fifo.sh

I have cleaned up my apartment, that is to say, my bedroom is a semi mess, but that’s just because of the amount of unfolded laundry, should only take me one evening to sort that out as well (probably tomorrow night, as tonight is the last sunny evening in a while)
I have had two people for dinner over the weekend. Cooked my super-easy pasta salad on Saturday and by special request a brocoli pesto on Sunday, it was *brilliant*
I am still thinking about changing the setup of the living room, but I might need to wait till the rabbits are back outside, because they live in part of the living room now. (They will go back outside once the garden is redone, see the last point on this list)
I found the glass bricks I want to close my bedroom off with. Now I just have to see how expensive they are. By the looks of it, this is an easy way to put them in, no mortar needed, yay!
I want to try to finish putting in a zipper for my friend Wednesday night and finish my dress (the one with the cherries) on Thursday night. As my apartment will be shiny by then, I’m “allowed”. :-)
My new kitchen will have to wait a little while, as I’m still a bit short on the funding side of things. I still need about 25%, which is either my tax-money back (which will also buy me a car) or about two more months saving.
I slept like a baby all last week and over the weekend, hopefully an early night again tonight :-) (I love sleeping and I love my bed)
I have been running on a semi regular basis with my dog again, around a lake/wood area near my place. We both *love* it. Nothing compared to Friday Night Skate yet, but we’re getting there, running 2 km’s every other night now.
Tonight some guy will come over to make me a proposal for putting in two terraces and some paths in my garden. The coming week I will be seeing some more of these guys, so hopefully I can get a good deal. (I would love to do it myself, but my back just isn’t up for it :-( )

I have just decided that I’ll throw my life around.
I’ll clean up my apartment, starting tonight.
I’m going to entertain people at my place more often again, I loved doing that, and I just never get around to it anymore.
I might change the setup of the living room.
I might close off the space between the living room and the bed room, perhaps with the see through glass bricks that you can’t really see through.
All my sewing projects will have to be on hold until the apartment is shiny again.
I’ll order my new kitchen ASAP. (New and improved, with a higher work surface and a dishwasher, both for less back-ache)
I’ll get some extra sleep over the weekend, as I’m completely exhausted right now, and I’ll start running in the mornings again.
I’ll try to get my physical condition back to where I can participate in the Friday Night Skate, and I’ll put in more of an effort to go do *FUN* [TM] stuff with my dog. Right now I just walk her, but I don’t really go anywhere that often since they closed the park near my house and I can’t walk towards the big park anymore.
I’ll fix up my garden this summer, as I want a terrace and to be able to BBQ out there.

Do you know where your towel is? (Which Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy character are you?)
Ford Prefect (Ix)

Kyah, almost the funnest guy in the known universe besides your pal Zaphod. You know how to have a good time, even if all the sods around you dont. Why dont you ditch Arthur already and go to a party? You’re pretty impressive (After all, you work for the GUIDE) and you have been scarred for life because of your long term residence on earth. Of course, you left eventually, and you always knew where your towel was.

CEST 2008 May 13 01:36:19
          -!- Faragon [~faragon@83.68.0.49] has quit [Ping timeout]
	
May 14 10:10:34 coffee spamd[722]:
          spamd: connection from localhost [127.0.0.1] at port 3622

A total downtime of approximately 1 day, 8 hours and 34 minutes. (If you take into account that I “normally” receive spam every second, and 15 seconds, but who’s counting? Mind you, then I should also calculate how long the timeout for the ping was, so let’s just keep it at 32,5 hours of downtime)

From what I heard, the problem was so obscure, engineers had to be flown into the country to fix it. Mind you, kudos to the brave men (and possibly, hopefully also women) who sacrificed their sleep, and quite possibly sanity to fix this malfunction.

If I ever find out who fixed it, I’ll make sure they get some sort of recognition here :-)

* Faragon shivers

It’s very freakin’ early and it’s very freakin’ cold!
I *love* my job, somehow a minor ajustment on my part resulted in the feeling that I have a completely new and even greater job. However, if I have to get up at 4:30 (ish) to get to work in time (5:45), I do start doubting my choices.
After about 10 minutes of contemplating, I still decided I have a great job though ;-) So off to work in a bit!

Gives me the added advantage that I will be able to go to the City Hall and request a driving license this afternoon, as I passed my (first) exam on Monday. (Yay!)

