It's the last short week for weeks ! Had a good relaxing long weekend. Bastiaan and Maarten Staal (our old neighbours on nr 9) visited us. During the lunch we had time to catch up. Admiring the photo of his wife to be: Rosa. And they had a chance to see what has become of their old house. It changed a bit during the last 18 months ...

Sunday Annie and her children: Savannah and Alex came by. It was their first visit to our house. The children enjoyed themselves enormously. Franny made somosa's (not sure about the spelling ...) she used filo pastry because we can't buy the loempia pastry in the supermarket. Because of that we had to use the oven to cook them, but they didn't come out so well as we had hoped. By the way: always check the bus schedule on Sundays ... not much busses in the mornings. So I had to take a taxi from the station. It was not too bad actually, the fare was a bit more than 10 euros. About double the bus fare for the 5 of us (I took Hannah with me on the bike to pick them up).

a long weekend ! Pentacost (Pinksteren in Dutch) I think it's called. It's the last one till Xmas. Last week was Ascension (Hemelvaart). I spent last night in Hotel Kok in Delft after Debby brought me with Henk's car. We lost our way in Delft, but luckily Henk's car has a routeplanner.... ;-)

We had some time to catch up. It was the first time since we came back from Pittsburgh in 2005 that we met again. Glad to be back in contact. Henk showed me some nice stuff he and his company are working on. Looking forward to learn more and start to use some of the mapping features/modules with Drupal and of course also on this site.

I'll be sleeping over in Delft again tonight and I'll visit Henk this evening. All things that break the daily routine a bit. Had to bike hard just now to reach in time. I had to put the bin outside and I forgot to bring the city map of Rotterdam. I was on time, sweating like a pig ...

I was planning to upgrade this site yesterday evening, Fran was out playing badminton and Hannah in bed. But unfortunately Drupal had a scheduled downtime for a database upgrade. Hmmm, too bad. I watched some MythBusters. A nice episode with a lifter as a trembucet ... uuhh, shit forgot the name of that medieval sling kind of thing. And testing if driving with windows closed + AC is better than driving with no AC and windows down. Conclusion: better lower the windows ... even though the drag is increased the AC consumes more power.

This morning I had my first real conversation with a lady in the train who boards the train in Breda and often ends up in 'my' compartment. Talked about hay fever, cold, air pollution, pollen, soft winters etc. I think she works in the VROM ministry in The Hague. A very sympathetic woman.

Spoke with Henk (http://www.koorneef.net/node/31 ) for the first time since years on the phone. Felt good to hear his voice. He is doing ok, his company http://www.imagem.nl is even doing better. Heard a lot about new projects etc. WMS, OpenGis etc. Very interesting. The http://drupal.org/project/gmap module has WMS support too. WMS really looks a lot like XML-RPC. Maybe something nice can come out of this. Coming Thursday I'll visit Henk in Rotterdam. I already made reservations for a hotel in Delft, so that's quite convenient.

I've finally took the time to post the photo below (it's not a seperate node yet, later it will be). Anyway, enjoy !

It's the bike path from downtown Eindhoven to the High Tech Campus (the old Philips NatLab, or research). I had a good laugh the first time I saw it. No idea if this is something original or who made it.

I've another funny photo of a constipated horse statue ... But I'm in the tunnel at Rotterdam already, so that will have to wait.

Ok, update: here it is:

Ah well ... We had a good holiday, short (a midweek) but still good to be in different surroundings and take your mind of things. Hannah really enjoyed it. Nice playgrounds, swimmingpool etc.

We only went to one outing: the Julianatoren. It was only a 15 minute drive away. The amusement park is compact (nice word for small) but neatly organised. Even the rain could not spoil it. I'll upload some photo's soon.

Yesterday we did some gardening in the back garden. Just some maintenance, the garden needs a bit more than that. But we have no resources available now. At least the hedges are cut to a reasonable shape (I tried to cut straight, but the result is a bit wobbly).

We arrived yesterday at the bungalow park "Rabbit Hill". And indeed, lot's of furry animals here. The bungalow is perfect. All the creature's comforts you can wish for. The weather is a bit unpredictable, but this morning the sun is out in full force.

The area is nice and wooded. Very quiet and peacefull.

We'll go to the swimmingpool as soon as Hannah Kapanski has finished her raisin bread (which can take forever). She is watching Nick Jr. : Blues Clues (last saw it in the US, the lip synced it in Dutch ... hmm, I even prefer the American accent above the mismatched and crooked Dutch expressions.

Hmm, slept quite well, and longer than the last few nights ! But my cold (coughing, nose ... the works) is not over yet. My nose is not so blocked anymore but my cough is still there, a bit less than on Monday. I'm feeling a bit hot, sweaty right now in the train. Nearly in Breda. I'm not sure if it is the warm train compartment or

I almost forgot to mention it, but Angelo called last Wednesday. Was nice to hear his voice. He's doing ok, Kim is on bursting point with her pregnancy. I hope everything goes well.

I've put my goals (see blog post from yesterday) in a separate node: http://www.koorneef.net/node/552