The Baby is 2 today, although she hasn’t the slightest idea what is going on.

This morning we went tile hunting for the kitchen, as well as stopping by Piet Klerkx to visit our kitchen ( which is very difficult to track down with this link : you have to click on ‘town and country’, then click on ‘volgende’ twice. You end up at a yellowy kitchen with butcher block counters.)

We also checked out our new oven in passing- all still seems to please us ! Blue, by the way.

On day 3 here, and still grabbing a puff here and there. I’m thinking maybe I should run over to the drug store and get some of that nicotine gum or patches or something. I’m quite the space-cadet here without my massive doses of nicotine, said the woman who once described herself as ‘I smoke, therefore I am’.

Tonight we are going out to dinner in Eindhoven, to Sardinia. It’s a nice enough place, and we go there rather often. It’s pleasant Italian food, reasonably priced and has a rather studenty atmosphere that I like. I shall make an absolute hog of myself.

The Father has promised me ANYTHING I want if I stop smoking. Under ‘anything’ falls another hobgoblin, something I know he doesn’t want- he really must want me to stop smoking.

Yesterday was my birthday, and a pretty lousy one at that. Months ago, The Father arranged a ‘let’s-quit-smoking-laser -therapy ‘ for himself, and decided it would be just the thing for me. So he set an appointment up for me, forgetting that it fell on my birthday.

So yesterday was the big day. It was in a large office, where everyone called each other ( warmly, of course) by their first names- a real huggy-feely sort of place. He ran some sort of laser around the edge of my ears, and then, using his fingers, pushed a couple of small needles around the ear area.

I have to admit, the jumpy feeling which was arising in me from having already gone an hour without a smoke was gone. But it’s not quite the magic potion one would think.. It’s now 19 hours later ( gee. Is that all ? Feels like an eternity), I’m very light headed and now and then obsessed with the idea of smoking, but in general, it seems to be going well.

I think I’m psychologically dependent on them as well- we shall see.

So, Happy Birthday to me !

Vacation is over and it’s back to school . I didn’t do much over the week, fiddled with a java applet and a piece of DHTML. My weakest point is design, so of course that is the part I totally neglect.

We meet tonight for three hours. For the first hour and a half, old teach gives a really good lecture. Then most of us run outside for a quick smoke. The second half of the evening is spent ‘working’ on our ‘web sites’. The course is really geared towards people who want to get a job as a web designer, not just bored haus fraus like me. So I dread tonight. I’m about due to pretend I’m talking to the guy who has hired me to make his site. I think that I will attempt to cut through all of the BS and just ask him where I’m supposed to store the graphics for a JS file.

And Mr. Jo just buzz sawed through the main water line ( this is the second time this has happened this week- although I broke it the first time). I’m beginning to find it hard to believe that some day I will sit alone in this house, all by myself, hobgoblins in school and no gentle hum of the jack hammer in the background.

A ‘fixer-upper’ demands inhuman amounts of patience.

Every few months, I start re-reading all of my ’she-really-was-Anastasia’ books again. Oddly enough , I find them more interesting now that DNA tests have proven that Anna Anderson was Franziska Schanzkowska, basic polish peasant.

Top book is Peter Kurth’s Anastasia : The Riddle of Anna Anderson
followed by the somewhat far-fetched The File on the Tsar
by Anthony Summers.

And I always end up the marathon with Robert K. Massie’s The Romanovs : The Final Chapter .

Since Sunday, I’ve been abnormally tired. The only thing I can compare it to is when I was pg, but short of immaculate conception, I don’t see that as being a reason.

Ha! I just blew a ton of money ! I bought 900 cels ! How on earth I’m going to get them here is beyond me, but I’m quite excited about the thought of processing them. I have, however, promised The Father that I will try to sell some of them. Not that I expect an early retirement !

I’m feeling very un-boardy these last few days- probably because I’m so tired. Not much gush and blush in me.

Last night, when I came down from bathing the girls, The Father told me the US had started attacks on Afghanistan. In a certain way, it seemed like there was about 10 minutes of actual news, which was padded and expanded and commented upon for the whole evening. And it all seemed anti-climactic, somehow.

Within minutes of the news, there were spontaneous demonstrations against it in various cities across the Netherlands. And I wonder how long it will take before an anti-American cast arises again, such as the one during the cruise missile period.

I spent the weekend making graphics for my site ( for school) and now I think that they suck. While I thought that they were subtle and sleek, now I find them contrived and clumsy. Bah !

We decided to make one for the board, and was that fun ! Here is a link to a very good one. Think I can edit the poop out of it and it will still work. Although thespicemums don’t seem half as excited as I am.

School goes well, but leaves me tired all of the time. My Dreamweaver expired, so I either have to burn a copy at school or see if Ted can copy something in Utrecht for me.