Day of the dog/ around town

Dog




"the flash is so bright!"


itchy


after getting into muck. she looks bummed that i wouldnt let her inside


pretty puppy


jumping over the bushes



jumping back over the bushes

Around town:





wagon thingie



barbed wire




berries

forgot

i forgot to post 2 other photos from saturday, mainly because they have nothing to do with pumpkin carving.

here you will see the first photo ever taken with this particular Nikon D40, and a picture from the end of the night:




roxy and gregory like to kiss




they start them early here in Belgium, how else do you think they get the reputation for having the best beer?
baby Daan on quality control in the kitchen

new camera/pumpkin night

i got a new camera Saturday! its the Nikon d40! we got it on sale at a local store. apparently it normally comes with 2 lenses but this one only came with 1, hence the sale. but i still find it a good deal because i went into a camera shop a couple of weeks ago and asked how much it was and for 1 lens with it it was still a hundred euros more than this one. yay!

so last night there was a pumpkin carving thing going on at a church in Kortrijk. (Halloween is really picking up here more and more each year) they brought in 4 tons of pumpkins and gourds and you were encouraged to use your creativity to carve a pumpkin and they even had wooden dowels so you could make creatures out of you pumpkins. it was a blast! i had to hand over my new camera to Gregory because i was covered in pumpkin goo. here are some photos he took from the evening:


Pumpkins


gourds


my nearly finished product



happy to be carving



giving people looks while carving



janne and me with our finished pumpkins



goblin kids!



more kids dressed up



pieter-jan and thomas NOT carving, but drinking beer

Halloween survey thingie

HALLOWEEN QUESTIONS:

What were you last year for Halloween?: dead bride because gregory wussed out and wouldnt be the beetlejuice to my lydia.
What are you going to be this year?: a fat drunk on the couch?
Favorite costume you have ever worn?: umm.. my pin-up costume that i made?
How do you spend your Halloween?: its different every year. i try to do something fun though
Are you or are you not going trick or treating this year?: HA! NO
Did or do you pull Halloween pranks?: nope
Do you believe in ghosts? I do
Are you superstitious? yes
Do you like caramel popcorn?: eww gross
Have you ever gone in the country to look for pumpkins? YES!!
Have you ever been on a hayride? yes!
Do you decorate your home for Halloween?: uh heck YES
Have you ever been to a haunted house?: plenty of made up haunted houses and the lizzie borden bed n breakfast which was def haunted. my old dorm building was also haunted as it was general shaw's estate (the duded that lead the 54th regiment in the civil war. theres your history lesson for today.)
Have you ever been to a graveyard on Halloween? yeah
Have you ever attended a Halloween party?: yepp
Do you watch scary movies on Halloween? I always watch scary movies
Have you ever had your candy stolen from you?: no
Did you ever steal any ones candy? probably my brothers
Has anyone ever gotten hurt due to your prank?: no pranks
Have you ever dressed as a witch/warlock?: I've NEVER been a witch
Are your parents into Halloween?: not really
Do you know someone who was born on Halloween? don't think so
HAVE YOU EVER:Passed out candy?: yep
Bobbed for apples?: yeah, its messy
Gone to a pumpkin patch?: yes!
Hosted a Halloween Party? yes!!
Attended a Halloween Party?: of course!!
Made pumpkin pie?: yes
Raked leaves?: yeah for fun and not for fun
Watched the Travel Channel with the Halloween specials?: wait..what? i didnt know they had that!
HAVE YOU SEEN:
Amityville Horror?: yes
Halloween?: no
Last House On The Left? no
House Of Wax?: yes
Tales From The Crypt? yes
The Exorcist?: yes
Texas Chainsaw Massacre?: yes
Pumpkinhead?: no
The Sixth Sense?: yes
All or any of the Nightmare On Elm Street?: all!
Practical Magic?: pffft yeah!
Any or all of The Simpsons Halloween episodes?: yep
The Munsters?: love em
The Adams Family?: love em
Elvira?: heck yes!
The Lost Boys?: no
Contact?: no
Hocus Pocus?: yes
Edward Scissorhands?: *swoon* yes
Friday the 13th?: actually- no
Childs Play?: yes
The Shining?: yes
Salems Lot?: yes
Fright Night?: no

double dose of crazy

one of the old ladies that lives at my work has been particularly crazy the past 2 days. she's normally one of the normal ones that make you question how she landed herself on the dementia floor in the first place.

