Meet Ribica, my Pandoran monk.

For some reason I felt a strong urge to pick up World of Warcraft again. So I bought the latest expansion...

... and created a Pandoran Monk. It's fun. And to break with my past, I made it join the alliance instead of the horde. This will give me access to all new quests and areas :-)

Work

I was alone in my office today and it was freezing outside. But the heater was on, the Christmas lights made it all cosy and I had a lot of work to do and I managed to do a big chunk of it.

The naked tree

Snow. And a fair bit of it too. First real snow of the season!

I put up the Christmas tree but forgot that we actually have nothing to put in it yet...

Sinterklaas dinner

When I left work to go home there were snow clouds coming in. It looked apocalyptic I think.
The crane ship is still up in the air.

The light was pretty.

It was getting darker very fast.

I took a train to Alkmaar to meet my family for Sinterklaas dinner. We went to some place called "Wereldwijd". You pay a fixed amount and then you can eat AND drink all you want for 2 hours. But after 2 hours you gotta be gone or pay extra for every 30 minutes you stay longer.

The concept is fun and the place looks nice but it's mostly buffet eating except for the fish and meat. They cook that on a grill for you. The quality of the food wasn't great. Particularly the chicken sateh tasted like it had been lying in the sun for a few days and it was covered in a very watery, tasteless sateh sauce.
But I had a very fun evening and it was really nice to eat together with my family which was the most important bit for me anyway so I'm happy :-)

Ilse and Cassie standing in the snow that had appeared while we were eating.

The repair manual

I received the book about repairing Mustangs with V8 engines today. I bought it second had for a tenner. Nice!

I felt like opening the blinds today and put plants in the window. It made it look nice and warm and homey, I think I'll do it every day from now on!

Here's Tanja in front of a flying ship.

Told ya it flies...

The hole

Another plumber arrived at 8:30. Let the hacking and slashing commence!

Yeah, so now I have a hole in my ceiling and we couldn't see it leaking anywhere. That sucks...

Had to vacate my shelves, the contents of which now lie on my bed. Has to stay there a while coz I need to check if I can spot a leak anywhere for a while. So every time I hear water running I run over to check now. Just dandy.

In the meantime the builders who arrived at 7AM had finished putting up their scaffolding. This is going to be fun. I think they're going to break out a section of the outside wall. Maybe I should just move to Tahiti for 6 months...

And then it started to snow, for like an hour, after which it just rained. And then rained some more.

In the evening I picked up the last 3 remaining items that were in my trunk. 1 air filter, 1 radiator and 1 glove box (don't ask...).

My car started! :-)

So today I went to see how my pony was doing. I also brought bags to see if I could get stuff out of the trunk to my house. Normal people use their car for that stuff, I used an IKEA bag and a backpack ;-)

The trunk has loads of old parts in it and I want the trunk to be cleaned out so I started taking stuff out. There was the air conditioning parts that made room for the new LPG setup and the previous LPG parts and the original air filter was there as well. I also found what i think is the old starter motor. And some things I don't recognize.

Anyway, I managed to take everything out except for 2 big things that I need to pick up separately some evening this week.

Then I thought I'd try starting the car again. At first it wouldn't work, I think it got overflowed. Then I remembered a trick Nicole told me about and also a person on a Ford Mustang forum: Before starting, floor the gas pedal and then start. I tried this and I never heard it start so quick! Within a second it came to life! I was stunned...

So I was all happy again :-)

I went up to Gerrit's and had some tea. Catherine was in need of a lot of attention.

Then I went to the station by bus.

I was carrying a lot of car parts, some were very heavy... IKEA bags come in handy then ;-)