Saturday, September 17, 2011

The cacti

Went to the key shop to have a house number plate made for on my letterbox.

Pigeons.

The old cacti that once belonged to Nicole. Chop sticks come in very handy when repotting a cactus I found out!

Nice new pots for them.

Marjolein plotting revenge on her old hard drive that gave her so much shit ;-)

Cassie, my mom and dad, Ilse and marjolein. We had a nice time and I made enchiladas which everybody liked.

Friday, September 16, 2011

Ships and ice cream

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A place I remember :-)

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Ships across the water, where my office is.

The ice cream van came by again! I asked him how business has been with all the shit weather of late and he said that he's been doing this for 20 years or so and he makes the same money every year, no matter what the weather is like! Bit surprising but apparently Dutchies don't really care about the weather when it comes to eating ice cream...

On the way home I snuck underneath a building to take better pictures of the ships.

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Ships.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Replacing my heater / meeting Ruud

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Today was heater replacement-day. My current one is old and starts to leak in a few places. Now, I like my DIY but this I rather have done professionally ;-)

The man who was coming to do all the work arrived at 8 AM sharp.

8:30.

10:00.

13:30

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At 15:30 it was all done and dusted. It seems to be working fine. haven't found any leaks so far. Always a bit of a worry I find but so far so good. I guess I can pay the bill now.

This is the programmable, wireless, modulating thermostat I bought with it. No need for it to be on a wall. It will make it the right temperature where I put it. Very handy!

Then I tested my new foot-stool for half an hour, until my mate Ruud arrived.

Ruud and I went for dinner and pints. It was good meeting him again.

We went to Mulligans where we had a couple of pints. There were some Aussie blokes playing good ol' pop songs which was nice and also there were about 40 girls at some point. Think it was a birthday party. OK, maybe 20. But it seemed like 40!

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

My new postbox

This is the birthday card Marjolein gave me yesterday. I like it very much, it reminds me of her ;-)

I got this card from work.

And this card from Joyce and Raymond!

As soon as I came home I put up my new postbox. Now I can keep my gate locked during the day :-) It looks nice I think.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

My birthday

Birthday cakes! I took the remaining 5 (out of 6) to work with me.

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5 minutes after sending the cake-mail out my former colleagues from upstairs were all down enjoying the cake.

2 of the admin girls came to bring me a pressie! A gift voucher for a nice shop in town :-)

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This is the last time (for now!) that I will post a picture of my tarts. It's just so damn good...

The letterbox I ordered yesterday arrived today already!

My colleague Tanja sent me an e-card :-)

In the evening I went out with Marjolein. We ate Indian at a very good restaurant.

Afterwards we went to Mulligans. I took cake with me. This is not cake though, this is Marjolein ;-)

I had the best surprise! Jan and Susanne dropped by! They were returning from Spain and had landed just before. It was great seeing them again :-)

Gerrit and Danny came as well. Thanks guys :-)

Monday, September 12, 2011

Windy

In the afternoon it got incredibly windy. Weird windy. It was still sunny though.

I needed a tram to get to Mic to play Monday night squash but trees were blown over everywhere in town and the firies were everywhere to help out. My tram wasn't going due to tree-damage somewhere.

I walked a bit to a place where mic could pick me up by car, that was nice and it worked out well. The planes were flying very low due to the wind as well. They needed to come in over town...

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I had dinner at Mic's folks' place. I brought them a chocolate caramel tart. Noortje was pretty happy with it.

My first birthday card arrived today as well! From my mom and dad :-)

Sunday, September 11, 2011

The busy day / chocolate caramel tart

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I had a busy schedule today. Mainly DIY and baking. Couldn't really do anything in the morning except for shopping though, everything else would be too noisy. So I went to get breakfast and all the ingredients for the chocolate caramel tarts I wanted to make.

Baking is nicer in a well organised kitchen. Just like tools for DIY, tools for cooking/baking need to be proper and of good quality as well. I bought this Leifheit thing as a bargain yesterday and put it up today. Good start of the day :-)

I was also very eager to put the lock on my gate. To do this I needed 1 very large hole. In solid metal. I love DIY but I hate drilling holes in concrete or metal. Especially when they are 10 mm in diameter. I drilled it in 5 takes; 3.5, 4.5, 6, 8 and 10 mm.

When that was done I was able to put my lock on that I had also bought yesterday.

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I am very pleased with the results. I made this gate myself, all from scratch :-)

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My fortress ;-)

After all that DIY it was time for some baking. My birthday is coming up and I wanted to bake a few chocolate caramel tarts. 1 to take to Mic for desert and 5 to take to work. This is how it starts. Flower, sugar, cocoa, butter and egg.

Make dough and put it in the tin. I bought ceramic balls to put in as weight. This is handy for "blind" baking.

When that's done I started on the caramel. Sugar dissolved in water, bring it to the boil.

When it start to colour, put in butter and cream.

It will become a bit violent, keep on the heat and stir a lot. The butter and cream might cool things down and it might turn in to a lump. Just keep stirring until it's all dissolved again.

When it's all mixed well, you can pour it in. It should be creamy and soft.

I was making 6...

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Then there's also some chocolate action.

Boil cream.

When it boils, take off the heat and put in the chocolate which will melt slowly.

Keep stirring until you have a homogenous mixture.

My workmate came in very handy ;-)
It took me from 2 - 9 PM to make these...

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One of the 6 finished tarts, 1 day later.