Friday Fragments- July 29, 2011

It's time again for Friday Fragments! I don't feel like I did very much this week but let's see what I can come up with to tell you about!


After completing my goal of a 30km bike ride I decided I would set my next goal a little higher... and bike to Belgium!

This may be slightly less impressive than it sounds because I live within sneezing distance of the border but I was still impressed with myself for doing it.

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I came home from my bum-numbing ride and bought a new bike saddle with a little stubby nose. I had to order it online because the only one in that style that I could find locally was a gel seat and I decided "gel" is slang for "you're gonna regret buying this seat if you take any rides longer than 10km."

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I'm going to a tapas party tomorrow hosted by two of my lovely friends here. I am bringing teeny one-bite cranberry cream cheese muffins and some phyllo pastry with cheese and ham rolls. I am excited to see what other people bring.

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There is some really unclever person who thinks that my e-mail address actually belongs to them. I know it's not stuff I've signed up for because it's a very slight variation on the address that I actually use (periods on Gmail addresses can be omitted or extra ones added and the e-mail all goes the same place). I get weird e-mails from family members that I know I am not related to! Every now and then I get bombarded with password recovery e-mails at my secondary e-mail address while she tries to retrieve "her" password. I get bank statement notifications and I know what's on her Netflix queue. Today she signed up for match.com and part of me wants to do evil horrible things to her profile. Honestly, wouldn't you start to wonder why you couldn't ever log into your e-mail and why you never got the e-mails you thought you signed up for?

I don't really know what to do other than shake my head in wonderment and keep deleting the e-mails.

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I'm so mad. I've been wearing my cute hat that I fancied up and it's been a little rainy and I've been sweaty so it's gotten damp. The darn button on the top is a fabric covered METAL button that's rusting. So now my pretty white hat is all marred up with rust spots.

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Go visit the amazing Mrs. 4444 at Half Past Kissin' Time for more Friday Fragments Fun (oooh alliteration) I hope everyone has a fun weekend. I think I will!

Friday Fragments- July 22, 2011

I miss doing Friday Fragments so I'm going to make an effort to participate regularly again.

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Martijn bought me a fietscomputer (bike computer) a few weeks ago so that I could track my mileage and speed. It's totally a psychological motivator because I can see how far I went and say "Oh, I can go FURTHER today!!" Counting my 32km trek on Wednesday, I cycled 129km this week!

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In other cycling related news, I am considering a noseless bike saddle... and maybe some cycling shorts with a nice padded bum.

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I am so pleased with the progression of technology. I have to get pictures of my eyeballs done once a year and every time they dilate my eyes it makes me want to die for the next 24-72 hours while the drops wear off. I get the letter for the appointment about 6 weeks beforehand and then I spend the next 6 weeks moping about it. Well this year I went in and she said "We got a new camera and with your light eyes we shouldn't need to use the drops." I almost hugged her. Seriously!

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My mom loves me a lot. I already know this but she sent me some new socks for my birthday to remind me just how much!

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Have a good weekend! We're headed to Belgium tomorrow for a family BBQ. Hopefully the weather will be nice.

Be sure to swing by Half Past Kissin' Time for more Friday Fragment fun!

Friday Fragments- June 24, 2011

It's Friday! Time for my boring fragments!

• My new vacuum sealer broke the second time we tried to use it. I'm not blaming that on the first person who used it and it may have actually been a blessing in disguise because it wasn't actually that handy to use.


• Have you been following The Apprentice on the BBC? We like to watch it and cringe at the things people say. The quote of the week was "Are the French very fond of their children?"


• I hopped on my bike to go to my volunteer job today and it started sprinkling a little bit so I ran back upstairs to grab my rain poncho-esque thingie so I wouldn't get wet. That proved to be a rather futile effort because it was raining SO HARD by the time I was halfway there that the water had soaked through my poncho. My shoes were squishing as I was pedaling and THEN it started to hail. Lucky for me they have white nursing shirts that they keep on hand for the nurses and I could borrow one (which didn't fit very well because I don't think most Dutch people have hips but at least it was something). My shoes were squishy and my pants were soaked but at least I had a sorta dry shirt... Now I'm on the hunt for a good water proof fabric to make myself a less useless poncho.


