That’s it. I’m going to vacuum. The next time I start mumbling about code, someone nail my hands to my desk. Much as I had the last 15 inch monitor, I am now determined to have the last page using tables. Borrowed tables. Tables with errors.

I will be the mastodon in the weblog world.

Really. I’m doing it again : screwing around with my code. This is so predictable it’s almost laughable : I will spend hours and hours trying to come up with something that doesn’t use tables. After a few days I will simply accept the fact that I haven’t one creative bone in my body and will make do with just throwing a * break* in here and there.

Why do I do this ? At least if I vacuumed I would seriously diminish the spider population around here.

I live in a tourist town. If you are dutch, you have probably come here at some point in your life, have eaten pancakes and walked around admiring our little burg. As summer draws to an end, so does the peak season here. The plague of locusts which lands here each year buying up all of the newspapers and milk, leaving mountains of wrappers from the frites store on the streets will be gone . And I will once again live in one of the most beautiful, peaceful towns in the Netherlands. It’s like being in a village sized ‘Cheers’, where everybody knows your name.

Until then, though, I have to deal with the tourists. No, I’m not going to rant and rave about them now- it’s Sunday, I’m too lazy to do that. I did manage to water the geraniums this morning without anyone asking me for directions. But I am always amazed that tourists seem to forget that people actually live here, that behind all of these oh-so-charming facades there are people living, families eating dinner, watching football.

I was just sitting here a few moments ago, looking for a pretty link to our town to send to someone. My computer is on my desk in the living room, facing a window to the street. I looked up, and there was a man standing on our stoop, right in front of my window, not 3 feet away from me. His back was towards me, his face in profile. And he stood there for almost 2 minutes picking his nose. I mean, really digging around in it, up to his knuckle. I was simply riveted to my seat, little spy behind the curtain : will he or won’t he ?

He didn’t.

There really are people behind these curtains you admire, guys.

1. What is your current occupation? Is this what you chose to be doing at this point in your life? Why or why not?
Most of the time I just do all of those mysterious mother type things, like changing diapers and cleaning toilets. Officially, I work part time converting graphics into more-web-friendly-formats for a small company. It’s something a reasonably clever chimp could do. I’m exactly where I want to be.

2. If time/talent/money were no object, what would your dream occupation be?
Basically what I’m doing now, but with someone else cleaning the toilets.

3. What did/do your parents do for a living? Has this had any influence on your career choices?
My mother was a great stay -at – home mom. She was always there when I came home from school. She would ask ” How was school ?” I would reply “Fine.” and then disappear into my room for the rest of the day. Funny how much I liked her being there when I came home though.
My father started out as a military medical adviser to ‘foreign’ armies , he ended his career as the director of a couple of hospitals in a Near Eastern country.
I don’t really know how much influence what they did had upon me.

4. Have you ever had to choose between having a career and having a family?
I never had to choose between having a career or a family. I did, however, have to choose between having a career and having the kids be able to speak English. When number 2 came along I was working 28 hours a week- outside of the house- and realized that that simply wouldn’t leave me enough time with them to teach them English. It is still too soon to tell if being bilingual has been the best thing for them.

5. In your opinion, what is the easiest job in the world? What is the hardest? Why?
I guess my job is the easiest- and the hardest : after all, when the kids have grown up, it will all be my fault.

via smattering

Well, here I am on my new computer. The wizards at the computer place did indeed manage to save all of my data ( for which I kiss the ground they tread upon. What ? Who , me, backup?) but I did lose all of my programs, my address book and my bookmarks. To everyone that I owe an e-mail to ( in other words, to everyone I know), please send me a nag so that I have your address again.

I spent an inordinate amount of time simply trying to make a connection. In fact two days, until I discovered that my ISDN cable ( oh, that might be what it is called. Sounds like as good a thing as any to call it) was plugged into the wrong place. Now to put my software back up. Unfortunately, T. has my Dreamweaver and has just taken off for three weeks to- oh, I think Australia, so I shall have to use FrontPage to put pictures up. And I’m dying to get some color back on this page.

And to find my bookmarks again. Well, I had too many of them anyways. I did just stumble across this in my search for old bookmarks and rather enjoyed it : How to love an INTP. Rather apt , although it does make one sound rather like a slobby Greta Garbo..

via via via Bloginality

( actually a picture of me smugly showing the arrowhead I found last summer… uh, I don’t have many photos with me even half way smiling…)

I have color ! I have Photoshop ! I have FTP ! I even have Dreamweaver again ! One happy mommy here !

Walking is only an option , of course, should it decide to rain before 10.35, as it takes 25 minutes to walk to The Baby’s school.

It started to rain at 10.45.

In a little over one hour, I have to get my ass on that fool bike and pick up The Baby. Even though I rode the bike a number of times after we fell, I’m amazingly nervous about it. And it’s drizzling outside, making all of those oh-so-charming Swedish granite cobblestones slick as ice. The Father was a prince this morning and gave us a ride to the nursery school ( he is off to Germany today to pick up his new car), but now I’m on my own.

Well, if it starts to pour, I shall simply put on a rain-suit and walk there. That’s all that there is to it.

I don’t suppose that there is any connection between my outburst of domesticity yesterday – washing the kitchen windows – and the veritable monsoon that occurred shortly thereafter.

The Girl : ( looking at the newly cleaned kitchen windows) It’s like the glass is gone.
Mummy Dearest : Hmmm.
The Girl : Like we don’t have any privacy anymore.
Mummy Dearest: Hmmm.