I put it down as nr. 11 on the 43 things list… ‘get in shape’… There is no real order in the list yet, just wrote them down as I made them up. But yesterday it became quite clear I am still far away from achieving that goal so maybe I should make an order and push this one up high on the list. Playing squash was great fun again, I actually missed it after not playing for almost 2 months. But where we normally play a best of 5, we now played a best of 3. On my request actually, but fortunately on quick agreement! ;-)
After loosing the 3rd set, and therewith the match, a bad idea, but after the 2nd set and wildly encouraged by my physical state it seemed the best plan at the time. Now I just tell myself I could have won it in 5! :-)
But this morning… the day after the afternoon before… Oh my lord… Waking up, no problem. Watching some tennis from the bed, quite good. Getting out of bed to get some breakfast, outch!!! Muscle pain all over… Especially my butt and my legs… But well, it all belongs to the game of course and not having played for 2 months doesn’t help much there! Plus it was very good for morale to read that I am not the only one with a muscle pain this morning. Bastiaan just wrote me the following (freely translated):
“Getting out of bed this morning was quite hard… Kinda forgot what muscle pain feels like ;-)”
Made me laugh, as I felt exactly the same! Wonder how I feel next time, after playing 5 sets again… Either way: bring it on! I am looking forward to it! Shape or no shape :-)

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Pasta Pesto Chicken. Pesto Chicken Pasta. Pasta Chicken Pesto. Still having problems picking out a name for the things I cook… But well, does the name really matter? This is an old favorite. A winner, because it doesn’t only taste good, it is also great to build up energy before big physical events! :-) Last summer when Bastiaan and I went to the far east of Holland to compete in a 100km cycling event to support cancer research, I ate 2 plates of the Chicken Pesto Pasta the night before as preparation! And as finishing the 100km event, with a respectable 27km/hour average, wasn’t due to the fact of great preparation, so I have to give some credit to the Chicken Pesto Pasta! ;-) Unfortunately I haven’t been brave enough to sign up for the Vätternrundan this year (read also: “I am the messiah!”, red.), but I will be trying half that distance in the Amstel Gold Race in April. I am afraid that not being in shape and trying 300km will be a bit to much for me… and I don’t think I can blindly rely on the Chicken Pesto Pasta for that one… But I feel confident to do half the distance this year and then maybe the real deal next year! :-)

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Pffff… that ain’t easy… Peter told me about the “43 things” website. A funny website were you need to write down 43 things you still wanne do in life. Sounds easy? I thought so, but it’s rather difficult! *hahaha* after a good 20 minutes I got 9 down… 34 to go! :-)

Try it yourself or read my 43 things, or 9 at the moment, here :-)

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This morning I found the following note in the mailbox:

Good paint work

For you who can’t read Dutch, or are to lazy to try ;-) it states the following:

I have read it a couple of times now, and it doesn’t really make sense. I understand the note is from a freelance-painter, who is afraid to share his name, but more then happy to give you his mobile number. Just call and ask for “good paint work”-man. His qualifications I don’t really get… He paints, can plaster the walls, can handle tiles, but what does “staircase” mean?!? He makes staircases? Or he just paints them? 12 euro an hour. I am afraid to ask if that’s including or excluding VAT… ;-)
He goes on with inside (misspelled in Dutch, but I forgive him for that) and outside. I guess painting again. But then: Windows?!?!?! What does he wanne do with them?!? Clean them? I sure hope he is not going to paint them! Even though his painting is good! :-) Then he returns to more paintable things before he goes wild on “RENOVATION”. First I thought about paint renovations. Places where the paint comes off, he sandpapers a bit and repaints. Paint renovation. But the more I think about it, the more I start to doubt my initial thought… I am starting to think he means just renovations in general. As he also focuses on plaster and tiles.
Finally he let’s us know he has a good reference. I immediately thought: only one?! Although he could just be starting… I mean, a painter that has worked for years should have more then one reference. Especially as he claims to be good! Well, I don’t think I will give him a call, although the windows look a bit dirty… :-)

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This morning I was cleaning up the mess my birdy makes in the house, mainly concerning birdy poo-poo, birdy feathers and birdy food of all kinds. And I actually got amazed about the number of places he sits during the day. So inspired by MTV Cribs, let’s take a little tour through the house.