• Every now and then I think of something and then I realize how European I'm becoming. Case in point: It's supposed to be in the high 80s and low 90s (F) next week and I'm trying to figure out ways of clearing out my fridge and living in there for the duration. When I lived in Utah I scoffed at these Euro-weenies who were dropping like flies when it was in the 80s. I could survive well into the 100 degree weather without dying! I'm not so European that I don't believe in central air conditioning though. I seriously wish it would catch on sometimes!


• I somewhat successfully made corn tortillas this week. I borrowed someone's electric press/griddle and had a bit of a hard time getting them so they weren't see-through-thin at first but they still tasted good. I'm going to keep experimenting because I really do like corn tortillas better for tacos, enchiladas and the like and the corn tortillas here are flour tortillas with a scoop of cornmeal... which I say BOO to!

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Go visit the amazing Mrs. 4444 at Half Past Kissin' Time for more Friday Fragments Fun (oooh alliteration) I hope everyone has a fun weekend. I think I will!

Friday Fragments- June 17, 2011

It's been AGES since I've done Friday Fragments. I need to get back into the habit!!! I've been missing my fragmenty friends.

**I booked our flights to the US. We're headed westward on September 7th. I'm very very much looking forward to seeing my family and friends! We're planning on a road trip through Wyoming and South Dakota into Minnesota. I would like to drive the Peter Norbeck Scenic Byway (Needles Highway) and stop at Mount Rushmore for sure, but after that the plans are still a work in progress. If you have any amazing insights on MUST SEES on the way I'd love to hear them!

**I bought a vacuum sealer the other day. Mr Jummy decided he needed to test it out.

He claims Joey just "fell in" but I think he's up to his usual naughty tricks!

**Don't you think the name Benedict Cumberbatch is the perfect name for an actor who plays Sherlock Holmes? If you haven't seen any of the BBC Sherlock series you NEED to! I love it.

**Speaking of the BBC. I think they need to not have evil mid-season breaks of Doctor Who anymore. I'm too addicted to keep having these months-long interruptions.

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Enjoy your weekend and make sure to swing by Half Past Kissin' Time to visit the other Fragmented Folks!

Friday Fragments- October 22, 2010

A few weeks ago the new Professor Layton game came out and it sucked me in and I spent too many hours playing it so I could pass it. The ending was horrible and I was left feeling unfulfilled. I needed something to fill the void, so I thought maybe a re-play of Advance Wars: Dual Strike would be in order. Again, it sucked me in and I spent way too many hours playing it. Now I'm sucked into playing Advance Wars: Days of Depression Ruin. HOURS AND HOURS OF MY DAYS PEOPLE! I'm telling you all this because I've reached a conclusion. That conclusion is: Video games will rot your brain... and you will never get anything done... ever.... again... Now I already sorta knew this because of Paper Mario on the Wii but I can't stick the Wii in my pocket and take it with me places. That being said, my DS is still pretty much the best wedding present I received!

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Everytime Martijn and I go somewhere on holiday in Europe we have really weird sleeping arrangements. We've had bunk beds (twice!!) and several one person beds that we unsuccessfully push together and end up with something like this in the middle of the night:

We're headed up north for a couple nights and I'm just wondering what our sleeping arrangements are going to be this time. I'll document it and let you know!

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Since video games have rotted my brain, that's all the fragments I have for this week!

Enjoy your weekend and make sure to swing by Half Past Kissin' Time and tell our wonderful Mrs 4444 how awesome she is for hosting us scoundrels every week!

Friday Fragments- October 15, 2010

It's Friday! I've had a pretty uneventful week, so this may be the most boring post you'll read today.

• If you host your photos with Photobucket, I can't see them on your RSS feeds anymore. I usually can't see them on your main blog either. I'm not sure what's up but I think it's just another reason nobody should use Photobucket... ever...


• I'm still doing my volunteer job. I had a bad attitude for a few weeks but things have gotten better and I don't dread going anymore.


• Did you realize that there are only 10 weeks until Christmas?! I might have lots of space for a tree this year since our couch is going on a road trip to Germany for repair and we don't actually know how long it will be gone. Knowing how speedy the manufacturer was in building the couch has me a little wary about the timeframe. We shall see!


