Hoera, het gedoe rond de lekkage bij de lichtkoepel in de keuken is sinds vandaag ook rigoureus verholpen met plaatsing van een nieuwe daklaag. (Daar is vast een officiële term voor, ik ken em echter niet.) Kom nu maar op met de voor dit weekend voorspelde regen!
I finally had my furnace replaced for a newer, smaller model. It's also a lot less noisy. The other one sometimes sounded like a WWI bomber about to take off. So I'm ready for winter to start! Unfortunately the plumber accidentally hit my lamp, which then needed to be replaced. I went to IKEA earlier today to do just that. Strange though, how even with a strict mission like the one at hand, you always end up buying more stuff. I do tell myself they're all things I actually really needed, but still.
Though I've wanted one for ages, I'd alway postponed (read: chickened out of) getting one. But recently I suddenly just had enough of vaccuming, that I finally ordered myself a Roomba (the 2.2 Green de Luxe to be exact) on Friday, which was delivered in record speed yesterday morning. It's making it's first round this very moment, and even though it means clearing everything from the floor (which is probably a good habbit to get into anyway) before you can finally tell it to get started, I'm very pleased with the results already.
After a long period of summer, it appears autumn has now arrived. With massive downpours. I was watching some television earlier tonight when I noticed my oak floor was shinier than usual. On closer inspection it turned out the alley in front of the house was flooded with about 30cms of water, with nowhere to go it was now making it's way into my kitchen. :-(
I formed a dam with towels and once the rain stopped it retreated from my home. I've got a fan aimed at the floor, hoping the damp won't do any damage. Guess I'll just have to wait and see.
Update: looks like I wasn't alone, a different part of town was worse of. There's now a discussion about opening up some of the canals to better handle extra water in the inner city in the future.
Had a rather busy weekend. Finally got round to painting a part of my wall I'd been planning to paint for ages. It turned out a lot darker than I intended, went for dark chocolate, but it's actually more very very deep purple than chocolate. But I think I actually like it. Strange. Oh well, and if I do end up hating it, I can always try a layer with a different colour on top of it.
I also deceided to re-install Windows since my current install was acting funny. Had a bit of a scare as my second disc wasn't recognized at first. I was told it was RAW instead of NTFS and I was asked if I wanted to format. Which I didn't as it contained all my valuable data. I really should back-up more. But after a few reboots it suddenly recognized it. Very strange.
So that kept me quite busy. Not to mention the laundry and dishes I worked my way through. Now if only I could find someone to do the vacuuming. ;-)
Not much going on at the moment. I finally got the screens installed on my new rooflight, which should make sleeping in a lot easier. What else? Firefox 2.0 Beta Candidate 1 has been released. Haven't tried it yet, but I might this weekend. We're preparing to move offices here next week, so it's a bit chaotic at the moment. Timing couldn't have been better though, since the second heatwave of the year should be a highpoint around that time. Sigh.
Due to problems with the Internet connection at work, I've been working from home these past days. Which suited me fine, since I was having a skylight installed yesterday. Unfortunatly the screen that will keep out the sun will take about two weeks to arrive. So the morning sun caused me the awaken a 5:15 this morning. Might try sticking some cardboard in front of it tonight. Ah well, I'm sure the extra fresh air will more than make up for this temporary discomfort.
Let's see, what else. Oh, my brother ran the 21 km distance at the Marathon in Leiden on sunday. Very impressive, especially with these high temperatures. Which my parents have escaped from, since they fled the country this morning, to go on holiday to Norway. They're going to take the Hurtigruten, a Norwegian coastal transport service which is over a hundred years old, now an 11-day round trip between Bergen and Kirkenes, which includes 32 other ports. Recognised today as one of Europe's biggest attractions and is internationally acknowledged as the 'world's most beautiful sea voyage'
. After that they're planning to drive home, through a part of Finland. I'm jealous.
Another late night yesterday, as I had a wonderful dinner in far away Medemblik with the people from work. Glad to be able to sleep in this morning though, as I was still quite tired from last weekend. After a relaxed lunch with the newspaper I felt brave enough to go to the store to pick up some things. I'm quite sure one of my circles of hell will have something to do with shopping on a saturday afternoon. I did manage not to strangle anyone though, and arrived home with some nice pieces of music:
I originally entered the store to get my hands on the new Porcupine Tree, but that was unavailable. Ah well, you know how these sort of things go. You set out for something and return home with something completly different. Might give it another try after work on monday ;-). Oh, and I also bought a new electric kettle as the other one looked horrid in my pretty new kitchen.
We went for another round of Ikea today, to return the last of the leftovers from my kitchen and to check out the available matrasses. In the end I didn't get on there, but ordered one from a different shop, namely CASBA. It should be delivered in 2-3 weeks. Can't wait!
Afterwards I had dinner at my parents house, at which time my mother thought I might aswell explain the interface of her new video recorder. Apparently that was more convenient than reading the manual herself. Not sure where the fear for those comes from, or if she'll ever realise that most interfaces are -in their core- pretty much the same. :-)
My mattrass has seen better days, so it's time for an upgrade. Thought I'd go and see what's on offer online first, before I venture into all kinds of overwhelming stores. There's so much to choose from with regards to layering and content. Already I'm horribly confused by the sheer amount of possibilities. I'm quite impressed with misterbed.nl, though the site is horrible, they offer a nice service. But I'm still doubting whether this is the kind of item best purchased online. Hm. To be continued.
Let there be light. And there was light. And then there were photos. ;-)
The dome was installed today. Looks great. The kitchen looks much bigger now.