We start of course with the master bedroom. It is actually a real master bedroom, as he only spends the night there. He goes to bed around 20:00 and get’s out as soon as someone gets downstairs and opens the door again. Right beside the master bedroom is the nibble tree. Specially selected branches for him to sit on and eat away. On the other side of the room on the high closet is his lounge plant. Currently almost eaten away, under a thick layer of birdy poo-poo and feathers, but still his number one location to relax when nobody is at home. A changing favorite is the chill out lawn. Sometimes a hotspot for relaxing a quick nibble on the grass, but lately not often visited.

Master bedroom	Nibble tree	Lounge plant	Chill out lawn

Let’s move on the penthouse wok. Safely stored on high kitchen cabinet. Guarded with great passion it was hard to get it on a picture. But I got one with the entrance and one with the proud guard! :-) The lady that peaks around the corner is a part of the TV magazine he uses to chew pieces off to decorate the inside of the penthouse with. Down the kitchen is his beauty mirror. Where he sits to look at himself and sometimes even tries to feed his mirror picture! Notice the white spots on the mirror.

Penthouse wok	Penthouse guard	Beauty mirror

After passing through the kitchen we get to the outdoor area. Usually he gets to this area by flying into the kitchen, sitting on his beauty mirror and peeping to get our attention to open the door to the outdoor area. Out there we first pass the pool. Where he takes his occasionally dip in a usually freshly filled pool with warm water. Next to the door is the beak pedicure area. On the right on the picture is a custom made woodwork where he can rub his beak on to keep it sharp and shinny. On the right of the pedicure area is the all day buffet. In the back of the outdoor area is the specially designed cactus garden. Where he usually picks on the fine gravel and on the picture just flies away.

Outdoor pool	Beak pedicure	All day buffet	Cactus garden

Finally back in the house we find the table mini bar. Ideal for that quick bite and drink during the day. In the front of the house are the last two places to chill when the house is empty: another lounge plant and the designer fan.

Mini bar	Lounge plant nr.2	Designer fan

So, that was the main tour! Thanks for joining us, the house is clean again! ;-)

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After my brother told me he had pancakes for lunch a couple of days ago, the thought of pancakes didn’t leave my mind… The last time I had pancakes is quite some time ago now. Must have been in Sweden during a canteen lunch. Where the crazy Swedes eat pancakes together with their pea-soup! ;-) Not for me. I always passed the pea soup very quickly and went straight for the ice-cream! A good combination, but not as award-winning as when pancakes and bananas come together! A match made in heaven! Maybe because I hardly ever eat banana pancakes, they always taste so good! Well, it kinda has to be, because pancake nr. 5 was a bit of a struggle to work down… ;-)

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After doing my afternoon shopping today, my eyes were drawn to a little goat on the middle of the road. Apparently it had found a way to jump the more then a meter high fence surrounding the little petting zoo. Now that I think of it, quite a jump for such a tiny goat! But either way, it was running loose now next to fence on the sidewalk and road calling his goat friends on the right side of the fence. After a quick thought I figured this could be a dangerous situation, as the cars that drove by could easily hit the little goat if they wouldn’t pay attention or the goat would jump on the road for no reason. Strengthened by the idea of the Crocodile Hunter, which I have seen catching crocodiles on TV with great ease, how hard could it be to catch a goat? Well… more difficult then you think! :-) First had to take a little sprint to catch up and get close to the goat, but when I got there, it turned out quickly the little goat was not having any plans of cooperating… What was suppose to be an easy catch, turned out to be a wild chase. After about 5 minutes I realized it was hopeless… I wasn’t gonna do this alone. The little goat was simply to quick and I didn’t dare to rely on my own fitness to chase it for half an hour and hope the little goat would get tired before me. I have to stay realistic! :-)
At this point numerous people had passed by, but none had stopped to help. Some had just smiled at my hopeless effort, which started to annoy me quite a lot. Stop smiling, start helping! Just at the point where I started thinking of giving up, due to the lack of help and being realistic about my own odds, a man stopped his car and stepped out to save the day! We cornered the little goat quite quickly between the fence and some bushes and when the little goat took his last desperate run to escape the man was able to catch it, lift it up and put it back on the right side of the fence. Victory! A bit unexpected at some point, but maybe those are the best ones! ;-)

