Q is for...

Queen

This is the Golden Carriage, which is used every year on the third Tuesday in September for Princes Day, the day when the new financial plans for the coming year are unveiled. The carriage is used by Queen Beatrix and (when he was alive) Prince Claus or (nowadays) Crown-Prince Willem Alexander.

If you look closely, you can see the Queen on the right hand side of the carriage. You don't? Disappointed? Well, so was I after I got back home and got these photos developed! The only reason I stayed and watched the whole parade of soldiers and airmen etc and got cold all over (it wasn't a nice September day) was because I would get to see the queen! So, imagine my surprise when I got the photos back and saw a bunch of fingers and no queen!

Anyway, we don't have a President, we have a Prime Minister and we have a Queen (does this sound like the commercial for a Canadian beer brand now?). We've had a Queen for over a century now, but it's coming to an end: our next leader will be a man! The Netherlands was one of the first countries where the eldest child would automatically become the reigning royal, be it male or female. We sure were emancipated!

For more Q words from around the world, please check out ABC Wednesday and join in the fun!

Strange goings-on

Sometimes you do have to wonder. Why do cats prefer cardboard boxes to nice and soft blankets and baskets (Wuppie)? Why do some cats lick you over and over and over (Mathilda)? Why do some cats like to sit on your lap, but only if you've got a towel on your lap where she can sit on (Sophie)? And why oh why do cats have to pee on your lovely couch cushions when there is a litterbox in the hallway (Linette)?

Result of last night: one scatter cushion in the bin and one sheepskin in the bin as well (this morning) and me slightly worried!

Don't you just love cats?

Friendly

Just Breathe thinks I am a friendly blogger. At least, she's given me a friendly blogger award, so I guess that must mean she thinks I am friendly.

Anyhoo, another award and this time no strings attached! No truths or dares, no funny photos, no silly questions. Thank you Debbie!

Now, there is someone I think of as friendly as well and if I were to live closer, I would definitely go and visit her someday. Until then: I think you are a friend and a friendly person, so Cry, come and pick up your award!

In honour

It's been twenty years this weekend. Over here in Europe there are documentaries all over. Why it was built, how it came down. What am I talking about? Well, the wall of course. That dreaded wall between East and West Europe. Between the Russian influenced states and the American influenced states. Between East and West Berlin. And it came down!

You would think that people learn from the past. But alas, other walls (physical or mental) have gone up in the twenty years since. In the Netherlands we have a saying: an ass doesn't in general stub its toe twice on the same rock. An ass of course being a very stupid person. Well, the world is full of asses in my opinion. Because we keep doing the same stupid thing over and over. It didn't work then, it doesn't work now. Knock the walls down, be they physical or mental! It worked in 1989, let it work again!

Saturday Archive 1

Well, with all those photos being scanned and cropped and named and things, I have so many photos now. And it would be a shame not to share them with you. Of course I can't show all of them: some are just showing me in a not so decent light, others have other people in it. But there are still plenty that I can show.

Now, I don't want to show you those photos every single day, that would become boring pretty quickly I think, so once a week I will show you a photo from my past with a little story attached.

The first photo of my new weekly thingy is quite a mundane photo. From 1992 until 1994 I lived in England. First in a room at the back of the kitchens of the hotel I worked in and later in a room in a house on top of the hill. The first was good because it had a private bathroom, the second was good because it had a kitchen and a washing machine in the house. This is a view of my second room.

It was on the ground floor of the house (called Serendipity) and was located between front door and garage. It was only a small room and L-shaped, but I liked it. So, let's go through what you can see: On the far right you can see a little doll hanging on the wall. I knitted it myself and represented the uniform worn by my male colleagues in the restaurant. I also had a little female doll. As window covering I occasionally used black tights. Not the most fashionable, but living with four men, they weren't too impressed if they would be drying all over the house. So, curtain rail it was.