• The weather is getting cold and wet and dreary. We had some really nice days over the past few weeks, but I fear that fall and winter are taking their hold and I may not see the sun for another 6 months. I need to haul out my light box and get back in the habit of using it.


• I made the worlds most amazing sandwiches the other day. They were croissants (fresh from the bakery!) with brie, apple, rosemary and a drizzle of honey that I then put in the oven to melt the cheese to an ooey gooey consistency. I decided I'd be happy eating that sandwich everyday for the rest of my life probably.

Just to make this post ever so slightly less boring, I shall give you Mr Jummy riding the magic blue sheep!

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Be sure to go visit Mrs 4444 to check out the other Fragmenters this week!

Friday Fragments- October 8, 2010

On Tuesday I picked up this:

So today I went and applied for my Dutch citizenship. Once they run a check with the police and make sure I'm not a terrorist with unpaid traffic tickets they'll forward it to the IND (the immigration department in NL). The IND will then take their sweet precious time in processing it, but by this time next year, I should also be Dutch!

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Have you ever noticed how free food usually tastes better than it would have if you'd paid for it? Martijn and I both got a coupon for free pizzas so that's what we ate for dinner tonight and it tasted goooood.

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I switched my comments over to DISQUS a few weeks ago because I kept trying to reply via e-mail and getting stupid blogger no reply addresses. It is nice that the DISQUS comments thread and you can reply and hopefully the person you're replying to will get an e-mail! Plus it makes following along conversations a little easier.

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I gave Martijn a haircut last weekend. I think I'm probably not a stylist for a reason. It's a good thing hair grows sorta fast.

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Do you ever go through the bookmarks on your computer and wonder what your motivation for saving it was? I started using Delicious to I could add notes to my bookmarks but sometimes I don't have time and then when I go back I feel like a dufus for not remembering! Are you a serial bookmarker too?

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Have a fun weekend everyone, and go check out more Friday Fragments by clicking on the link below. Thanks as always to our lovely hostess Mrs. 4444!

Friday Fragments- September 10, 2010

I finally got my new glasses yesterday. I HOPE that my eyes adjust to them fast because today I was kinda miserable until I put my old glasses back on. I always have issues when I get new glasses for some reason. The arms are made of some sort of magical bendy rubbery material and I keep having to resist throwing them on the floor to see if they bounce back up like a superball!

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I don't know about my Five O'clock Friday submission for this week. It sorta looks like a creepy stalker surveillance photo of these people, even though it really isn't. I'm standing on my balcony on the 8th floor and utilizing the magic zoom on my new camera.

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I have been cooking recipes from the Nigella Express cookbook. There are some really nice ones in the cookbook but some of them have really pretentious names like "Croque Monsieur Bake" when they really could be called "Ham and Cheese Sandwich Casserole."

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I'm going to spend a lovely day tomorrow in Alkmaar (way up northward) exploring and seeing some friends. I hope everyone has a lovely weekend!

Friday Fragments- September 3, 2010

It's Friday! Time for fragments. Thanks as always to the lovely Mrs 4444 for hosting us.

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We were watching the news tonight and I asked Martijn if he ever wondered if the newscasters were wearing pants. He insisted I was insane, but now whenever he watches the news he'll be looking at the desk they sit behind and feeling mighty curious about the whole thing.

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I went in on Tuesday to complete the final piece of my Dutchification process. They said they'll get back to me within 4 weeks. I hope it will be sooner and I really hope I passed. I'll let you know... Unless I failed and then I might just make up a lie about them losing my results and me needing to do it again. Although, knowing how competent this system is, it might not even be a lie!

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My sweet friend Lori does a feature called Five O'clock Friday on her blog. You take a picture at 5 o'clock (AM or PM) and post it (or e-mail her and she'll post it for you). Seems simple enough. It really is, yet somehow 5 rolls around on Friday and it's the furthest thing from my mind. I told her she needed to start an SMS reminder service. Here's my photo from a couple weeks ago. He's our groovy turtle pot. Please ignore the fact that I'm a terrible plant parent and the tips of the leaves look like something horrible has happened to them.

