sew buttons

sew buttons

FINALLY i have my very own sewing machine! sewing machines are generally really expensive and i have found some inthe price range of less than 200 euros, which didnt really sell gregory. so as i was browsing through a large beauty store (kinda like cvs only without the pharmacy) i found sewing machines on sale for 69.99! so i told gregory and he said i could buy it!! ohhhh yesss. so i walked there in the rain today and hauled that heavy bitch back to my house and set it all up. its beautiful. i thought it would be super ghetto since its considerably less money than the ones i've seen even in the grocery store! but its not at all. it has 26 stitch functions including zig zags, 3 button hole functions, blind hem etc etc. it came with all its little goodies like extra bobbins, seam ripper, screw driver, extra needles, zipper foot, button foot and even a cover for it! oh the possibilites!!

i've had a shirt laying around that i got from a thrift store and i havent worn it since it was considerably too big. i began to hand sew it but i have the patience of a fruit fly and just couldnt do it. but i finally altered that bad-larry today and now i can wear it without feeling like a pregnant woman. i am so so so excited. this is my first very own. i've always used mom's circa 1970's. the old gal was a bit rickety and liked to gradually loosen her tension on ya but she did the trick. i want to make a summer dress for myself. if anyone feels a sudden urge to buy me something, you could buy me sewing patterns. maybe for a chocolate exchange (hint hint, you know who you are) here are some that i really like:butterick b4513 newlook 6377 simplicity

gregory and i are also looking into a new house. keep your fingers crossed. 2 bedrooms, a small garden and garden house and it looks like it has a dishwasher too! how sweet would that be?????????

Belgium package delivery system...Has NO system

Since WEDNESDAY, nearly a week now, I've been trying to receive my package that came from America. They delivered it here to the apartment on Wednesday but since our landlady is such a douche-bag, our bell doesn't work. (however, convinently, her daughter's bell work) so I never received it because how was I to know anyone was here with a broken bell? I have Gregory call because he can communicate with these people better than I can. He calls THE VERY NEXT DAY to have it delivered to his grandmother's house since he goes there every afternoon and there's always someone home. This is not the first time we've had one of my packages shipped to her house. Well to make a long story short it never got there, Gregory has called multiple times everyday, either people have no idea where the package is, or they're reassuring us it'll be shipped out that afternoon, or the very next morning. Last I heard it was found in the "return to sender" corner, but then was going to be shipped out yesterday afternoon. It never made it yesterday afternoon because it went from gent (on Wednesday) to Brussels for days, back to gent yesterday because someone looked at the address on the package rather than being involved in what's going on and looking to see if there's a second address to send it to, bell still didn't work yesterday so we STILL didn't get it and then it went back to Brussels only to be lost yet again. So the lady we talked to said she didn't know what to do anymore. If she doesn't know what to do then who does???????? I am so pissed off at these people. I BETTER get it soon or they're going to start hearing a very angry American person on the phone and I don't think they want that.
oh an ps taxi post-I refuse to pay the 9.90 you're charging me. Maybe if you could do your job effectively then I would pay your fee but after the hassle you're putting us through, there's no way I'm paying that anymore!

Goed Nieuws

OK. I have some pretty good news. This coming Tuesday I have a demonstration of my language skills for a prospective employer. Its within a real estate company. I would be answering phones n giving information about the questioned real estate. I MUST speak Dutch.

I'm pretty scared since I don't speak it much and when I do its only with Gregory. So everyone please cross your fingers, light a candle, pray, do a dance, do whatever it is you do to send luck to someone because I NEED it.

Appendix I

As many of you know by now, last week, to the day, I had my appendix removed. My experience with European surgery wasn't too bad. The only thing I didn't enjoy, besides surgery of course, is the interns, for one. While in the emergency room they needed to take blood and insert an iv. Ok, no problem I can handle that. What I didn't know was that they were going attach the tourniquet for an hour BEFORE even having anything ready or attempting to draw blood. So as I'm laying there with my arm slowly decaying, an intern that clearly had not been practicing on her oranges came up and took another hour assessing her next move like a champion chess player. Now I've begun to sweat and am nearly in tears. I've told the others my arm hurts and they just nod. In my head I'm screaming "HELLO! Patient is in PAIN because of YOU loosen the damn thing" but they didn't until what felt like years later, after the intern poked me WRONG. My arm was entirely purple and I thought for sure I was losing much more than appendix that day. All that and I didn't even get a needle in me. So then I had to endure it again a few moments afterwards, only this time tourniqueting my hand, which still doesn't feel good as its necrotising, but at least it was just a hand rather than my whole arm. The other unpleasant thing was when they wheeled me into the operating room. Once in the room they made me lay on the metal slab they call a table. Now ordinarily that wouldn't matter because I would expect to be knocked out before I even saw the operating table but no, I layed there shivering because its about as cold as an arctic tundra in there. So then this brutal woman comes over, rips off my socks and underwear on a side note: . Those were a good pair of underwear! All those rumors "clean underwear for the hospital" total crap. I had been sick the entire day so I never got a chance to shower, so before heading to the hospital I at least changed my underwear, putting on a comfortable, yet nice pair that I wouldn't mind everyone seeing and they never gave them back!!!! Next time I'm wearing a pair I'm thinking of throwing away, anyway.