Now i know why.

yesterday, as i was making bed rounds, she stopped me before moving past her room and asked for a small, dark, plastic bag. i was pretty confused because we don't use such bags anywhere in the building. I asked her why she needed a bag and she said, as a matter of factly, that she needs the bag for when she wets herself. she needs someplace to put the wet pad.
OK then....
Like i said before, we don't use dark bags in the building so i began looking on my linen cart for something that could be used. i found a small plastic sack that had been holding such pads that she was referring to. it wasn't exactly dark, but certainly an opaque white with blue in it. so i handed it to her and she shook her head.
"no no no." it has to be a brown or khaki color, the color of my shit.

i blinked.
did i seriously hear her correctly?
i had a college with me and by her cracking it i think i did. mmmhmmmm...."the color of shit"
i had to disappoint her by saying i don't have any shit colored bags.

fast forward to today. i thought she was having a momentary laps of craziness but apparently it overflowed into today. i got through my entire bed making rounds, even talked to her at her room and all was normal, until i was putting everything away and she flagged me down and asked if i had a girdle for her.
WHAT?!
she's never worn a girdle since I've been there. and she's skinny!

i think its just going to keep getting better.

cleaning class

today i had to stay longer at work because a representative from the company where we buy our cleaning products came in to teach us the proper method in which we should be cleaning. (tomorrow I'll e learning how to serve people and even though i don't serve people at my cleaning job, and the fact that I'm suppose to leave at 12 because I'm working the weekend, i still have to be there from 1-4. yay.)

turns out i already clean pretty much in the acceptable manner whereas other ladies admitted they didn't. i was so surprised because Belgian ladies are always cleaning<; turns out, their point of view is "if the floor is clean then the room is clean!" which i already gathered from observing_____.i noticed before she spends SO much time cleaning the floor yet her house still looks dingy. its because she doesn't have time to bother with anything else after washing floors for hours.

while in the class the rep asked our previous working backgrounds. she wanted to know if we cleaned for a living in the past. i gave my answer and the head cleaning lady told the rep that "i don't speak dutch that good" i was furious! i hate when people feel the need to excuse me or apologise for me. other people aren't stupid. they can obviously tell that I'm speaking text book dutch and not a regional dialect which, by process of elimination, would make me a person not from Belgium.
i should be the only one who apologises or gets to lean on the excuse that its not my first language. but i wasn't in trouble. i answered correctly. the woman understood me perfectly. there was no need to point fingers at me.
its at times like that when i just want to smack the person. or yell at them. or just get up and leave. if my dutch is so damn bad for her to have to let the other person know then why was i in the class?
then i had to be the "special" one through out the class and be asked if i was following OK. like I'm a retard.
yeah. i felt good.

spooooooooky

is it too early to start talking about Halloween?

i didn't think so.

i came across a book that i just HAVE to have!

by the creator of the infamous "puking pumpkin" and website extremepumpkins.com, Tom Nardone has a new book out also titled Extreme Pumpkins

only 5left in stock. anyone feeling generous should buy it for me now ;)

I don't plan on having a party this year either, and instead really want to go here:

http://www.magichalloween.com/index.html#UK

tickets are only 29 euros per person and if you ask me that's not toooooo expensive. i want to go for the big Halloween party on the 31st but i don't know if we can get the day off. I'll have to discuss it with Gregory but regardless i need to go! its not like anything else halloweeny is going on around here.

I ZOO do YOU?!

Monday Gregory and i went to the zoo, as we both had a day off. it was awesome! the weather turned out in our favor for the most part; can't ask too much more than that from Belgium.

we took lots of pictures, so here are some of us for your viewing pleasure.

enjoy!

Gregory on the train to Antwerp

Me on the train to Antwerp

Antwerp station. it was built before the Eiffel tower! its so beautiful and exactly how i would picture a train station in the 1800s--only in black and white.

with the warm penguins

with the cold penguins

telling Gregory the camera is crooked..or am i calling him a loser?? you decide.

Its Belgium! explanation enough.

Gregory with a warthog

me with an elephant.

This was actually a garden with all red flowers and red benches and i wanted a picture in it because i too was dressed in all red, but Gregory didn't get the flowers in the photo. instead he got a trash can.

I found Nemo:

DIRTY PICTURES AHEAD:

scarey/bad news

Gregory and i got burglarized last night!

someone came in through the backdoor, which i had locked (turned the key) but i never checked to be sure it was properly secured. which it prolly wasn't because there was no forced entry.

Roxy never barked. didn't even peep which i find so weird out of this whole thing. apparently the lights were on and everything. was she too scared to make a noise? i find that hard to believe. was she in her sleep cycle where you don't wake up? i don't know, she must have been sleeping pretty good for her not to go nuts as the reached over her cage to a shelf above it. did they give her something? i don't think they'd have fingers left. its a mystery and Roxy will never tell us what happened to her bark during a critical moment.

