english

The second time this year I stand on my cross country skis. The first time was the day before I was felled with a brochitis (probably related), and the second time, today, almost three weeks later. I went with my friend Paul, my lungs held out okay and we covered quite some ground. It was fun.

Part of the reason for this lack of skiing, is the weather. There is just not enough snow. It was barely enough today and every day one centimetre of snow evaporates because the air is cold and dry (the process is actually sublimation).

We really need a couple of feet more snow.

The metro stopped at Berri-UQAM and the doors didn’t close. After a couple of minutes a voice announced something on the intercom, but because these intercoms are of “1965”-quality I couldn’t decipher what they said. Fortunately the other passengers around us could, and left the metro car. An accident caused an interruption for 1 hour. A metro euphemism for a suicide. We went up to the street and were one of the first to stand in line for the bus. Behind us the line went around the block.

If you want to kill yourself, please don’t jump in front of a metro. It’s awful for the bystanders to witness, the metro driver gets nightmares and you piss off a whole lot of metro passengers.

I wasn’t feeling well the last couple of weeks and on Monday evening I really wasn’t feeling well. Very tired, a fever, coughing and totally out of breath after doing little physical activity. I made an appointment with my doctor and yesterday I went to see him. He examined me and told me I had either a bronchitis or a pneumonia.

He prescribed me antibiotics and an inhalator for my lungs and I had to make an X-ray, to see if it was actually a pneumonia.

I always think it’s funny they hand out these gowns here, I’ve never had a gown in the Netherlands. Ever. And believe me, I made a lot of X-rays over the years, although I never had anything broken apart from my nose.

When I’m wheezing I think about my mother, who was out of breath too, but worse. It’s strange how your perception of things change after you experience them yourself.

[After my visit to the clinic my car broke down again and had to be towed to the garage. I waited for an hour for the tow truck and was completely cold and miserable. Then I found out I left my house keys with the car keys and so had locked myself out of the house. Had to go downtown to Alison’s work to pick up her keys. Not a particularly good day, no.]

A big thank you to all the readers of loglog who donated to my pet-goat project. Your donation is really appreciated.

But I still haven’t reached my goal of $333 yet, so donations of other readers are still welcome. After I reach that amount I promise to double it, because I think $666 is quite an appropriate amount for donating animals.

So don’t hesitate but click on the banner or follow this link to make your donations.

Thanks.

Update 26 January: I get some complaints from readers that want to donate, but can’t get past the credit card form, because they don’t have a US address. I’ve complained about this to Heifer repeatedly but haven’t heard back from them yet. I myself, when testing, used just a fake state since I couldn’t enter a province, and it passed. But that might not work foir you. I’m sorry, but thanks for trying though. If you still want to donate a goat or other farm Animal, you can go to Oxfam Unwrapped in Canada, and make your donation there. Or, Oxfam in the Netherlands. Or a another charity of your choosing.

When you start rewiring your house it’s hard to stop. So in addition to the new hall lights, I also moved a light switch that was in the hallway to the inside of the guest room because it is much handier to be able to turn of the light when you don’t have to open the door. I also installed a lamp in the entry way, which was kind of dark, and pulled a cable so all the new additions are grounded.

Working on the electric installation is in Québec only allowed by qualified electricians, but I have an electrician who will come and inspect my work and that’s fine too. The new work done is a big improvement to the previous situation, and I’m pretty confident of my work he’ll approve.

We bought a new bed! On the way back from the garage a couple of days ago, I went past the Ikea and celebrated the return of the four wheeled monster with some bed shopping. We already had picked it out beforehand, when Alison and I went to the Ikea by bus. It was fun to go to Ikea and not buy anything.

Not that we needed a new bed, but Poupoune did. For Poupoune the bed was too low and too high. She sleeps under the bed and the space under the old bed (basically a box that Alison got when she bought the mattress) is very low so she really has to crawl under it. The total height of the bed was getting too high for her to jump onto anymore. She sometimes needed a couple of tries to jump so high and sometimes I even had to help her. She’s getting older and stiffer, especially in the morning.

So now we have a new bed, both lower and higher. The room seems much bigger now, because there is more air above the bed. I also bought some lamps for in the bedroom, but haven’t installed them yet.

(And yes, I also bought many other things at Ikea, because I like to have things that can be found in hundreds of thousands of homes. Some of them I have to return, because Alison doesn’t like them. Ikea likes that, because returning customers usually buy more stuff they don’t absolutely need.)

Today I went to Gatineau, a town in Québec just across the river from Ottawa. I went there to pick up our car at the garage. The car broke down just when we arrived at Alison’s parents in Ottawa the day before we were going to celebrate Thanksgiving in the US. It started to make a lot of noise, huge clouds of white smoke came out of the exhaust pipe and finally it stalled. After consultation with the firm that provided the extended warranty it was towed to this garage and then the big waiting game started. Would the insurance company pay for the repairs or should we? I went away to Europe, and didn’t put much pressure on them from there, and after I came back everybody was having Xmas breaks and so it took ages before the engine got fixed. We still had to pay a lot of money, but the insurance company did pay more than two-thirds of it.

Coincidentally, yesterday we had our first big snowstorm of the year so I had to dig out the car before I could take it with me.

The engine makes a lot more noise now than it did before, but the car seems to work fine so far. I’m not 100% confident yet.

Before I went to the Netherlands I started working on a fence that divides our garden and prevents Poupoune from giving the alley cats too much exercise.
In the winter the back gate is open because it otherwise gets stuck in the snow, and I have to dig out the fence before I can use the car. It’s all a bit moot, because there was neither snow nor car. The snow stayed away because we fucked up the climate and the car is in a garage in Gatineau (near Ottawa), where they’re trying to fix the engine again. But miraculously today, just after I had finished installing the fence, it started to snow.
The panels to the left and right of the gate are not fixed but can move up and down in a track. So when we will, some day, get a lot of snow (one can dream, can’t one?) I can move the fence up vertically so Poupoune still can’t jump over it from the snow bank. Patent pending.

Poupoune and Pepe are getting older so I bought Alison some new pets.
No seriously, these are the red wrigglers that sit in a bin and together form our worm composter. Some of our organic kitchen waste will go into this plastic bin and the worms will eat it and turn it into vermicompost, an expensive term for worm poop. Apparently that’s the best compost in the world and we’ll have it soon. I bought the kit this afternoon and the worms are definitely still upset from the jumpy ride through the city, in the metro and the bus. I tried no to shake them too much, but the bin was heavy…
Sorry worms, we’ll try to take good care of you. Give you enough food, a nice bedding and regularly play with you.

If you also want to have new pets, you can learn more about them and place an order here.

[…]