Today I had the best day I’ve had in a while. Enjoying yourself in the company of others sort of takes a back seat when you’re busy with exams and catching up with work you should have done earlier .

Friday my day was not so good, starting with an exam that didn’t really go according to plan, and ending with what shall henceforth be known as the Friday Fiasco. The Friday Fiasco has been on my mind since it happened, and it was nice to get away from it today .

I spent the day with my aunt, uncle, insanely cute cousin, and their cat, who doesn’t really seem to like me all that much. When I arrived we had some lunch and I helped my cousin with the gift I bought her (a wooden elephant she could paint and put together) and after lunch we went to a playground where I watched my aunt and uncle throw snowballs at each other, as well as my aunt being chased by my cousin, who would try to throw snowballs at her.

Before dinner the three grown ups sat on the couch, and my cousin sat/hung on my lap, which was really cute and really nice. We watched Mr. Bean’s holiday, which I hadn’t seen before, but now really like. My cousin and I also managed to persuade my uncle to let us watch a Winnie The Pooh movie. I found out later why he wasn’t enthusiastic at first; my cousin had seen the movie so often she could say all the lines and sing all the songs almost word perfect.

After dinner when I was on the way home I had the only down point of the day, although it was a very large down point. You see, I spent the 2 hour long train ride back to my city in a train which couldn’t have been warmer than 10 degrees Celsius! It seriously made my feet hurt and I had to buy a hot chocolate to get warm again.

That was the only damper on my day though, because other than that it was pretty awesome! Everybody needs a cute 4-year-old cousin

Over the past few weeks our cat has been sleeping in my room. Mostly she’s been sleeping on my top bunk, or on my mouse arm, or on the end of my bed. Recently she’s taking to sleeping on top of me. Like so:

That there in the back of those incredibly grainy pictures (used my laptop webcam) is me. I’m trying to look at my computer screen, and breathe at the same time, which is sort of impossible, since the cat was right in my face.
She’s done it again, by the way. She came to sit next to me on my bed, and then stared at my breasts until I made room for her to lie on them.

Believe it or not, but when I was younger I could be a real brat. (These days I’m more of a goodie goodie two shoes. ) I would steal sweets from the sweets jar, and eat them in my room. Read in bed, even though my mother had already said that I should turn of the light and go to sleep, and in general (occasionally) not do as I was told.

I remember this one time very vividly, it was at my grandparents house, where I was staying for a few days. My grandparents didn’t have an impressive amount of toys so I usually brought my own, or stuff to read, but they did have a few barbie dolls in one of the bedrooms, which I would play with.

One day I decided to ask my grandmother if I could wash their hair, and of course my grandmother said no. So, like any good girl, I did it anyway. I washed and dried their hair, shaking the excess water off by holding them in my hand and shaking them about, and I didn’t think my grandmother would be any the wiser.
Until she entered the room and saw the tiny wet spots on the wall where the excess water had landed. She asked me about it, but I ofcourse said I didn’t know anything about it, and that was the end of that.
From then on, whenever you entered the room and looked hard enough, you could still see the spots on the wall where the water had dried.

My grandparents house was put on the market last year, because they wanted to downsize, and they handed it to its new owners at the beginning of September. I’m happy for them, because they now have a lovely new apartment, and because it’s what they wanted, but I’m also said that it’s no longer theirs. It held a lot of great memories, like this one.

I’m so happy right now! I haven’t been this happy in a long time. This happiness was caused by three things:

1. Graduating! I’ve now officially graduated and it was so much fun! People were called forward in groups, and the group I was in was talked to by my amazing physics teacher. She said a LOT of nice things about me, and it just goes to show how well all the teachers know me, and I really appreciate that.
   I’m also officially done with the stupid yearbook as it was handed out today, and I got a lot of compliments about it!
2. Driving! My grandparents gave me an awesome graduation gift, I get to take driving lesson, and they are going to pay for them! I’ll probably be starting in September, since I believe you have to be 18 to start, though I’m going to find out if it’s possible for me to start sooner.
3. This is probably the biggest reason I’m happy right now: Medical school. Remember I went to a selection day, which was the second round of the selection process? Well, based on the scores of the different things you did you were put on a list. On that list the person with the highest score is ranked number 1, and the person with the score after that number 2 etc. The higher up on the list you are the bigger the chances of getting in.
   I’m number 8!!!!! Edit: 28-06-2009 (Oops.. I posted the wrong number before.. A friend of mine is actually number 7) There are 300 people on the list btw.

