Monthly Archives: June 2006

After a busy week filled with appointments with bank and insurance people, we decide to tackle the garden. And I decide to cut some branches of our VBM, our Very Big Maple. VBM’s grow in 15 years from a twig that someone forgets to weed out, into a 20 metre tall tree. A tree so tall that nothing grows underneath it because the plants don’t get enough light. So something had to be done. Our new neighbour, who bought the house next-door but had to wait a year before she could kick out one of the tenants and who will be moving in soon, wants us to cut down the tree completely. But our tenants, uh, I mean the people who live in the apartments above us, want to keep the tree and only want some branches cut so they don’t interfere with their laundry lines. So I started with cutting those, from their balconies with a long pruning cutter on a stick. But then I put my climbing belt on, pulled my rope out and before I knew it I was standing high on a ladder to cut the lower branches of the tree. But you know how it goes, some branches become a couple, a couple becomes a few and before you know it I was half way up the tree, and the other half of the tree was down on the ground. So now the whole garden is an undescribable labyrinth of cut branches.

Okay, some fast answers:

• Yes, I bleached and cut my hair. I’m now Alison’s blonde instead of otherwise.
• Yes, my shoulder is slowly getting better. I still have a limited reach, but it doesn’t hurt as much as it did before. Or I just got used to the pain.
• No, we haven’t bought the house yet, even though we started to do major work on the garden. But it won’t take long anymore either. I’ll keep you posted.
• More holiday posts are coming after we’ve cleaned up all the branches, twigs and leafs. Maple Leafs.

We visit Ottawa to get some house buying advice of a friend of Alison’s parents, who is a financial advisor. He looks at all our numbers and says that it’s probably a very good deal and certainly doable. He has some other useful tips. We knew we could pull this of but their was still room in our heads for a lot of doubt. What if?
After his ‘blessing’ we feel very relieved.

Certainly after we speak to Alison’s grandmother when she drops in. She didn’t want her photo taken but gave us a lot of encouragement anyway. The first years being a homeowner and landlord will be tough, but after that period it is probably a good way to pay for our retirement. Which we might need because Alison has good genes: Granny is 86, still very energetic and travelling around the globe to visit friends and family. Her grandfather is almost 93, and her deceased grandparents also died at a respectable age. My genes are less strong; two of my grandparents died long before I was born and only one grandmother made it past 90. And my father died relatively young, 10 years before his statistical life expectancy.

A very Christian manhole cover as seen in Ottawa. Or it is a tribute to Little Nemo, when he’s flushed down the toilet?

Dealing with the infestation of Pantry Moths (Indian Meal Moths) we empty the whole pantry, clean everything with warm soapy water and remove and throw out all food items and packages with traces of bugs, worms or pupas. In total we throw out about three garbage bags of food…

After that we clean the pantry very well and spray insecticide inside it. I’m not a big fan but spraying regularly during 6 weeks (the life cycle of the bugs) is apparently the only way to finally get rid of the critters. They are not that bad actually, and pretty harmless, but if there are so many of them they eat your food before you can.

A big fire, two blocks from here on the busy Avenue Christophe-Coulomb, fills the air with smoke. About 10 appartments are demolished, first by the fire and then by the fire brigade that opened all the walls and floors to extinguish the fire completely. About 25 fire trucks, a lot of police and a tangle of fire hoses coming from fire hydrants a couple of blocks away. Fortunately there where no casualties, but losing your house is not fun. And people are often not insured (we aren’t, although we will when we buy our house) so it sometimes means you have lost everything you own.

The electricity is also interupted, also in our house, so we had to postpone the activity we had planned: getting rid of the bugs in our pantry. While we were away in Europe they multiplied like mad. The whole house was filled with pantry moths…

The paint on my keyboard came off on certain keys. I emailed the company if they had a couple of replacement keys for me? No, but send us the keyboard and we’ll send you a new one. And so they did.

That’s what I call excellent customer service. Thanks Matias!

Alison and I are both at Heathrow airport, but we came on different flights, and as it turns out, we arrived at different terminals. But after some bussing around, I finally find her. We kiss, chat a while and then she’ll have to leave again, to catch her flight. Weird. She’ll wait for me at Dorval airport so we can share a cab home.

A family reunion at the house of my nephew and his girlfriend and almost everybody is there. Even my mother who was brought by a taxi van from Nijmegen, almost an hour and a half away.

[Not in this picture: Ronald, Riet, Veroniek, Jeroen]

Saying goodbye is hard.

And another baby, how original…

This one is Dolph’s and Mansa’s son, Christian.