Care package from home.

A small box with a hefty price tag. Arrived at precisely 14:40 c.e.t.
I was expecting maybe something the size of perhaps a compact fridge when I heard it was over $75.00 to ship a box. Supposed to have taken five days. Pretty close I guess. Was shipped a week ago Monday.
Came today, that makes it six by my count.
We certainly are keeping the mail companies in business, since I just shipped off yet another box to Canada. That was only €24.
It was about the same size, just a little lighter. Somehow I don't seem to see the relationship between those two prices.
So I've had a pleasant afternoon reading a couple back issues of Fine Woodworking, and I'll let Gabe sort through the rest of the stuff, since there are a couple little items in there that she's particularly keen to get.


Meanwhile....I figured I'd post a few more pics of our recent excursion, since we came back to the Netherlands by way of Bruges.
If you ever have a chance, try to see the movie In Bruges , since quite a lot of it was filmed right in the main square of Bruges.

Mind you, the film is a wee bit violent in places, and there's no shortage of colourful language, but I could clearly see why the boss wanted to send the character played by Colin Farrell there for a "vacation".
I refuse to give away the plot.
Sorry.

I highly recommend Bruges.


Really.

(um...the place, not necessarily the movie, but it's ok too)

And not just because it's "romantic" or has neat buildings, but you just might come across something that you'd never see anywhere else.

OK, possibly this should fall under the category of, "things you'd only see in Yurp", and it somehow reminded me of my late father-in-law, since the trailer was a home made job....I couldn't help but take a picture, and I could easily imagine him riding it.

I know, has nothing to do with being in Bruges really, but it's my blog after all, and I'll stick in what ever I bloody well please.

The shopping was pretty good too. And not outrageous. But I have no opinion about that.

Here's me thinking of what to say next.
Well, either that or I'm contemplating eating that box of Belgian chocolates sitting in that bag in front of me. (although quite possibly a moment of indigestion)
There were lots of chocolate shops to chose from. In the first place I went into though, I was behind an Italian couple who thought they'd like to "sample" some chocolate. The clerk pretended not to understand, and I chose to leave. There seemed to be chocolate shops every 20 feet, so I wasn't going to stand there being annoyed by these people.

C'mon!

Pretty sure there's no "sampling".

Plus, the next place I went into, had just enough local kids to give me an idea that they might have the proper goods. Who better knows than the local kids where the best deals in chocolate would be?


Rather than head directly for the built up highway on our way home, we chose a more scenic route along the N9 and decided to stop and check out one of the many grave sites of Canadian troops, just outside Adegem.

I'll be darned if I can find a decent website, but I find this one. even though it only shows an couple more photos.

I don't remember the exact numbers (that's why I was looking for a decent website) but there are over 848 Canadian soldiers buried at this site.*


Since I chose to not end on such a sombre note, (and there's a pun in there too) I decided to upload a short video I took at our dinner table in Brussels on Friday night. The entertainment was (almost) free. Good thing too, since the food was pretty average.

*Just a trivial snippet; the Lincoln and Welland Regiment passed this way through what was then open fields on their way to Maldegem on the morning of Sept 15, 1944, along with the Canadian Grenadier Guards. This was the same regiment that came right through Delden in the spring of 1945.

It could be worse.

Like, there could have been an open window.

As it was, we were counting our lucky stars that there was plenty of glass between us and this one bug that kept trying to pound its way into the living room last night.
I think it was a big moth, but I'm not entirely sure, since I couldn't really get a good look at it. Put it this way, the buzzing was so loud we first thought it was inside.

Ya.

I have to point out that, there are really very few annoying bugs here, with the exception of the odd mosquito which of course, heads directly for Gabe, so we have to keep the place buttoned up pretty good. There were the annoying bees that kept coming in through a couple holes that the owner left in the upstairs door to the bedroom. I've since plugged those openings with some caulk.
Oh...in spite of what I just said about the lack of bugs, there was one other thing.

