March 09, 2003 : censored sundays

In Brief:
- Eva and I spent a lazy morning having breakfast with consisted of the day-old dough for two bake-it-yourself croissants, scones for Eva (I still don't pronounce it right: skohn...or something like that), yogurt, and coffee/tea.

- Today our scooter decided to start like a charm. It was a welcome surprise, but one we didn't plan on receiving. Just yesterday we were thinking that we were going to have to take it back, and then today it seems to work fine. There are still some jolting issues (like the fuel isn't getting to the appropriate place in a consistent manner) but other than that, it's great to have it back and it rides great! (Will the now minor strange scooter faults work themselves out in the end?)

- Since the day was pretty nice, and we had to run a couple of errands, we went off to enjoy afternoon joy-ride on scooter. We passed one of the local soccer club stadiums and have come to the conclusion that we've got to go someday.

- We made our way to the open-on-sundays grocery store and bought celebratory champagne (this is why the entry is considered censored part, and please note that it has nothing to do with us or our future. It is, however, a really great story.) The place is absolutely packed and no one seems to care that the prices are 20cent inflated, but seem to just happy that the place exists in an area with decent amounts of parking and of course the fact that it's open.

- Having no reason to hurry home, we took a leisurely drive back through Berchem, stopping for gas on the way. We can't help but look at the gas-take lid without thinking that some guy peed in our tank!

- On the way home, we noticed that a huge open grassy lot on Mechelensteenweg (it should have been a park all along) is apparently going to be a construction site. It's sad. It's even got a nice sized tree.

- Also, we notice some ugly purple graffiti on the side of the Konick brewery. If you're going to do ugly graffiti, do it on an ugly building. I'm sort of torn on the graffiti issue, not really, I suppose it would be best if it never happened. But then again, if an ugly concrete wall somewhere is blank, they why not allow people to make something interesting on it. (interesting not meaning the pointless tag-like scribbles scrawled in purple.) For instance, I like the animal farm all-out drawings (of animals no less) and the fact that it's name is somewhat political in nature, but why they have to put A.F. on the side of people's houses as if they are a dog peeing on the lamppost or something, well that doesn't seem that cool to me.

- We got home, and patted the green scooter and lavished it with kind words. (I learned from my Geo Metro that this is the way to treat machines, they like the attention) I also noticed an additional keyhole on the neck of the scooter. Sure enough, the starter-key fits and after playing with it for a minute or two, I realized that we can lock the front wheel of the scooter in a complete obnoxiously angle that makes it nearly thief-proof! What a find!

- We took showers, and headed to the movie-place to drop off Hedwig and stop by at Eva's brothers' apartment. (the celebratory champagne has nothing to do with them either)

- We celebrated for awhile and then watched the final episode of Mol. (the mole) Joris and Jasper have two channels, and so the variety of having two channels in color, well, it makes Eva and I a bit jealous.

- Eva and I buy frijtes because we're all upset-tummied from all of the sugar that we ate in the afternoon and the fact that we're not used to it. Consequently, I ordered all of our fries in Dutch and promised the De Witte and Zwarte that we'd be there next week as well. (Nichole and Jennifer should be arriving next Sunday...and should be ready for a hearty meal of fries or Grillhouse at evening-time.)

- We headed home, watched a little TV while we ate our fries and settled down on the Magneet. Eva wasn't feeling so well, though after fries and 3 cups of stomach-settling herbal tea, she felt a lot better.

- When we got ready for bed, I came up with another "learn Dutch the fast and easy way" plan, and so we took one "action word" and I learned the now, past, and future tense of it all in relation to personal pronouns.

The word: nemen which means "to take" and in reference to "Manny" my teddybear.
Nu (now):
ik neem de beer.
je neemt de beer.
hij neemt de beer.
wij nemen de beer.

gisteren (yesterday):
Gisteren nam ik de beer.
Ik nam gisteren de beer.
ik nam de beer gisteren?

Gisteren namen wij de beer.
Wij namen gisteren de beer.
Wij namen de beer gisteren?

Morgen (tomorrow):
Ik zal de beer nemen.
Zal ik morgen de beer nemen?
Jij zult de beer namen.
Zal jij morgen de beer nemen?
Wij zullen de beer namen
Zullen wij morgen de beer namen?

So if every night I could practice so hard for those 15 minutes, it'd do me a world of good.

IN THE NEWS:
Convicted killer Delma Banks could become a historical footnote Wednesday, when he is scheduled to die in what would be Texas' 300th execution since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982. So far this year, Texas has put nine men to death, setting the state on a pace to break its one-year record of 40 executions, in 2000. Last year, 33 inmates died by lethal injection.