it’s true. they are. it seems that every thursday night i drink way way way too much. it has been, so far, a surreal friday.

i went to bed, a little dizzy, around 5 am. i woke up at 9 to try to rouse myself enough for a 10:00 violin lesson. yikes. my teacher has a new house, near matt’s office, so i bicycled over there. he suggested i try drinking and playing, so i can better let out the feeling of the gypsy music i’m trying to learn. or just play the irish fiddle music a tad more authentically. heh.

was home by 11:10 and left to take some xbox games to the post office to return to some friends who will be moving to the seattle area before we return to maastricht. stopped by the grocery store, then the post office, then was walking to the beloved chocolatiers, olivier bonbons, when i was accosted by a gaggle of 20-something japanese tourists. i had been rather dazedly slumping along the main shopping street, zombie-style, with my grumpy hangover. two of the girls rushed me. “oh, we love your hair! can we take pictures of you???” note the plural use of the word pictures. yes, i stood there blankly staring as they took turns crowding around me and snapping photos. very strange. then, continuing on my way, i found free yummy scooby-snacks being handed out. i got in the crowd. i got a cookie. yay. and continued to olivier bonbons.

i was there yesterday. i bought 4 boxes of chocolates, the small size. 2 minutes after i left, matt called me and said his mom had asked for 40 euros worth of olivier bonbons. which is why i was there again today. my dutch is really bad when hungover. the ladies in the store were as usual very sweet to me, but i am getting really good at this new word i’ve learned: kater, which seems to really mean a male cat, but also a hangover.

and by the way, kwaadaardig is my new favorite word. very evil. the depths of evil. but desiree, my dutch teacher, says that a stronger word is duivels. but i like the sound of kwaadaardig.

ok. i have to pack sometime. might as well stop putting it off.

can’t seem to get moving today. it’s nearly 12 and all i’ve done is take a bath, check email, read some sartre, and run a load of laundry. packing for heading to mn hasn’t even begun. bad bad. i have a student coming at 2, which should be plenty of time to get some things done, but perhaps all i really need is coffee.

i’m dreaming of american junk food. onion rings. mmmmm…. and cheese curds, of all things. and sour patch kids.

in other news, i’ve lost 6 kilos since we got back from ireland. hopefully i don’t get back to mn and immediately gain them all back again. it’s been hard work losing them.

have begun the process of opening the boxes of books that went immediately into the attic when we got to this new apartment. it’s a joy to find all my little obsessions. however, my head is in a very weird place. i go from reading bits of this or that erotic novel to pieces of something philosophical, back to erotica, back to philosophy, and throw in a regular novel or something biographical now and then for flavor. i have been behaving strangely, as might be imagined.

it’s fun.

hello!

see how non-addicted i’ve been! no posts for a while! yay!

it’s been a fun few days. matt’s old friend corey has been in town, and we’ve been hanging out with him and his coworkers a bit. perhaps i should start there, with our first evening of hanging out.

it was last thursday. thursdays are evil here, as it’s the shopping evening, and lots of people go out. matt went to aikido and i got a phone call from ghislaine, a friend from our first dutch class last summer. she was getting together with some people at cafe twee (“tway”) at 9, and wondered if i could come. as i was leaving, matt showed up with dick and anne, from aikido, so we took them along. when we got there, ghislaine wasn’t there yet, but petra, another acquaintance we hadn’t seen in a while, was there with some of her friends. ghislaine got there soon. unfortunately, the music was a bit too loud for me to hear anything but this obnoxious german guy across from me, who i was about ready to bash into the table. in the nick of time, corey called. we offered to come meet him at a hotel across the river, and take him out for drinks. we took dick and anne with us. corey was there with bob (another coworker) and his wife lynn. they are interesting people – we had been out for dinner with them 2 nights before. or maybe the night before. i can’t remember. so we all went to ‘t knijpke, a cool cellar restaurant/bar with loads of atmosphere. we drank there until they closed, then i offered cocktails at our place. bob and lynn went back to their hotel, but we five – matt, corey, dick, anne and i – all went back to our place, and hit the terrace with martinis and mojitos. yummy. dick left first, around 3:30 i think. then anne at about 4:30. matt went to bed shortly after that, and i walked corey to the taxi stand on the market sometime around 5 or 5:30.

matt usually wakes up around 7:30, although he doesn’t need to be to work until 9 or 9:30. he woke up friday morning when my alarm went off at 9. oops. corey’s coworker tom called asking us if we knew where corey was. nope. put him on a taxi. dick was supposed to come by around 11 to pick up some moving boxes before leaving for france to see a friend’s taiko (spelling?) performance. i spent two hours in the bathtub. at 12:30, i got worried about everyone. i messaged anne to see if she made it home ok, then went over to dick’s place to ring the bell over and over to see if he was waking up. i knew he needed to get going to france if he was going to make it. no answer there, and no answer from anne. i went home to continue nursing my hangover.

dick showed up sometime shortly after that, and we were so out of it that we were mostly just sitting there staring at one another and saying how we OUGHT to be sleeping it off. he had tried to get on his motorcycle to get to france, but had been a little queasy. so no go. his friend, jean, called to find out where he was. matt called to say corey had been found. dick went home and i went to bed.

that night, matt, corey and tom went out while i stayed home and slept.

