*
This weekend I "surprised" Marli with a weekend in the country, just to get away from it all. I'd taken the Friday off so we could take care of all the household chores in a hurry, letting us leave for the province of
Drenthe around one. I'd rented a nice cottage at the
Kuierpadtien camping park, which came at a nice price since it's off-season.
Incidentally, the area we visited this weekend is also where my dad used to go on holidays with his parents back in the fifties (or was it the sixties?).
Wezuperbrug is home to about 200 people and is kind of stuck in the middle of nowhere, along with a few other small villages. We loved it :)
We really didn't do very much this weekend, but that's why it was so relaxing. No Internet, no work, no household work, just the three of us and nothing to tie us down. We had a nice dinner, we had breakfast together for the first time in a year and we made a small visit to the tiny town of
Orvelte. Orvelte was voted number five in the list of the Netherlands' prettiest towns and it does live up to this! We arrived around 0930, mist still hanging thick in the air, with the town still quiet and peaceful.
I've mentioned before how we'd love to move to the country and Drenthe is one of the places we've been eyeing. The scenery's just lovely over there and the housing prices are just insanely low. We just checked out a real estate site and seriously: the difference in what you get for 200k between the provinces of Utrecht/Flevoland and Drenthe comes down to two rooms and about fifty m^2. Holy crap! Ie 4-5 rooms @100m2 versus 6-7 rooms @150m2. That's making things -very- tempting.
Posted in:
drenthe
,
holiday
,
relaxing
,
trip
*
A little me-time... (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach
*sigh* ^_^
It's Friday evening, around nine... Dana's fast asleep in her own bedroom, without so much as a peep over the baby monitor. Blackie's asleep on the furnace and Marli's in bed, relaxing to a few tunes. The living room's dark and only the lights over the dining room table are lit. There's some light classical music playing softly in the background and I have my big, steaming mug of
Douwe Egberts Black. And in the meanwhile I'm folding four baskets of laundry ^_^;
There's something oddly relaxing about folding laundry. The monotonous operations allow me all the time in the world to just let my mind roam freely... And that coffee really is pretty good!
Posted in:
alone
,
me time
,
private
,
quiet
,
relaxing
*
It was a bit inconvenient for $CLIENT, but I've decided (after a lot of pushing from Marli) to take my vacation a week early. I was feeling pretty near to burning up and Marli really wanted me to stay healthy before the baby comes. Of course that makes total sense (as a lot of wives' suggestions do), but I do feel a bit guilty about the decision.
Ah well... Come Monday I'll be home for two weeks, allowing me to sleep a lot, to relax and to do some sewing :)
Posted in:
pre-baby stress
,
relaxing
,
rest
,
vacation
*
Sewing again (Kilala.nl (Cailin Coilleach)) by Cailin Coilleach
Many would declare me mad upon hearing that I've started yet another project for my free time. Thing is: most of the currently running projects offer me little to no relaxation! The
VVE and
Anime 2007 are indeed fun and challenging to work on, but they also place quite a burden on my shoulders: responsibility for a great deal of money and people. Also, studying for my LPIC exams I can hardly count as a hobby either! Who's ever found homework to be an agreeable pass-time?
Of course I'm vegging away in front of the TV a lot, with DVDs and a few series that I'm following. But show me one man who declares such a pass-time as valuable or worthy! Now, thanks to a fellow
Ars Lounge blogger I've found a project that is both useful, educational and it helps clean out the house as well! I'm gonna keep quiet as to what it is that I'm making, save to say that I've picked up sewing again :)
In the past I used to work the ol'
Pfaff Synchromatic 1215 quite often, making
garb for
my bouts in the SCA. When I left the SCA my trusted sewing machine fell into disuse, only being pulled out to make repairs to clothes, or to modify some jeans for Marli.
But that's changed now! I still count the Pfaff as one of my best birthday presents ever and I'm going to see to it that it gets good use during this new project!
EDIT:
Thinking about the SCA got me to search YouTube since they're bound to have some clips about the Society.
And they do :D Looking back I realise that the Anachronists are a well-meaning bunch but that most of the stuff that goes on is about as realistic as Jack-shit. Still, it was a big load of fun while I was still in.
Posted in:
project
,
relaxing
,
sca
,
sewing