here i am at the library again with 3 minutes to go for time.  so i’m posting.  this morning i picked bob and ceese (matt’s dad and stepmom) up at schiphol.  they’re napping, so i decided to bicycle over to the library to do my taxes.  i successfully navigated the belastingdienst website, and declared my so far non-existent business to have not gotten any money so far, thus nothing to pay.  thank goodness for that, or i would have needed my dictionary.  i tried to phone in for help yesterday, but the man on the phone refused to speak slower or rephrase when i didn’t know a word.  he just repeated the word over and over.  i asked if maybe i could speak to someone else in english, and he said it was against policy.  argh.  but it’s done now.

oops.. out of time.  bye!

wow!  amazing!  we knew enough people in the area to have a successful party on saturday!  i was shocked.  actually, i’m feeling kind of guilty, because matt did all the inviting.  i didn’t bother inviting anyone, so that especially included people we know in maastricht.  i didn’t think about it.  anyway, we had tons of people.  2 from maastricht, several from rotterdam, a huge group of ikea people from delft, and a surprising number of people from amsterdam and surroundings.  yay!  we almost had more non-ikea than ikea people.  🙂 (that would be a rather wry grin… there were a shitload of ikea people…. we’ll have to meet more non-ikea people.)

anyway, i think it was a good start.  oops, and i see i’m less than 2 minutes away from being out of time.  damn.

hi there.  well, as i’m sure everyone knows, we moved into the houseboat almost a month ago.  amazing.  so we’re settling in and having a great time there.  i’m learning that waking up early is practically a given on a boat.  first, so much sun comes in the bedroom windows that it’d be hard to sleep in anyway, but also, the people who live and work on the water seem to start their noisy days earlier than other people.  ugh.  but other than getting ridiculously tired by around 11pm, i’m liking it just fine.

we still don’t have internet at home, so i’m at the library, using some of my free daily time.  i can’t wait to get our connection set up properly.  i hate having time limits to pay attention to, and i have a bunch of stuff i’d like to be looking into.  anyway, i just wanted to do a quick update.  that’s all for now.