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Today was a lovely day for a walk on the beach and let the fresh sea wind clear your mind. I obeyed. The beach, normally about 40, 50 meters wide, had shrunk to about 5 to 10 meters. No, it wasn’t global heating! Just a lot of wind from the south west. A wind that really made sure I got the fresh nose I was looking for! Even the fact that every now and then it felt like this same wind was sandpapering me, I couldn’t be bothered! :-)

An impression (click to enlarge)

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Wheehoo! Recipe number two! :-) This one was a bit of a long shot, I must admit that, but it turned out really nice and definitely deserved his place in the recipe section of the limecrush website! I wanted to make something with spicy chicken and pineapple. After some searching for recipe, I couldn’t really find what I was looking for… so after a while I decided to just add some things together and see how far it would get me. During the process, I decided to throw in some banana as well. A master move! The banana really contributed to the success of the recipe! It was a bit spicy, so just lower the amount of sambal if you don’t like it like that. Seeing all the smiling faces around the dinner table told me everybody was pleased! :-)

I only need to come up with a more funky name for the recipe… but for now it will be called what it is: “Oriental spicy chicken with fruit”.

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Time is up. We are leaving. Are we done? No. Time is up. Are we not appreciated anymore? No. Time is up. Do we need to be somewhere else? No. Time is up.
I don’t understand it. We are helping out in Iraq to maintain the peace. Ok, it’s a different discussion if we should have gotten involved in the first place. I don’t think we should have, but fact is, we have. And according to the news, we are actually doing a good job! The local people, as well as the American, British and Japanese are happy with our presence. And besides peace keeping we are also doing other things to help out. Rebuilding bridges, stuff like that. Seems to me like a great thing! But now, time is up. We are going home. I would understand it if all work was done, but that’s far from… Ok, the British will take over, so that is good, but why not give them a hand? Why not stay and make ourselves useful. It’s not like we have to fight other wars. We are available! And what else do we have an army for!? Now we can help, are helping, but we leave… Only because we initially committed to stay until March 2005. So when it’s March 2005, time is up. We go home. Back to playing fussball and ping-pong in the barracks… I know it’s probably dangerous to be in Iraq now, but that’s what they signed up for when they joined the army. I just hope the government gets smart and changes her mind, so we can stay a bit longer and help to rebuild the country. As long as we are welcome and the local people like us to be there, why leave?
It just don’t make sense…

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Yesterday was the day a machine from earth reached Titan. What a day. Today we could see the first pictures! Many people got very excited about it! Of course, it’s nice the machine got there in one piece and was able to send back some pictures, but I just wonder why no-one seems to question the pictures made on Titan… to me the pictures look like sand with rocks. Found on many locations here on earth… And also, why are the pictures in black and white?!?! I know the machine left earth in 1997, so has been flying for a while, but for sure there where color camera’s in 1997… So why not put one of those on it?!?! Who was the genius that 8 years ago decided to go for a black and white camera?!?! No, color is way to fancy! :-) Or maybe everything on Titan is black and white… that could be the only valid excuse… But then another thing. Yesterday they mentioned on the news they put a music CD in the machine. So if there is any kind of life form out there, they could listen to ….. French music! Yes, French music…. It must have been the same genius that installed the black and white camera… What do we wanne tell people in space? That we on earth have bad taste in music? Or is it to scare the aliens away?? Don’t come to earth, there is more bad music where this came from! ;-)

Update (January 16, 2005):
Ok, the genius wasn’t a total idiot… Found a color image today on the ESA website. But I am not to convinced yet… It says: “This image was returned yesterday, 14 January 2005, by ESA’s Huygens probe during its successful descent to land on Titan. This is the coloured view, following processing to add reflection spectra data, gives a better indication of the actual colour of the surface.”
So “coloured view”… Bit weird to call a normal color photo a “coloured view”… so I still think he got told of by his boss for installing a black and white camera, took the black and white picture and went a bit wild with a couple of colors in Photoshop!! :-) I must say the coloured view does make me wonder… if it’s really -180 degrees down there, how come it’s all dusty? I think I would have used the blue filter… ;-)
I have added the pictures so you can judge for yourself! :-)

© ESA.	© ESA.	© By me.

