Eloïse went to the consultatiebureau today. She now weighs 10 kilos exactly, which means she’s putting on weight nicely.
I was planning to go with Sarah, but we had a bloke coming to look at the boiler and he changed the appointment time, so I had to stay at home to deal with him.
A different bloke, one from a gardening company, also popped around today to size up our garden. In our recent absence, the place has turned into a jungle, so it’s nice to have someone sorted out to tackle it a couple of weeks from now.
Sofia, our cleaner, was here today, too, so the house is now looking spick and span, ready to receive our next set of guests, Peter and Chantal, who will arrive Saturday afternoon. Both Sarah and I are looking forward to that very much.
I shared an office at Google in Mountain View with Peter for several years, so he occupies a very special place in my memories of my time at Google. It will be nice to catch up with him and drink loads of coffee, a substance that Peter and I both feel strongly about, although he more than I. It will be nice for Sarah, too, to have another American woman to talk to.
The weather forecast doesn’t look all that good for the period that they’re here. Hopefully things will clear up a bit by the weekend. After two heatwaves, the summer really does appear to be over for this year. The mercury barely creeps up to 20°C each day and the sky is permanently overcast, if not pouring with rain. Why is the temperature seemingly always < 20°C or > 30°C? What’s wrong with that middle ground?
We had a handyman fit a latch to the guest-bedroom door a few days ago. Why there wasn’t a latch there to begin with is a mystery to me, but there wasn’t. I’m sure Peter, Chantal and our other future guests will appreciate being able to close their door now.
What else? Well, Sarah finally has that elusive SoFi-nummer (national insurance number) in her hands. Almost a year to the day since moving here, she now has the magic piece of data that provides her with fiscal legitimacy and the dubious privilege of being able to pay Dutch taxes. Obtaining that number was on my original to-do list of things to do in the first week after our arrival, but it was dependent on her residence permit, which turned into a long and drawn-out story. Anyway, the number is hers now.
We finally hung up our oil-painting in the sitting-room this afternoon. Well, more accurately and fairly, an acquaintance of ours, Gerard, hung it up for us. It really adds a touch of style and class to that room, which made me realise all the more strongly that the rest of the house needs similar touches. We just still haven’t put our stamp on this place yet.
I’ve been looking at wristwatches for the last few months. The odd thing is that I haven’t worn a watch since 2000, when the cheap timepiece I was wearing fell off somewhere in Ottawa. I tried living without one to see how easily I could cope and was delighted to find that I didn’t miss it at all, apart from the sentimental value that it had. Oddly, I can now no longer remember the slightest detail of that watch.
Anyway, about six months ago, I felt the vaguest of urges to start wearing a watch again. This is decidedly peculiar, since there has never been an period in my life in which time has played less of a role. I don’t have much of a schedule to keep these days, seldom needing to be anywhere at any given time. Indeed, it scarcely matters what day of the week it is, never mind the time.
A few months have passed since then and now I find myself wanting to have a watch again. Sarah is always asking me the time when Eloïse falls asleep, as her regular sleeping patterns translate into a peaceful life for us when we are mindful and respectful of them, and it’s tedious to keep pulling my mobille phone out of its holster.
So, whilst the desire for a new wristwatch is quite strong now, it has as much to do with wanting to carry around a small work of art and piece of technical ingenuity as it does with wanting to know the time at any given moment. I’m close to settling on a brand and model at this point. More on the subject when I do.
I’ve also been busy with new releases of Ruby/LDAP and Ruby/Amazon since we’ve been back. These two projects are now at version 0.9.7 and 0.9.2, respectively. It’s good to keep my hand in with some form of programming, since my sysadmin/programmer skills are otherwise completely languishing.
Finally, the tedious process of importing, rotating and captioning photos has been going on in earnest behind the scenes. We hope to be able to reveal the snaps from our recent trip through Central Europe within a few days.