Things that are happening

I've been getting together all the papers so we can get R's visa. Since I'm a "highly skilled worker" he automatically gets a work permit, which is making this process a little easier. Since he was born on a military base in Europe, the paperwork has been a giant pain. I registered our marriage at Gemeente Delft, which is like a city hall. That part was easy, since I just had to take the marriage certificate, its apostille, and my residence card (which I'm legally required to carry all the time anyway) to the building and hand them to the people there. However, I recieved a new form to fill out, which had some awkward spots. Since R is still in the states, he doesn't have a visa number yet; what goes there? Do I have to mail it to him to sign, or can we fax it? Naturally, I didn't read the form thoroughly until I got home, so I couldn't ask about it. I have it (I think) all ready to go, though, so it gets mailed to R tomorrow. Just as soon as I find out where to buy stamps.

The world cup is over, and I haven't heard a vuvuzela since. Pure awesome.

I tried fixing my bike tire, but I think the hole was too big. O very thoughtfully loaned me a tire repair kit, and explained how to use it. The whole process was pretty simple, I'm just not sure it worked. I suspect I'll need to buy a new inner tire (this is like, 5 Euros or so) and learn how to replace that. Fun times! I like fixing things. I had planned to take pictures of the tire patching process, but my hands had too much adhesive on them to be touching my lovely camera.

Now that I've been paid again, I'm planning an exciting trip to IKEA. I really need a new mattress, so I don't have to sleep on the perpetually falling apart bed, and I could use a couple picture frames. Plus, IKEA is fun to wander, and Delft has a ginormous* one.

R and I have had some more activity with showing the house since we lowered the price again. We're giving it a couple more weeks, and then are probably going to take it to auction. We've reached a point where as long as we have to keep paying the mortgage, we're losing money, so it's better just to cut it loose now. Besides, we're young, and can earn more money later.

I need to find a tailor, or borrow someone's sewing machine, to fix a tiny fit problem on the dress I bought for MM's wedding. The top needs to come in by about half an inch, and the hemline could definitely be raised an inch or so. I could do it myself with a machine, but I'm not hand stitching it, because I really really don't enjoy hand sewing at all. This is very apparent in my choice of knitting patterns, which rarely require any seaming. Granted, that's also partly because it's cheaper to buy a sock's worth of yarn than a sweater's, but still. That's not my point, which is that hand sewing is tedious and sharp. I am a huge fan of nice blunt plastic yarn needles, I must admit.

I'm impatient to finish the second red sock in the pair, because I really want to use the leftover red yarn with leftover brown from the previous socks and make a nice pretty scarf or something.

July has just flown by here, partly due to the week I had a migraine, I'm sure. I'm way behind on pictures, so I've added a handful of old ones. The only unusual thing I've done was have a BBQ (by this, people here mean grilling out as a social group, not actual BBQ-ing) with all the roommates. However, as it started raining right as we sat down to eat the first course, I didn't get many pictures after we finished prepping all the food, because we were busy running inside with all the stuff, and then finishing the cooking under an awning as the rain poured down. It was fun though!

*Is ginormous really a word? The spell check doesn't underline it, but does underline IKEA. Which is even stranger, since spell checkers usually assume all caps words are acronyms, and therefore not subject to normal spellings.

For my birthday, which was a national holiday (some jesus thing) F and I went to Keukenhof. It's about an hour by train and bus. This is the first touristic (apparently they felt a need to make tourist into an actual adjective here) thing I've done since I got here, and it was super fun. I plan to go every year, because the garden is amazing. Next year I'd love to rent a bike and cycle through the tulip fields, but it was much too cold this year.

From their website:
Facts and figures about the most beautiful spring garden in the world:
Has won prizes as Europe’s most valued attraction
It is one of the most popular attractions in the Netherlands and has clocked up more than 44 million visitors in the last 60 years
It is the largest bulb flower park in the world
It covers an area of 32 hectares 4.5 million tulips in 100 varieties
It is the most photographed place in the world
There are 15 kilometers of footpaths
It is the largest sculpture park in the Netherlands
7 million flower bulbs planted by hand
More than 2,500 trees in 87 varieties


It was stunning. We only walked through about a third of the garden, because it was getting cold out, and the sheer quantity of flowers was mind-boggling. And they redesign the flower beds every year (although I'm guessing the tulip historical garden stays pretty much the same) to keep people coming back. We were also there at the right time for the Lily exhibit inside a pavilion. I have never seen lilies like these. Some of the blooms were as large as a dessert plate! The scent inside was lovely, but incredibly overwhelming. Going out to the mildly scented cherry tree walk was quite a relief!


Keukenhof is logically located right in the middle of the major tulip fields, near the town of Lisse. This means you can see some of the tulip fields from the garden. Because the Netherlands is very very flat, you can see miles of tulips. It was a little late in the season, so a lot of them were dropping their petals already, but they were still gorgeous. As someone who grew up in the American midwest, entire fields devoted to attractive plants (corn is delicious, not pretty) are kind of alien.

I've added a link to the online photo album of pictures from Keukenhof in the sidebar. There are also some photos in the 365 album. I took the slideshow down because blogger and picasa weren't playing nicely together, and I'm tired of fixing it.

Photo Project

Because my camera takes ginourmous photos, and shrinking them down to blogger size is tedious, my photo project is now up at Picasa. I added a link to it in the sidebar, as well as a slide show made of that album. I think this is going to work out much better, because I won't have to fuss with the image sizes.