Cats and dogs

While Babet is still hissing and growling every time she sees (or remembers the mere existance of) Haroen, Lotte is friendlier and trying to persuade Haroen to play with her. Haroen in his turn is also highly interested in Lotte and learning that we reprimand Lotte when she is too obtrusive (and abusing this fact). So these two are slowly getting friends...

Another movie of Haroen

Haroen has arrived

Yesterday I picked up Haroen at Clio's and he's doing great! The journey to our house in a travel basket was of course not appreciated too much, but he survived. First thing mr. H did after getting out of the basket was blessing the cat's litter box (and not the carpet, thank God).

Last night he was a bit shy and spent most of the time behind the couch, but now he seems to be completely relaxed and at ease. After a heavy session of playing, chasing mice, attacking balls, climbing couches and exploring the attick (which is Haroen's main domain the first few days), he's sleeping now. Completely exhausted.

Party post

Pfiew, we've survived our houswarming / birthdays party! Last Sunday, we had about 55 people (plus a load of kids) in our house. Fortunately, we had great weather, so we could sit in the garden all day. I'm not sure how we would have fitted all those people in our house, to be honest. Usually, we never really celebrate our birthdays so I think all of our friends and family took advantage of this opportunity to come down south. It might have helped that lots of them hadn't actually seen our house as well.

Nothing to tell really, except for the fact that we had a great time and as I understood our guests did so too. We were loaded with gifts (some highlights include a Solar Buddha, an olive tree and a feng shui home decorating guide :-s), thanks for that! And last but not least some experience-based tips for throwing a party with slightly too many people at your home: 1) invite batches of guests at different starting times, 2) buy at least 6 vlaaien for 50 guests and 3) if you want to keep your cake wax-free, don't blow 70 candles at once.

Our new housemate

Meet Haroen, who will be our new housemate in a few weeks. A friend of Diana found a cat with two kittens in the forest. And after nine months we don't really believe that our old cat Max will return anymore. So we decided to take one of the kittens for Babet (who will be thrilled, I'm sure. Yeah right.). So here he is, Haroen, a little red & white cat. We think he is about 5 or 6 weeks old and he will stay with his mother (and his sister, who will go to Menw!) for a while before we will get him.

Cute by ugliness

We have something cute in our garden... A song thrush (zanglijster) has built a nest on a couple of iron supports in our garden shed. After she sat on some stunning bright blue eggs for a while, a couple of very ugly little birds came out. And they don't seem to get any prettier... Hopefully, our cat won't find out!

One of the joys of working at home...

Sunny Sunday

Finally... Sun! Spring! Garden! No winter coat! Sunscreen (I burn easily)! In short, great weather today... Here's a visual impression of our Sunday, mostly consisting of breakfast and some reading in the garden (have reached part 4 of "Het Bureau", which I really recommend - mind the resemblance between our cat and the one on the book cover!), and a long walk through a lovely South Limburg landscape (lots of blossoms at the moment).

Another topic: my new job... Lots of people have asked me whether I like it, which is quite hard to answer after only a few weeks. But let's give it a try! So far, I like it. I like the projects we're working on (both applied and more fundamental stuff, cool project partners including cultural and arts centres, a senior home, other research institutions, etc., and nice techy topics), my colleagues are friendly and the city of Leuven is really charming. Driving back and forth is not too bad (it's about an hour and hardly any traffic jams), but in rainy weather traffic is lots heavier and because of road work I have to drive through lots of small villages (including traffic lights) before I can hit the highway on my way back. One slightly negative point is the fact that our office is located in the basement of a building and that our view consists of a concrete wall about one meter from the windows... One plus of this: weather-wise it's great, you don't have to watch depressing grey and rainy skies all day, while bright, sunny weather can't nag you while sitting inside!

Painting white Easter weekend

So, this picture more or less summarizes my Easter weekend! I planned to paint both of our stairs (they are new and need three layers of paint), but that turned out to be way too ambitious for three days. I always seem to forget that preparing a painting job is actually much more work than painting itself! So, during the weekend I shifted the focus of painting two stairs towards painting one of them, and I didn't even make that... But seriously, why do people want to become a painter? I really don't understand. Painting sucks! It takes ages before you can start to paint, you keep sanding, degreasing, filling holes, etc., your back starts hurting after only two steps, and I could go like this on for a while... But, on the bright side, the stairs leading ("nowhere just for fun", quoting Tevje in Anatevka) to the attick now have two layers and look quite stunning already. A final layer should do the trick. Unfortunately, I'm a bit low on available time the coming few weeks.

Another picture worth posting, although not too original I'm affraid, is one of our view into the back yard when we woke up this morning. It was predicted, this snowy morning surprise, but it is still nice to open the curtains and see the world in white. The weather for Sunday was very poorly predicted, by the way. Bad weather with lots of rain and 'wintery showers' was announced, but in stead, we ended up having a clear blue sky the whole day! Decided to have a good long walk through the woods with the dog, which was appreciated all too well.

Home makeover

For all of you who haven't been in our house recently, or ever for that matter, here some pictures of what we've been doing lately. The first two are of our 'study' (like the intellectual sound of that). In the yellow part of this room, the floor has been replaced (and I'm not talking about
the floor covering only, heavy wooden beams have actually been replaced - which was quite a stunning view, when entering the house you could see the roof of the house two floors up -), walls have been replaced and plastered and lots of painting has been done. In the "booked" part, we have covered lots of pink painting. The other picture is of our hunting style attick slash guest room (there is a sofa bed out of the picture focus). In short: we're getting there, but enough remains to be done!

Hairy clothes

For all of you who have been wondering why my clothes contain so many white hairs (the black ones don't seem to stand out so much), here's why! Our laundry simply isn't safe for Babet, even when we put the laundry basket on the kitchen table. Sorry for the high level of Animal Farm-ness on my blog the past few posts.

Not so many highlights this weekend, I'm affraid. Except for a new load of chocolate easter eggs (including the infamous "eiwijzer"), dragging down the first Christmas tree of the former owners of our house, which they pitiably put in the back yard 16 years ago (normally, Christmas trees have the decency to die pretty quick after being planted, not this one...), and the day on which sooo many people have their birthdays! In alphabetical order, Bas, Laurent, Martine and Timo, congratulations!

Our cat seen from below

We have three clear skylights in our kitchen roof. Our cat Babet sitting on one of them results in funny pictures!