It is all about stethoscopes

I need a (mental) doctor. Possibly an addict group.

"Hi, I'm Nadine, I'm addicted to House." In the last five days or so, I have watched about ten episodes of House.

"Are you in love with him?" FreezeM asked, after catching me watching YouTube videos about Hugh Laurie.
"No, just fascinated"

Actually, if I would be in love, I would be in love with Doctor House, not with the actor (although he is incredibly talented, funny and speaks with his cute British accent). I just love this TV character. His sense of humor is to die for and he's the perfect unreachable good bad guy in a way that tickles me pink. AND he watches soap operas (OK, just General Hospital, but that's a good start). Never thought I would dig beards though.

When it comes to TV shows, we (in little Dutchland) are always one or two (or three ... or four ... ) seasons behind the US. Except for Lost, Prison Break and Heroes. Which are the only shows we need to survive anyway. Like recently I asked: have you seen that new show, ehm what was it, yeah, Beverly Hills 90201?? That Luke Perry is hot! OK, kidding about 90201, but you get the point. We are in the 1800's when it comes to TV shows.

But now there's House. And Dutch TV is still airing season 1. ONE.

I didn't want to wait until TV caught up with reality (is that even possible?), so I got season 1 to 2. Which I am watching now like a total addict. I have pretty much been neglecting the new Harry Potter which my husband so kindly bought me in the weekend. At this moment I am all about stethoscopes, and less about magic wands.

Mathematics

Sweety + friend + terrace + sun – food + beer + beer + bike = not so good

This being all about maths… I guess I could file this post under school…

Louigi? Mario?

I emailed with a good friend about our trip to Rome and joked about bringing a cute Italian with me as a present for her. She emailed me back, and said:

“Arrrgggghhh...the last thing I need complicating my life right now is a MAN.
Although a nice, hot, Italian one would be nice to LOOK at. :)”

I can relate. It’s like a basic female instinct.

Men equal trouble.

(sorry guys)

I sat down and looked outside and thought about what she said for a while.

Thought about the past men (okay, boys, Mr. Sweety turning 29 this Sunday makes him probably the first MAN I dated :)) in my life. And then I realized. Mr. Sweety doesn’t complicate anything. He makes things simple. He makes my life simple.

The first man in my life who make life simple.

Funny how an email conversation can make you realize you have something beautiful. Thanks for that, you know who you are ;)

It’s a wonderful world

Why?

1. My migraine is finally over. Yep. Totally gone.

2. I’m zipping on a wonderful glass of Californian white wine. Mmmmmm.

3. Ya’all were right. I passed the re-exam of Organisation & Management. With a 7.8, on a scale of 1 (very bad) to 10 (very good). It was the highest grade in the class. I should just accept my mad management skills, but I’m still worried there was made a mistake. I really didn’t think I’d passed the test.

4. This semester I’ll be studying Psychology & Customer Behaviour, Integrated Communication II, English and Dutch. And again I like every single one of the courses I’m taking.

5. It’s weekend.

6. The other day, I applied for another job for a very cool company. I’m not saying anything more, just use your crossing finger skills to help me get a interview. But the fact that I finally found a job opening worth applying for, and the fact that I finally actually wrote a letter is making me very happy.

7. Mr. Sweety is enjoying his new job. I didn’t even tell ya’all he got a new job? I’m getting worse at keeping my blog up to date. Mr. Sweety has a new job! He works at an international company, which also has offices in the US. Maybe just maybe in a few years we can move to the US through this company?

8. My manager from hell has a new hair do. It’s making me laugh. Like all the time.

9. I actually have a few nice projects at work.

10. Monday is Mr. Sweety’s and mine 5th Valentines day together. Being late with our travel reports, I totally forgot to mention our 5th anniversary we had in Anaheim, California. More about that, later.

We sold NewYork. How dumb is that.

*cough cough*

Anyone here?

Loyal readers... ?

Hello?

