July 08, 2003 : not another one!
By now we really just laugh. After yesterday's escapades we were set to have a good day today, right? We did end up having a nice day together, but Eva and I, yet again, had our share of woes and non-woes.
On the non-woe side, we did our taxes and it looks like we'll get a bit back instead of having to pay! (a big bonus!) Also on the plus side, we grabbed the cd-burning Joris from our own house and drug him down to the defunct Opel and Eva and Joris pushed it all the way down one street, down another, and to a perfect position for jump-starting. I reread online information for "sure thing" jump starting just to build confidence, and I maneuvered the camper-van beside the Opel in the abandoned parking-lot and jump-started it first thing. Yay!
I suppose it was actually a day of more betters than worses. To keep the car all charged up, we drove around town, spotted the ijses van with the fresh strawberry and ice-cream delight, and pulled in for the treat. What a treat it was! As part of the "zomer van Antwerpen" a carousel was parked in a corner by the park and it was literally packed with Jewish mothers and their hordes of children, and children in general. We took our ice-cream and headed to a bench to spoonfuls and kid-watching.
The carousel was amazing. It wasn't the ordinary horse and carriage type, it was all sorts of whimsical mechanical creatures with each creature having some sort of mechanism that was triggered by the child. Round and round they went, with some of them just figuring out the mechanism round about the time the ride was finished. It was a treat. (not to mention, a delicious ice-cream!)
On to town where we bought Leila a birthday gift from MediaMarkt and did some Sun Wah Asian food shopping. (more tasty Thai ramen noodles--which happen to still be the best fast-food one can possible find and prepare for only 40 Euro cent)
Back at the apartment, we packed up the Opel with scooter oil and Jerry Can and headed to Broechem to see if our scooter will live on to see more rides in Antwerp. We stopped at a gas station to buy one liter of petrol for the scooter, and after I filled 'er up, my first roll of the car made me say to myself, "oh jeez, I think we have a flat tire." One additional role of the tire made me get out and exclaim, "Oh jeez, Eva, we have a flat tire!!!!!"
We pushed it to a side location and set in to mending the tire. Thank goodness it has a full-sized spare and a new one at that! We laughed while changing the nuts and bolts and took all of the kind helpful hints that passerbys offered. (the jack was a bit different then the ones I am used to from back in the states) 20 minutes later we were fixing the scooter up for a test-ride.
Well we aren't yet certain of the scooters ability, but we remain hopeful. It wants to run, only it chokes a bit when you give it too much gas. Will it work on the streets of Antwerp? My guess is "maybe" and we're soon to find out as we hope to return it to it's nearly-native streets in the coming days.
We went into the house, passed by the anonymous note on the door (a reminder only to those parties involved as to recall the facts of this particular days-of-our-lives to mind) and went up stairs to watch cable tv. (a treat in and of itself) We decided to go and grab fritjes, return to the tv, and settle in for a night of moving images in color. (funny how we only watched one station the entire evening)
We headed out for fritjes only to find that every frituur in a 10 km radius was closed, so we went all the way to Lier for our dinner. We returned for the rest of a made-for-tv-low-budget-film set in Missouri, of all places, and then returned to Antwerp.
As I sit and type this, Eva has gone over to Leila's to give her the birthday present, and I sit here waiting for her return. When out in Broechem this evening, we vowed that we MUST make time for a small vacation (no Italy or Spain) but just some time to relax...a bit of camping, mosquitoes (we have enough in our apartment to last us the rest of our lives) and down-time.
I truly thing we deserve some down-time...and tomorrow we've added second-hand-tire to our to-do list, among others that occupied our list today but happened to get moved to tomorrow.
IN THE NEWS:
I was reading some sort of news-blurb today when I noticed the following at the bottom of the article: MSNBC is a partnership of the NBC unit of General Electric Co. and Microsoft Corp. Is it just me, or does this somehow fit into the mega-media conglomerate concept?