Once again last night, but a little later on, I actually thought Gabe had fallen down when she went into the bathroom, since she let out a sound that may very well have put the fear of God into all the dogs in the neighbourhood.

Now, I've squished a few bugs in my time, but that wasn't going to be the course of action with this one, since I would have ended up with an actual corpse.
We do tend to keep bathroom type cleaner at the ready, which seems to work fairly effectively on huge-assed spiders. Let me just put it to you this way, I went downstairs and got a pair of plyers to pick this guy up....

I've never actually seen a spider that large inside a house before. There was just that black widow* on a golf course in the Dominican Republic, but it was at least out doors.
With all eight legs completely stretched out, I'm pretty sure he/she/it could have covered the entire palm of my hand.
Might have been this guy.

While we're on the "it could have been worse" topic. I came across one other little snippit today that I need to share.

It's not that likely that we would have ended up living in this place that I'm about to point out but y'know, anything's possible.

Once again, counting those lucky stars, since when asked, at least I don't tell anyone I live in ....... (go on, click that link...I dare ya) this place

*sorry, I've been reminded that it was a tarantula.

A different perspective

Every once in a while, I can take a half decent photo with the "back-up" camera. It doesn't seem to happen very often, and it typically needs to be a blindingly bright day out, at least that's my take on the situation.
I've actually been reluctant to upload whatever was on the card from that camera, since I pretty much knew I'd be disappointed.

These two pics of one of the canals leading into Brussels are the rare exception. They're also a rare example of a nice vista in Brussels (although this is somewhere outside of Drogenbos, but let's not split hairs)



Yes, that's an actual bike path.


Out of all the other pictures on the card, there was one lucky one, which was taken in Sava, just outside of Ljubljana, on Easter Monday.

This is Gabe talking with her cousin Darja. (geez, I hope I spelled that right)

You'll notice there are train tracks right behind the house. I didn't really hear much in the way of trains when we were sitting in her kitchen though, since the walls are solid concrete and looked to be over a foot thick.

The "free" internet connection here at the hotel is making me a little nervous, and I've had to log in a few times already, so I'm not about to loose any more info.
I've already lost an entire email that I wasn't about to try and recreate, so I'm thinking this will be short and sweet.

Kind of a refreshing change.

Live from Brussels

This could very well have been "camera update", since it occurred to me that you may have noticed that there has been a distinct shortage of photos lately. Since my camera never did arise from the dead on Easter, so I shipped it off to Nikon of Canada on Monday. Took me a little back and forth before I could determine whether or not they would actually send it back to me, but I got an honest to goodness reply from someone named Norman, (think that's his real name?) saying they could do international shipping, but there was no way I could get it fixed here in the Netherlands. I do sort of understand the whole "separate legal entity" thing (my words, not Nikon's)
I still think that's a pretty dumb way to handle a warranty issue. Then these dough heads had the nerve to send me a survey asking if I'd recommend them to any of my friends? Huh?
See, I don't really have that many friends, so I'd just as soon not piss off the ones I have, so no...that's not going to happen.
The somewhat tricky bit was that I needed to provide proof of purchase, and there was no way such a critter was about to jump out at us. I had Kathryn hunting high and low back in the homeland, since I was pretty sure I had only brought the "warranty card" with me in my luggage back in October.
My first thought was to try and sort through credit card statements on line, but Mastercard somehow thought I was going to call collect to try and get a password to be able to do that. I don't even think you can call collect from Yurp, so I'm not sure what they were thinking. Of course, 800 numbers are out of the question.
Anyway, some nice fellow at Henry's managed to come up with a copy of my receipt, and I was able to print it off and shove it in the box.
We now wait....and hope.

I'll see what I can do with the less than stellar HP tomorrow, but I'm certainly not promising anything.

We're currently in Brussels (oh wait, I said that) at this place and just about ready to
pack it in.

A mysterious email

Back in March, the 13th to be precise, I mentioned something about a process called inburgering
Sorry about this, but now that I've graduated away from the html cheat sheet, I'm sure I'll be putting in links at an insufferable level until I get over the novelty of the whole thing.
I'll try to control myself. (not)

Where was I?

