Little ironies.

Not too much happening today. Managed to spruce up the interior of the car a tad, after our recent bout of visitors. Guess I just didn't have a chance or the motivation to get out there with the vacuum cleaner up to this point.
Also took a little trip to my favourite store ever since I figured I'd take off the little sticker do dad that we had to buy to drive on the roads in Slovenia. There was no way it was coming off without the help of a razor scraper, and I probably have two or three of these things, but didn't think to ship one over here.


Meanwhile, Gabe keeps sending me more places to look at compliments of the relocation people in Vienna. Talk about a contrast from when we came here! I think we're up somewhere in the range of a dozen to 15 places to look at. That is of course, if we do manage to get around to them all. There were a couple that looked like it was a bit of a hike for Gabe to get to work, so we might eliminate them from the list.
I think we saw a total of four places when we came to the Hengelo area.

Anyway.....right after I got a note from her earlier today, the phone rang. So I was a little confused when there was someone on the other end speaking Dutch, since I just figured Gabe was making a follow up call to the note. The chances of Gabe speaking fluent Dutch was pretty slim, so I told this person she must have the wrong number, but she wasn't about to give up....

See, here's the thing.

Back, oh I dunno, about six months ago, for something to do, and with the encouragement of my significant other, I put an ad in the local rag offering English lessons. Don't laugh, it is something I can certainly do, and figured it would maybe bring in a couple shekels to boot.
So I ran the ad for a couple weeks, and heard nary a peep. So I just figured fine, nobody around here thinks their English is all that bad (little do they know) and simply never gave it another thought.

Until today.

Wow. Here I thought I was a shoo-in for the Procrastinator of the Year Award, but obviously I'm only in double "A", and this lady on the phone is Major League.

So she had managed to keep my number for some six months or more, and then finally today decided to muster up her courage and give me a call.
Like I said. Wow.

Either that or one of her kids finally said, "Mom, your English sucks, why don't you just phone that guy?"

So I actually felt kind of bad when I had to explain to her that we're moving to another country.

I mean, what could I say?

Getting together once a week would be a bit of a non-started I'm afraid, since I'm pretty sure the airfare alone would make the lessons a tad pricey. Plus of course, do I rent a car? Take the train? And then of course there's the per Diem....and well, I'd have to stay over...

All kidding aside, it's too bad I suppose, since I could have been taking this person's money for the last six months.

Jammer!*


By the way, I have it on pretty good authority that the Austrians suck when it comes to English. Hmmm....




In other news, the neighbourhood has been somewhat quieter now that the house down the street has been completely leveled.
Of course, since these places don't have basements, there's not even a hole to fill in.




*for those of you who don't speak the lingo, that's pronounced "yammer", and it sort of means, "too bad", or as the Germans would say "shade".....oh...and with that one you pronounce the 'e'.
like...Porsche
And it's not like shade, as in a window shade, but pronounced with a long 'a'....
sort of like "shahdeh".


Oh forget it..