Sunday, February 23, 2020

Stormy weather.

Goodafternoon everybody!

Oh, I took my time this morning! First slept longer than normal and then hanged out on the couch, watching some reruns from Dharma and Greg comedy serie, bits of news etc. And it just felt easy, cool and just fine LOL.
But finally it was time to do something and I thought I best could do first my blogpost and then carry on with some other things.The title of his blogpost says it about all. Today specially it is very windy, along the coast surely at times stormy and hard winds all over the country. That together with rainshowers it isn;t nice weather at all. The temperatures are still not too bad, but I get enough of all that strong wind. It seems that it could calm down a little net week, I do hope so.

I felt really good last Tuesday, because i sent away all taxpapers to my accountant, so that is taken care off. Great. I was able to do so, because Heidi was so nice to print me out some papers and brought those copies along. That was Monday, she even had a bit of time to have a cup of tea.

Rest of the week it was quiet here, I did do some little jobs I had planned, so that always is a good thing.
Friday I thought it was nice to go to city center for a little while, to look around what was new in some shops and of course I came back with a few things. But they were all for Jan, hahaha. I brought him a new pair of jeans in a lovely beige color, and in sale I bought him two sweaters, and it was a good price, about half of the original.
And coming home again Jan had a nice surprise for me. He had washed the long curtains hanging at the back of the living room and also cleaned the windows of there. It is nnice of him, isn;t it? It takes some energy you know, carrying around the big ladder, climbing up and down several times. You don;t have any trouble when you are young, but now it is more difficult, 

This weather isn;t really inviting to go out more than becessary, so I think we'll just wait a little bit longer to go shopping for a new couch. I really do want one, but it will be nicer if there is a little bit better weather. I don;t mind so much if it is a few degress colder, if there is almost no wind and if possible a bit of sunshine. We have a kind of Mall with several shops that sell furniture, but to get there is taking some time with the tram and you will have to walk a bit before arriving there. And then it is nicer if the weather is somewhat better. Once you are in that centre it is okay, of course, but still, I like to have some better weather, it almost seems that it makes the shopping experince more agreable. Do I make any sense here?

Well, time to finish and get dressed! Yes, I am still in my warm, fleece morning gown, oh, so good LOL! But I will change into........some warm and cosy "lounge-wear", the weather is inviting to it and why not? It is a good day for it.
Hopefully I will have some more to tell you next week.
Have a lovely week and stay safe!


Sunday, February 16, 2020

Too much wind around here!

Goodafternoon everybody!

Yes, we have too much wind around here at the moment. We had last week quite a heavy storm(we were lucky, we didn;t catch the full strength of it) and at the moment there is real strong wind again(started yesterday afternoon). It will stay on tomorrow too, then it might slow down again to 4-5 Beaufort. Hmmm, still a bit too much but already better. Temps are amazing today, around 11C in our area. Later this week it will drop a bit, but we cannot speak of wintertime, which I don;t mind very much!

I just was in the kitchen to prepare our dinner. We will have stuffed peppers, with bigger chunks of fried potatoes and stewed pers for dessert. That should fill us enough to last the whole evening LOL.

Jan was at his doctor last Wednesday, and all seemd to be fine. He just has to be a bit nicer to his kidneys, meaning I will have to be more careful with using of salt. But all together all is going well with him.
Hopefully it will stay this way for a long time.

I am happy that I have now all the forms I need for the taxes, Heidi will print me out two forms and then I can copy hopefully all forms this week and send them to my accountant. It will be a good feeling to do that. Then we will have to wait if there will be some additional tax payes to do. I really have no idea, I just count with it that it might happen, and if not, that would be a fantastic surprise LOL.
Our income changed already last year, because we are receiving now retirement pays from the government and some we saved for ourselves during our working life.
We'll wait and see, all we can do.

Yesterday Jan and I went to the celebration of Séverine's birthday.
It was nice to be out for a while and to be in company, but after some time I was happy to return home again. It's a funny thing with me. I do like to go out to visit someone, but after a while I have the urge somehow to get back home again. And then it feels so good to slip into my comfy loungepants and slobby sweater and slippers, and being able to hang or sit on the couch as you like, and to watch a program on tv you really like etc. Is that really a funny thing or do you have the same feeling??

Of course Heidi and I didn;t have much opportunity to speak with eachother, not the way we normally do, but we already made an appointment to meet eachother and go out for  coffee together and may be even have a small lunch and then we will have time enough to talk about all we want! I am sure it will be nice.

Not much more worth telling at the moment as far as I can remember, so I better end this post and really hope next week the weather will be better, with some more sunshine at least.
Have a lovely week.

Sunday, February 09, 2020

Weather to stay inside!!

Goodafternoon everybody!

Oh yes, I definately will stay inside today, probably tomorrow too, because we have very stormy weather with rains at the moment here. Not just a bit of wind, but on the scale of Beaufort between 8-may be even 10, so that isn;t nice at all
Much too dangerous for me to get out, I only could do that with two bricksin the pockets of my jacket, but I don;t think it will feel comfortable LOL!