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I was slightly resistant to the changes that Flickr made to their pages, but I'm sorta digging the fact that you can just click on "share this" in the photo window and grab code for whatever size picture you want to post. Before you had to click on "All sizes" and then click on the size you wanted. I thought it was a lot of clicking and waiting for pages to load so this makes me rather happy.

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And I shall leave you this week with this:

Some guy in Texas has managed to deep fry beer. I think it sounds revolting, but whatever floats your boat I guess.

The article says "Zable started experimenting. But the beer-and-dough concoction kept exploding once it hit the fryer. He kept getting burned...
Then, earlier this year, he finally found the recipe for success."

So I suspect the moral of the story is: If at first you don't succeed, fry, fry again.

Friday Fragments- August 27, 2010

I've been back in The Netherlands for 3 weeks now and I finally feel like I might be getting back into the swing of things. Hopefully that means less spotty blog posting and the return of FRIDAY FRAGMENTS! Thanks to Mrs 4444 for so graciously hosting us every week.

• I think I need to make these Lasagna Cupcakes, but I will need to call them something else. "Cupcakes" should not be savory.


• Mr Jummy & Mrs Yummy are getting along famously. I won't say who they learned this behavior from.





• One of Martijn's uncles passed away a couple of weeks ago and he wore his wedding suit to the funeral. He reached into his inner pocket at some point and pulled out an unopened card.... from our wedding... in 2006!!! Who knows how long it would've been in that pocket if we'd not had a funeral to go to. I'm so thankful there wasn't a check in there, it would've been horribly embarrassing to have to confess why we never cashed it.


• I bought a new camera while I was in the US. I am still learning how to use it but it seems to be pretty snazzy.


• I'm sad to say that I think summer is officially over. Anyone have some yummy soup recipes they'd like to share?

Friday Fragments- May 28, 2010

We had a rather nice birthday get together for Martijn last night and I didn't go to bed until after 2. Therefore, once again, I am fragmenting a little late.

• I'm in the process of breaking up with Firefox. I stubbornly stuck with them because the other browsers didn't offer all the same sorts of wild magic extensions and add-ons but now Chrome will do most of what I want. There is no reason for me to be wildly frustrated because it completely eats up ALL THE RESOURCES on my netbook and makes it run like a slug. NO MORE!


• Eindhoven is officially the "least safe city" in The Netherlands again! Perhaps that has something to do with the measly amount of police officers. Just to give you an idea- Rotterdam has 1 police officer for every 232 inhabitants. Eindhoven has 1 per 382. For the largest city outside of the Randstad, that doesn't seem like much. Honestly though, I don't spend much time worrying about being unsafe here. There are a couple of places that I wouldn't want to be alone in the dark here but for the most part it's not bad.


• My inburgering portfolio was accepted the second time around. In the typical manner of the organization (I use the term loosely here) that takes care of things, they screwed up and sent a bill instead of just deducting the cost from my "student loan." We had to call and straighten that out and now I'm just waiting for the letter that says when my panel interview is so that I can reschedule it (since I'm 99% sure it will be scheduled for sometime when I'm gone).


• Speaking of being gone, we're leaving REALLY SOON! We fly out of Schiphol on the 8th and get to SLC at a very very very late hour. We have a 7 1/2 hour layover in Houston. Does anyone know of anything interesting to do around the airport there?


• I found a sewing basket jam packed full of stuff at the thrift store today for €3.75 so I snatched it up. I always think that it's interesting to go through other peoples sewing goodies. I'll keep some of it and pass on the rest. I haven't decided if I'll keep the basket. I'm thinking no, but I might change my mind!


• I love strawberry season. The little teeny ones are so so freaking good that it makes me never want to eat tasteless out of season ones.

Friday Fragments- The Late Edition

Today's Friday Fragments is brought to you by the letters I and P. I for Imagine and P for Pretend that it is still Friday!

I've not gotten home until after 1 AM the past two days and by that point, blogging isn't on the top of the list... HOWEVER! I had really good reasons for irresponsibly staying out so late! Friday night we went to a Hayseed Dixie (imagine AC/DC in bluegrass) concert. Near the end the cigarette smoke was getting to me and I went outside and sat in the fresh air for the last 3 or 4 songs. There is a smoking ban in public places here, but a lot of people just ignore it and that just pisses me off. I did have an awesome time though and I'm glad we went. I think Martijn had a blast too and that made me happy.