So yeah, today was a really, really, really good day!

I love the house I live in. My parents have lived here for around 20 years if I remember correctly, and I have lived here all my life. It shows in the house, for it has gotten a rather lived in feel, with all our books and non-matched furniture about the place.

It also shows in the way my parents interact with the people on our block. Most of them have been here for as long as I can remember, and only recently did some houses come on the market, and were sold to new owners.

Whilst new blood may very well be interesting, I have come to find these new families to be slightly irritating. They are easy to get along with for the most part, but they have some annoying habits.

One of the habits they all seem to share, is DIY. Which is great, I’m all for home improvement, adding value and all that jazz… It’s just that after having to listen to constant hammering and drilling and sawing (some of which can go on till 10.00 in the evening) you become rather infuriated with it. Since I live in a terraced house that is rather susceptible to noise coming from the other houses (it’s the way the houses were built), it’s almost as if all the hammering and drilling and sawing is taking place in your own house.

Another habit that gets on my nerves is the fires they start. Apparently it is a lot more fun the bun garden waste instead of driving it to a composting facility. The problem is that this burning can only occur in dry weather, and dry weather is usually only available when the wind comes from the east, and is therefore aimed directly at my window, causing the smell of burning wood to linger in my room. >.<

I’m not entirely sure I can chalk the next annoyance up to the new  neighbours, but since it has only started recently I will mention it anyway: one of the families living in one of the houses closest to me has purchased what I believe to be a bread maker. It’s great that people are making their own bread, but it seems that they turn it on in the middle of the night, and since for some strange reason my hearing has become much more sensitive lately, I can actually hear it kneading the dough. This is an annoyance mainly because I’m not sure it’s a bread maker, and I don’t like unidentified noises. Especially not ones that keep me awake.

For the time being I’ll learn to deal with all of these things though. I take comfort in the knowledge that there’s only so much that can be improved with these houses, and that the DIY will soon stop hopefully, in the knowledge that there is only so much garden waste to burn before there’s nothing left of your garden, and in the knowledge that in a few weeks I’ll be on holiday in Germany, and I won’t have to deal with that particular unidentified sound any more!

Yesterday I had the worst luck I have ever had in all my time of travelling with public transport. It was even worse than the time I missed the first bus I wanted to take and the one I wanted to take instead of the one I missed didn’t show up, as did the one I wanted to take to replace the second one.

So what happened? Well, I haven’t been to the city centre in quite a while, since I was on study break for my exams. Turns out they have been doing some work at several bus stops. After my bio exam I walk to the bus stop, very confident that I’ll be able to catch the bus on time, and when I get there the bus stop has been moved, and I don’t know where, because I can’t read the sign.
So I walk to my second choice bus stop. I always never take the bus from there because it’s on the other end of the city centre, and I’m not a fan of walking. Nearby is a book store and since I have some time to kill before the bus comes I wander in there. When I do eventually get to the bus stop there’s no one there. Very suspicious, so I look at the bus stop sign, and it turns out this one is also moved. This time I can read the sign, and it turns out I have to walk even further.

When I do eventually get on a bus and make it home, I’m home and hour later than I would have liked… >.<

And then there’s the icing on the cake: When I get home my sister is all: ,,Oh didn’t you know that the bus is rerouted to stop directly in front of the school?”

AAAARRGH.

