Insane… That was probably the first word that popped into my head after my dad told me yesterday he got shot (!!!) when cycling home. Yes, you read it well: got shot. Ok, not with a big gun with big bullets, it’s not Iraq here, but with an air gun and a little iron “bullet”. But still, that doesn’t make it any less crazy… Some kid was just shooting at people that passed by, with his air gun and hit my dad in the face, on his chin… totally insane… it left an about 2 by 2 cm red mark on his face… just 5 cm higher and my dad would have been blind on one eye for sure… or god knows what other damage it could have done…

I still can’t believe my dad refused to go to the police… I mean, the stupid kid is shooting at people?!?! Just grabbing him by the ear a telling his mamma just doesn’t do it for me… Especially as the mamma clearly failed to educate her child about what is right and what is wrong… as he apparently thinks shooting at people is “normal”?! So what can be expected from her after this (hopefully) “incident”?? It probably has much more impact when the police tells him off, then his mamma, but I couldn’t convince my dad from that, and don’t know who did it or where it happened, so unfortunately there is not much I can do about that…

It’s just insane… I fail to find other words for it… I remember as a kid my brother and I would also shout my dad’s air gun, but we used to shoot with little “arrows” at a dartboard… and never ever would we even have considered taking that thing to the street and let alone, start shooting at people with it… It’s scary, but probably also quite typical for our current day society. General lack of respect and parents failing to teach children basic normal values… And maybe that’s the most scary bit of this story…

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Pffff… It was great fun playing squash again yesterday! Last game dated back to the 12th of March from this year, so it was to be expected, but nevertheless a little disappointing to see how rusty my game had become… Luckily it wasn’t just my game, but Bastiaans game had suffered as well, so it was still fun to play! Even though the final score of 0-9, 9-11, 9-2, 3-9 doesn’t really show that and doesn’t give me much to cheer about, it was all smiles from start to finish!

Well, how could it not be fun, if you would hear Bastiaan try to take a deep breath which sounded so bad that if any doctor would hear that, they would have tried nothing else then to get him to the hospital emergency room as soon as possible! Talking about sport not being healthy… well, that’s how that sounds! :-)
And besides Bastiaans lack of breathing, there was also laughter when I managed to hit my own leg… pretty hard… and that produced a sound that would compare best with smacking a pirates wooden leg… quite strange… Do legs really sound like that? :-)

But that was all yesterdays fun… this morning when I woke up, it showed that being rusty on court, also meant feeling rusty the next day… pffff… very rusty… oh my, my right shoulder, both arms and hands don’t feel as they should at the moment… The cycling I have done the last couple of months made sure I was in pretty ok shape, stamina wise, but damn I feel like an old man at the moment… Ah well, it’s probably gonna be better again next time around and seeing the fun I had, it’s more then worth it!

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Last night when I went to bed, there was a spider in my bedroom… Normally I don’t mind a small little spider. As long as it’s in a far away corner on the ceiling and plans to set up camp there for the evening, I won’t worry and deal with it in the morning. But not last night… this spider was big! HUGE! Well, to my standards… It was sitting right in the middle of a white wall and was about 5×5cm, so to me that’s not a normal “indoor” spider anymore… yes, maybe of you live in the jungle of Borneo, Vietnam or some other exotic country, but 10 meters below sea level in Holland?!?! This spider is lost! Or was lost… I wasn’t gonna spend the night with that beast on the wall, but killing it straight away seemed like a rather brutal solution… I decided to capture it. That went smoothly so it spend the night trapped inside a up side down glass, and I was ready to sleep. I thought… That turned out harder then expected… Many questions kept popping into my head… “is he alone, or could there be more?”, “where did he come from?”, “how did he entered the room?”, “is he dangerous?”, “what is he doing here?”… Yes, I talk about the spider in the “he” form… not because I am 100% sure it was a male spider, bit with such hairy legs and back, I just want it to be! ;-)

Either way, I think I lied wide awake for almost an hour. Looking around like a hawk, being sharp as a shark and as fast as a tiger! Sweeping the walls and ceiling with my eyes over and over again. This big spider seriously freaked me out! I finally got more and more relaxed. Helped by the thought that if the spiders friends saw their friend trapped in the glass like that, they would chose somebody else to mess with! :-)

Either way, this is what he looked like:

Big nasty spider!

