Dec 10 2004
Ice

Two days of freezing rain and an American build courtesy car. I have to get the more than 2 cm of ice from that car, but it takes more than an hour to do so.
Dec 8 2004

In the middle of the night we wake up by the ringing of a bell. It seems like the neighbour is locked out by his girlfriend and desperately tries to get in. He keeps on ringing, with short pauses in between. After ten minutes or so I get out of bed and walk to the front door. The ringing stops. I get back into bed and a few minutes later it starts again. We curse the neighbour and try to get back to sleep. But the ringing continues with some gaps of silence in between. I get up again and walk to the door. The bell rings again, but now i hear that it comes from the basement and not from upstairs. I open the basement door and there it is, a ringing bell. I’ve never seen it before, our front door bell is a ding-dong type of chime, not a bell. Alison later tells me it might be the backdoor bell. Because of the freezing rain it apparently got shorts circuited somewhere. I get my cutting tool and cut the wires. Finally, silence.
I hope the neighbours aren’t mad at us now.
Dec 7 2004

I brought the Subaru to the garage today were it will get some new parts (speed sensor, rear differential, clutch, winter tires and rims). I got this Dodge Intrepid as a courtesy car but it drives like a dog. American cars are so bad. Especially in this weather (freezing rain) I’d rather drive my Subaru.
Dec 5 2004

In order to celebrate the Dutch feast of ‘Sinterklaas’ I got a chocolate initial from the Netherlands for Alison.
We intended to go cross-country skiing today, but all the snow was already melted. So we took Poupoune for a walk instead. It’s too cold for Pepe, so he staid home.
Dec 2 2004

Now it’s cold outside it’s very nice to close the curtain Alison made and keep the cold out. The curtain is made of two layers, an orange non-woven fabric that’s almost impenetrable by air or light and a second layer of silver gaze over that. So depending on the circumstances it looks either silver/grey or orange with silver. I think it worked out really nice.

Dec 11 2004
Paper
The paper boy was probably not happy this morning. 20 cm of snow and it’s still snowing.
It looks wonderful. I guess I go out on my snow shoes today.
By mare • english •