I know I haven’t blogged in AGES. Shame on everything that’s Sweety.

A dotsie summary of the past week:

• Friday was my last workday for the next 5 weeks. 5 weeks. 5 weeks. I still can’t believe it. I’ll start working again on January 10th.

• Sinterklaas eve:

When the Dutch still owned the land that later became New York, they brought the Saint Nicholas' eve legend with them to the Americas, but without the red mantle and other symbols. The name Santa Claus is derived from the character's Dutch name, Sinterklaas. Note that in Dutch, the feast is called 'sinterklaas feest' and it celebrates the birthday of sinterklaas during sinterklaasavond ("sinterklaas's evening") on December 5th or in Belgium on December 6th.

from wikipedia.com

So yes, yesterday we celebrated Sinterklaas. When I find some time I’ll post some pictures. We had a fantastic time.

And if you’re totally bored, go watch this fun video about Sinterklaas. It’s by Boom ChicagoAmsterdam & Run DMC. Go go go!

• Monica has given birth to a beautiful baby boy. I’ve been reading her blog for some time now. Now go congratulate her!

• LOOK!!! Look over there!! It's a purple birdie!

*whispers* my last grade (for organisation & management) came in… it’s a 3.5 on a scale of 1 (suckage) to 10 (brilliance). The class average was a 4.2. Our coordinator is going to talk to the teacher and he will tell him to pull the grades up so that at least 55% of the students passed the exam (pass = 5.5). So please... let me see your mad finger crossing skills... I might just be lucky.

What no bird?

• I did it. I love it. You should do it too.

• School period II started. This Thursday I have a presentation for Dutch. I’m going to give a presentation on the history of advertising in The Netherlands. It’s quite interesting actually, I find myself sucked into the book I borrowed from the library.

• Oh .. there is ONE thing positive about not posting in a week. NO spam. I’m lovin’ it.

• 5 weeks. 5 WEEKS. Woohoo.

Cleaning...

The itsy bitsy spider went up Sweety’s favourite chair
Down came the vacuum cleaner and ate the spider, so unfair

I hope he doesn’t crawl out to get his big cousin.

Do illiterate people get the full effect of alphabet soup?

Question. Do - crazy, in public, to themselves talking, people - realize that they’re talking to themselves?

Like today riding the tram home, there was a man, a little crazy. He got my attention because he was talking to himself. Or to the imaginary person next to him. I’m still not quit sure. He was not only talking, at some point he started screaming. And then he whispered.

Do people like that realize everybody looks at them? Or don’t they? Or do they just don’t care? And if they do realize.. what ARE they thinking? Do they have some sort of blackout? Do they actually see this imaginary person? Don’t they hear themselves screaming??

I’m guilty of it too. NOT in public. I hope.

I talk to my computer “effin Windows”
To some of my emails “hahahahaha”
To some of my work emails “F off”
To our cats “Simba, don’t put your nails in my new sweater”
To our bunnies “Heeeeeeeere’s a little carrot”
To my coughing manager I whisper “Please do smoke another cigarette…”
To our television “Noooo WAY”..
To the dishes “I hate you”
To the laundry “You AGAIN”
To that cat puke on the floor I say “Mr. Sweety will clean you up in a bit”.
To the tram I always miss in the morning: “Asshole!”
To all the people reading this blog I say “Hi ya’all!”
And this list goes on and on and on and on.

But I hope I’ll never start talking to an imaginary person in public transport. So em.bar.ras.sing. Except when you don’t realize it. But do you?

And the title? No idea. Just a crazy thought. To match the crazy post.

Pinky, I’ve found the ultimate way to conquer the universe!

Mr. Sweety and I often discus the possibilities to move to the US… and get a permit (which ain’t easy). A few minutes ago I was surfing on a website of National Park Service and see the page: “volunteers in parks”. V.O.L.U.N.T.E.E.R. That’s it! Or so I thought, for a VERY brief second…

Me: Eureka!
Mr. Sweety: Huh?
Me: Imagine… we move to the US to do volunteer work!
Pinky: That’s BRILLIANT Brain!
Me: Wouldn’t that give us…
Mr: Sweety: …hunger?
Me: party pooper

... probably not the most noble reason to volunteer either.

