The CIA has a page up for kids. Included are links to Try a Disguise, and Spy – Fi Archives: 40 Years of TV and Movie Spy Fiction, where you can see a picture of Maxwell Smart’s shoe.

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De Telegraaf reports :Hondenburgers in Zuid-Korea( dogburgers in South Korea).

Whatever the truth is, I certainly wouldn’t want to be a Korean dog just right now.

Design and then order your beer coasters ( those little cardboard coasters which soak up the drips from your beer glass). One of their interesting decorating tips is the 75cm ‘ viltje ‘, which can be used as a tablecloth for a round table.

Tomorrow is Koninginnedag. We shall all hang our flags out and be confronted with the color orange wherever we turn.

Every weekend, I usually have a BLT for lunch. I’m rather fussy about my bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches : I only like them when they are prepared with Miracle Whip. I don’t like mayo, I have tried those made-with-yogurt spreads, I’ve even tried sla saus. It’s just not the same. So far, I have been unable to find Miracle Whip within a reasonable traveling distance from our town, so it’s one of those things I have my Dad bring to me when we all meet in Italy during the summer or that I bring back from visits to the States. The other is Stove Top Stuffing.

Last weekend I used up the last smidgen of my Miracle Whip, so it’ll be another two months until I can have my usual BLT for lunch on the weekends.

Read the history of Miracle Whip.

A nifty, clickable map of the Liberation of The Netherlands at The War Museum

Hmmm, the link to the map keeps changing, going to the default page. Click on ‘liberation’ and then ‘map’ to see the map.

Foreigners to be offered dog meat juice at World Cup –

Shortly after The Girl went back to school after lunch on Friday, the doorbell rang. I opened the door and there stood Romy ( a girl in The Boy’s class) and her mother. Romy asked for The Boy and when he came, she handed him a small glass vegetable jar filled with swampy water. And 7 tadpoles. Actually, they are probably ‘toadpoles’, as I’ve never seen any frogs around here, but we have tons of toads.

Having tadpoles is the latest status symbol at the grade school here. In fact, last Wednesday, the kids and I spent over an hour tromping around town, looking for tadpoles- but in vain, for this spring has been too dry for any stagnant pools of water to form. We did find one very nasty canal near the house with hundreds of dead black snails floating on the surface of the water, but no tadpoles. Nope, for tadpoles, one must go to Herpt and Romy lives in Herpt.

Every group has it’s little verbal short cuts, a single sentence that can explain away a complex situation. In our family, the phrase ‘Everyone likes The Boy is one of those short cut explanations. On Saturday, when The Father came to pick The Boy and I up at football, The Father asked me where we got the tadpoles. I told him that Romy, a little girl from his class had brought them over for The Boy. The look on his face asked ‘Why in the world …?’. I replied ‘Everyone likes The Boy. Especially little girls’. Then The Father smiled with paternal pride, and said ( as he often has in response to this statement) ‘Wait until he’s 16….” You could almost, but not quite hear him say “That’s my boy! “.

I’ve set up all sorts of animal friendly rules about the tadpoles. On the first night when one died, I made it very clear that if anymore died by morning, they were going back in a canal. The next morning, I caved in and agreed that they could move into a large fancy glass bowl I have, out of the cramped vegetable jar. I sent The Girl out with an empty Spa bottle to get some swampy water, with strict instructions that she was not to get water from any canal with dead snails in it. I bought a small container of fish food, after staring at the fish food shelf for 10 minutes ( Goldfish food ? Tropical fish food ? Turtle food ?).

I’m beginning to suspect that as a child I always secretly wanted to have tadpoles, but was never allowed to. The six are thriving in my fancy glass bowl, which The Father insists will never be crystal clear again. Whenever I go into the kitchen, I wander over to their bowl and hang my head over it doing a quick body count. Then, I take my glasses off and just watch them. Looking for little sprouting legs, or their tiny black eyes.

Mummy is amused.

How to care for tadpoles.

My history link has already let me down : it incorrectly states that on April 27, 1746, the battle at Culloden Moor was fought. It was actually April 16, 1746.

Whatever.

Culloden Moor is the most impressive battle field that I have ever been to.

Well, hush my mouth : the Herptse Boys F-2 did not lose today. I repeat, they did not lose . They didn’t win either – it was a tie – but we ecstatic supporters were jumping up and down like the kids had just won the UEFA cup.

I enjoyed watching the game, leaning back against a railing in the cold wind. Being outside in the sun seemed to clear away the remnants of last night’s smoke, beer and gossip. We went to rik with a couple we have known since we all lived in student houses – I guess for 20 years now. They are the only couple from that time period, from that group- besides The Father and I -that are still together. She is 8 months pregnant with her third boy ( has it been a week yet ?) and she and I can talk about pregnancy without getting all dewy eyed and mushy. I suppose you could call it pragmatic reproduction.

They don’t have a car, so I told her about the new chair I got for The Baby on my bike and I complained about the balance problem. He told me that the problem was that I needed a stronger, triangular shaped kickstand. She said that she had one hell of a time getting both boys into their chairs without her bike tipping over. And yes, they would be buying a kiddie trailer soon.