March 01, 2003 : the bike, the bike, the bike

Most of today stemmed from the fact that we're scooterless but bike-ful. Yesterday I put my new handlebar (purchased nearly half a year ago) onto my bike (the bike I haven't ridden since we got the scooter), aired up our tires, and had both bikes outfitted with lights so that Eva and I could still be mobile in light of the present scooter-less situation at hand.

So now that we're mobile, we're lock-less. Our one surviving lock is located on the scooter which is locked in a shop that doesn't seem to worked up about fixing our flat tire. (no need for speed when there are hundreds of newer-model scooters needing to be fixed up)

So this morning we headed over to Driekoningstraat to buy a lock at the Krak. I have to ask Eva if that's the right word, but I'm thinking it is. It's one of those variety stores comparable to the Dollar General back home. But less bright lights and less bins. Ok, Dollar General is comparable to Zeeman and Wibra, Krak is more like an army-surplus store without the army goods. At least it's just like the army surplus store in Springfield, Missouri. (sans gas masks and uniforms.)

Since we have no lock, I go in to look at locks while Eva waits. Then she goes in to buy locks while I wait. We end up buying an awesome 'U' lock and a cheap cord-version all for under 10 Euro. See, it's a great store!

We proceed to do some shopping only to realize that it's going to rain and we have to do laundry. We hang out in Blokker for a bit and then head back to Krak to buy some light-bulbs (which consequently work in our fixtures back home, but it appears that our living-room lighting has a short in it somewhere, so we've been reduced from 4 ceiling lights to 1. It's been this way for 3 or 4 months, I just figured I'd nip it in the bud and fix it today. Then of course we lost the receipt so we can't take back the perfectly good light-bulbs.)

In the process of buying the light-bulbs, I spend our change for washing. I didn't know that's what I was doing, but Eva did and so we had a minor spat about my "not caring enough about the laundry" and "spending the laundry money." She had simply handed me her wallet and said, you pay for it, thats "all I've got." To which I figured she meant that the change was "all she had."

To make things up to her I went to one of our favorite Turkish markets (the lady-run one) and asked her in Dutch, "Ik heb een vraag, kun ik heb twee 2 Euro en een 1 Euro munt voor mijn 5 Euro?" She was making a joke and said, "no" and shook her head quite sternly. I looked at her like, "What?" and said, "Ok...sorry..." to which she broke out into a huge smile and laughed, "Grappig, eh?" And I did a nervous laugh, took my coins and left.

I thought this would smooth things over, but it didn't solve it completely. We came on home and I pulled the table under the light-bulbs, placed a chair on the table, and gently climbed toward the ceiling. As I mentioned before, nothing worked. The bulbs were fine, but something else is wrong. I suppose this means it'll go back on our list.

As I mentioned, our spat wasn't any better. I didn't realize that Eva was suffering from a bout of woman-pains, and that I should be more sensitive. So instead I thought I'd leave her alone, and so I rode off on my beautiful bike with awesome handlebars, got out some money, and headed to Aldi. (a surprise for Eva)

I got our basic Aldi purchases, which this time around included frozen pizza, and headed back home. She was surprised, and the affects of my effort to please her and her taking a couple of Advil, made all the difference.

We basically hung low the rest of the day, and only in the evening time when Joris was over burning some CDs for Sabastian, did we venture out again. Leila and Susan invited us over to hang out with a couple of their friends, one of which I actually hung out with back on the first day/night I met Leila and Eva. He's the one that made the extremely curried rice back in 1998. And I had never had curry-flavored anything before--the event I've recalled a few times since then, though now I'm curry-friendly.

He and his boyfriend Chris, are actually the first gay male couple I know to be engaged. On top of this, they're the first gay couple I know that have gotten engaged and can actually legally marry. Now that's cool.

I suppose the only other additional things worth mentioning about the night was my being unaware that what I was drinking was champagne in addition to amaretto. I had thought I was drinking some sparkling water and amaretto mix, and by the time I realized that it was "all alcohol" I had already had enough for the affects to simply take hold of me. In my eyes I was the only one "really having fun" and even convinced Leila to sit on the kitchen floor with me and visit for awhile. I haven't talked to her sense, and maybe she didn't find it as agreeable as I did, but the floor-talk was jewel-like for me. I miss Leila...the central character who weaves the story of Eva and I together.

Besides all of this, the man-from-the-past, Nico, also casually mentioned that he thought web-blogs were completely ridiculous and online-journals a completely vain and arrogant effort. Now what was I supposed to say to that in the state I was in?

Let me just say this one thing in defense of my own journal now that I'm in a better state of mind:
1. This has been a nice experiment/project
2. It fills in my friends back in the states on what is happening, and no one has to read it, but if they're bored at work, it gives them something to read.
3. It's made me realize that sometimes when I do "nothing" I've actually done something.

Eva led the stumbling me home and we climbed into bed. We listened to the rain on our roof and wondered where the leak was in the neighboring house. If they didn't know yesterday, they sure will now.

IN THE NEWS:
Though most anyone who has spent any amount of time with us in our apartment already knows this song, I think it highly appropriate as the song of the day: The Bike, by Amy Correia. (right-click and save as or option-click on a mac)