One weird thing that happened at the end of the concert... I was waiting for Martijn by the door since I'd been outside, and some guy started hitting on me and asked me out for pizza. I was like "Uh, no, I'm waiting for my husband!" He asked me about three times if I was sure, so I guess you have to give him credit for persistence. It was so weird!

The other late night adventure was going to visit my sweet friend Lori and her husband. They were staying in a vacation bungalow a little less than an hour from here and since that's much closer than we usually are to each other we drove over and hung out. I told them about the aforementioned pizza incident and over the course of the evening it morphed into some sort of dirty euphemism. I love that my friends have the same sort of warped sense of humor as me!

Martijn invented a nice recipe for fish this week. He mixed some cream cheese, dill, lemon juice, a pinch of salt and freshly grated parmesan cheese and spread it over the fish. It was really good. We had it twice and will probably eat it again next week!

It's asparagus season so as you drive around you see many fields that look like this:

They mound dirt over it and cover it with the tarps so that it doesn't get any sun. Since it can't produce chlorophyll without sun, it stays white. I do like white asparagus, but I think I prefer green and it's harder to find and stupid expensive here. I have my fingers tightly crossed that the cooler temperatures and SNOW in Utah have kept it from coming up too fast and there will still be some delicious in-season green asparagus when I get home next month.

I've been thinking about doing a potluck birthday party in Utah since I'll actually be there for the first time in ages. I really just want to see lots of people and a party seems like a good means of doing so... I'm terribly sneaky!

I shall leave you with a picture of the lovely roses Martijn gave me last weekend.

Thanks Mrs4444 for hosting our weekly brain dumps!

Friday Fragments Returns- May 7, 2010

I started having Friday Fragment guilt because I was linking up and not being able to get around to everybody each week, but I decided that's okay. I've met too many fun people to give it up and I'll just do the best I can and visit as many people as time will allow.

I submitted my inburgering portfolio and waited a month for them to tell me it wasn't good enough. They are SO VERY specific in what they will accept, yet they don't actually tell you what they want. Some of my things were rejected for being "reading evidence" instead of speaking or writing evidence, but their "reading evidence" is perfectly appropriate for other things. Apparently this is a big problem with a LOT of people so I tried not to be too devastated and only spent half the afternoon wailing and stomping around. I fixed the crap things they said weren't good enough and resubmitted it. I hope to find out in the next month or two if they accept it this time around. I'm not holding my breath.

It's been raining the all day and I wish that it would stop but the forecast for the next several days looks quite wet.

Life isn't all bad though. I finally found my Holy Grail Orange Sewing Machine. I already posted a picture a few posts back, but you can never have too many. We tuned it up a little and it sews like a dream. A DREAM!

Next on the list is selling two of the other ones I bought to tide me over until I found THE sewing machine. Martijn keeps teasing me about having 5 sewing machines (which I don't- only 4 and a serger) which isn't really fair because he has WAY MORE than 5 computers. I think it's a bit of a double standard, don't you?! Really though, I need to unload a couple so I can make space for other awesome things.

I'm starting to feel like my creativity is coming back. For awhile I felt like all I was doing was filling out paperwork and asking Dutch people to take pity on me and sign my papers for my portfolio, but now I'm FREE since I can't do anything else with it until they approve/reject it again. Now I can start making monkeys again. And maybe finish Mrs Yummy.

Tomorrow I'm going to brave the rain and meet up with a couple of pals in Utrecht. I love hanging out with them but we live on opposite sides of the country (shut up people in great wide expansive America... I'm turning European and 2 1/2-3 hours of travel is JUST TOO MUCH) so we don't see each other very often. I look forward to it very much.

Friday Fragments- February 26, 2010

So, as you may have noticed I've been having a little PROBLEM in regards to blogging lately. Both in reading AND posting. I finally got through all ninteybillionty posts in my reader, but I was speed-scanning so if I missed something really important like you are moving to the moon or your dog had kittens please let me know!

I haven't been spending as much time on the computer as usual, but I haven't been accomplishing anything interesting either. Although, a few neat things have happened recently.