she also popped open all the buttons on my johnny, roughly forced my hands at my side where she wanted them; my feet aswell and then left. So all this fussing and hurrying and being forceful, one would think they were ready to go. NO! I layed there like that for about a HALF HOUR. I know, there was a clock there. I mean Christ, I would have rather of layed in the more comfortable emergency room bed with my socks and underwear and blanket than the metal, cold table with nothing but the flimsy johnny covering my privates for a half hour.

after all that I made it out alive. In some serious pain, but alive. The nurses on the floor were pretty nice and helpful, so that's good.

I also should be getting my bandages off either today or tomorrow. Hurrah.

GEEK

You know you're a geek when you officially own 3 library cards. Yes that right, I have THREE library cards in my wallet. You know just in case I want to go to one within the sails network aka north attleboro, attleboro, then hop on over to the Boston public and then skip the country all together so I can evade my late fees and go to one here in Belgium. Quite a scam I have going. I hope by the time I'm 65 I have a whole fist full of library cards. That's how much of a geek I am.
unfortunately, the 2 sections of the library I wanted to go into today was closed. The literature section aka learning Dutch stuff and English books and the children's section (that's the reading level I'm at in Dutch) I don't know when the literature section will be open again, they're working in there, like re-doing the floor or something, and the children's section is only open in the afternoons. I'll go back tomorrow afternoon. It'll give me something to do. I'll have to be incognito though because a friend of mine works in the building next door, and as I was standing outside the library today she saw me from her office window and wrote me a cryptic message of "I can see you.." Very creepy. I don't like people watching me. I don't want anyone to see me going into the library everyday. I can hear the conversation now friend:what do you do in the library everyday? Me: umm..Read children's books with all the other little kids...
GEEK

Happy Valentine's Day

Today is the day of love. Gregory and I didn't wake up very lovingly, I opened my eyes and thought to myself "the only time I wake up voluntarily, with no assistance from my alarm is when I've gone BACK to bed after Gregory has left." this also made me realize how light the sky was, so I looked at my clock and shouted "Gregory it's EIGHT THIRTYYYYYYY" and that was that. We're not doing anything special, just mussels for dinner and and chocolate covered strawberries for dessert.

Yesterday was Justin's Birthday. I called him, hope he got it (HAPPY BIRTHDAY YESTERDAY AGAIN JUSTIN) I also went out to dinner with a friend yesterday. Its not very often I go out on a weeknight without Gregory, so I was pretty excited to be doing my own thing. He had work to do anyway and its always boring sitting there while he just came home from work and then he goes straight back to work. Victoria and I ate at a Turkish restaurant and had Turkish pizza. It was super good. Afterwards we headed for one of my favorite cafés (Pink Flamingo) and had a drink.
I didn't get home until 10 and Gregory was still working so it looks like I didn't miss a thing besides TV programs but who cares about that! I had fun. I hope justin had fun on his birthday too.

Let it Snow, etc...

Yesterday it snowed here. I heard there was a nor'easter over in Massachusetts aswell. Our snow certainly wasn't a storm, but to Belgian standards it was a lot..It covered the ground! What a mess though, very slushy snow. Fun to watch though.

last night Gregory and I also went to see "Walk the Line" with our friend Els. What an excellent movie! And for anyone who has seen it, and doesn't know, both Reese witherspoon and the dude who played Johnny cash had to learn how to sing for the movie, and from watching Oprah I know that Reese tried getting out of doing the movie because she would had much preferred lip syncing. Well for people who couldn't sing or play instruments they did an AWESOME job. Really worth a watch. Though be warned, it is 2 hours 20 minutes long. Another highlight to last night is that Belgium FINALLY came out with salty popcorn!!! Boy was I in heaven. They had a "menu" option. A menu in Dutch is the same a value meal in English. So I got a "normal" popcorn with SALT and a "normal" soda. My salty popcorn had a few handfuls of sugary popcorn in there but whatever, it was still good to eat tasty popcorn at the theater.

