Last month's summary
Well, I have to say I don't usually get around to writing too many LJ entries these days. As for the entries to link to other journals I tentatively referred to in the previous entry, I think I wil have one for Jungian temperament (largely dealing with ntpersonality and idealists posts), but probably no others for the near future.
I am still active on several mailing lists dealing with the Dutch language. In fact, their number is growing. The last addition has been a group currently called DUTCH-ENGLISH-SPANISH. It is not particularly different from PracticingDutch or LearningDutch so far. I wonder whether a multitude of these fora is really useful. It seems everyone might learn a little more if there was just one bigger group. Reading back in my Sent folder, I see I was also asked after GoneDutch late in January, but I haven't bothered to check it out. I was also invited to this initiative recently, but I am not sure..
I went on a search for someone to carry out some repairs and improvements on my house. The first person I approached did not quite make the right impression on me, though, so it took a little longer to find someone than might have been envisioned. An acquaintance now seems to want to do the work, but he is rather busy, so that might happen anywhere in the next month, I guess.
On January 25th I went to the birthday of one of my nephews. It turned out that the intention had been that his brother's birthday would also be celebrated that day, but since no one had bothered to tell me (or my parents), not that much came of it. My parents went back two weeks later, but I was otherwise occupied at that time, so I went the week after that.
The week after, I noticed that my ISP was indicating wholly ridiculous statistics about my bandwidth usage in the service center. It took me a month to actually get them to acknoweldge that they had a problem. They haven't fixed it yet. I hope this problem is not more pervasive. Some customers might want to check their usage, since there is an upgrade going on, which implies an opportunity to downgrade and decrease costs. I could probably downgrade and not notice too much of it, though I am not sure yet if I will, because.. well, fortunately the little bit of money is not that important to me.
That Sunday I went to my aunt for her birthday, which turned out to be quite a small gathering, which was quite good to actually get to talk to each other for a while. On Monday I was at my parents' for their 38-year anniversary.
On Wednesday a friend who was going to spend a few days in The Hague arrived, so I picked her up at Schiphol Airport. After finding the hotel in The Hague I showed her around the city center a bit, starting with the government buildings. On Thursday we had a look at Madurodam (a collection of scale models of many important buildinds from around the country) and went to the Mauritshuis museum (primarily paintings, including, e.g., Rembrandt's "De anatomieles van Dr. Tulp"). On Friday I showed her around Delft and on Saturday we went to the Haags Gemeentemuseum. We certainly had a lot of fun before she went back to the airport on Sunday to catch a plane home. I then went to have dinner with my parents.
The next week was very busy, but I enjoyed my Valentine's present. The day after, I went over to my brother's for my other nephew's birthday. He liked the game I had bought him a lot, and so did my brother and I. ;) My brother and I might have gone on to play shogi, but he hadn't told me either he wanted to play again or that he was unsure where his set was, so I didn't bring one. Oh well. I was actually still there around 17:30 when my mother called, who had actually expected me to show up for dinner (slight miscommunication), after which I took the bus and the train and the bike and went there.. It was not a very great night. :|
The next week my acquaintance had a look at possible improvements on the house, and another fitter paid a visit to check up on the central heating system. At work I spend most of the time on a peer code review. That weekend I decided not to do too much, because I was pretty tired. I did read a small Buddhist book around this time.
Last week was fairly uneventful. I started reading another Buddhist book ("What the Buddha taught") and answered a flurry of email on some of the mailinglists I read, mostly. I also planned to go to the Dutch Shogi Championship today, but yesterday I was told that the event was being moved to another date: due to the bad weather (we had quite a bit of snow etc. around here), the organization was afraid that it would be hard for people to be in Woerden on time. So I answered some email and did some other small things today, mostly, instead.
One of my email correspondents seems to have gone missing. Not only have I seen no reply for a while, but there must have been a phone number change, too. Hmmm.. Another acquaintance specifically let me know about a new telephone number (in connection with harassment :().
One day last week I had rather a backache; maybe I am too careful with painkillers, but anyway, the dosage didn't work, and I didn't sleep much that night. Since, things have been okay again, though today I happen to have a sore upper spine/shoulder blade. I should probably make sure I get enough rest..
As to the immediate future, I am looking forward to a quiet Sunday, and a very busy week..