I've gone and found myself some volunteer work. It's just one day a week for three hours, but it gives me AMPLE time to practice my Dutch. Plus I was able to get lots of the signatures I need to finish up my "integration portfolio." I'm working in a verpleeghuis, which is a nursing home. The place is this enormously gigantic complex with different levels of care. I'm back in quiet little bungalow style accommodations with some residents who have mild dementia, are very very old, or have had strokes or other neurologically damaging things happen. I'm there during lunch so I help with meal prep, table setting, feeding, and cleaning up among other things. Today was my second day and it seems to be going well so far.

My amaryllis finally bloomed. The blossoms are dying a little bit now, but I wasn't sure it was going to bloom at all this year! Hopefully the tulips and daffodils will start blooming soon too. I've had enough of winter. Spring will undoubtedly be soggy, but at least it won't be so stinking COLD!

I've been trying to find plane tickets for our trip to the US this summer and I'm thinking of selling organs to fund the trip. Anyone need a kidney or a piece of my liver?

Someone made a sock monkey out of Legos. I'm impressed.

Photo credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bahkubean/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Speaking of sock monkeys, I've been working on a super secret project. If I don't die of sheer frustration before I finish, I shall hopefully be unveiling it in the next week or two. Now aren't you all curious and excited? Oh, well... you SHOULD be!

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Thank you thank you to Mrs 4444 for being our lovely Friday Fragments host!

Friday Fragments- January 29, 2010

Ahoy dear friends! It's finally Friday!

I got my bike back last weekend. When we picked it up they said "Here's your half new bike!" Most of the front end had been replaced. It's nice to have the freedom to get around easily again.

My therapist is moving on to bigger and better things at the beginning of March. I'm kinda bummed, but I feel okay about it. So, I suspect that means there's been some progress made!

I made a hilarious sock monkey a little while ago. He's a kabouter aapje (gnome monkey). I'm still laughing about it.

I have a confession. I suck at blog awards. It's not that I don't appreciate them, it's just that I suck at them. I'm trying to do better! I'll be posting about the two I got recently very soonly.

I made peanut butter cups this week. They were delicious and I shall be making a post about them next week.

If you'd like to participate in the weekly fragmented fun, go visit Mrs 4444 at Half Past Kissin Time!

Friday Fragments- January 15, 2010

As I was drifting to sleep last night I thought of a really clever intro for my Fragments post today, but I must've been exhausted because I can't figure out why I thought it was clever. Maybe I forgot the clever part.

I've been going everywhere by bus and foot this week and I really HATE having to rely on the bus system. I'm glad it's there for when I -want- to ride it, but it takes SO MUCH LONGER. Plus... there really is no polite way to say this... some people need to jump on the deodorant bandwagon. I mean, really. I don't want to be smashed up against your smelly person in the bus. It's bad enough being smashed up against an UNsmelly person!

We took my bike to the shop for an estimate. I didn't think it was going to be CHEAP to fix, but I also apparently underestimated the huge amount of damage it had taken.

I had a bent front fork, bent front wheel, bent FRAME, broken steering pin, broken brake handle, broken pedal and some other things that I can't figure out to translate for you at the moment. The total there at the bottom? It does say €306.99 incase you thought maybe you'd hit your head and started seeing more numbers than should be there. The man is supposed to transfer the money to us to cover the repairs though so that's good.

Speaking of my bike, the bike shop is calling it "the tall one." I guess that's okay since that's what people call me too!

Poor Martijn developed an abscessed tooth and had to run to the dentist (in Germany) to have a root canal on Thursday. He had to go back in this morning for what was supposed to be a five minute procedure (taking out the drain for the abscess and repacking it) but when the dentist got to poking around in there he discovered that the roots of Martijn's teeth actually go down to his knees and that the whole thing hadn't been removed properly. An hour and a half later... well, you get the idea!

We're going on a "date" to IKEA tonight because Martijn's desk chair finally gave up on life this week and we need to get a replacement. They don't sell the one he had anymore so I hope we can find one he'll like. This also means that I don't have to cook! Hooray for meatballs.