It was a good week, with not much happening, I did just some clearing out of a cupboard and a part of a bookcase and looked through some cooking magazines if I needed them still or not. I only took out a few recipees of things I might make one day and got rid of the rest. Takes so much place and most of the things in it I will never make. So I made a pile of that, plus some books we could do without.
Then Jan took them a bit further into the street, where there is a little bookcase standing outside, with a little glasdoor, where people can take out and put in books or magazines they don;t need anymore.And someone else can have a book and when read put it back again for somebody else. It is all done without any charge. I think it is a neat idea, and it seems to work rather well. So I am glad I could participate in it.

I didn;t forget to post a birthday card for Séverine, who turned 18 yesterday!!!
I almost cannot imagine, it all is going so fast! Next Saturday will be a gathering to celebrate her birthday. And then she will get her present.

Probably next week, or at the least the week after I will be able to send all papers for taxes to my accountant. I almost have all of them already lying in a folder. Just one I am still waiting for to download, the statement of that bank isn;t ready yet. Tehn it is printing out(think this time again I will ask Heidi if I can use her computer and printer) and then copy it all and away. It always is a great feeling when I can send it to the accountant. I am curious to know, if this year we will have to pay an ammount to the taxoffice, because our income has changed and such. I am counting with a certain amount, better prepare myself for it and if it will be lower than I thought, that will be a pleasant surprise. who knows??? LOL

Just was watching a interview programme on tv for a moment and there was a discussion about a certain painting hanging in a museaum. There seemed to be a few people, who were kind of offended by a painting purchases by the museum.
This was the issue(I tranlated part of the article in the newspaper via Google)
And listening to the discussion and reading this article I wonder if all the world is getting mad? Should we ban about all paintings, photos, sculptures etc. etc. from our musea? How far will this madness go???
Perhaps I am just thinking too simple. but you will have to decide for yourself what you think about it. I am sure there is something to be found about it in the net if you want to know more about it. Here just a snippet of the article by a columnist:

January 30, 2020

At the Van Gogh Museum, I read in the paper yesterday, 
they had quite a discussion about the purchase of 
Badende vrouw, pastel from the French impressionist Edgar Degas.
 Not because of the amount (6 million euros) or because of 
the artistic quality, but because of the issue 
of whether a museum can still hang "a naked woman" on the wall 
in 2020.

In all seriousness? Yes, in all seriousness.

The issue, curator Fleur Roos told Rosa de Carvalho, had 
been extensively discussed.
 
So, this is all for this week. Time for a cup of tea(or perhaps coffee) and then probably prepare a bit our dinner and then I will do a little Mahjong game and then .... well, we will see. We take it real easy today. Tomorrow will be laundry day and perhaps some more clearing out.
Have a wonderful week and stay safe please.


 
 
 



Sunday, February 02, 2020

February already and what a nice date today, 02-02-2020!

Goodaftoon everybody!

Our weather is wet today! Last week we had rather high temperatures of around10C or even at places some higher. Sadly there was also a lot of wind, so it wasn't really nice to be outside. Next week it will get a little bit cooler, with more rain, but..less wind.

A lot of our bulbs already come above the soil and we even have some daffodils blloming, which is rather early. Soon the tulips will have grown higher and will have their buds too.
All in nature in our pat of the world is quite early, roughtly about a month or 1 1/2 even too early. I do hope we will not get suddenly in end of February a real winter with frost and all that, because that would effect all that already is in bloom.

It was a more or less quiet week, with little tasks done, but I didn;t have all the energy like the week before! For now it is okay, there is a next week and who knows what I will do then?????

Of course there was Jan's birthday in the middle of this week(thanks for the wishes i received for him) and the meal I had in mind succeeded well. It is always a bit tricky to prepare shrimps, if you fry them too long they get chewy and don;t taste as good anymore. I made a potatoe salad to that and I think Jan was happy with his birthday meal.(He did gave me a compliment later in the evening for it, WOW!).

You know, with our retirement pays and pension, we now are a little bit easier on the financial front, so to speak. It feels quite good you know, after some years of being careful with spending the money you had in a month.
Just to have a bit more "stretch" is making already a big difference. I used to be in city center and looking around and seeing lots of things we could use or needed replacement for, but I couldn't buy some of them because we needed our money for other, more urgent things. Now I can buy every now and then a little thing that could do with replacement, or just because it is nice. And I am not talking about big amounts, may be just a thing for 10 euro, that now I can spend without feeling guilty. Don;t get me wrong, I still like a good bargain, and if I can find a thing in a sale I will take that, of course!
It's just the idea that I can, not necessarily that i will buy it. Perhaps a bit strange, my explanation, but perhaps you understand what I mean.

So today it is 02-02-2020! Our King and Willem Alexander and his Queen Maxima married on that day, in the year 2002, so they are married now 18 years.
And I have here an article out of the New York Post about this date, which I did find interesting.

The date — February 2, 2020, or 02/02/2020 — is a palindrome, meaning it reads the same forwards as it does backward.
This is the only time the special sequence will occur this century, reports the Washington Post.
The eight-digit date is especially rare because it works in both America, where dates are written as day-month-year, and in other countries where dates are written as month-day-year.
The last time such a palindrome occurred was 909 years ago on 11/11/1111. It won’t happen again for another 101 years, when the calendar turns to 12/12/2121.

With this little nice to know fact, I will leave you again and wish you all a very good week to come.
So till next week!