Mijn Man Martijn

Today I shall talk about the mysterious Martijn that I speak about so often (I know he's not REALLY mysterious but just play along, it's M week).  He's rather modest and gets embarassed if I brag too much about how marvelous he is, so I'll try to keep my mushy comments to a minimum!

Every now and then I get a comment or e-mail asking what sort of name Martijn is and how you're supposed to pronounce it.  It's a name Dutch people use to make non-native Dutch speakers feel like idiots.  Okay, that isn't entirely true, but unless you are Dutch or have had a tongue transplant from a Dutch person, you are more than likely going to have problems saying my husband's name.  I'm lucky that there wasn't a question on the marriage license application that said "Can you actually pronounce your soon-to-be-spouses name properly?"  It has taken years of practice and I still say it wrong half the time.  There is no English equivalent to how the "ij" is pronounced so I am going to let you listen to this nifty mp3 file of how Martijn says his name and his online nickname which is "Tijntje."  This is an older file and I think he has a far less pronounced Dutch accent when he speaks English now that I've been corrupting him with my American speech for the past 3 years!  Go ahead and click the "play" arrow on the embedded player below (if you're reading this in a reader you'll need to click through to the actual post... sorry). 

Moving on... Martijn is a rather musical fellow.  He plays the bass.  He can play the piano too but he'll usually tell you he can't do it well because he's too out of practice. 

His first car was a Subaru Mini Jumbo which he lovingly referred to as the "dinky toy."  If my legs weren't long to the point of being ridiculous we might still have that car!

I made him a new bathrobe a couple of years ago and here's him modeling it for all to see. 

He and Mr. Jummy are good mates.  Mr Jummy is kinda naughty sometimes but I think he learned all of his tricks from Martijn.

At work, he and his co-workers made an M&M sorting machine so here he is busy doing market research for his project.

Over the past few years we've had many misadventures.

There is a miniature Dutch city called Madurodam.  Here's Martijn in Madurodam.

Somewhere in Utah (I THINK Vernal) Martijn had a run in with a mammoth. 

Of course, living in The Netherlands, we've been to many mills.  You see lots of photos of the outside, but how many do you see of the inside?

I am hopeful that I din't manage to mortify mijn man (English: my husband) too much with this post! 

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I'm participating in Mrs. Matlock's Alphabe-Thursday! Click the link below to see what other marvelous magical things people have posted about.