I started using Windows Live Writer to publish a few posts and I don't think I really like it that much. It is all shiny and magic but it takes me twice as long to format posts how I want them. I know a lot of people like it, but blegh. I shall continue to use my old Livejournal editor and go to flickr and gather my photo links myself. It's supposed to be more convenient but for me it's really not!

EDIT: Since I'm a forgetful flake and forgot to mention this the first time around! One of my sweet friends here compiled a post of ways to help the Haiti earthquake victims and how to avoid the scams. There is a ton of great information so please check it out.

If you'd like to participate in the weekly fragmented fun, go visit Mrs 4444 at Half Past Kissin Time!

P.S. I'm giving away a magicJack! Check out the magicJack Giveaway post for more info =)

Friday Fragments- January 8, 2010

Let’s just jump in here!

I got a new 2010 agenda for myself so I could try to keep better track of my appointments. I was filling in a few things that I had dates for this year and I got to May. I discovered that someone had been helping me add things to my calendar.

My wrist seems to be healing up okay, but I’m still pretty black and blue in certain areas.  My bike is in the shop and they should be calling with an estimate tomorrow or Tuesday. 

Martijn and his co-workers were discussing the shortage of salt here.  He was joking that he needed to fly to my parents house near Salt Lake City, fill up his suitcases with salt, come back here to sell it on and make a slew of cash!  One of his co-workers said “Oh, do they have salt there?”  Martijn replied with “They don’t call it Salt Lake City for nothing!”  Then another one piped in with “Because then it would be called Zoetermeer!”  Zoetermeer (a village next to The Hague) is literally “sweet lake".”  So essentially, I’ve moved to a place with the exact polar opposite of Salt Lake City- Sweet Lake City.  I knew things felt off here for a reason!

Speaking of the salt shortage, it makes me giggle that the first priority is the bike paths.  Who cares about those dang cars, let’s let them slip slide all over… the cyclists need to be safe!  Not that it matters to me right now.  Poor mangled bicycle.

After Christmas sales here aren’t really quite the same as they are in the US, but you can scoop up a good deal every now and then.  I’d mentioned that I was longing to start my very own Christmas village and my sweetheart spotted the village things were 75% off at one of the hardware stores here.  They had some WAY cool larger village houses but since we’re short on space we decided to get a smallish 5 house set with the figures and trees and such included.  It’s not the worlds most amazing village but it will be cute when it’s lit up and up on the shelf.  PLUS, instead of paying €50 as it was originally marked, we snagged it up for €7,50.

If you didn’t see it, I posted about the cheese I made.

Unknown Mami’s comment on my sock post yesterday cracked me up.  She was shocked to find out that I can’t knit and is thankful to know I’m not actually perfect.  I’m so not even close to perfect, I’m just a good pretender!

Thanks again to Mrs. 4444 for hosting this madness!

Friday Fragments- January 1, 2010

It's Friday, and you know what that means! Happy Fragmented New Years!

• I'm not making resolutions this year. I've learned that I set unrealistic expectations of myself and fall into a horrible funk when I can't mark "save the world" off of my list.


• We spent Oudejaarsavond with a bunch of Martijn's co-workers and friends eating oliebollen, waffles and lots of cheese. At midnight we went outside and watched fireworks for a good hour before we headed back inside to thaw out. Around 3 am, I dragged my sorry butt home and fell asleep. TODAY I feel old and tired! I had a good time though, and I suppose that's what is important. We didn't have anything crucial to do today so it was okay to stay in bed until almost noon.


• Christmas 2009 was held on the 29th and 31st of December instead of the 25th thanks to the USPS and TNT Post taking their sweet precious time delivering things. I appreciate my husband for not letting me mope all day on the 25th and for facilitating a candle light dinner to cheer me up.


• I spent the past few days feeling a little under the weather. Enough to feel like crap but not so much that I felt like it was acceptable to stay in bed and do nothing. I am feeling better now and I hope I can stay un-sick through the rest of the winter. Wouldn't that be nice?!


• My paid flickr account is going to expire this week, so I clicked on over to renew it. It's 24.95 per year, but I feel like I get enough use out of it that it's worth it. But wait, you get a super amazing deal if you buy two years at once!
  