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Not sure if this Dutch expression translates directly to English… but well, it sounds good so why not! And indeed “on my toothflesh” I have reached the end of the week. My mamma is quite loyal to following a diet for the last couple of weeks. A diet that runs from Monday to Friday and a “free-for-all” weekend. Last Monday I decided to join her for this week. Mainly to see how far I would get and if I could hold on for a whole week. And if the side-effect was loosing some weight, I couldn’t be to sad about that either! ;-)

The diet is quite simple. Keep it easy on the bread. Some bread replaced by crackers. Fruit. Lot’s of fruit. Lot’s of veggies in the evening and keeping it easy on the potato’s. And water. Of course. So nothing major, quite a simple “diet”.

Well, Monday was quite easy. Highly motivated and possibly still benefiting from the big dinner on Sunday evening I cruised through the day. Tuesday was already a struggle. The lack of food was getting to me. Less bread and more fruit and veggies didn’t seem to fill me up for a very long time… Wednesday was a nightmare… the lack of food was getting to me… seriously. The empty feeling combined with small headaches every now and they were just far from pleasant… My mamma pulled me through with the wise words: your body just needs to get used to it… Well, if that was the fact, it better get used to it fast, as this was fun for nobody… And it actually did. Thursday was quite ok. Or at least much easier then the day before. Plus the thought of the weekend getting closer helped a lot there as well. Even more when I negotiated sushi into the diet on Thursday evening! I had no clue if it could fit in the diet, but my mamma got convinced from terms as “healthy”, “not fat” and “just veggies and fresh fish”.

So today was sushi day. I never tried to make sushi myself. When I was working in Stockholm, I often went for sushi and always thought it should be quite easy to make it yourself… well… it’s not rocket science, but it takes time. Or let me rephrase: it takes me quite some time. Making the sticky rice went surprisingly well, but actually building the sushi pieces and roles was quite time consuming. Plus I am not a true hero yet in making nice and round roles… But either way, the result with some soy sauce and wasabi was lovely!

Lovely sushi!

So all in all I struggled through the week and barely made it, or made it “on the toothflesh” as we would say. Although after the sushi dinner from tonight it will be just cruising to the finish line! Or does the weekend officially start Friday afternoon? ;-)

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What started out as more or less a joke, slowly started filling the complete garden… The joint venture between my brother and my dad to grow a couple of marijuana plants was a great success. Seen from the growing side of things, that is. Besides that they are just taking away much of the pleasure of sitting in the garden. Just going to feed Snoesy the bunny was already quite the challenge, having to almost climb through the big marijuana plant blocking the bunnies cage… Well… plant… Is it actually a plant?? Maybe big “weed” should suite the marijuana plant much better!

Until this morning… The big plant has been brought down by the wind from last night. Yesterdays all day rain probably made it quite heavy, with the wind almost finishing the job. Almost yes. The freaking plant didn’t break! It took a bow, but stood strong. So this mornings exercise will be getting my shoulders under it and with ropes and other equipment, putting it back up again.

Almost down and out…

Ok, didn’t get to publish this story before the plant was actually put back up again! But that ain’t to bad, as now I can also show a picture of how it looks now! We got it back up… took about 8 meters of rope, a new extra wooden pole behind the plant to attach the rope to and quite some raw muscle power to get the plant back up straight again. And yes, it’s heavier then you think! ;-)

Not pretty, but back up again

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Stage 13 in the Vuelta yesterday. 3 Spanish riders, Mauricio Ardila, Oscar Pereiro and Samuel Sanchez are away and will sprint for the victory. Ardila seems to have the best sprint of the 3… After a long 4 hours on the bike he sees the banner above the road, thinks it’s the finish and goes for it! Arms in the air, victory! NO!!! Wait! Where is the finish line?!?! Sanchez takes off and wins his first ever professional race! Could it be more dramatic? :-)

As the finish from the stage was on a climb, the banner Ardila was sprinting at was there for the mountain-jersey points. And for some reason they put that banner just 150 meters before the actual finish line! A painful mistake…

Click the image below to watch the video! A truely classic finish!! :-)

A classic finish! (Source: Eurosport)

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Football tonight. Holland beat Andorra with 4-0 in a world cup qualifying match. Quite the expected victory. There is more people in my hometown that play football, then in the whole of Andorra, so nothing else could be expected. We know this, but the Andorrian people know this as well, so the way they play football matches their sense of reality. In other words: they defend. And to be more specific, they defend with the whole team (in a lovely 5-5-0) and while doing that they try to do everything god forbid but the referee will allow. Tackling, holding, pushing, rolling, faking injuries and delaying the game where possible are just some simple examples of that.