Right.


So this morning there was an email in my inbox from someone I did not recognise....
Hm...
This doesn't happen too danged often, since I have my junk-mail filtre set at "don't even try it" and tend to mark anything that manages to sneak in as a "phishing scam" and then I never hear from that person/thing again. In this way, I get very very little junk mail.

Anyhoo, it was a good thing that this person put "Hof van Twente" in the subject line, since I then was able to discover whom it was from.
So by now a couple emails have gone back and forth between yours truly and a Linda Büter over in Goor.
(I know....seems like a German name to me too...but she's Dutch.)

I remember Linda, she was the blond lady that spoke English. Mind you, she writes to me in Dutch, and I'm afraid, with my smattering of written Dutch, I write back in English.
I do recall that she had written her email on a piece of paper, but I was darned if I could read it, so I had no clue what her last name really was. Besides, I tossed the paper after about a month or so, and figured I'd never ever hear from anyone over in Goor...

Turns out, I've been asked if I wouldn't mind helping someone up in Almelo put together a couple wardrobes.

Huh?

I mean, I don't really mind, since I did say I'd be willing to volunteer to help out. I'd sooner be making a couple Euros, but we'll start with some pro-bono work.
Mostly I guess, I'd be curious to see just who it is that's so pitifully helpless that they need some gringo to come and help put together a "kleding kast"

Although, it probably looks more like this.

Bwahaa! Yet another link!! Not over it just yet.

An offer was made to drop me off and pick me up, but I'm pretty sure I'd prefer to take the car, since then I can take all the tools I think might be necessary. Plus I wouldn't then be stuck in Almelo waiting for someone to come and fetch me.
At this point I have no clue who these people are, or where on God's green earth they might have come from*.

We'll see what comes of this, but these wardrobes are supposed to arrive in "week 20".
Ya...the Dutch count the weeks. They don't come out and say, "oh...the week of May 10th" or whatever.
For example, when the car was ordered, it was due to arrive in "week 42" or something. So then you need to sit there like an idiot counting the weeks on the calender to come up with an answer.

Honestly.



*um like, are there like, doo-rags involved?

The wittless protection program.

Yes, I spelled that right.
We were watching some show last night where one of the characters had to up and leave because he thought he was being chased by some bad guys, and had never bothered to tell his wife he was in the "witness protection program". So I whispered to Gabe, "Don't worry honey, I've never been in the wittless protection program".
Had a bit of a chuckle.
Then again.
Looking back on the impression I might have left about Slovenia, maybe I do need to go into the wittless protection program.
I was being a tad sarcastic when I dismissed the country as just some place with mountains and a bunch of old buildings.

It was sarcasm people.

Settle down.

Slovenia was really really nice. Trust me. I recommend it.

Not only that, but if you have the "Slovenian connection", and I've spoken of this in the past, then you're always going to have some place to stay. If you try staying in a hotel, some relative or other will come there and drag you out by the heels. I mean, we stayed with someone who just happened to come along to our wedding some nineteen years ago.Here we are in her kitchen.

What I'm also getting at is well, I'm pretty danged cheap....so having a place to crash makes it all the more worthwhile as a destination.

I'm just saying.
This was Saturday night. After going to the cave in Postojna, we continued on to the coast, to see Piran. Cute little touristy village with a good choice of restaurants.
We had to park way, way down at the other end since well, I think you know about parking just about anywhere in Yurp by now. I'll leave that alone.


The crazy thing is, if it had been say 10 degrees warmer, I would have sworn I was in Puerto Rico.

Honestly.

A lot of the buildings had a similar look, a lot of the occupants of the motorways have a similar "driving style" and there were even places playing that annoying samba/meringue/ thumpa-thumpa music. I did a real double take when we went by one restaurant and they were playing Buena Vista Social Club. I know that's Cuban, but we played it to death when we lived in Cabo Rojo.
It was like déjà vue all over again.

