Bye bye 2014!

Leaving Central Station by ferry early morning in the darkness on the last day of 2014..

A big cruise ship came in to celebrate the new year in our little town.

I spent new year's eve with Simone and her kids and mother. It was a nice evening. We bought some fireworks.

The neighbours had bigger fireworks.

And louder fireworks.

And even bigger fireworks that made it look like our street exploded...

Some were nice though.

I liked our own fireworks the best and Milan had fun playing a pyrotechnic ;-)

The candles

I was quite busy at work most of the day, addressing my SQL knowledge. Surprisingly so I did pretty OK.

I went home to my own place after work so I could water my plants. Now I'm listening to some red-neck music and I'm burning some candles my friend Diewertje gave me 2 weeks ago.

The whisky

It was cold last night. Puddles had frozen over.

Inside my tummy it got warm late evening when I had my first whisky in 6 weeks. Yummy :-)

Two more lights put up

I wanted to put up a few more spotlights in Simone's first floor ceiling. Removing the old ones left ugly holes and they need to be made bigger. But when you use a hole saw you need to be able to centre the drill bit into something... So I went up the attic first and put in a piece of wood. It worked like a charm!

I worked until it got dark. I got two lights done. Two more to go now.

The nothing

I see. Forgot to make photos again. Blogging this on January 1st I seem to have a hard time remembering what I did today. It was a Saturday. Ah, Simone found out that she had accidentally taken one day off too much so we had an extra day together. I think we shopped a bit. Possibly at some DIY stores to look for... Ah yes! New shower head, that's it. The rest of the day was spent as lazy as possible. Which isn't really all that lazy. So there.

The talk show host.

Simone and I went to see The Hobbit, the battle of the 5 armies. I liked it a lot. Afterwards we went to get a coffee at Hotel Schiller. It's changed a lot as I didn't realise the bar and restaurant area are now the decor for a popular talk show.

Duo-selfie!

I'm sitting at the talk show host's spot.

I invented cool ;-)

Nah, just messing on the way to the restaurant where we were going to have dinner.

The second proteine diet, the end / Christmas day.

Yesterday was my last official day on the protein diet. I have lost 11,5 kilos. I'm very happy with this result!

Lovely Christmas breakfast made by Simone.

In the afternoon / evening our families came over for dinner and a presents-game. Dinner was delicious and the game was fun :-) The first day of Christmas was very nice!

The second proteine diet, day 30.

Normal lunch. It's been a while! Just crackers with cheese. Fantastic! :-)

Tomorrow it's Christmas and we've got lots of family coming over. Now there are just a few presents under the tree...

The second proteine diet, day 29 / Amsterdam Light Festival 2014

Close to my work this party cruiser is now docked. Its designer must've watched a lot of Star Trek!

My colleague Alex put chocolates in my tree at work! Very nice of him :-)

Simone, her kids and mom picked me up after work and we went into town. Since we were close we bought some coffee.

Not everybody is convinced about the quality so they need to be hypnotised.

The Christmas tree at Dam square is lit up nicely again.

Look! It's us! :-)

The Amsterdam Light Festival is on. There is a route that you can walk and there's one that you "should" do by boat. We did the walk tonight. It starts at this heart, to which you can send a message to let it know your country and then it will show your countries flag. I guess there were Americans nearby.

Here are some more photos:

One of my favourites.

This sphere had tons of little lights in it, powered by (nearly) empty batteries that people could hand in. The more batteries people "donated" the more lights would turn on. It was pointing out that people should recycle more things.

This was my least favourite one.

I liked this one and the next two a lot. They are 3 sheets with rice shaped holes in them to make a drawing. Very nicely done I think.

And this is the last one. It was a fun evening and good exercise too! ;-)