So knowing this, it wasn’t to be expected to be the most excited football night ever, but what made a poor match so much worse was the TV commentator: Leo Oldenburger. Normally the TV commentator doesn’t bother me that much, but today his comments got very annoying, very quickly. He thought it was necessary to constantly keep mentioning how bad the Andorrian players were and how much they were frustrating the game with fouls and other annoying behavior. And yes, that was very obviously the case, and we could see that. But “WHY DO YOU HAVE TO KEEP MENTIONING THAT!?!”… what is the point? The Andorrian players did nothing wrong according to the referee and just played to the best of their abilities. And their goal in these qualifying games is to keep the score down as low as possible! And the way to achieve that is not how we play… But just except that! The fact that the commentator didn’t, I could still live with… but please stay respectful! And the constant arrogant undertone in his comments clearly didn’t show any respect.

I am not a big fan of football like that either, but I totally understand it. Can even admire it at some points, as it’s part of the game that not always the better team wins. But talking down and patronizing other people in front of millions of viewers, only because they act different from us, is just wrong and stupid. So Leo, next game they pick you to be the commentator, I will turn you off and listen to the match on the radio! I am tired of your whining!

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Every first Tuesday of the month is set for karting. Every first Tuesday of the month you are available and feel like it that is. It’s very flexible in the setup at that suits me very well. Last night was only the 2nd time I joined up this year. I couldn’t say I was to busy, so I figured why not. It’s always kinda fun, even though I am not the karting hero I would maybe like to be, but as long as I can keep it to just doing one (15 minute) heat, I am really enjoying myself. If there is a second heat, that just becomes a struggle… First minutes in the 2nd heat are still fun, but after a while it’s more about fighting pain in arms and shoulders then enjoying the ride… I guess IT-work ain’t the best physical preparation for karting… :-)

Last night we were with 4 and had the track all to ourselves. Kinda nice, but as I started first, I didn’t see anybody the whole race… Strange… I am definitely not fast enough to make up enough time to overtake someone, but also not that crap that people overtake me very easily… so it was quite a lonely run, but even so, still fun. Especially on the end, when I saw one of the group getting closer and closer and I actually started to feel some pressure to stay ahead of him. He got a little bit closer each lap, but I managed to stay ahead by quite some distance when we got to the finish flag! It’s weird that you can feel so excited about something so little like that… Ok, the feeling didn’t last that long, but it felt great when getting out of the little car! Well, I guess any achievement is always nice, no matter how little.

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One of my favorite TV shows started a new season today: Holland Sport. Not just you regular TV program about sport, they try to look at sport from different sides as well. Like with a professional cyclist who was a guest today. He (Jans Koerts) broke about 8 or 9 bones in his body while crashing in a fast (75, 80km/h) decent in some cycling race in Portugal. And just that description was probably how it was broadcasted in the news just after it happened 2 months ago. But now we get the amazing details about the event! Apparently he was cut of in a corner by one of the following cars, had to take the outside of a turn, lost control and went straight at an old Portuguese lady who was watching the race… he avoided the lady, but that caused him to run straight into the wall of her house… It was a natural reaction to try and avoid the lady, but what if… what if he would have just crashed into her… he would probably not have broken a bone, or at least not close to 10… and still be a professional cyclist today. But with that speed, combined with her age, she would have probably not been able to tell the story after such a crash. Fascinating that such split seconds decisions can have such a big impact on things…

But more fascination in the show! The world long jump champion was there as well and together with him they “replayed” his personal best jump of 8.60… That distance… more then 8 and a half meter… weird to actually stop for a moment and look and understand how far that distance actually is… amazing… Already looking forward to more fascinating stories on next weeks show! :-)

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Ever since I bought the grill pan on my trip to Denmark and Sweden this summer, I only got to cook with it twice… once in Denmark an hour after I bought it, and a couple of days after I got back to see if it would work in Holland as well. It did. And today it worked again! Not that amazing, but the result was very satisfying! I filled the chicken boob with pineapple and cheese and with the slightly marinated (ketjap, sweet chili sauce, little sambal) chicken it worked out briljant! Served with rice and some grilled veggies, a meal to remember! ;-)