Btw....we just reached a milestone here. That link above is the first ever html that I've written without having to refer to my cheat sheet. Just thought I'd mention it.
So fine, it only took me a hundred plus friggin' entries and seven months to get to that point, but really, I ain't got no larnin'. So cut me some slack.


Then I realised I forgot the accents in "déjà", so I had to go back and fix it anyway, so.....to get those accents, I had to refer to a cheat sheet....but at least it was online..



Doesn't mean I'm getting any smarter, just that I was too lazy to get up and walk across the room, and thought I'd give it a try.

The link worked.

Who knew?

The week that went.

To those of you who check in from time to time to see if I have anything to say. I'm sorry. (you'll note I didn't say anything "interesting" to say...)
The motivation has just been somewhat lacking this week to say much.
I don't really think it was the long drive back from Slovenia or anything, although I do feel like I've been recovering.
I guess maybe it's just the notion of rehashing the whole trip for everyone.
It was just another country with some old buildings and a bunch of mountains.

Really.

Well, plus a language I barely understand.

Meanwhile I've been trying to spend at least an hour a day out in the "garden" trying to make it look like someone actually lives here. Again, the motivation was not there today, but the day isn't over just yet.
Right along with that fun activity, at least half of yesterday was spent trying to figure out my Dutch homework.

It was Thursday, after all.

Gabe says she'll be clocking out with the Dutch today.

We'll see.

They are strict nine to fivers over here yet for example, the plant controller actually makes more money than the divisional controller. Go figure. Guess the company that cannot be named doesn't mind putting in a cheap Canadian.

But I digress.

There will be a few more photos that I'll upload, along with perhaps a little video, but the thing that is getting me down just ever so slightly is that my camera crapped out on Friday and cannot be revived without being sent off to Nikon in Canada.

There, I said it.

I vascillate between being gutted (as the Brits would say) and utterly pissed off.
I mean, I have the original receipt from a Nikkormat that I bought in something like 1975, but cannot for the life of me find the receipt for this camera, that I bought just last October. The other irony is, that Nikkormat still works fine to this day, even though it's over 30 years old.
That's it.

Took one little tiny battery. Was totally mechanical (that lever next to the lense is the timer) and was completely reliable.

There's no place where I can load film into this computer however.
Don't get me wrong. The D40 is a pretty darned sweet camera, and is capable of some stunning photography. But it needs to work.
I'm trying really hard not to cuss here.

Meanwhile, here's a little snippet from the entrance to the caves in Postojna.

I realise it seems like either something out of a horror movie, or a scary ride at some carnival, and it was just a tad of both. Standing up is not a good idea, since there's really no head room to speak of. The little train takes you roughly two kilometers into the cave, then you start your tour, which takes about an hour.







Yes I know...it's really dark. It's a friggin' cave, so bite me.

In case you've never stumbled on this bit of information, Slovenia has a number of caves

Now.....I have to say this about that:

There have been two "things" that I keep seeing over and over again here in Yurp. One of them is that place with the golden arches, which I don't really mind seeing too much, since their washrooms are clean and can sometimes be a real convenient "find", if you know what I mean.
The other thing is, well....
I'm trying to figure out how to put this without being really inflamatory. Let me just say this: with the population of China being what it is, it comes as no surprise that there's going to be some "spillage" so yes, that would be the other "thing" that I keep seeing.
Kind of like when the pot under the bed is too full....but let's not quite go there.

So here's the thing. In spite of being asked repeatedly NOT to use flash photography, there were these two individuals that continued to do so. Pretty sure that from a population of what? Two billion? A couple of them wouldn't have been missed. They weren't that big, and since we were at the tail end of the tour, I'm pretty sure I could have flipped each one of them over the railing with each hand....and nobody would have been the wiser.
I didn't though, since I didn't want to end up in a Slovenian prison.
Of course, the way the Slovenians feel about their "jame" (caves) I probably could have got off with time served.

"Really your Honour, I only did what any sensible person would do".

Ok...gotta go cook something...

Is it Tuesday?