Saturday night I went to a lingerie home sale. There's this girl, Muriel, who designs, makes, sells her own lingerie. I think she's even sold to people such as pink. Her company name is lafilledo <-click to see her website. she makes really nice stuff. you can browse her products here http://www.eroyin.com/Main.php?taal=en I think for the summer I want to get a bathing suit from her. Perhaps the "crazy" bikini shorties paired with the "dream" push up bikini top. OR if she has a new line out maybe something diffrerent. we run in the same crowd so i can always just go over to her house and buy something there rather than at a store. i think it would be better to ask the designer herself how things look on you than a store clerk anyway.

(almost) free dinner

last night Gregory and I had dinner at our friend els' house along with our other friends, Laurent, laurance, Colin and Eveline. It was good and fun. We had a vegetarian lasagna. Gregory didn't much care for it, he complained (to me) that it didn't even have meat in it. But seriously, he was the only meat eater at the table, what does he expect?! It had carrots, onions, sunflower seeds and sesame seeds along with a tomato cream honey sauce (the only thing Gregory liked about it) and only cheese on top, so it wasn't a big ole cheese bomb either. I thought it was really good. And then for dessert I had made cookies and Colin and Eveline brought over a chocolate mouse cake. Now, the dessert is where the ALMOST free dinner comes in. I had planned, and tried to make banana bread. It was perfect for me because I had just enough ingredients to make it, and that's why I chose banana bread. But as I posted yesterday it went horribly wrong. So I had to go out to the store and buy more flour, and more eggs. Luckily I already had chocolate chips in the house and half way through the directions I realized I was out of vanilla!!!! But I substituted some vanilla sugar we had in replace of vanilla extract. It may have had an impact on my cookies, either that or it really wasn't a good baking day for me because, though they tasted good, they came out way flatter and crispier than ever before. People still ate and enjoyed them though.

oh, and on a completely unrelated note, I finally got my letter of recommendation from the professor last night. He wrote it in English (why????) he also gave me the disk in which he wrote it on. Is that like don't ever bother me for this ever again?

heh

The most interesting this i've seen in a while:


a man peeing on the roof for well over a minute. the funny thing, he didnt even know someone (me) could see the whole show from my kitchen window. keep it in your pants, buddy or next time i'll take a picture.


Worst thing that happened all day:

i fucked up my banana bread. it looked, smelled and tested as done. when i tried to take it out of the pan, a wall collasped and a pool of banana goo came out. what happened?!?!

Emerged

Hello,

I haven't posted in quite a long time, I know. Nothing has really been going on for me to say anything. When I arrived back in Belgium I had to wait to see about a job in a nursing home. Turns out that it was only to be for a kitchen aid for a couple of weeks in a far away town so I didn't take it. Then I heard that the professor, who I previously worked with was going to finally (after hounding) send me a letter of recommendation along with an invitation to go to the university in Brussels to see about a job as a prosector. He has yet to e-mail me, and I've been e-mailing him!!! What the hell! So this week I've sent my resume to a big funeral company that does embalming and everything, along with various other jobs such as a legal secretary and a help desk person.The legal secretary job called me back and boy was I NOT prepared for all the questions they were about too ask. Such as : what interests you about becoming a legal secretary? I was thinking "shit, I just want a job! All my answers I awkwardly pulled out of my ass because I had no answer for them. I don't give a shit about legal secretarial work. I just want a job. So needless to say I didn't get that job. I have a feeling the help desk people will call either today or tomorrow. Both companies make you fill out an online application form with all the same questions that can be answered by looking at the attached resume. The legal secretary's form came in first and they called the very next day, so based on that I'm assuming the help desk people will call today considering I filled out their form yesterday. I hope they don't ask me questions like why I want to work as a help desk person. I mean, is that really a career goal? Does anyone REALLY want to work at a help desk? Still waiting for a word back from the funeral place. That one I mailed in through the post so it might take a bit and I'm STIIIIILLLLLLLLLL waiting for the professor to get back to me. He's really beginning to press my buttons. Anyway that's it for now.

