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I needed to do more shopping, beer as well. And I found a crate of Heineken with the superduper funky opener inside :-)

Also I needed to bake one more cake. It was the apple pie. And a very nice one it was indeed!

I got a lot of people over for my birthday today which was really, really nice! My house was nearly too small for all of them to fit. Early evening only Mic, Mickey, Noortje, Marjolein, Simone and Larissa were left.

This year's pressie-theme seemed to be "whisky and cars". Whisky because of all the booze I got and cars because most other pressies involved donations towards my little pony. I guess I better don't mix these two up ;-) I'm especially pleased with the little book on '76-ers coz it belonged to Simone's late father... I'll treat it well and I feel inspired to now collect other years as well.
I also got a photo of Simone, me and the kids which I like very much but for privacy reasons won't show here.

The "funniest present" award this year goes to Tanja and Patrick who gave me a puzzle of our new Dutch King and Queen. I will indeed finish this at some point and hang it up at work I think ;-)

I had a great birthday with all my family, in-laws, girlfriend and friends. Thanks guys!

Happy birthday me!

I was surprised by decorations in my office when I got to work....

Tanja and her husband had been busy with balloons and little flags. I loved it :-)

And I brought them cake.

Awesome chocolate caramel cake. Mmmmmmmmmmmh :-)

My colleague Paul's plant is doing really bad. I took it home to give it new soil and then found out that half the roots are already rotting. I cut off the rotting bits and repotted it.

Now we hope for the best...

In the evening I had dinner with Marjolein, Mic and Gerrit. Later we went to Mulligans where i bought a lot of friends drinks. A fair few people showed up which was very nice!

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Today is my birthday. This was my birthday breakfast. Well, there was a croissant too but that had already disappeared ;-)

The view.

I bought cakes for colleagues at work. And forks and plates and napkins. These only came in one color/pattern btw ;-)

Colleagues had picked up the scent of cake...

I got a card from Ilse and Cassie. Thanks guys!

In the evening I walked to Mulligans where I celebrated my birthday. I saw this cat.

(Photo courtesy of Nicole as I forgot to make any pictures...)
Quite a few friends came by and it was lovely to see so many. Thank you all!

Birthday loot... There's a Mulligans T-shirt, funny asian BBQ sauce, a bottle of liquorice tasting alcoholic stuff, 2 cinema tickets inc. drinks and popcorn and books about restaurants and hidden places in Amsterdam.

I had a very nice evening. Thanks to everyone who showed up and was nice to me :-)

Welcome home!

We were out of bread this morning so I went to the bakery. We have two bakeries here, one right on Main North road and one left on Main North road. I went to the right one first. It was 7:30 in the morning. When I entered I noticed there wasn't any fresh bread. Just some bread rolls from the day before. So I asked the baker if he had any fresh bread. After all, bakers bake all night long so that we, the people, can have fresh bread in the morning. He looks at me all grumpy and barks "Nah, one hour!". As fucking if. See you later! Or probably not.

So it was off to the bakery on the left. Same bloody scene except that these people didn't even speak English. But I saw he had fresh loafs of white bread in the back, just not cut. I tried to ask if they had or could cut a loaf. After trying so get the general picture of a sliced loaf of bread across to the the baker's wife I gave up and told the baker himself that I'd just have the whole un-fucking-sliced loaf of bread and that's it. At least it was fresh. The guy puts it in an open bag saying "it is hot!" and hands it to me. It was hardly luke-warm but alright, it was crispy so that was nice. I paid and left.

I don't think I will ever try to get bread there again unless I happen to walk past anyway. This kind of thing just shits me to tears in the morning you know... And the thing is that sometimes when you go to the toilet at night (for which we have to walk through the garden) you can actually smell bread baking. So where is this magical bread that I can smell but not see?!?!

While cutting my bread the in-laws returned from their holiday in Croatia. It was good to see them again. We just had a little 15 minutes chat and then we went to work. Life goes on ;-)

It was beautiful and sunny during lunch so I had a Vili's pie outside in the sun. I needed the break because work was a bit frustrating today.

When I came home there was this birthday card for me. It's from Joyce and Raymond. Thanks guys! It's really nice of you to think of me and Nicole :-)