Cheryl on the Web

Dear serious blog followers,

I must sincerely apologize to you for the lack of any updates for what is now a very long time. Please blame this negligence on my dedication to my employer combined with my love of hobbies that do not involve a computer and my true desire to lead a life of romance and intrigue.

I have many lovely little stories to tell and I promise to post them here soon. In the meantime, please read Tim’s latest post which is a great story, don’t scroll down too quickly: http://timsymons.com/?p=345

Tonight Tim and I tried to make an Italian omelet. I’m not sure how that’s different from a Spanish omelet, but I’m pretty sure the key thing is that ours had pasta in it. Or was supposed to. We sort of neglected to read the directions after we got to the part where half the ingredients were in the pan (I mean, it’s an omelet, how hard can it be?) and after that it went downhill quickly. It didn’t help that we forgot to put in the pasta into the omelet with the rest of the veggies (potato, leek, onion, olives), and putting the pasta in too late created a nearly irreconcilable disaster. If it wasn’t for Tim’s persistence and dedication to the task, that mess would have all landed in the trash can tonight and it would have been bread and water for dinner; I abandoned ship pretty quickly once it stopped looking edible. But thanks to Tim, we did eat our Italian omelet eventually and at least we got a good memory out of it .. I’m sure it’s one of those that ages well with time!

Today Tim and I traded a table we no longer use for a lamp a friend of ours no longer uses. A neighbor of ours spotted us loading the long table into the car (with some difficulty, we drive a small Opel Corsa) and said, “Still cleaning things out?” I answered, “Yes, exactly.” “No fun”, she answered understandingly.

The table is the last of it. The last of everything we needed to clean out after the move in January. Except for the two remaining moving boxes behind the door of my office, containing our old VCR and some related junk (pardon the expression, Tim!). And the lamp is one of the last pieces we needed for the livingroom; we never bought one because we planned to trade the table for the lamp .. but just never got around to it until today!

Pretty good feeling, really, swapping something useless for something useful - and knowing the person at the other end of the trade feels the same! Guess I have a small window into what it was like before currency existed and everything was still a barter-economy.

Tonight Tim went with some friends to see Spiderman 3 OV (Original Version = no German voiceovers) in the cinema. I refused to go, trusting my female instinct that the film would not be worth seeing. Not to mention that I don’t much like the actor that plays Spiderman and I don’t consider the films to fall into the stereotypical action-movie class that generally does appeal to me.

If Tim and friends are to be believed, it seems my intuition was right and I can happily go and spend my nine Euro fifty better elsewhere. It seems that the main actor cried (I mean, really cried) multiple times in the movie; the plot when it came to the Sandman was not remotely credible (but then again, it’s Spiderman we’re talking about here, so is that a valid criticism?); most of the budget went into effects for the not-so-credible Sandman; and the movie in general was pretty random.

Any other suckers - I mean, folks - out there who saw this movie?

You may have heard that Technorati is a blog search engine that has risen to fame in modern Internet use. I’m curious what it can mean to a blog to be linked up to this mammoth, so today I registered my blog to see what happens.

Technorati Profile

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The Dutch have a custom they call “borrelen”, which to me means socializing on appetizers and drinks, often in the late afternoon (there’s probably a Dutchman out there somewhere who’s ready to provide a more official definition!). I really got attached to this concept when we lived in Holland because it was always one of the most relaxing ways to socialize and was how we spent lots of good times with friends and family.

This weekend Tim and I “borrelled” (forgive my corruption of this Dutch word for my English purposes) on the patio both Saturday and Sunday and it was great, though no one was able to join us. We had some tzatziki sauce and some creamy cheese with fruit bits in it, with some French bread and crackers and also some olives. Yesterday we even broke out some rose champagne, the weather was so good. Talk about feeling decadent, drinking champagne and eating appetizers on a lovely balcony in hot sunny weather!

It has been one long week for me as I was feeling a bit under the weather, but the last working day is over and I am ready to kick back and relax. Most Europeans would have called in sick given the way I felt this week, but not me, I just keep on plowing through. I feel like I’ve run a marathon, and my reward is that I now get to lay on the couch and do absolutely nothing for the next 5 hours, after which I will lay in bed and sleep like a baby (hopefully!). It is supposed to be nice weather here this weekend, so I will have to do some sleeping outside in the sun as well.

Talk to everyone later this weekend! Relaxation has begun.