Everyday Life

Welcome to Walter, our new furry companion!


(Photo by Ryan)

He’s 1.5 years old, and we adopted him from the kitty orphanage where he was living since he was found on the street in May. He’s adorable, well behaved and really funny when he does silly kitten things.

I finally took the time to take photos of our house and share then with whoever is still following this blog. So here we are!

The living room:





Dining room (notice the brand new furniture that finally finishes the room):



The cabinet at the back it the brew-closet. It is full of beer brewing equipment.



The lavender kitchen:





Our wonderful bathroom. We opened that window when we renovated it, and it’s the absolute best thing we have done to the house.





The bedroom:



Our terrace, opening from the bedroom:



The garden downstairs:



The crafts/computer room, in its natural state:



And from the outside, we have the top left quadrant of the house and the central balcony:



The church at the end of our street:



That’s it, you’ve seen it all now! (Well, except for the messy closets, but those don’t need to be shown...)

Mojo lost his hard-fought battle and had to be put to sleep on March 14 at 10.50 AM CET.

We’re still not completely clear on what he had; either a fatal virus or an aggressive cancer, but he was severely anemic and lost over half of his body weight in less than two months. Over the weekend he lost the ability to regulate his body temperature and was slipping into a coma, so I took him in first thing Monday morning. The vet was shocked that he hung on as long as he did and reassured me that this was the right thing to do and that there was no way to save him.

He was a terrific companion and I already miss him terribly, but after a little over 12 years, it was apparently his time.

-Ryan

Last weekend we participated in a spectacular regatta of old sailing boats. About 60 old Dutch barges from the beginning of the century were gathered in Enkhuizen for two very pleasant days, with a crew of about 25 people on each boat (depends on the number of masts, we had 2 on the Nirvana), where everybody sleeps on the boat for the weekend. An old coworker invited us there, and we took the opportunity to try a very local sport.



The first thing to tell is that we were incredibly lucky with the weather. Two days of gorgeous weather with just enough wind to push the boats around and give us a little bit of work to maneuver the sails. It wasn’t always easy to take photos, since we had some work to do with our sails, and there was some wind and waves at our post at the front. As a result, not many photos of the actual race, but rather of stuff before and after the action.



Here for example, we are parking after the first day of race, where we had to make a triangle between 3 cities of the IJsselmeer.



The boats pack themselves nicely in rows of 4, and everybody goes through several boats before reaching theirs. It’s very friendly.



All these boats have a flat bottom and a “sword” on the side, a big piece of wood that goes in the water to do the job of a quille when needed. They were used to transport all kinds of things between Dutch cities back in the day, and they can go on canals and the sea in the middle of the Netherlands, but not really in the rough sea. In the 70s the owners of these boats started to convert them in pleasure boats with cabins and more comfort, and to race in regattas like this one.



On Sunday it was a different type of race: an Olympic course. Here our skipper Irene informs us of the plan for the day: first we go against the wind (thus plenty of maneuvers), then we come back to the beginning in a triangle. We did the triangle 3 times to finish the race.



As a result the boats get very close to each other and sometimes play chicken.



It was quite majestic to see these old boats cruise around on the lake!



And it’s quite some work to hoist all these sails and manage all the ropes without mixing or entangling them!



At the end of the weekend we started to understand the principle and to anticipate the proper operations at the right time.



We even did a good score this year: combining the 2 races of Saturday and Sunday we finished 5th on about 60 boats!



Back in the charming town of Enkhuizen, after a very nice weekend learning sailing techniques and meeting very nice people:



We would love to go back next year!

It’s not a secret, Mojo is a fan of tanning his belly.



But honestly, have you ever seen a cat as ridiculous as this?



But watch out, he doesn’t like to be made fun of!



And the view from our dining room in near-infrared.

We appreciate when visitors give us a hand with our house!



Ryan’s Mom Ilyse came for a week and painted a lot of walls and windows.

Around the end of April the weather was perfect for a few weeks, and on a sunny Sunday we went to the forest with my coworker Kris, is girlfriend Lisa and their dog Scrubby. This forest had an eclectic collection of themes.



We took the path called the “Milky Way”, where there were models of planets along the way. The distance between planets was to scale, and after a few kilometers we reached the sun. In this representation of the sun, Scrubby found it logical to run in a circle around Kris as fast as she could, “her belly to the ground” as we say in French. She’s still young and she has A LOT of energy.



Very amusing. Around the corner from the sun there was this alignment of radio-telescopes listening to the stars.



