Family & Friends
Had a busy week with lots of family and friend interaction which is great as it makes me feel I do have a social life.
Wednesday I went to the museum and the movies with Nienke. We only had about an hour to spend in the museum but I couldn’t postpone it as the exhibition I wanted to see was only there until April 9. It was an exhibition of things found by famous Dutch archaeologist Van Giffen, who excavated numerous sites in the province.
The exhibition was great, it had all kinds of things ranging from combs, fibulae and beads to pottery, weapons and skeletal remains. Highpoint of it all was a grave containing skeletons of two horses and a dog. I’ve seen pictures of this before and when I saw the actual find was there (they lifted the entire thing with soil and all to preserve it) I spend quite some time watching it.
When we were done with the museum, it was a quarter past four; and this was also the time the movie was about to start so we quickly exited the museum and hurried to the cinema. Once there, the trailers and previews had started but the main hadn’t so we could take time to find a seat. And we needed to take time as the lights were already out and we couldn’t see shite.
The movie, Ice Age 2, was great! Amazing graphics and a good story too. In part one, Sid, Manny and Diego return a human baby to its parents. In this part, the three, together with a heap of other animals, all live together in a deep valley. Lately, however, they animals noticed it’s getting warmer. And when they realise that the walls of their valley, which are made of ice, are about to break, a mass exodus to a high point begins.
Besides this, relatively simple, main story, runs a love story based in existential anxiety. Manny, being the only mammoth in the herd, gets confronted with the fact that he may be the last mammoth left. Just when he himself begins to deal with that, he meets another mammoth, Ellie. Love ensues you’ll guess, and it does but not without it’s troubles. You see, Ellie was not raised by her mammoth parents, instead, she was raised by a possum family and consequently thinks she is a possum. It takes a lot of talking, and some misunderstandings, before Ellie realises she is a mammoth and were the two of them stand in a relationship.
Diego, a fierce sabre tooth tiger, also gets a nice storyline where he needs to overcome his fear of water which Sid helps him with. Sid is his usually chippy self with some issues regarding respect, of him to be exact.
After the movie, we headed to a pizza place to grab something to eat and then it was time for Nienke to go and meet her classmates and do a survey/research thingy and for me to go back home.
Thursday, I had invited my parents over for dinner. They arrived around five and I started cooking about an hour later. I made spareribs, baked potatoes and a nice fresh salad containing lettuce, beets, sweet pickles, mango, pine nuts and a dressing made of, among other things, lemon juice, honey and oregano. My dad’s not a salad man however, so I made extra spareribs and potatoes as I knew he’d want nothing besides that. 😀 And I was right, he took one look in the salad bowl and ignored it for the rest of the meal.
After dinner, mom helped me with the dishes and they left around seven thirty as I had an aunt and uncle of mine come over for coffee a bit later. They came around eight and we had a good time, as proven by the fact that they stayed until ten thirty.
On Friday, during the day I had nothing pressing to do but in the evening I went to see a concert by Rapalje together with a group of friends. Ingrid picked me up around eight after which we drove to Warffum to pick up Eva, Judith and Mellien. We then continued to Sauwerd where Rapalje would play.
The concert itself was great, as Rapalje always is (I’ve seen them before). The audience however, not so much so. I think the people either weren’t really expecting this, or folks from Sauwerd are really boring.
It began with the fact that the room was by no means full. And most people were somewhere in the back half of the room leaving a three, four meter gap between the public and the stage. When we came in however, we took up a spot close to the stage and to the side so we could lean to the wall a bit.
Second, Rapalje does Celtic/Irish/Scottish traditionals with weird instruments (gitouki, teachestbass etc…) and dressed in medieval style kilts and such and it’s very danceable music. But the people there didn’t move a muscle. My friends danced (I didn’t, I’m not much of a dancer and not at all when wearing pants) and later a few other people joined them but it was maybe a handful and not so much as I’m used to with Rapalje.
I was a bit disappointed though that David Myles wasn’t there. David often accompanies them and he plays the Higland Pipes. So I was really looking forward to seeing him play as I’ve just begun learning how to play the Highland Pipes in December. But alas, he wasn’t there so that’ll have to wait until Castlefest. Rapalje will be there and I don’t doubt David will be there as well. I’m hoping to have my picture taken with him, that’d be so cool.
Well, that was about it. I’ve burdened your eyes enough now for the time being. Go and relax, have a drink.