I know, it's actually Wednesday, but I swear I wasn't sure what day it was yesterday.
Comes from driving from Slovenia back to Delden in one swipe. Was a bit whoozy after that one.

Lemme see. In total we drove something like 3200 km. Well, I should say I drove 3200 km. Wouldn't have been quite so much if we had actually stayed in one place, but well, we were trying to squeeze it all in.
First stop was Munich, since I didn't want to try arriving at our destination in the dark. Got there around 4:30 on Thursday I guess. If you're old enough, you may recognise the area where we stayed. Remember the hostage taking of 1972? 31 Connollystraße is just over to the left, slightly out of camera range.Might have got there slightly earlier, but someone had to go on a conference call.I can get out and walk around for a few minutes, but it doesn't take long before I'm itching to get moving again. By the time we checked in, found a place for a bite to eat, I was pretty much ready to call it a day.
The kids decided to take the subway into Munich, but we were too pooched to do any such thing, and were in bed by about nine I think it was.
Besides, every time I looked back at our back seat passengers, the sleepy heads were sleeping. I probably would have a little more energy in the evening as well, if I could somehow figure out how to get someone to drive me around while I sleep.

Since the Friday was Annie's birthday, we figured it would be a cool idea to swing by Neuschwanstein just to have a look.
Not a bad place to celebrate your 25th birthday.
Here she is with her Aunt Gabe. I'll let you figure out who's who.
Sticking castles up high on a pile of rocks seems to be a recurring theme in those parts.
We resisted the temptation to go up to or into any of the castles, since it was Good Friday after all, and the place was mobbed. Hate to sound just a tad too pragmatic, but once you've seen the inside of most of these places well, it's a bunch of rocks somebody stacked up to make a building. (they're all the same)Here's the thing.

I'll have to come back to this, since I just finished cutting the grass, and there's some cleaning up to do.
And I'm not talking about grass clippings.

I'll continue the saga at a later date.

What? Post No. 100?

That didn't seem to take long, and I hadn't really noticed until I saw that Monday's was number 99.
Ah yes, number 99. How does a complete idiot like Maxwell Smart end up with a hot chick like number 99? You thought I was maybe refering to "The Great One"....sorry, but no.
Ok...getting a bit off topic here, even though I had no topic to start with.

It would seem that trying to get a quick photo at the train station can be a bit tricky. Couldn't very well leave the car unattended, since I was basically double parked and had to move once for a bus as it was.
So that meant that, I had to rely on watching the door very intently and hoping to catch them on the way out.
I shouldn't really comment on the photo. It is after all, a public forum. I'll let you guess which one's are Lucas and Anne-Marie.


I thought I'd use "the big flash" instead of the tiny built in jobby that sits on top of the camera. You can see it does a fabulous job of lighting up a huge area that other wise was completely dark.
I did take a more exclusive second shot, but hadn't allowed the flash to recharge so that was a complete waste.

Idiot.

Since we're heading to Slovenia in the morning, my job list for the day will include searching out and printing off a couple google maps templates along with any other helpful info that I find. I may go back to the Read Shop and pick up a map of Austria, just so I have one. They didn't have a map of Slovenia, so I'll need to stop at a roadside travel plaza and pick one up. I've seen almost every possible combination of map at any of those stores in our journeys so far, so I'm not too concerned about that.
Of course, never hurts to do a little perusal of the phrase book:


Coming up on nine a.m. so I'd better head out before the stores are mobbed.
There may be an update later today.

Play nice.*




*there are allowances for poor grammer btw.

Worse time of the day.

And so we wait.

This is pretty much the story of my life. Did a lot of it in Puerto Rico. Thankfully this time around I don't have to sit out in the boiling car waiting and waiting. There would always be some stupid ass who would call from Pittsburg at 6:00 p.m. ('cause it was only 5:00 in Pittsburg) and then proceed to be on the phone for at least 45 minutes.

Good times!

I was forwarned this time around though, but it's always good to have something on the stove at about the "half done" stage, so that when I get the call, I can bump up production.

