The current home- and foreign affairs

I expected myself to blog more often since our move to Elst... but the contrary has been proven

The House
Let's be honest. It's still just a camping tent disguised as a brick-house.
The water (and consequentially the heating system) hasn't been connected yet, because the water contains too much iron and lime. Filters are needed, but the installer-guy is taking his time to order and install it...
The toilets and outside-tap are working though, because they use the water from our rain-pit. (Which was nearly empty two weeks ago, but fortunately (yep, I'm happy when it rains now) some grand downpour was soaking our region last week)
The bedroom is nearly finished. I still need to finish-off some of the joins of the plasterboards (those up near the crest of the roof), and then it can be painted. After the paint, the laminate floor will be laid, and then finally we can move our bedroomfurniture and clothes upstairs and sleep in the bedroom!
The bathroom is also nearly finished, only the ceiling needs finishing, some lights need mounting, and the shower window needs putting up.
The kitchin is running at 40%. The microwave works, but the oven is (already) broken. The cooker is installed, but the cooker hood isn't. The fridge and freezer are working. The cabinets are installed very professionaly by the kitchenplace, but not 100% correct. (They need to come back to make corrections... weehoo).
And the rest... is for later... :-)
Yes, that's something we learned doing this house: one thing at a time... otherwise you don't finish anything at all... (well, i'm not sure if we really learned... we know it; that's a more accurate description)

The Garden
The 4 cats have a new hobby: "Find the mole".
And eventually kill it, but don't eat it.
We've had 6 (dead) moles on the patio at the back so far. Not bad.
As it turns out it seems like our whole garden is actually one big mole heap. Where we thought they were ratholes; they must be from moles... We haven't seen any rats, just a couple of mice, and loads of moles...
(Yes they are cute... but not in OUR garden! Thank you Musti, Joey, Louie and Malley.)

The grass in the garden has reached about 1m40 now. Poor Old Betsy died on us when we just moved in. (For those who don't know her, Betsy is an old Countax ride-on mower we bought in the UK last year) After trying to troubleshoot what was wrong (what do I know), the conclusion was 'it's probably the solenoid'. Great. What's a solenoid? Well, shortly said, it's a thingy between the battery and the starter engine. If it fails, the mower doesn't start.
As we were in the UK last week, we bought a new solenoid, and yesterday I replaced the old one with it. If I hadn't left my keys in the UK (what? typical? noooo), I could've tested the mower by now, and let you know if it really was the solenoid that wasn't working...

James
He's doing great. He has lots of fun in the new house, running from one side to the other, climbing on ladders and stairs, chasing the cats and playing in the garden. (well, the little piece I managed to mow with the other mower) His talking is improving (that is, he's talking more and more, expanding his vocabulary, but unfortunately he's turning out to speak Japanese, instead of Dutch or English...)
He also made a giant leap in doing his puzzles (you know, baby-jigsaw puzzles), looking at the shape of the piece and then neatly putting it in the right spot almost immediately. Looks like a click was made in his mind last weekend in the UK. (Aah, thàt's how you do it!)
He's still obsessed with cars ("auto auto!"), and Piet Piraat ("piwaaa"). But new interests are coming: Kabouter "Pok" Plop, Aunty "Aati" Aki, and poo ("kaka") (yes, the excreta).
He's 620 days old today (1 year, 8 months and 12 days), and I've enjoyed all 892800 seconds of them :-)

Cate
My dear munchy is under quite some stress. Mostly from her job (of which I cannot speak... I even signed a confidentiality document because as you know she is a secret agent for a secret crazy company with even more secret (and crazier) people), and a reasonable amount of stress caused by yours truly; I'm not doing the household things I should be doing (I seem to be preoccupied with sleeping, working, working more and then some sleeping), which makes the cleaning and tidying-up land on her shoulders alone... It's not fair, so that'll have to change; I'm gonna start tonight by cleaning up the house before she comes home, so she doesn't need to be bothered with that anymore. (And I intend to do that more often in the future as well)

Geekiness
I abandoned the Windows XP Operating System on my home pc, and installed a Linux OS (Ubuntu). Why? Because I wanted to try it.
It looks nice, it works faster, but you need to dedicate some time to it to make it work just the way you want it to... And that I lack at the moment, so I regularly switch back to Windows (it's a dual boot system) if necessary.

