The construction, day 1.

A small helicopter flew by my window at work. No idea what it was doing and I wonder if they knew themselves...

And OH JOY! They have started working on the walls in my office. They're going to make us seperate office spaces. Thank fuck, soon I won't have to listen to a couple of colleagues that talk and talk and talk aaaaaaall the time!

In the evening I met up with Ruud again finally and we played a few games of chess which he both won, of course ;-)

Chess with Ruud

Construction infront of HEMA.

I met Ruud tonight. We had drinks and played chess. For the first time ever I managed to beat him ;-)

Pregnant!

My Christmas tree is growing bigger yet again. I guess he's happy where he is :-)

In the evening I visited Ruud and Laurien. Laurien is expecting a baby girl, she's due to arrive any day now!

Mister Ruud.

The second proteine diet, day 9.

That bowl is still there. Still haven't touched it. Ain't going to.

I met Ruud and Laurien in the evening. Ruud and I were going to play a few games of chess. I hadn't seen them for a while so it was fun :-)

The first game of chess was the only good one coz after this I just played shit... This first game however was fun! I nearly won but then gave it all away with one stupid mistake...

The Haasje Klaas Klup

This morning I picked up the trophy for my squash tournament at work. I had the 2014 winner's name engraved in it. Next year is already the fifth edition. Super :-)

In the evening Simone and I had dinner with friends. We formed the Haasje Klaas Klup which is a gang of 8 (4 ex colleagues and their partners) and we have dinner a couple of times a year. Usually at a restaurant called Heasje Cleas in Amsterdam but sometimes elsewhere.

Last night we went to HC and it was a fun evening! :-)

Mara and Patricia.

Simone, Laurien, Ruud, Remy and Mara.

Laurien, Ruud, Remy and Mara.

Patricia and Martijn.

The Bandido

Some of my colleagues have a serious surplus of time on their hands I think. At least sometimes it results in funny shit like this ;-)

Ruud and Laurien came over for dinner in the evening. We also watched the soccer game AZ-Ajax. I favour AZ and Ruud favours Ajax. Ajax won unfortunately...
It was a fun evening with a lot of laughter :-)

Bye bye 2013

Last day of the year. Public transport was empty. I like!

At work I joined the annual poker tournament.

I was out early. This was my table. Cute dealer but no good cards for me unfortunately.

Bjorn playing on the right.

We started with 46 players this year needing 5 tables. Biggest tournament in our company's history. Don't know who won because I left before it was over but whoever won took 800 euros home...

This was my real prize, I spent NY's eve with Ruud and Laurien. Over the last couple of years they have turned out to be wonderful people and very good friends. They've picked me up when I was down and out several times and I'm very grateful to have them in my life.

We chatted and laughed a lot.

Played Mario Kart for a while at which I totally sucked thank you very much ;-)

At midnight there was some Brute of course. Bubbles from Champagne, France.

I went out to look for fireworks.

I made these photos with my new iPhone 5s. I'm impressed. I so love this phone...

When I got home I checked my mail and found a nice card from Marjolein.

In 2013 I learned a lot about myself. I learned about emotions, love, death, friends, family and most of all to be true to myself and to give myself what I deserve instead of always looking out for others. Now I just need to find a matching tattoo ;-)

Hope you had a great New year's eve too!

The Amsterdam Light Festival

My breakfast was rather large...

The Christmas tree received decorations today. I have no clue who put it there...

In the afternoon Mara and Remy joined me to see my car, they were very curious. I needed to fire it up a bit and also I wanted to remove the antenna so I could put the cover on properly.
The care started after 5 tries. Hope I didn't exhaust the battery...

Afterwards we went back to my place for a beer.

... and a pile of toasties that I made :-)

Then Ruud and Laurien dropped by and we walked in to town to walk the "Amsterdam Light Festival" trail.

Below are some photos I took during the walk:

My shadow was in jail!

At some stage it started to rain really bad and we hit a pub. here's yours truly, Mara, Remy, Ruud and Laurien and for some reason nobody has a normal face!

The whole trail took about 3,5 hours to walk which was a fair bit. We needed some moisturizing afterwards.

One final shot when i walked back home with Ruud and Laurien. I love the sky, it's kinda surreal.