I enjoy watching TV on a Saturday night. It’s always interesting to watch a showing of an English detective on the Belgian television. First and foremost because I love watching detectives, and secondly because the subtitles are very interesting, Belgian Dutch can be quite different from Dutch Dutch sometimes, and it always brings the lulz.

Tonight though I am very annoyed by my little brother. He’s constantly trying to be funny, commenting on everything that’s going on, and asking questions none of us know the answer to. He’s also so convinced that he’s right about stuff that he doesn’t believe a word we say, and instead sniggers.

How wonderful it would be if my little brother would just shut his rather large pie hole for more then ten consecutive seconds. Preferably for the duration of the episode.

Oh the early morning phone calls from a very worried grandparent. My grandfather has had a computer for as long as I can remember now, but sometimes he still doesn’t know what to do with it. To be fair he doesn’t use it the way my family does and so he does not posses the knowledge all of us do; because of this we have turned into his personal tech support, something none of us mind, really.

So when he called this morning at about ten I wasn’t in the least bit surprised when he, after asking for my father first, proceeded to bombard me with questions. When I could decipher what he was saying, it turned out that he had opened up internet explorer and had found google without the usual google logo. Instead he saw morse code. It took him a while to get through my still sleepy skull what Morse code was exactly (I’m not the brightest when I wake up).

After all of this we could finally start assessing the problem. He had ‘lost’ his address bar, and couldn’t navigate anywhere. My first thought was that he perhaps has pulled the window larger than the screen, and in the process had made the address bar disappear at the top of the screen, but that turned out not to be the case.

About thirty seconds later it occured to me that he may have pressed F11, which it turned out he did.
This entire problem could have been solved much better had he not worried about a virus and had just told me what he was seeing at the time. The lack of the bar thingy at the bottom would have given me a clue as to what was happening sooner. In any case the problem was resolved: my grandfather didn’t have a virus and was very relieved, and I now have the option to buy an ice-cream and have my grandfather pay for it.

I have concluded something important today: my brother can be a massive jerk. I already knew my sister could be completely insensitive, but for some reason I did not expect my brother to be so too.

You see, I fell off a horse again today. Which hurts, whatever other people say, falling off of horses whose back (the one you sit on when you ride) is almost as high up from the ground as the top of your head when standing up, does hurt like a bitch.

So, when I come home, obviously troubled with walking, because, you know, I did fall on my hip, which is the hinge of the whole walking construction, I really don’t appreciate to be met with a remark that basically says: oh, suck it up.

Because even though my brother thinks it may be the same, getting a field hockey ball to the back of your leg does not equate to falling of a 1.60 m horse in mid canter.

My dad is a frequent visitor of the Groningen Archives, because he likes to do genealogical research. He always knows people there, and today he posed a very thought provoking question to some of them:
What do you think is worse, 9/11 or 03/03?

9/11 obviously refers to the terrorist attacks, and 03/03 refers to the day the Köln Archives, that had some priceless historical documents, collapsed over a a new tunnel for the subway. This is a very interesting question. What do we measure, when we measure the amount of tragedy? Do we measure the loss of human life, or do we measure the historical artefacts, when passing on knowledge is something that makes us human?

I’m not saying that the loss of life that happened on 9/11 is insignificant, I’m certainly not saying that it’s no big deal, but how much of it will we remember in 100 years? Will people still mourn? Will the family of the people who died still see it as a huge tragedy that happened to them? After all, most of the people who lost loved ones now, will be dead in a hundred years.

On the other hand, the one things that separates us from the rest of the Animal kingdom is the ability to store knowledge and pass it on. Is it not a tragedy to western civilisation that several pieces that were from as early a 800 were lost? In a hundred years historians will still be interested in the  documents that  were lost, they may have been able to base whole new theories about some historical event on those documents. In other words, people will still care about them.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to belittle what happened on 9/11, it was a very, very sad day for all the parties involved. But looking at 03/03, don’t you think that’s sad too? Parts of our history were just lost, gone, swallowed by a subway tunnel.
History as we know it, is gone.