I also re-joined BOINC (Berkeley Open-Infrastructure for Network Computing), which uses the idle time on your computer (Windows, Mac, or Linux) to cure diseases, study global warming, discover pulsars, and do many other types of scientific research.
You might know the most popular project of BOINC: Seti@Home. (Search for extra terrestrial instelligence using telescopic data)
Why? Because it's fun (for a geek). You don't need to do anything at all, but you do help scientific studies. Really. I even intend to install a Linux system on my Playstation3 to do just that thing; use the power of the cell broadband processor of the PS3 for scientific research. (Later, when there's time, after finishing the house for example :-))

I stumbled upon a 'new' series on a new channel '8', which broadcasts mostly HBO series and shows... The best one so far (and it's really really brilliant I think) is Flight of the Conchords. If you don't know them, please check this and this YouTube video... That's the kind of humour.
(I'm sure my dad will love it as well :-))
Aki got me and Cate hooked up to The Wire as well, so we have a lot of screenwatching to do... when we find some time :-)


Foreigners
As I already mentionned, we went to the UK last week. I don't know if you had noticed, but it's full of British there... I hope they have a good foreigner-policy.
Cate's mum was delighted, of course, to see James again. I can imagine it's not easy for her, only seeing her only grandchild every 3 months... Maybe we should start using the webcam a little more often, or let James call her more often. (I'm not kidding, James has started to understand the concept of making a phonecall! He listens, and talks when a question is asked. Not that what he says makes any sense, but it's the idea! :-))
A country full of foreigners also has nice advantages: cheaper stuff than in Belgium. So we bought plenty of new trousers, tops, socks and underwear and a baby-slide for indoor and outdoor use, (yes, for James), and some other things.

Pictures... take time to process, and I know I've been lagging enormeously with posting new ones, but I'll try my best to do some updates this week. That's a promise.

Progress

How about an update?

Quite a lot has changed since my last blog post...

Aki's coming back to Belgium (for her a decision made with mixed emotions, but I can assure you I'm glad she's coming back! :-)).

James is still not making any sense while 'talking', but he thinks he is though... You should hear him explaining to Cate and/or me how his toys should be properly arranged (Usually in a for us, silly parents, very chaotic way)... There's some words becoming more and more pronounced though, like Miaauw (cat), Banana or banaah, ball or babaal, Ballauwn (balloon), girauw (giraf), leuuwww (lion), broom-broom or auwtt... auwwttt..o (car)... It's grand.

I started working at Newtel on the 1st of March; what.a.difference! I get time to study, nice collegues, free lunch, better salary-package, and the idea I can make progress (carreer) again. I really needed this change in my life; one of the better decisions I made in the last few years.

Our house is almost ready for the big building-up again. The leveling of the floor is done (under screed is laid); all electricity has been pulled out and renewed (and this time it's nicely integrated under the floor and in the walls); the future office-space (which used to be the kitchen); is level with the rest of the ground floor (and the tiles will nicely merge from living room to office space); All pipes for sanitary and heating on the ground floor are ready (top floor needs a few more); ...
Next week the guy that so professionaly laid the under screed will put all tiles down in the kitchen, living room, hall, little toilet, sauna space and office space, and then we can start putting the gyproc (plaster boards) against the walls and ceiling on the ground floor. We're getting nearer and nearer to the finish!
(I'll post some pictures of the current state of the house later on, probably tonight at home).

Voila, that's it for now... As progress is made, more news will follow here :-)

New Layout + Some news!

A new blogitem, together with a completely new blog-layout.
Do you like it?

Short newsflashes for July:
- James had chickenpocks! He endured them bravely; he's now better than ever! (making walking gestures, nodding no, and blow-spraying his slobber allover you when you encourage him :-)

- The house we bought will finally be ours on the 5th of September! Hooray, we've ruined ourselves hurrah!

- I put our band's website in a new jacket: http://www.crosstowntraffic.be

- Crosstown Traffic played a showcase for the Woodstock aan de Maas festival last Thursday; on our (new) website you can find the recordings of the complete 30 minute concert. (also on YouTube by the way... :-))

- I still like Opera.

- I had a one week holiday in July, and I feel I could do with another one...

B-B

Yep... there you have it...

Didn't think it would catch me so soon...
It arrived like an Asian typhoon...

I'll wait a bit more... perhaps 'till twelve-o-clock...
'Cos nothing proper comes out with this Bloggers-Block...

The Beginning

I guess this is it...
The Point of No Return

After reading the blogs of friends and family, I couldn't restrain from starting one myself anymore.
Some doubts about whether it should be in Flemish or English welled up, but I finally decided it should be in English...
After all, my dear Cate would constantly hassle me for translating my blibs (ty Aki, for this pleasant new English term) if they were in Flemish anyway...
(no pun intended! ... or maybe a little ... ;-)

What can you expect here?
Well, like on any other blog; my own personal thoughts and opinions about everything and nothing. About my son James, my girlfriend Cate, my family and friends, my music, my gaming-addiction, my geekiness, my ups and downs, my terrible sense of humour (according to C.) my non-existant short-term-memory and my son James. And my girlfriend Cate. And my family and friends, my m...

So, that's it! It's started, there's no way back,
and the lay-out looks a tit.
But there's time for improvement.
Lots of it. As long as the concept 'future' doesn't expire...

Have a nice day, and hopefully read, hear or see you soon!