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Last night I went to bed wearing a t-shirt. This morning I woke up not wearing a t-shirt. And I have no recollection of taking it off in the middle of the night… Spooky. Again I should add. As it’s not the first time that I seem to do strange things when I think I am sleeping. And compared to some experiences from the past, taking off my t-shirt was quite harmless! ;-) I have done more crazy things! What? Ok, the two I remembered best.
The first is taking a power adapter out of a plastic seal. Doesn’t sound to excited huh? Well, it’s a strange one, because before I went to sleep I spend about half an hour trying to open it… I was in a hotel in London and had no tools whatsoever to help me open it… I tried and tried, but no success. Went to sleep and in the morning the power adapter was out of it’s plastic seal! How?!?
The other experience was the first day of my backpacking trip to Australia. I stayed my first night at a hostel in Sydney in a dormitory with another 11 people. Nothing weird so far. Until I got to the breakfast room the next morning and people started laughing… and it wasn’t long before someone asked me with a smiling face why I was dancing through the dormitory room in the middle of the night?? I couldn’t believe it… but when more people confirmed his story, I started to feel quite stupid… :-) Apparently I had jumped out of my top bunk bed in the middle of the night, danced around in the middle of the room and climbed back into bed again… funny, but very spooky!
Luckily it doesn’t happen to often… but it does make me wonder… when will it happen again, and what stupid things will I do!? :-)

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Administration day 1. Last quarter of 2004 is almost 2 weeks behind us and still I hadn’t found a moment to do the necessary administration work. It actually ain’t that hard, it just takes a little bit of time. Collecting receipts, invoices, bank account overviews, phone bills, internet connection bills, etc., etc. Again, no rocket science, but it takes time. It takes even more time, because for some reason I seem to keep great amounts of paper in the office. Project notes, sketches, code printouts, overviews, manuals, project documents, all that kind of stuff. There is tons of it! :-) So as a good start of the new year, I decided to throw all of it away. Do a major cleanup and just leave the bare essentials. It’s not very likely I will go read through the project documentation of a project I did 4 years ago… and even if I would, I would most likely use the digital version anyway! :-) So today has been a big struggle through all old papers and collecting the correct things for my administration guy. The aim will be to finish it all tomorrow! Shouldn’t be spending to many days in this jungle.

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Last night a fellow countryman won the world title in the game of darts. Sport of darts I must say. Just minutes after “Barney” had won, he turned to the reporter and told him: “playing darts is a top sport! I train 3 to 4 hours every day in the gym and additional I also practice 3 hours every day. But this trophy is what I do it for.”
I must admit, and probably everybody who has tried to play can agree, it’s darn difficult to get those 3 darts exactly in the same spot all the time… So he has my respect, but what I don’t understand is the 3 to 4 hours in the gym… every day!! I wonder what he does during those hours… the good man weighs probably around 125 kilo… and that ain’t all muscle! ;-)
How can someone that trains so much, weigh so much??? That seems impossible and just doesn’t make sense… the only conclusion could be that he eats a lot. Ok, maybe the game, sorry sport of darts doesn’t burn to much calories… true… swinging your arm and hand… walking back and forth to the board… there are sports out there that are a bit more demanding! :-) But what could he possibly do those 3 to 4 hours in the gym??? Just train his right arm?? Most likely not… But if we would have the discipline to spend 3 to 4 hours in the gym each day, using cross trainer, cycle, row machine, etc. wouldn’t we all have the body of a fitness model??? It’s a mystery… I will just keep away from the darts for a while! ;-)

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A true movie classic! Hadn’t seen it in ages. Actually think I have only seen it once or twice many years ago. It actually was one of the first scary movies I have seen as a kid. Which movie? Aliens.
I have seen the latest one, Alien VS Predator or AVP, in November last year and that made me think of the movies again. I always liked Aliens (the second Alien movie) the best, so when I could borrow it from my brother last week I got excited to watch it. Yesterday I did and it was great fun to see it again! Because even though I hadn’t seen it in a while, I still remembered quite a bit. The marines. Vasquez, Apone, Hicks, Hudson, Bishop… The plane, the car, the girl, the aliens, the welding of the doors and maybe the best of all: the motion sensor! The tension caused by it is just brilliant! With Hudson crying out over the beeping motion sensor: “6 meters… 5 meters… they’re inside the room!” Brilliant stuff! :-) It was very cool seeing it again so bring on the next “classic”!

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