The workmen renewing the square before our front door

My son Caspian playing with his Lego 

Leo, the musselman

In Dutch, we have a song 'Zeg, ken jij de mosselman?'. Originally, a 'mosselman' or musselman in English had nothing to do with mussels, but that does not prevent us from calling Leo our musselman. He cooked perfect mussels during the last coach-meeting of our church, and the picture below is proof.

BBQ adventure

One picture says more than 1000 words, so I won't spend too many words on this event. One thing you should know, however, is that this was not the first time: a similar event took place a mere two hours earlier. The only difference was the demolished object: a sun chair instead of a wooden crate, and or course the volume of laughter of the spectators.

Before

After

Mud

Today, I drove my car in the mud while searching for a nice place to hunt some coins. Luckily, there was a construction site nearby, and I went to find some help to push the car out of the dirt. The tires were in it up to the rims, and keep trying was probably not the best solution. The workmen however were not really eager to use their muscles, but asked the shovel driver to help me. The shovel had an easy job, and all I had to do was thanking the driver and clean my window from the mud, spinning wheels mean spraying mud, you know. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera...

Skates

Today, Myrthe got her first pair of inline skates! She is really happy with this gift of her aunt and uncles, and even called me to ask me to come home early so that we could practice! But for sure, skating is not easy to learn for a four year old. And for daddy it might be even harder than teaching cycling without the extra wheels ;-)

Address unearthed

This weekend I found my very first bike tax plate with a name on it! This one is of the first world war II years: 1940-1941, and probably belonged to one of the workers in the local gas factory.

Move or build?

Tonight we had a meeting to discuss the last issues before we start with the construction of the new second floor in september. Originally, the 2nd floor was only one room with 2 small windows and a low ceiling, but we are going to extend it with 2 large rooms. For more detailed plans, look here. Tonight we have inspected the flat roof, and the view is really awesome! We even see the woods and wind mills in Germany!

SVG Open 2005

The SVG Open 2005 conference will be held at the campus of the University of Twente, organised by UT, CTIT, TI and ITC. Today we have set up a basic call for papers and a time schedule, before the 2004 conference in Tokyo has even taken place!

Weekend

Last weekend had a rather diverse programme: maternity visit to Joas, BBQ with Jordi and Wendy, cycling with the bike trailer to church, unrooting a couple of bushes in our back yard, and programming a version of the game 'Rozenkoning' (King or roses) with different player types: from human, to simple and more smart digital players. The game will be available soon!

Fire

Today I finished the transcription of the list of damage caused by a large fire that consumed almost the whole village of Varsseveld in 1723. The total damage was estimated at 66.000 daalders, a rough 50.000 euro (without inflation correction of course). Funny to see that 300 years ago you could buy a village for the price of building an extra floor on my home today. We have plans to do so, by the way. I will add a description of our plans to this blog soon.