And a bit further along that array we strolled through a transfer camp where an unbelievable number of Dutch people were deported to concentration camps during the war.

Well, it’s been a while... Everything is going well in Groningen, now that we live in our own little house and it’s all functional. I’ll try to give you some excerpts of the story.

We moved in our house on March 1st, then survived for 3 weeks without a shower while our bathroom was being renovated. Then I got very busy at work and barely had any brain cells left for home. Then the fam came to visit and help build storage. Then some relatives came for a couple days, which brings us to the photos of today, taken in a tiny fortified village called Bourtange right on the border with Germany.



This village is built in the shape of a star with canals all around, which looks awesome from aerial photos but obviously I don’t have any of my own as we stayed on the ground.



Just around Easter the spring poked its nose and all the trees and flowers in town have come back to life, what a pleasure.



Stay tuned for the next photos!

Vous avez de la chance, chers lecteurs, car grâce à notre nouveau projet photo on est forcés de prendre des photos tous les jours et du coup s’il en reste des potables c’est le blog qui en profite. Vendredi il faisait grand froid, et la campagne était toute gelée. Le brouillard était très épais, par moment sur l’autoroute on avait l’impression d’être tous seuls sur la route. La c’était plus clair:



En milieu de journée le brouillard s’est levé en laissant des petits cristaux de glace sur toutes les brindilles qui passaient:



Avec un grand ciel bleu, c’était vraiment magnifique.



Les brindilles avec des piquants avaient encore plus de cristaux, dommage que je n’avais pas d’objectif macro pour m’approcher plus près.

Mon fond d’écran du jour m’a rappelé de vous informer de notre petit projet photo pour 2010:



Prendre au moins une photo par jour et la poster sur le nouveau photoblog Mojo 365. On se partage la tâche, donc ce sera une photo de l’un ou l’autre, en principe tous les jours.

Et pour ceux qui se demandaient, la photo ci-dessus vient du pied d’un glacier en Islande.

My desk at work is next to a wall of windows oriented to the south, so I see the sun rise every day until about 10° above the horizon and then go back down. As soon as it pokes through the clouds we often get beautiful sunrises and sunsets.

Yesterday night on the way back from work it started snowing a tiny little bit, and I even fell off my bike on a thin layer of snow on cobblestones. But we’re not in Boston anymore, so I didn’t expect anything very serious with snow in our new country. Imagine my surprise when I opened the curtains this morning...



That’s right, not an optical illusion but actually 10-15cm of snow on the city!



I got ready quicker than usual to walk to the carpooling place and take photos along the way. Looks like the snow plow hasn’t come yet...



A lot of bikes are buried, when they are not in use with not-so-prudent-bicyclists who still try to bike in a loose and not-melted snow...



I walk in front of the hospital, it’s really coming down. Not easy to take photos in a snow fall (not a blizzard though, just a heavy snow fall).



Notice the sunk houseboat on the foreground. Poor thing.



Yes, you read the correct time, it is quarter to eight and it’s still pitch black except for the snow that won’t stop falling.



It seems that everybody thought the same thing when leaving their house this morning: there can’t be that much snow, I should be able to go to work... But there is more snow than one may imagine while looking out the window, and without plows all morning it’s not that easy to get around. Here is the fishmarket without the market:



Almost eight o’clock, I arrive to the meeting point of my carpool as the sky is starting to lighten.



Kris is clearing his car. He promises to pick up a colleague about 2km away from his house, then to drop me off at home with the car. After a half-hour spent driving for about 1km towards the pick-up place, we turn around and he goes back to his place, on the other side of the city from our house. I walk home, after 2.5 hours to cover just a few kilometers slower that I could have walked. Sweet, my first snow day!

Can you believe, dear readers, that Mojo is about to buy a very cute apartment in an old house on the side of the city center of Groningen! We signed a contract (all in Dutch) that would make us owners early January, so we have time to make a few changes before moving-in in February before the end of our lease on Gerbrand Bakkerstraat. We want to meet the other people living in the house before we send the contract back, which should happen this week. Isn’t this some great news?


The house is divided in four apartments, and on the photo below we would have the top right corner, including the center balcony.



The big windows, oriented south-east, will probably be very pleasant.



I let you erase in your head the furniture of the current owners, and we’re thinking of putting the dining room in the big bright room, but you get an idea.



It’s on a quiet street with chestnut trees and grass on the center strip, in a fancy part of town. Without the need for a car and in the middle of a housing crisis, we can afford to indulge ourselves with a nice house!