One of the joys of working at home...

Long warm sunny days with campfires

And yet another weekend with absolutely lovely weather, sooo nice! Saturday we had a birthday party of Eise's sister Mel and her boyfriend Mark, who live with Eise's parents in the old farmhouse they grew up in. It's a really charming, big, old house (with a "bedstee"!) with lots of space around it. This time we set a campfire in the meadow behind the house, which was much appreciated by the pony living there (and apparently feeling lonely). The couple of geese were not as much amused though... Lotte, as always, was very nervous all day because 3 out of 4 times we leave her behind when we visit Eise's parents (she always stays with them when we're on holiday), but not this time.

Today, on Sunday we enjoyed the sun in our garden with books, magazines, Saturday newspapers, cappuccino, chocolate cake and lots of sun screen. We've just returned from dinner & rose at Cafe Zuid, not bad altogether.

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!

Go see this movie!!

I saw a really lovely movie yesterday: Lars and the Real Girl (IMDB). Really, go and see it! It's about a guy, Lars, who is, let's call it socially challenged, and has difficulty finding a girlfriend. One day, he finally brings home a girl, to the great relief of his family and friends. Shockingly to them, the girl appears to be a life size doll Lars bought on the Internet! Still he is having a serious relationship with her and Bianca is getting a very popular character in the village. Hilariously funny, very sweet movie. The website is also worth visiting! Script is written by the one of the writers of Six Feet Under. Here's the trailer:

Cool advertising

Wow, not too much to add to this one. Great bus ad! Btw, it's for a Dutch insurance company quite famous for their controversial commercials and ads ("Even Apeldoorn bellen").

Plates plates plates

Wow, I never got so many plates in one week! Everyone seems to know that I'm assembling an eclectic set of tableware consisting of mismatching plates, bowls, etc. (I simply see too many nice sets while I need only one... by buying one piece of each set I can collect them anyway). The plated week started on Wednesday when I got a beautiful Iitala plate for my birthday (a Taika one) of Anita and Ellen, which I had been drooling about fo ages). On Thursday I had my farewell drink, and all of my colleagues bought me a plate as well! Loveley, my collection is almost complete at once! To top it off, I got four nice chocolaty plates from Martine yesterday, also for my birthday. So nice when people know you well! Thanks you all!

Another picture, especially for my colleagues: it does help to put your tea mug in the dish washer every once in a while...

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.