The flight out

The flight out, was as per usual chaotic. We managed to leave the house about 1pm, to make it to the airport, sneaking more or less out of the house as not to disturb jess to much. As far as I have been in contact with home, she seems to be doing fine, which I must say is a relief.

Making it to the airport, we quickly popped into boots and weighted our suitcases on a slightly better scale then the one we have at home. Liz her suitcase came down to 16.8 and my suitcase weighted a 16.9. So atleast that was a worry of our mind.

After getting our tickets we headed to the airport and decided to check in as it was near 3ish pm anyway. Sadly my suitcase broke (or atleast the handle) so I need to see if we can fix that. I do *not* fancy carrying that suitcase home from the airport.

Two things really annoyed me:

• I forgot I had a pocket knife left in one of my coat pockets
• They confiscated liz her lighter at the airport

Apart from those two, who both were solved and should be mailed home right now. The flight was pretty good and we had great seats (1E and 1F) with extra leg room. The flight was pretty short and apart from a long haul through through terminal H at schiphol. (Am I mistaken or does that sound too much like “cellblock H” to me ;)

So that part of the journey was pretty much relaxed. No problems….

more on the stay later…

Christmas meal II

The day after boxing day we had liz her parents coming around. Liz was up dead early and apperantly decided to almost O.D. on coffee (well according to her that is). Hence she did extremely well and managed to be in good spirits until later that evening when the caffeine was off.

The food was once absolutely gorgeous and plenty of turkey. The company was pretty good and there was much rejoicement. For an idea: There was plenty of turkey, mash, garlic fried potatoes, peas, sprouts, stuffing, pigs-in-blankets, bacon, roasted parsnips all with liberal lashes of gravy and some cranberry sauce. Neatly washed away with a nice crisp white wine. As desert there was christmas pudding with brandy-butter, rum-butter, rum-sauce and cream. Seriously, the fact that I haven’t toppled over from an heartattack is surely a small miracle indeed.

 I am all in all pretty happy with the new presents I have got. Another book of my favourite author, Clive Cussler, his latest in the Dirk Pitt Saga. I am currently just starting to read through it, so I can’t say yet if it is pretty decent.

I also had a bottle of 8 year old Bells. Although neither bells and blended whisky’s are on my favourite lists, I must say that I was impressed and very pleasantly suprised by the taste. I was strong and deeply tasting, almost on part with some of the single malt whisky’s I normally enjoy.

As expected liz her hand made presents worked like a treat. I think her grannie was most impressed by the wonderfull quilt she made. In fact her mum (that’s liz her mum) send her a picture of her gran wrapped in it.

Christmas lunch

well Christmas dinner was very good.

An overload of lamb (most being devoured by me), cauliflower cheese, peas, sprouts, sage and onion stuffing, garlic roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings and gravy. All sloshed down with wine a-plenty (a quite nice south African Merlot Cabernet Sauvignon Shiraz)

Right now, I’m feeling pretty stuffed and to content too move very much (apart from the occasional raiding party for more lamb). I have this vision of me geeking out with one hand wrapped around a leg of lamb like a modern techy caveman

Having watched Dr. Who, we can’t make our mind up if it was a good  episode or not. Catherine Tate seemed to be highly annoying although I liked the fact that the Doctor was still `grieving` over rose. Although the end seemed a bit weird-ish (making it snow, asking if she would come along (the new companion is already announced at this time) and the TARDIS taking off instead of just disappearing

Having now cleared most of the stuff away, and done the dishes quickly (it was rather less than I thought). So all that is left is to relax and enjoy plenty of telly

Tomorrow is gonna be a bit of a busy day, although we don’t have any plans for people to come aroud. Although I made an invitation to Dave and Eve to drop by if they wished, we shall see. Apart from that, we need to get the house ready of the in-laws-invasion tomorrow and get the suitcases packed and ready.

A new baby is born

And no, this isn’t about Christmas .. although ….

I just got a call from my parents, telling me the wonderfull news that my youngest sister, gave birth to a baby (a girl) at 20:30 GMT. I am dead happy, apperantly all is well, and the delivery went smooth and with out a problem.

I am looking forward to seeing them soon :D

Congratulations sis!!

update I: I just finished posting this blog and I got a text of my sister. I am really touched that she thought of me. After all she must be quite tired, even though the delivery went extremely well

update II: My oldest sister just quickly popped online and send me 3 picutes of the newest sprout. And you know what? She’s absolutely gorgeous. I am gonna spoil her! *grins*

note: I might put up a picture, if my sister is okay with it.

Christmas shopping

Well, with Christmas in front of us, it all leads down to the mad shopping spree and ofcourse the much needed presents [1]. Being absolutely unable to find something nice for liz, we decided that there was one better option. Indeed, I dragged her along. What intended to be a short trip, turned out to be a nice strolling around finding some nice clothes for her.

So all in all that means we are almost ready for Christmas. Only things left to do is cleaning up, getting some good booze [2] and eat, drink and be merry. After that it’s preparing for the arrival of liz her parents on the 27th and us going to see mine on the 28th.

Merry Christmas to one and all!!

[1]: I am still ambivalent about the whole Christmas and giving presents things. Still I am happy to give liz some nice things.
[2]: Must get some nice red wine to go with the lamb, and some beer and well more just to get us pleasantly merry ;)

hardware aquirement

Today, I managed to get my monkey hands on some rather nice hardware. Thanks to freecycle we managed to get the following:

1. a 17″ CRT Monitor (CTX-1785S),
2. a 19″ CRT Monitor (CTX-1995UE) with BNC connectors,
3. a laser printer (Tally 1804 Plus),
4. a inkjet printer (HP 920C),
5. a keyboard.
6. an office chair.

It was a lot of panic and stress to get everything organized for collection. But thanks to “j” who came along into down to help me lug some stuff. The taxi driver certainly didn’t help by trying to be difficult.

I am convincing myself that it is my unresistable charm, that made him do my bidding (otherwise my jedi mind powers are growing). Although I do fear that I have done my back slightly in by insisting on carrying the heavy stuff myself.

So far so good. More on the hardware at a later point. Right now, my bed awaits.

Hello world!

“Welcome to WordPress.com.“

Right, two fold reasons for checking this out. I had a bit enough of lj. I want somewhere new somewhere fresh. Where I can put down my thoughts without everyone knowing about it (where applicable). And I want something focussed on me, not something else.

And of course, the saphire theme is pretty good looking and the other themes look really nice ;-). I need to find my way around this more and see what it offers. So far I am more than impressed.

or in the world of my favourite code:

#!/bin/bash
echo "Hello world!"
exit 0

or in another language:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
print ("Hello World!\n");
exit

Okay, I guess that proves enough that I am a geek above all!

find more examples of the famous “hello world” program