Best mediation style, ever. One of my dreams is to have a house with a small pool (or a giant ass bathtub) that I can float in. It just has to be big enough that I don’t touch the edges and I’ll be perfectly happy.

8. The smell of spiced meat cooking.

I love most foods during cooking, but there’s just something about the combination of meat and herbs/spices together as they cook (or better yet, roast). If they made air freshener in this smell, I’d buy it 😀

9. Cake.

I looooove cake. Of all the more sweet desserts and treats, cake is by far my favourite. Especially layer cakes with cream or whatnot in between. Some of my favourites are Schwarzwalder kirsch cake, nougatine meringue cake, lemon cheesecake or basic cheesecake with strawberry topping.

10. Being taken care of by my mom when I’m sick.

Obviously the being sick part itself does not make me happy, in fact in tends to piss me off. However, whenever I’m really sick, I prefer to hang out at the parent’s place because just being around Mom while she does her normal things and such takes me back to childhood and makes me feel better much faster.

Off to the Theater: C3

1 Comment

A few weeks ago Mom saw a review in the paper of a show by C3, called ‘Wil je in ons groepje?’ (Do you wanna be in our group). She mentioned it to me and indicated she’d like to see it. They were doing one show near here, and that was exactly on her birthday. So I asked her, for confirmation, if she wanted to go, and got us tickets.

Since I did have to work before hand, and the show didn’t start until 20:15, we decided to go out to eat as well. For ease, we decided upon the restaurant at the theater.

So, last night was the night. Mom picked me up at work, and we drove the short distance to the Oosterpoort theater. After parking we headed inside. We were a bit early for our reservation, but we could get seated early. After getting drinks served, the waiter discussed the menu with us. Because Cristina Branco was also performing at the Oosterpoort yesterday, they were having a Portuguese menu and were there any dietary things we needed. We both let him know that the starter, a fish soup, was not something we would like. Fortunately, the vegetarian option sounded great so we opted for that.

Shortly after, the starter was served, a truly delicious courgette soup with cheese and cream.  The main course was a skewer with chicken, beef and pork served with roasted veggies, skin-baked potato and salad (nom nom nom!). While we were eating, I decided to check our tickets to see which of the halls we had to be. That’s when I realised something. We were in the wrong theater…

Instead of the show being at the Oosterpoort, it was at the Stadschouwburg, the theater they’re connected with. We had a good laugh about it, what else can you do. I’d had the tickets for a few weeks already but never really bothered to read them properly, and we’d only seen mentions of Oosterpoort near the review so we totally missed it.

Fortunately our dessert (melon slices with orange flavoured ice cream and a vanilla pastry with cream) arrived shortly so that, combined with our arriving early to begin with, gave  us enough time to walk to the Stadschouwburg. We arrived there with about twenty minutes to spare. Had we been on time for dinner, we’d have been late for the show 😀

The show itself was quite good. C3  is a a cabaret/comedy group consisting of Mike Boddé, Onno Innemee and, this theater season, Jelka van Houten. They sang songs, some more comedic in nature, some more serious. It started off with Jelka singing a love song about New York. Not because New York is that great, but because the person she loves comes from New York. Onno sang a great comedic ‘cuntry’ song about being a cowboy. Halfway through the song it became clear through the lyrics that instead of being a real cowboy singing, it was a boy singing about playing cowboy and the patrons of the local cafe getting quite sick of his repeated Hyippi-ya-yays.

Mike played the piano throughout the evening (he is absolutely great at that) to accompany the songs. At some point Jelka sang a lovely song about not being able to sleep and begging Mr. Goldberg to help her. This led to Mike explaining to her the story behind it, and how it had led to this beautiful piece of music, the Goldberg Variations. In short: there was this count who had trouble sleeping so he went to Johann Sebastian Bach and asked him to compose him some music that he could have played by his court harpsichord (klavecimbel) player, Mr. Goldberg.

Mike then elaborated that the Goldberg Variations are basically the hardest thing to play for a pianist, and that he could not play it all. However, he knew the basic chord structure, so he could make his own Variations. Which he then did: Goldberg à la blues, Goldberg à la Mozart, Goldberg à la Chopin… It was very awesome.

He also dit a dramatic reading about a nice smelling man in a language built of archaic words, screwed around current words and screwed around translations of english words. The way in which he read this (as if he were preaching) and the speed with which he could speak all those out of the ordinary words is a total turn-on for me (I looooove words and language).

Too bad there’s no videos of this, or his Goldberg Variations online, even to just show a hint. Mike Boddé is brilliant with a piano and words.

There were also sketches. This was for me a much more mixed bag. I did not much care for most of them. I just found them unfunny and I had trouble finding the through line of the show and I do like me a through line. Random assortments of things without a discernible connection throw me off, especially when a show’s description makes me believe there is supposed to be a through line.

After the show, we quickly headed back to the car and went home for today was an early start. We had a great night.