MY Birthday

Gregory, amazingly, without my knowing bought a huge cake for me and (the even trickier part) got me to the skate park where everyone was going to be. When I got there a beautiful David Bowie cake was waiting for me, garnished with fruit and everything. It was delicious. I was so surprised. And today it's snowing!

ah shit

yeah, its been a while since I've written. Nothing really exciting is going on. Yesterday was St. Nicholas Day here in Belgium. That's when SinterKlaas arrives from Spain on his boat with his "helpers" zwarte pieten. Also known as black petes. Its a holiday just for children so we bought, I mean SinterKlaas left at our house, 2 remote control trucks for the twins. They loved 'em.
it snowed here once so far. I know its nothing to what you guys are getting back home, but for Belgium it was a pretty decent snowfall. We also have our decorations up. Since we're poor and don't really have enough for decorations, I went with the paper snowflake theme. Well, its not that we can't afford decorations per se, its just that they're expensive and we have finacial obligations which keep us from spending frivolously.

so the pictures you can see our tree, my pink and blue snowflakes on the window, some white snowflakes hanging from a shelf, and some stars hanging from the archway. Mom sent me a link from hallmark on how to make stars from greeting cards so I tried it. We also have snowflakes in our bathroom. There are a few other random decorations aswell, so I think for not being able to spend a butt load of money on decorations we did alright for ourselves.

so in 2 weeks I'm headed home for Christmas. Should be awesome. Pray to the snowgods to hold off their snowstorms until after I land in Boston. I reeeeeeaaaallly don't want to be delayed. Traveling that far is hard enough nevermind having to sit extra hours.
see you all soon!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Hope everyone is having a super awesome thanksgiving. I was suppose to have a mini thanksgiving dinner with an American friend but his wife is in Germany for the entire week and they asked if we could postpone it till next week. Bummer, huh. I was really looking forward to it. BUT even though they don't celebrate thanksgiving here, I put these pictures up to show that here too they kick the Christmas season off early. These we have a little tree hanging from our window!! And they're all over the city. They have lights strung up in the center aswell but I haven't seen them lit up yet. So here's to thanksgiving--the official day where you can break out your Christmas albums and get into the Christmas spirit.

It warms my heart

Our boiler has been broken for about 3 weeks now. It leaks everytime we use hot water. For this reason we haven't turned on our heat fearing that there might be a massive explosion of burst pipes our a small river through our house or even the complete breakdown of our boiler therefore not even having the opportunity to get warm by taking hot baths and showers.
WE CAN SEE OUR BREATH. Now, coming from a home where it was forbidden to touch the thermostat, and being constantly cold, my dad used to say "can you see your breath?" "no.." "then its not cold enough to turn it up" ok, fine. Add a few more layers. But what happens when you CAN see your breath and we cant turn on the heat?????? I learned you light as many candles as you can, wear a hat, 4 layers, 3 pairs of socks and slippers and still walk around like you're on an expedition in the arctic tundra.

well the repair man finally came today. Its still broken but we learned it only leaks when you turn the water on, its not the heating part. So he turned on our heat for us, cranked open all the radiators and turned on the thermostat and oh boy....OH BOY...The lovely intoxicating smell of the radiators burning the settled dust. Its heaven. The temperature is still pretty cold in here. 16°c, but it has been between 12-13°c sI'llll take 16 anydayButut now, wheI'm'm coldI i can just hug that radiator for dear life and let it pas its warmth into meLikekI'veve already done twice since the guy left a half hour ago.
life is good again.

EUREEEEEKA

today I'm wearing a pair of pants I haven't been able to fit into since before summer. I thought I'd try them on today to see if I've lost any weight. (that's my new way of measuring since I don't own a scale) any old pants that I've had before I moved I see how they fit differently than before, and since I gave away most of my old pants since most of them didn't fit me already before I moved, there's not much to go by. The pants that I wear regularly seemed to be a bit looser than normal so I wanted to see if I could fit into anything smaller and I CAN!! This has motivated me to work out more because they are a little tighter than what I would normally wear so now I have a goal. Maybe I'll be stunning for Christmas and then blow it all away with all the great, delicious, American holiday food.

three cheers for lost weight!

DEEP

"which one is Simon and which one is Garfunkel?"

"Garfunkel is the one with the great, big, giant afro."

"Does that make Simon the one with the mustache?"

"I don't know if he has a mustache or not, but he's the less crazier looking of the two."

"So do you think Garfunkel is the rock?"

"Well, if he is I guess that would make Simon the island."

"an island kind of is a rock.."

"it depends on where it is, I guess. Not all rocks are islands. Plymouth rock isn't an island."

"it was until the boat hit it."

This is Halloween..

