Nothing to complain about.

Which is why I have to dig a little deep here.
(there's actually a pun in there somewhere)

I mean, I surf around and check other blogs, some of which have these huge followings, and I guess I'm just a little dim, but I don't get it. Seems you either have to be bordering on a perve, or have some huge tale of woe in order to spice things up.

Well, sad to report but, that ain't happenin'.
Most people don't really and truly give a rat's tiny behind, so it will be a rare occurrence that I bitch and moan about this or that, just for the sake of having something to say.

I can't even complain about the weather. We've had a fabulous week, and yesterday I decided to head outdoors to do a little digging, and even worked up a sweat! Oh my goodness!
The only slight problem with working in "the garden", (and if you saw what I'm talking about, you'd fully understand the quotation marks) is that, most of it is right out front. This house is pretty much a "fishbowl" as it is with the huge (mostly dirty) windows, but when you're out front with a shovel or rake or whatever, you'd better not have something hanging off yer chin.

Even my one neighbour lady with the little dog said as she rode by on her bike, (with her Dutch accent)

"Wow, Bob!". (so that sort of sounds like "vowe Bop")

What the f...is that supposed to mean?

Is it, "hey you lazy bastard, 'bout time you came out to do something!" or was it, "you know, you could just hire someone?"

I guess I'll never know.

I'm just digging with a shovel out here, cut me some slack!

Thankfully nobody came along to try and give me any advise. I know they have prisons here, I don't want to be in one.
(hm, dude with bulging vein in forehead and a shovel....methinks I'll just walk on by)


As an aside, I must say that the soil is really nice. No clay. They probably don't know what it is. No flippin' wonder almost everyone has a garden. It's a no brainer.

Now, I suppose the positive thing about being outside in view of the whole world, is that my Landlord happened to drive by and stopped for a chat. Even though my Dutch has improved ever so slightly, I still have a heck of a time understanding the guy, and he has this one sort of dead looking eyeball that I'm constantly trying not to stare at.
Kind of like when someone has that mucous spit between their lips that you can't help but look at....ew.

Here I thought the guy was dead, since we hadn't seen him in months. Busy selling those pillow cases I guess.

So here's the thing. He's offered to send by a "tuinman" to do a once over. That's a gardener btw.
Y'know, give the place a tune-up, so to speak, since there are a few things that need to be seriously clipped. Not a problem with me, especially since he offered to pay!
(are you counting, 'cause that was pun number two)

These kind of things make Bob happy.

I figured it was a milestone in my life when I was able to figure out how to trim the grapevine at the front of our (back home) house without killing the poor thing. After that I was willing to call it a day, and leave the actual gardening to those who like it, and know how.


This now brings us to the question (and a neat little segue) of, just what should one pay for when it comes to a rental property? I'll admit I dropped the ball when it came to a couple things, since I was able to have lawn care included when were were in Puerto Rico, (not that it was all that spectacular) , and somewhere in the lease the installation of a washing machine should have included the term, "new" so that we wouldn't have ended up with the "wonder machine".

I'm sure Mr. & Mrs. Landlord are enjoying a brand new machine, while we got their old P.O.S.

So fine, you take yer lumps. However, there are always those little surprises that come along.
If say, one rents an apartment, usually the garbage simply goes down a chute. Right? When we rented in Puerto Rico, the garbage went out to the street, and that was all there was too it.
Here they have the very cool system that I've demonstrated earlier on, but it turns out, somebody needs to pony up some dough for all that technology.

This is one of the little surprises:

For those of you whose Dutch is weaker than mine, lemme 'splain.
Basically says we're paying €449 to have our garbage picked up. At todays exchange, that's roughly $748 cdn.

Wow.

I could probably buy a pretty darned nice power tool for that. And for a few extra bucks, could probably get a whole set.

That's for the whole year though, isn't that special?

Good thing blogging is cheap.