  
  
  
  
  It's ONLY 47.99 for two years... a savings of... wait for it... ONE DOLLAR AND NINETY ONE CENTS! Really flickr? I mean, really? Thanks for the amazing deal. I'm so floored by your generosity.

As always, head on over to Half Past Kissin' Time for more random brain dumpings!

Friday Fragments- December 18, 2009

Not much to this weeks fragments. Every week I say I'll write things down so I can remember them, and every week I don't do it. Anyhow, onto the fragments!

• I'm incredibly cross that our fairly young seldom driven car that had "nothing" (according to the garage) wrong with it in July suddenly had a €1200 service bill. I'm so not impressed with anything to do with cars here. I think it's a racket run by the mafia and I feel like going to school to be an auto mechanic to fight back. Maybe I should find out about the witness protection program here first.
• I had a blast in Germany last Friday. I'm working on editing my pictures and I'll probably post them on Sunday for "Sundays in My City" which I haven't participated in for way too long.
• I know that women complain about men being absolute babies when they're sick, but I must've found the exception to that rule. Martijn is sick enough that he stayed home from work yesterday (and that means he really feels awful because the man doesn't stay home sick). Instead of laying in bed and moaning and complaining about dying (like I would do), he was apologizing to ME for being a bother. I didn't think that making him tea and pumping him full of Tylenol and Ibuprofen was much of a bother. I do have my fingers very tightly crossed that I don't get sick!
• Saturday of last week, Santa visited the NAWC kids in Eindhoven. Everyone (including Santa I think) had a really good time. There were a couple of shy children, but no one who was shrieking in crying in horror so I think that was good!

• It feels weird that next week is Christmas. We have our tree up, the nativity out, and the stockings hung but I'm missing something to make it be CHRISTMAS! I need to figure out a Netherlands Christmas tradition to start in my little family. I'd love to hear what your family traditions are!

Make sure to check out Half Past Kissin' Time for more fragmented fun!

Friday Fragments- December 11, 2009

I'm going to be gone all day tomorrow and I think if I miss another week of fragmenting my mom is going to start some sort of revolt against me so I'm setting this to autopost at 12:01.

The reason I'm going to be gone all day tomorrow is because I'm going to a Christmas market in Germany. I'm SO VERY excited! This will be my first time so I'm going to take my camera and be snap happy.

I finished up my Christmas tree skirt and put it on the tree. I was too impatient to decorate the tree before I took a picture, thus I "Picniked" in some ornaments so the tree wouldn't feel naked and exposed on top. I'm so happy with my skirt, I want to make a hundred more just because it's so fun to see how they come together and look amazing!

This Saturday is looking quite busy. Martijn got wrangled into being a jolly old man for a couple of hours in the morning and then we're going to a new friend's house for delicious authentic Spanish food! Inbetween we need to get our Saturday errands done. Normally I'd just take care of the weekend errands tomorrow so we didn't need to worry about them, but I WILL BE PLAYING!

Do you send out Christmas cards? I feel like Scrooge because I don't and I've gotten a whole bunch from people. Maybe I need to change my Scroogey wayward ways? What do you think?

We celebrated Sinterklaas last weekend. It was supposed to be "scaled down" a bit this year, but I'm not entirely sure everyone got the memo because I felt like I made out like a bandit. I got a salad spinner (which I've been wanting for awhile), a silicone muffin pan, a very snuggly warm blanket and bunches of warm socks among other goodies. It's tradition to attach a funny poem to the gifts and my mother in law wrote poems for nearly EVERY gift... we didn't get home until 2 am! I was happy though because I understood at least 90% of them and the other 10% both Martijn and his dad thought were really way too hard!

The Pineapple Upside Down (cup)Cakes were a hit yesterday. I am quite impressed with the photo I got of them too. One of the guys who had seen the picture before they came over said "Oh, was that YOUR picture on your blog? I thought it was professional." Nope, just me and my little pink point and shoot. It does give me some good pictures if I can get the light just right. Having the light just right here in the land-o-darkness is getting increasingly difficult. I hate it when the sun is disappearing at 3:30 in the afternoon. I'm telling you it's just plain ridiculous!

Don't miss out on all the fragmented fun over at Mrs 4444's Half Past Kissin' Time.