Band of brothers

My little urban micro garden desperately needed maintenance. So I got to work removing weeds, grass and rubbish. Then I trimmed the shrubs to nicer sizes that also hopefully makes them less attractive for dogs to piss on.

The result: A nice and clean little garden. And it was nice working on it :-)

Today is my friend Nantko's birthday but we can't really celebrate that with him coz he died a while ago. I drank a glass of Connemara in his honour. I often find myself thinking when going to a concert or something.. "Nantko would've liked this". He is missed...

I watched the last 4 episodes of "Band of brothers".

It's a great series.

Based on true stories.

They have some survivors of Easy Company do some commentary before every episode.

After the final episode they commented some more and only then do you get to see who they are. It was so moving it made me cry... These are men that went through all that crap to liberate my grandparents. More to think about on May 4th next year...

And then in the evening there was a bit of a fire in my street.

I spotted a whole 4 small wiffs of smoke. Hardly any bigger than somebody smoking a cigar. Well, at least it was no false alarm.

A farewell party for Nantko

Today was Nantko's funeral. It was going to be a very long and tiring day.

After the service and quite a few beers we went to have some dinner at 't Fornhuis in the Utrechtsestraat. It was very, very nice!

And then we went back to Mulligans to celebrate Nantko's life.

We celebrated a lot. At some point rounds of whisky were coming in so fast I couldn't keep up and my glass just got fuller.

Mic with Nantko's brother Wim.

Gerrit, Nantko's sister Eef and Marjolein.

The Tennessee Studs were playing, one of Nantko's favourite bands, and mine as well. Party music all night.

It was a night Nantko would've loved. There was laughing and there was crying, great music and drinks just kept on coming.

Cheers buddy, this is farewell. You will not be forgotten.

R.I.P. Nantko

My friend Nantko in better days, before he got the stomach cancer. He died tonight. A very sad loss as Nantko was such a kind person but also an end to 2 years of demise and suffering.

May your spirit be free again buddy. I hope to meet you again in another life.

Just before I got the call about Nantko I opened this beer that's been in my fridge for more than 6 months or so, waiting for a special occasion to be opened. Cheers Nantko, here's to good times!

Nantko in hospital again

I wanted to make this starship from an old floppy disk for a long time. Today I took some time to do so. Full report on my creative blog.

My friend Nantko ain't doing well and he's in the hospital again. It's all very sad :-( I went to see him with Mic and Marjolein.

After we visited Nantko we went in to town where Mic and I originally planned to go for dinner a new year's drinks. There's still a bit of light-art hanging in town.

We had dinner at Wagamama.

When I came home I received a Christmas card. It was delivered at the wrong address...

Visit from Nantko

Herron on top of a lorry. Not the best place to catch a fish me thinks but anyway...

It was very foggy this morning.

Our neighbours.

Nantko came over for a cuppa! He had gained a few kilos and was quite chatty. So we chatted a lot about lots of different things. Didn't wanna discuss his 2 tumors the whole evening and I think that was appreciated a lot. I was happy he came over!

Risky business

Mic, Gerrit, Eva and Nantko came over tonight to have dinner and play a game of Risk. We ordered Indian take-away at 19:30 which was delivered at 21:15.

After wolfing down the food we finally managed to start at 22:00.

Basically the game went like this:
- I managed to get hold of South America early on.
- Eva tried to get hold of North America, which I kept preventing.
- The others were getting stronger because I was focussing on not letting Eva get away with North America.
- I got my first 10 extra armies and took Australia away from Nantko and Gerrit.
- I got tired of keeping Eva under control. Now that I was getting 4 armies every turn for 2 continents, I offered Eva a non-attack deal so that we could both focus on our assignment. She agreed. Very much disliked by Mic (fair enough)
- The deal worked out nice and allowed me to conquer Africa as well.
- Just before I was about to conquer 24 territories for my assignment, Eva completed her assignment for which she needed 3 continents.

Eva manages to win at least 1 game of Risk or settlers of Catan every single time we play. Maybe it's the little bit of German blood in her ;-)

Visiting HQ

Marjolein, Mic and I went out for dinner and then to Mulligans to meet Nantko.

Nantko was doing alright, gaining weight again after a stomach infection made him go below 60Kg. He's just a bit hairy nowadays ;-)

The band was good!

The dinner

I had invited Marjolein, Nantko and Gerrit over for dinner tonight. The only thing missing still were most ingredients and a steaming pan. So first things first, I went out to get me a steaming pan. The morning had been quite nice so far but as soon as i stepped outside it started pissing down...

Finally just after noon I had everything I needed and i started working. I started with 2 mini caramel-chocolate tarts.

The rest of the day I spent on an awesome fennel-tomato soup. In the evening I also made roast potatoes, steamed veggies and steaks.

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Nantko, Gerrit and Marjolein, each with their steak.

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My dinner. The steaks were 12 euro's each and I didn't have a good track record when it came to baking steaks. This one however was very nice!

The dinner was lovely and the company great. Afterwards we went to the pub.

The fantastic elastics were playing. They were fantastic indeed.

This was a very well spent day!

Shrek and Fiona

My new model train with a proper post wagon behind it.

Marjolein came over and we walked to Nicole's shop to have a look. The trees have beautiful colours at the moment.

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We went to the Halloween party at Mulligans. It took some preparation but we managed to pull it off. We were Shrek and princess Fiona! We won first prize in the dress-up contest and we took 1 bottle of whiskey home each :-)

Gerrit and Nantko were there as well and we had a very nice evening!

The Borg Queen!

This morning, Seven met...

... the Borg queen!

In the evening Marjolein and I met up with Gerrit for dinner. The jumbotron at Rembrandtplein was OFF! Lovely :-)

Gerrit, Marjolein, Nantko and Dick in Mulligans. We attended the second night of "Le chat mort" because we liked it so much yesterday. It turned in to a very good evening.

The dinner

I took the day off to do a bit of shopping in town. I met Marjolein at the station and as we walked in to town we past this church I hadn't been in before.

't was a church like others really... I do like to silence in churches a lot though. And the peace.

Walking through the oldest part of Amsterdam.

Having a drink in town.

We sat at the old weighing house.

Lunch ;-)

Marjolein photographing a statue in a tree.

In the evening we met with Nantko, Collins, Djox and Joanna for some Chinese food.

Afterwards Nantko, Marjolein and I went to the American hotel for another round...

... and cake :-)