Think alike :-)

Walking on Geneva airport yesterday, I remembered that I *NEED* a watch, I’ve been going without it for about two years again, and I just keep forgetting to buy me a nice one. I found Body and soul, a self winding watch of good quality (I know someone who has used it for 6 years or so without any problems).
I was so happy with my purchase I couldn’t stop myself from sending an sms to muffin decapitating boy to tell him I finally bought a Swatch… Then the reply came, I expected something along the lines of “great babe”, but instead, I got “Oh nooooooo! That’s what I got you! :-(”. As MDB can sometimes be a bit of a joker, I called him, to judge wither he was kidding or not over the phone. He wasn’t. He got me a pink one.
(This generated style options, so that was good)

When I arrived at his place yesterday evening, we did the customary “here’s your presents”-thing, I got him cheese, more cheese, Swiss flag sweat bands (as a joke for running), an Engadiner nusstorte (my favorite pie in the whole wide world), a big bar of chocolate and a small Swiss Army Knife (so that it’s easily carried in pants pockets for every day use) from Switzerland.
He got me an awesome pink New York (as he had been there for work) t-shirt and… a Swatch, a Pinksea to be exact :-)
It’s a very pretty watch! I know for sure that if they would have carried this model in the shop I was at, I would have bought that :-)
It’s great to have someone thinking about what you want and need, even if you hardly realize it yourself :-)
It’s soooo awesome, I now have two watches to choose from, one more feminine, the other more roughy toughy style! The pink one will go really nice with most of the clothing I made myself :-)
I’m extremely happy with both my watches, and I have no idea which one to wear when, because I like both so much :-)

Mind you, I still wonder why a guy in New York buys Swiss stuff for his chick in Switzerland, but I’m incredibly happy that he did ;-)

I’m sitting in a very comfortable kitchen, capuchino maker close by, laptop with Skype to muffin decapitating boy whom I missed dearly as he left for NYC on Wednesday (and I’m only returning from Switzerland on Monday!). On the table is a book, Northern lights, by Philip Pullman. Next to it, a coffee cup, my phone, an iPod and cable, and of course, a laptop.

For some reason, every time I’m over here, I want to stay. Luckily, my uncle gave my grandmother a digital camera yesterday on her birthday. She was asking me to come over again soon and explain it’s mysterious workings to her. My steph father (god bless his heart) replied by telling her that she would have to pay for the ticket to come over then :-) She immediately agreed! Huray!

Today the planning is to probably go to CERN, and afterwards a boat trip on the Rhone with the entire family and a nice big family dinner tonight.
Tomorrow my cousins’ kindergarten is having a Dutch week, so we brought them wooden shoes, dutch flags and stuff like that.
Hopefully I’ll get some time to do some shopping tomorrow. I promissed muffin decapitating boy I would bring him some raclette cheese.

Shit, my youngest cousin (was running a fever yesterday) is apparently going to hospital now, on account of a probable infection. Hmmm, will see about the CERN plans, might stay here… For now, breakfast, shower and we’ll take it from there :-)

I wanted to write a post about my great weekend, my finished jeans and my awesome cabdriver Eduardo…
However, nothing came of it, y’all can take a rain check, I’m too busy! ;-)

OK, I wanted lip balm, my favorite, Blistex Lip Relief Cream.
So you walk into your standard drug-store, in this case, an Etos and go to the register, where they have a nice little stand with all types of lip cream imaginable to man.
You can’t find yours immediately and ask if they have it in stock.
Next thing you know, the sales lady is being kind enough to tell you that you should get one with a sun-protective shield or something ridiculous.
At this point, me being me, I was getting slightly cranky and told her I was a nerd and I never came outside.
Apparently this didn’t deter her, she refused to answer my question, and kept telling me that it was really bad not to get one that doesn’t shield my lips from the sun.
At this point, I got really annoyed and told her I wanted my favorite, she reluctantly pointed it out to me, notified me again of the fact that the other ones were better and with visible aversion sold me two tubes of the stuff.

Up selling lip balm? How far can we go in this country?
I’m a consumer, but I know perfectly well what is good for me and what isn’t.
Any stick type of lip-balm goes horribly wrong on my lips. Any dryness will get worse and I’m allergic to Vaseline, which is in most of the stupid things.
Did this woman honestly think she was doing me a favor by pointing out to me that I should get another type of lip balm than the one I was specifically asking for, or would she get a commission on such a small purchase?

Sometimes you have one of those days, where you just suddenly realize what you want to do about something, a bit of inspiration here, a little bit of time there, and before you know it, nothing comes of any of your good plans to do one thing or another and you’re working away on something different…
Today it was all to do with gardening. I don’t know what set it off, but I’ve been tossing the idea of re-doing my garden around in my head for ages. I couldn’t determine what I wanted though, so it never got any further than just thinking about possibly one day thinking about it some more and what different features I wanted in the garden.
I’ve always knew I like the idea of a cottage garden, but I never knew how to implement that in my relatively small garden (just over six by just over seven meters).
As I was walking Jael, it hit me, the perfect design (I think) incorporating all the elements I wanted in there, while leaving enough space for a terrace a vegetable patch, loads of herbs and a space for the rabbits…
Click on the picture to the left to see a slightly bigger version of the design. I’ll redo the sketch in color, without the errors and in more detail when I get home and re-scan it sometime soon.
Also I’ll make some extra drawings that will show the side views, and not just the lay-out.