Gregory on the other hand did wake up from the creak the gate blocking the living room to the kitchen makes. he woke me up to tell me he heard something, but anyone who knows Gregory knows he's super paranoid about life. i cant count how many times he "heard" something downstairs and went with something heavy in his hands to look. he's been trying to curb his OCD/ paranoia so when i told him "yes, i locked the door" and that he was just hearing things he listened to me; he never checked. i on the other hand didn't hear anything at all so i was sure he was being crazy (the boy who cried wolf?!) Gregory never really got back to sleep he said and when my alarm rang at 5.50 he went downstairs to check on Roxy who was whining. i was still brushing Gregory off, saying that Roxy was playing him and he shouldn't check on her.

turns out Gregory was right. someone had been in our house. they didn't take much, just rummaged through my purse, took my ipod and 10 euros and rummaged a bit through the living room. we're not sure why they didn't try to take anything. was it because they heard my loud grumblings of being woken up? maybe. so 6am the police were here and checking everything out while Roxy barked her head off. thanks Roxy, but i think you're a bit confused as to which team you're suppose to be rooting for!

back from the crusades

yeah so i was missing for a while. I didnt have the energy/will/desire to post anything. here is a video slide of some dog clips. the videography is shoddy because i never video anything for one and for two, 2 out of the 3 clips were on the same day; the first time trying out my new video camera.

onward to the video:








ps--it appears that blogger's video hosting thingie really sucks, i'm not sure if you can even see anything with all the pixels in the way. i'll try and fix it later. going to bed for now.

pictures

life pictures:

gregory and i have been spending alot of time in our backyard making it look pretty. this is one of the flowers we bought to spruce things up a bit. the good thing about this plant is, is that it can be taken inside in the winter. that means it doesnt die! that is, if we can keep it alive in the winter.

flower boxes on our wall.

the flower box in our shed.

my monsterous pumpkin plant!

alternate angle of the pumpkin plant

could it be the beginning of a pumpkin?

the sweater i'm working on.

the strawberries i ate!

day off

i had to work this weekend. it was a Belgian holiday and everything. not only did i have to work on my American Independence day, but i had to work on the Belgian one too. at least i got over time for it.
so today i have the day off and so far i haven't spent it doing anything special. i had wanted to get my hair done today, but when i tried to make an appointment i learned that its the "Kortrijk holiday" simply put most everything closes down for a week in the city. because you know, PEOPLE NEED THEIR HOLIDAYS , HERE! pssssshhhhhht like they don't get enough throughout out the year. so anyway, my guy, or as Gregory likes to put it "the expensive hairdresser" isn't in until Thursday.
i woke at 8.45 this morning which was a welcomed change. cleaned the living room and kitchen because we let it sit and rot all weekend then walked/ran with Roxy in the rain. took a shower, made lunch and vegged on the couch for a bit. now I'm here. at least i did something a little productive this morning!
since i don't have anything better to do i found this little quiz thing. enjoy:


The game is SCATTERGORIES, and it’s harder than it looks!
Here are the rules:
Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following. They MUST be real places, names, things…NOTHING made up! If you can’t think of anything, skip it. Try to use different answers if the person before you had the same 1st initial. You CAN’T use your name for the boy/girl name question. Have fun!

Your Name: Amanda

1. Famous Singer/Band: Adam Ant
2. 4 letter word: ache
3. Street: Allen ave
4. Color: apricot (just look in your nearest box of crayolas, its there)
5. Gifts/Presents: angora
6. Vehicle: airplane
7. Things in a Souvenir Shop: ape post cards
8. Boy Name: Alexander
9. Girl Name: Alexia
10. Movie Title: absolute beginners (with David bowie!!)
11. Drink: almond milk
12. Occupation: anesthesiologist
13. Celebrity: Adam sandler
14. Magazine: allure
15. U.S. City: attleboro
16. Pro Sports Teams: angels
18. Reason for Being Late for Work: automobile crashed
19. Something You Throw Away: aluminum foil
20. Things You Shout: AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
21. Cartoon Character: Adora (the real name of she-ra, princess of power)

Weekend recap

this weekend was one of the best i've had in a long time!

• friday night was the first kick off to a weekend as a working girl in over a year!



• it had to be done right. we went to a fesitval in the next village over.



• we rode our bikes because we were planning on drinking heavily.



• and we did just that. 3 cocktails and 2 beers, i was wasted and it was time to go home.



• turns out we werent well fitted to be riding our bikes anymore.



• while pedaling on an unlit bike path through fields, we both fell. i, gently, and what felt like in slow-motion, tipped over sideways while gregory toppled over frontways and landed on his knee.



• he's ok now. he took one for the team that night. all in a nights partying.



• saturday, after visiting his parents and gregory showing his nephews how to ride a skateboard (and me noticing his knee was good enough for skateboard tricks) we went to what is known as Bellegem woods. i think its the only woods around for..half the country.



• roxy loved it. we only let her off the leash for 5.3 seconds because gregory was nervous.



• she ran off the path a little bit but she came right back after we called her.



• we found 2 ticks on her. but according to gregory ticks dont exist in belgium. musta been pretend ticks.



• sunday evening we had a barbeque and i ate a small sausage. it was good.

some pictures from the weekend:

pretending to smoke

drunk! i think i'm ripping off gregory's lip.

the morning after. Roxy is supporting gregory in a nap

helping gregory sleep.