Anyways, this weekend I’ll be applying for a job in LA, California. Which, of course, is a far better way to follow our dreams. Cross fingers!

The ultimate language challenge

About a month ago Mr. Sweety applied for a job at an international organisation. He had two interviews, and waited… and waited… waited… And this week… they called to say they want him to come work for them!! Yayyyy! I’m so excited because he really WANTS this job. He´ll start in September! Woohoo!

One of the reasons for wanting to work at an international company is that it can be a key to move & work in the US one day. It won’t in any way harm our chances and will be of help when it ever comes to the point that we actually apply for jobs in the US. Besides that, it will be an awesome experience.

So, of course, the working language at this company is English.
I know our English is not bad. But watching non subtitled movies, chatting and blogging in English is quite different from speaking it the entire day. At work.
And Mr. Sweety wants to do good at this job…. So he came up with the idea to, as of now, speak English to each other. For a month.
I’m always in the mood for something new & exciting (Yay! Give the kid a new toy!! It’s called ENGLISH WOOHOOO!) so I said yes.

We started today and it just feels SO silly! And suddenly I realize I don’t know all the words and find myself pointing to the objects I can’t seem to name. “I mean THAT THING OVER THERE honey! “. So far we had these conversations:

just before dinner

Mr. Sweety: What are we having for dinner tonight?
Me (pointing to the meet in the fridge): Meatloaf and..
Mr. Sweety: That’s NOT meatloaf, that’s beef.
Me: Uhm… I was thinking BEEF.. and.. uhm..uhm put it in the oven with that… that green with white vegetable thing over there.. in Dutch it’s called flower cabbage you know what I mean.
Mr. Sweety: It's too hot to cook
Me: Nachos?
Mr. Sweety: Nachos.

later this evening...

Me: A meteorite doesn’t dance in the sky like that
Mr. Sweety: Nee, maar het was een close-up he, misschien trilde zijn hand heel erg.
Me: *cough cough* English

in a few minutes...

Me: I'm going to do the dishes. Do you want to help me?
Mr.Sweety: Dishes? What are dishes? I don't understand.

For both of us it will be an exciting month. And I just know he’ll do fine, correction: he’ll do GREAT!

Fashion Disasters Championship

Contestants? Me, … me and me in one day…

The 3rd price goes to:
Mount Sandals
I should have known that wearing sandals I haven’t worn in a longggg time are not meant for longggg walks. My right foot is accompanied by a blister the size of Mount Everest. Wait… do I see a mountain climber there?? Mind the pedicure please! Thanks!

And the 2nd price goes to:
The legsThe skirt
For the second time this year I wore a skirt. From the looks on the mans faces (well, the woman’s faces too, but that was a whole other look, believe me. To them I say: *cough cough* diet) when I walked into the cafeteria I realized it was a tad too short.
Eat on, eat on.

And the winner of the 1st price this year is: *drums ruffle*
The Nipples
SWEETY SAID NIPPLES!
The comment “I have a braw that prevents them from doing that” made me realize I choose the wrong top to wear to work. “It’s called a TShirt bra”. Okay okay, enough talk about BRAS already! I’m working ya know!
Since the climate in our building is cool (I think they finally found the plug to turn on the AC).. I was not only with me, but with my 2 saluting friends (I SWEAR they were saluting!). I was like the 3 freakin’ Musketeers. Here we are, all three! Thank god I did not have any appointments today (hence the skirt).

So that was me, limping, in a too short skirt (for work anyway) with 2 musketeers silently screaming “Hello HERE WE ARE! Be PROUD! Stand up straight!”.

So.em.bar.ras.sing. But I finally WON something, 1st, 2nd and 3rd price. Woohoo!