Oh, just one little tip (or hint to remind myself when making this meal next time), try to keep the chicken boob as thin as possible… I kept it to thick, so it took forever to get the whole chicken “done”…

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There seem to be some minor issues with the limecrush website at the moment… Nothing major, all minor, but it could mean this not showing up every now and then… But not to worry, we have our people working on it 24/7! :-)

The official announcement was as follows, in Swedish, but as the limecrush fanbase ain’t that big, I won’t spend two hours to translate:

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The first story about our bunny didn’t start out as the best bunny story ever… With our female bunny more or less being forced to serve the sexually pleasure of the male bunny in her first days… But after the male bunny left, it has been all good news so far. She has been feeling more and more relaxed and we even has gotten a name now: Snoes.

And we couldn’t have been more happy when we figured out that she hadn’t gotten pregnant by the male bunny… which was most likely her own brother… or in best case a step-brother… That would have been a very unhealthy situation if you ask me… in our world, but also in the bunny-world.

So there won’t be any baby-bunnies just yet. Yes, just yet. Because now my dad is already thinking about arranging a blind date for her in the spring… Strange thing when I think about it… I remember as a kid I would go with my dad to the petting-zoo in our village and he would put my bunny with one of the male bunnies in his small cage at the petting-zoo and I would watch them get acquainted. And watch them get even more friendly just a couple of moments later! It was all ok, until I got upset by the male bunny being so rough with my bunny, when he was getting so excited that he started pulling her hair out and I run to my dad screaming that he had to make it stop… And after a little while, he always did.

But for now she is off the hook. And until then she will probably hop around happily through the garden and slowly but steadily moving it to total destruction! It started with her nibbling on some of the plants and flowers we have in the garden, but at some locations the nibbling has moved to simple eating and even “removing” plants from the garden! With roots and all. She ate the top bit, then started digging in the sand and pulled out the left over bit of the plant with the roots! Lovely. We look at it and smile. At some places we simple don’t care as those flowers or plants needed to be removed from the garden anyways, but at some others it’s very nice flowers or plants she is destroying! But well, I guess that comes with letting her run through the garden. If we allow that, we can impossible forbid her to not eat certain things… she is cute, but she ain’t that smart! ;-)

How it looks? Well, I will let the “before” and “after” pictures tell the story:

Snoes between the flowers	Where are the flowers?

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Excitement comes easy these days. Even from cleaning my bike! :-)
Well, it was in need for some quality cleaning time. I have been cleaning it quite well and quite regular ever since I got it, but still cleaning the gears and chain is quite hard. If you wanne do it good that is. Usually I used some old piece of cloth to do it, which works quite fine, but of course always leaves some dirt. So today was a day from some more drastic cleaning.

I got off to quite a good start and quite fast started thinking about dismantling the whole bike! Strip everything off, only leaving the bare tubes (thank you Peter ;-) so I could clean all parts perfectly and assemble the bike again afterwards. Well, I took a side track from that idea even quicker then I came up with it. I wasn’t 100% convinced I possess the essential knowledge to put it all together again. I think I can, as it ain’t rocket science, but as the weather will most likely be quite nice the coming days, I prefer making sure I can actually use the bike (in a proper way) over trying to be the bike mechanic I am not and screwing up the tuning of my gears, breaks and saddle position. So I took the easy way out, only dismantling the parts that could do no direct harm.

By far the most challenging was cleaning my bike chain. I dislocated one of the little chains so I could remove it from the bike and but it in a little bowl filled with “refined petrol” (or in Dutch: wasbenzine, in Swedish: tvättbensin and Danish: rensebenzin) and used my old toothbrush to clean it… Almost nothing but a great success, the chain got perfectly clean after I was done! But please kids, don’t try this at home!!! Because I had been with my left hand in the petrol almost non-stop for about the long half an hour it took to brush my chain, the skin on my hand got kinda irritated for the next about 4 hours… Some weird non-stop burning sensation… Well… sensation… I thought it would go away instantly when I would wash my hands… but no… I was seriously wrong! :-) Even holding my hands under the running cold water for 5 minutes, brought me nothing… Next time I will choose the wear gloves! ;-)

Well, a struggling 3 hours (including long tea break) later it’s almost showroom shiny again! :-) I just need to put the parts I took off back on again and come to think of it… I actually also still need to clean both wheels… oops… forgot about that… Well, I guess I have something to do again tomorrow morning! ;-)

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