saturday, five of us got in a car to go to nijmegen, where dick spends most of his time. tom and corey went home that evening, but matt, dick and i spent the night with dick’s friends vincent and kim. their friends sara and stein came over, and we ended up playing the longest game of munchkin ever, until 4:30 in the goddam morning. i was a bit grumpy, i’m afraid. then we all woke up around 10 in the morning to catch the 11:15 train, so that dick could go to esther’s party, which it turned out matt had also gotten an invite for. oh well. matt and i went home and relaxed. that was sunday.

monday i went running with my friend annemette in the morning, then had a student from 1 to 3. at about 3:30, dick and i got on his lovely motorcycle and rode away. what fun! he drove first, and there were some moments of terror for me. i’m not used to not being in control on a motorcycle, and he went really fast around some fun curves. by the time we stopped for something to drink at a cafe, i could taste fear in my mouth. then i drove. i’ve never been on his bike before, so i wasn’t quite so daring. it was fun, though, and i found some nice country roads in belgium (i think) that had easy curves and little traffic, where i could go quite fast. i don’t know where all we were, really. around 8 or so we were taking a helmet and gas break somewhere when matt called wondering where i was. i didn’t know, actually. i thought belgium, but the woman in the convenience store had spoken to me in german. dick drove again after that, and we ended up in aachen, and as usual to my experience in aachen, had some trouble getting out. i was having more and more problems with my helmet. with the new braids, it’s a bit too tight. i started getting terrible headaches with shorter and shorter periods of time, so around 10:30 or maybe 11:30, we got home. matt was sad and lonely, poor thing. we all went to witte ballons, a bar up on brusselsestraat that plays good music, and played pool until they closed.

tuesday i went rollerblading with an old student, kamila, who is back for the summer as an au pair. we rollerbladed to eijsden and back, about a total of 1 1/2 hours, but i haven’t rollerbladed since the occasional times i joined jodi and nichole and pals at the metrodome. i have blisters on my feet as i write this.

tuesday night corey, tom and another coworker, teresa, came for dinner. we had thai food: pad thai, green curry, and green papaya salad. yum. matt and i tried to go to bed early, but i think we were up until around 1 am or later.

today i was supposed to run with annemette at 11. but the rollerblading has my ankles and legs so stiff i can barely move, so i skipped it. i went to the drugstore to pick up bandaids and other useful accoutrements, and have been basically just doing little things around the house. ouch. everything is sore. i’m exhausted, too. we have our dutch lesson this evening, and then might watch shaun of the dead tonight. it’ll be a nice, easy thing to do. and there’s enough leftover thai food that i shouldn’t have to cook for the rest of the week. yay!

so, i’ll try to recover a bit before we get home. we’ll be there saturday night. anyone know of anything going on? warning: jet lag to consider.

oh yeah, also still looking for dasha. no clues. she has disappeared off the face of the earth. we miss her.

ciao!

hello, everyone!

i’ve been sadly remiss in writing. we went to ireland, did i mention? oh, well… that was fun. i bought some fiddle sheet music. it’s really easy, and good warm-up music for practicing my gypsy music, which is really hard. we ate yummy pub grub. mmmm….

then we came back.

the weekend after we came back, we had some friends over for hurricanes. yummy. we got toasted. around 3am, our cat dasha (many of you know her, the rascally cute tortoiseshell one, who scratches and purrs at the same time) escaped from our terrace to our neighbor’s back garden. we were too drunk to take the ladder down to rescue her, and it was too late to ring their doorbell, so we left her there for the night. she’s been there before overnight, to no terrible consequence. i woke up at 9am the next morning, worried about her. she wasn’t there.

she’s been gone over a week now and we are very very sad. we have reported her missing to the organization here, put up posters, and wandered the neighborhood several times daily with treat can. to no avail. we hope she returns before we head to minnesota. we were going to be there either last weekend or this coming one, but we put it off because of her. now we are leaving on the 16th. she’s got a week and a half to come back. we hope she does.

so that’s the next bit of news: we will be in minnesota sometime in the evening on saturday july 16th. matt will be leaving to return here on sunday the 31st, and i will leave for a road trip to washington on the 1st. i’ll be back in mn sometime around august 12th or 13th, since i will be flying home to maastricht on the 14th. i haven’t solidified my road trip plans yet.

our plans in general have not yet been made. please tell us about anything interesting we should try to attend. we will see what we can do!!! we are very sad to find out we are missing jesse’s party on friday, especially since we had originally planned on coming in on friday, not saturday. dammit. argh!!!

any other news? hmmm… dunno. matt held the 3rd KFG, which was very well attended. i, however, had food poisoning, and spent the night in bed. todd called me, though. yay!! so i had some entertainment. also, corey geving, an old friend of matt’s, who is also a colleague, will be in town tomorrow for a couple of weeks. we are looking forward to seeing him.

i have new students crawling out of the woodwork. bad timing, since i’m heading out soon. oh well, many of them have holiday plans too, so this should work just fine.

a student from last summer, who was an au pair here last summer, is back from prague as an au pair again for the same family. we are meeting up in the park tomorrow. then i will head over to molly’s house for coffee and conversation, then my dutch lesson later. somewhere in there i need to bicycle over to lanaken to feed a friend’s kitties for the last time before he returns tomorrow night. and that’s the plan. the rest of the week is pretty empty, since we kept it free in hopes of being on a plane on thursday or friday.

i have a lovely idea for a regular magazine column in a magazine i subscribe to, philosophy now. 🙂 heh heh. when i draft my first one, perhaps i’ll share it.

and that’s that for now. so now i can read up on as many of you as i have time for right now!