EVERYBODY SCREEEEAM!
yes today is Halloween in Belgium. It's very different and nothing like back home. I saw kids trying to trick-or-treat last night at gregory's parents house. I told Gregory to tell them off and he did but I should of as well. They pissed me off! If we don't get to go a day early no one trying to steal our holiday should either. So the kids said to Gregory as we were literally stepping into the car (translated version) "hey, sir. Do you have any candies?" and Gregory said "Halloween is tomorrow." and the kids said "well, we do it today." and Gregory supporting his American girlfriend said "well we don't. Come back tomorrow!" hooorah!!
it's the morning now so nothing strange or unusual has happened yet, besides the fact that it's a Monday and I'm not working. We have a holiday today. Actually the real holiday is tomorrow, it's all saints day. And its kind of like day of the dead in Mexico, only without all those fun little candies. Here, a vendor stands outside the cemetery and sells flowers, and everyone goes on this one day to remember their loved ones who have died and its also a competition, I've been told, among the families at the graveyard to be the one who buys the biggest most beautiful bouquet of flowers for their loved one's grave. Apparently its just a huge marketing scam now. But anyway, a lot of people have today off because Belgium is silly and will have ANY excuse for a holiday so they "bridge" it. So not only do I have today off but also tomorrow and Wednesday aswell. Because after all saints day you have to have all soul's day to balance it out. All saints day is the day to be sad because people are dead. And all soul's day is when you're not sad anymore because you're celebrating that they're soul has gone up to heaven. (I tell you, they just start making holidays up!)
today I believe we're headed to a giant shopping mall in France to do a little shopping and get Gregory a haircut. And tonight we're going to see the corps bride by Tim Burton in the theater with some friends. It's a bit of a different Halloween for me, but o got to carve a pumpkin so it's all ok.

I Wear sneakers...for sneaking

Quote from the simpsons (my favorite)
Grampa: " Son, I've come to help you. I know who the Cat Burglar is."
Homer: "What?"
Marge: "Who?"
Bart: "Huh?"
Lisa: "What?'
Grampa: "Well, well, well! Before I was just too old and no one wanted my help. Suddenly, look who comes to old Grampa for - wait! Where are you going? Come back, I'll tell ya. He was right under my nose the whole time. He lives in my retirement home. His name is Malloy."
Lisa: "Wow! How'd you track him down, Grampa?"
Grampa: "Good question. On one of my frequent trips to the ground, I noticed Malloy wore sneakers, for sneaking. My next clue came just yesterday at the museum. We felt slighted by your age bashing and started home. Malloy said, 'I'll catch up with you.' [Malloy starts climbing the side of the building] I couldn't quite put my finger on it. There was something strange about the way he walked, much more vertical than usual. And finally, Malloy, unlike most retired people, has the world's largest cubic zirconia on his coffee table (hehehe i love grampa)

anyway, i too wear sneakers and they apparently are very good for sneaking. I gave my colleague quite a fright this morning. I didn't mean to enter so quietly but I did and he jumped half a mile. Mom always asked me "why do you always sneak into a room???" sorry mom! I don't mean to sneak around but I cant help it; its my sneakers.

Apple Pie

I made my first apple pie ever. here are the apples.
i should have put a few more apples in so it would be fuller but i didnt know any better. next time i'll have a less flat pie.
here's the finished product. its not beautiful, but again, not bad for a first try ever. it tastes delicious so i dont care about presentation.

ps-as i'm looking at these photos i'm thinking "wow, i can even smell it" but i forgot i just had a piece and the pie plate is sitting next to me. hehehe.

Brussels sprouts all the fun

How come everything fun happens in Brussels?? I don't want to hop on a train and travel 40 minutes to get somewhere just to meet people, but that's what it looks like I'm gonna have to do if I'm ever going to make any friends. The American woman's club is there, some xpat club is there. I look online and there are pictures of smiling faces and messages of "lets do that again some time!" and I wanna be apart of that too. I really don't understand why there's nothing like that in the city I live in.
I talked to one of gregory's friends yesterday and asked him if he knew of any place I could go to join a group and meet people n stuff, since he's lived in Gent for 8 years. He told me a few places to look but wasn't sure if any of them would be of help. I didn't look yesterday because he wouldn't let me leave his shop until he closed (he was bored) and I was just heading home anyway. Maybe he was trying to show me I was wanted since we were talking about lack of friends n all.

today I got my extension on my visa here (I've been an illegal alien for a little over a month now) the office in Brussels was behind on all their stuff so it was taking forever. I was getting a little worried I wouldn't get it before December, but alas my letter in the mail came telling me I was approved. In a few months we're going to have ANOTHER police officer come to our house to make sure we're STILL living together. We've already had 2. Let me tell ya, these frequent police visits are a pain in the ass.