Everyday Life

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!

Une autre excursion recommandée par notre guide Michelin, voici le tour des églises rurales du nord-est. Dans la famille des photos typiques, je vous présente le moulin en arrière d’un canal.



On s’est même trouvé à passer devant un moulin ouvert aux visites, et un gentil volontaire nous a tout expliqué comment ça marchait un moulin hollandais. Celui qu’on a visité s’appelait l’Espoir (De Hoop), et c’était un moulin à moudre le blé (pas un moulin à transporter l’eau vers l’extérieur des polders, l’autre type). Il suffit d’un homme pour manoeuvrer un moulin, et notre gentil volontaire nous l’a arrêté un un quart de tour rien que pour nous montrer le tissu des voiles. Il faut dire que quand il y a un orage qui approche, le meunier a 2-3 minutes pour tout remballer et mettre le paratonnerre en place. Très intéressant.



Mais les moulins n’étaient que les distractions de notre circuit des églises rurales. Souvent de style roman et toujours en briques rouges (décoration inclues), les petites églises protestantes de la région sont très mignonnes.



Elles sont traditionnellement entourée du cimetierre du patelin, et sur les tombes gravées on trouve un certain nombre de symboles qui reviennent régulièrement: le crâne, la faux, la torche, les os, les papillons de nuit et le sablier.



En continuant vers la mer (du nord) on pensait arriver sur un petit port appelé Eemshaven, mais on est arrivé à un GRAND port industriel sans grand chose à voir si ce n’est... des ventilateurs!



Et pas que quelques uns, mais une flopée de ventilateurs. Un vrai champ de moulins modernes, à perte de vue. Les moutons n’avaient pas l’air d’y voir un problème.

Alors que je me mettais enfin à mon ménage avant la visite de mes invités la semaine prochaine, voilà que j’ai trouvé une distraction pour m’éviter de m’y mettre... Des dizaines de papillons à butiner l’arbuste du fond du jardin!



Je n’ai pas d’objectif macro (enfin, j’en ai un en emprunt, mais je n’ai pas voulu faire toute une session photo au milieu de mon ménage, je suis sérieuse quand même) donc n’attendez pas de voir leur trompe et poils d’abdomen pour cette fois-ci.



En plus ils allaient bien trop vite d’une grappe de fleur à l’autre, et il me faudrait une échelle pour atteindre la plupart des grappes de fleurs.



Je vous laisse compter les petits papillons qui se cachent dans cette image.



Mon aspirateur m’attend!

Nicole suggested that since this was Mojo’s blog after all, it was time to post photos of the ever more ridiculous thing. Instant photos from my phone.

The first day we arrived, he started meeting cute kitties in the alley. After that, there was no way to keep him in on Saturday night when he wants to go out and hang out with his buddies.



“Can you please stop following me everywhere? I need privacy to go crash ridiculously on the bed upstairs!”



As soon as the sun is out we get the most ridiculous positions. The dead fish, the chicken legs, the otter, the puma... Here one chicken leg and 3 otter legs.



But the worse is when the humans lock him in the house. Fortunately there are plenty of windows.



And to avoid the tan lines, he makes sure to tan his belly too.



What a cat’s life!

Last weekend we went on an impromptu bike ride to try our new bikes, and the sky was miraculously blue with cute puffy white clouds. This (long) weekend we had decided to go back to the same canal with our cameras, but of course the weather didn’t listen to our desire for puffy white clouds. There was some kind of high fog, a little bit like a layer of smoke from forest fires. The ride was fun, but the pictures are not so great because of the white sky.

The Netherlands (well, the north at least) are just like that:



A canal, some very green grass, a bike path by the canal, and tall trees along roads and canals. As expected, the flat country is, well, flat.



Not very orginial, a canal and a row of trees.



A little more unique, a direction tree, because you can go anywhere following the canals.



As long as you get a green light to pass the bridges, of course. We don’t know yet how it works to lift the bridges, whether there is a guy in charge of the bridge or if you need to call ahead.



A classic view, a windmill! Lost in the big white sky, but next time we get closer, I promise.



Tulip fields are further south I hear, between the Hague and Amsterdam. However, still typical, some gouda makers!



Not surprising that dairy products are very good here, with some beautiful green grass like that! Not easy to go drink in the canal when you sink in the muddy sides...



So here is our countryside landscape, and it’s possible that we’ve covered most of it already... We have to explore villages now.

That’s it, everything is wrapped and shipped, scrubbed and mopped, and the humans are excited while Mojo is stressed out.



Last night it was hard to sleep, the head did not want to rest. Tonight we zip our big suitcases closed, we leave the key under the front mat, and we’re on our way for new adventures!