english

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.

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.

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.

Alison dug up the christmas crèche and put it on the dining room table. She even added some extra animals. The dog head to the right is made by my mother during her sculpture course.

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.

We’re having the first snow of the year today, and of course I have to use the car. So I can put the Subaru to the test and it works pretty well.
Yes, it skids a bit, like all cars but it’s much easier to control than the Hyundai. Ah well, I’m going to finish the closet today, and after that I’ll bring all my tools home.

I’m finally putting the last doors into the closet. Tomorrow I only have to fit the drawers and then it’s finished. Well, the client still has to paint it, so I have to remove all the doors and drawers again, but at least it’s almost finished.

This looks like an ordinairy bank machine. But it isn’t. It’s a drive in bank machine. I went there for this picture, but won’t go there again. What’s the point? You have to reach for your wallet, your car ‘s interior gets cold because the window has to be open for a while, and there is a huge parking lot 5 meters away from the bank, so you could as well park and walk inside.

Oh, and the keypad had inscriptions in braille. For all the blind drivers out there.

Alison bakes bread, but the dough rises a bit too fast. But the resulting bread is very nice, even though we had a dispute over adding sugar to the dough.

On my first day outside (I’m feeling much better) I start making the garden ready for the winter. Gather the leaves (the trees are all barren now) and putting the barbecue and the garden furniture inside. And draining the taps so they don’t freeze over.

Let the snow arrive!