There's always the price to pay for living in la-la land.

Like the weekly bout with the lawnmower.
Such a pleasure. About half way through it's all I can do to not not just trundle the thing up to the furniture store (the Landlord's place) and wheel the f**ker in the front door, and just tell them to shove it. It's fine that it's self propelled, but that's because it's so heavy. If it needs to be "self propelled", then why isn't there a reverse??

I'm just saying.

It may very well come to pass that I'll just buy some lightweight little electric thing, and be done with it. And yes, they will get their lawnmover back. There's no room for two.

The weather today was damned near perfect and I'm not even sure what the temperature got to, but I do know I was sweating like a steer earlier on when doing a little edging along the back. Might have to work on what I at the time thought was a straight line though.

Oh well.

I may revisit a couple spots.Or not.

Again, I have to say. Good times!

We have visitors coming tomorrow, and should be arriving by train around say, 6:30 or 7:00? They'll call when they get to Deventer. (go to google maps, ok?) It's just far enough away that it gives me just the right amount of time to get there.
(um, something to do with that whole "waiting" thing?)

No, I'm not going to be taking along a couple bikes for them to ride back, I'll have the car. Hopefully I can later swing by the company that cannot be named and pick up Gabe.
Surely she'll be done by that time of night. It's getting to be that time of night at this very moment.

Guess I'll crack another cold one and see what the latest body count is in Italy.

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.

A fine mess

Sometimes there are things that just make me want to spit.

Seriously.

I'm not sure what the deal is with our landlord, but maybe he's just not a handy guy. Or maybe he never had a chance to sort out some minor issues. Perhaps to him they're not "issues".

Maybe too busy selling pillow cases.

We have this little room off the garage, which I've begun to think of as a bit of a death trap, and since coming here back in August I've been eyeing the place while trying to come up with some means of getting the junk in there organised.

Um...ya.
Here's a slightly different view. Fascinating, isn't it?*





I didn't really start becoming annoyed right away, and by the time I was getting a little worked up, winter came along, and it was just another place to ignore.
Now that the weather is starting to warm up well, I have to actually go in there.

Nothing has fallen on my noggin'...yet.
Best to be avoided, since my blood pressure did get slightly elevated at one point when there was just one too many things in there for me to work around. Nothing got broken, and there was no cursing.

Just a bit of a "clatter".




Of course, didn't bring my shop with me, so hanging some nice pegboard or something or other to hang things from is pretty much out of the question.

Turns out, Landlord dude had bought two "racks" that were lying in there with the rest of the flotsam. Just never bothered to put them up.

C'mon!

So that was today's little project. Had to go to the other side of town to pick up a proper sized masonary bit, which I purchased from the same place where I got the most expensive wrench ever. This time though, I only had to shell out €2,60. Whatever.
Meant to take a photo of the place.

Forgot.

It's right across the street from where we get the tires switched. I'm sure you remember.

So on the right there, you can see the racks. Makes a difference. I took out the beat up old tools and shoved them in a cupboard where I don't have to look at them.

They're not mine, so I'm not about to throw away his junk.
(hey, some guys are touchy about their old sh*t)

Oh, and did you notice the shoes? What the...?? They also got "stashed", but the socks had to go.
This is a tad better:


Pretty sure I can come up with something to deal with the two or three short handled things, not that I want to be too anal about it or anything.
Just can't deal with stuff on the floor...

I'll breath now.



Only other thing I have to say; they need to start selling Tapcons over here, 'cause dealing with plugs and screws is just nuts. Not to mention the fact that every screw is either a slotted or phillips. Oh, and if I wanted to use my Robertson screws? Well then, I'd need to go back home.

These little links are interesting, aren't they?


Tomorrow we once again fire up the lawn mower.


Oh joy.

*Um, any of you who checked in earlier may have noticed that I put in two "before" photos, one of which ended up at the end of the entry. Not sure how I managed that. Always careful when it comes to editing the words, didn't pay attention to the pictures.

Sorry.

I just switched them around.