My bedside table wasn't too big and completely covered. The alarm clock was a working one, although I do think my boss must have thought otherwise. At one point I was actually on time and all the gardeners thought they had come in for morning coffee early! But, I have also slept through four alarm clocks in one day! You can't see the other three, but they were scattered about the room to make me get up and get them to be quiet. It didn't always work though...

One other thing that is quite Dutch is plants. I always had them and you can see two in the photo. When I returned home in November 1994, I stuffed all of them in my car and drove them home. They survived for quite a few years after.

Apart from the white folding chair, all the furniture you can see was provided by the hotel. The bedding as well was provided, but I didn't really like it, so I bought my own duvet and covers and asked my parents to send me my blanket. It's hardly visible, but it peeps out from under the yellow bedcover.

Memories, memories...

Feline Friday 29

I'm keeping an eye on you!

Tweety

Today was a Tweety-Day. A day where the rain was just coming down and down and down. Cats and dogs, pipe-handles, water, bucketloads of water and more rain! And when cycling to work (since I don't have a car), you tend to get wet if you do so in the rain. So, for protection, I own a rain suit. It's lovely ochre-yellow and it still fits after ten years (in which I have put on some weight), so no problem there.

And I know you are all dying to see what I look like in my Tweety-suit. So, just for you, I've made a photo of myself today right before I went out into the rain and got my feet soaked, since I don't own any wellies.

Tweet tweet...

P is for...

Pizza

Growing up I hated, detested, loathed pizza. The smell, the taste, everything about it was absolutely horrid to me. I ate sprouts, cooked spinach and endives, liver, but I could not stand pizza. Yuck. But then, a few years ago (1998 to be precise) I was on holiday in Italy with my friend C and I just couldn't not try pizza. I mean, I was in Italy! So, I got myself the simplest one possible: Pizza Margherita. There wasn't even any cheese on it!

Well, I tasted it. And in the end only a few small crusts were left on my plate. And I've liked pizza ever since. On occasion I will have up to five pizzas in my freezer (no room for more) and they will not stay there long...

Pizzas originated in Naples, Italy and are oven-baked, flat, round bread bases, covered in tomatoes or tomato sauce and cheese and a variety of other toppings. Different regions, different tastes. I prefer mine with mozzarella, salami and pineapple. According to official pizza bakers a wrong idea, because it combines sweet (pineapple) with savoury (salami) and that is not really done. But then again, in the Netherlands you can also get Pizza Shoarma!

For more P words from around the world, please check out ABC Wednesday and join in the fun.

Cracked!

The cropped version of a view in Verona, taken in 1998.

Well, it took some work. First of all I started copying every single sheet of photos, then cutting the individual photos out and getting even more frustrated than I already was. And then, when I walked around my living room, shifted a small basket, I found it: the programme I needed. I slipped the disc in my computer, downloaded the programme and have been okay ever since!

So, now the hard work of scanning all my photos can start in earnest. Today I scanned in all my photos of when I lived in England, all 200+ of them! Of course that's only half the job done. But, I will get there. It might take me until Christmas, but over the next few weeks I will show you photos of my past. Whether that is what you want, is anybody's guess of course, but it's going to happen!

Photos

I wanted a negative scanner. But on finding out how expensive they were, how slow they were and how often I would use it, I decided I would just scan my photos and be done with it. So far, so good.

I don't want to go scanning for hours and hours and hours on end, so I put up to four photos on my scanner at a time. And it works beautifully. So far, so good.

But then, I have to seperate those photos again. Straighten them out, crop and give them seperate titles. And that's where the problems begin.

Several months ago I bought myself a state-of-the-art photo program. And ever since I got it, I have been annoyed by it. It's big and makes my computer slower. And when I want to use it, I can't because some component or other is missing. Very very very annoying!

I had a nice and easy photo program. I couldn't really do much with it, but it was great for cropping and straightening my photos. Once I installed my nice and new program, I deleted this program. And now I can't find it anymore. The new one isn't working the way I want it to work (like, at all!) and I am getting more and more frustrated.

I'll have a look around the net to see if there is an easy to use program out there for me!