But here I am.

Tonight was a going away party for one of my closest co-workers, and I always have some trouble going to sleep after these things. It never helps that I only got home at 00:30. The party (really a dinner) was quite nice. Good food, good conversation, and a lot of laughing.

Apparently, in the Netherlands, it's customary for the person going away to give as well as get gifts. My co-worker gave everyone a specifically chosen book that she signed with a personal note. There were 12 of us there, so it must have taken her quite a bit of time, but it was a lovely gesture. I got a book of aerial photos of the Netherlands to help us explore interesting things over the next few years. Fortunately, she's taken a job with a different part of the company, and I'll still get to work with her, but now she'll be the supplier to me instead of the other way around.

It's quite interesting to watch these events as a partial outsider, since I noticed that all of the "foreigners" seem to congregate to one side whenever we have these get togethers. I found myself standing with another American, a Canadian, a German and a French woman. Even though our native languages weren't the same, there we were all talking English as the rest of the room had their conversations in Dutch. We each found ourselves pulled into and out of the conversations floating around us, but, for the most part, we hung together as the non-Dutch speakers in the room. It's nice to have a little sub-community of this sort, but I long for the day (which may never come) when I can participate in the main flow of the room without making them change language to include me.

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I discovered some interesting things about the Netherlands lately. The first is that ice is just not available anywhere. As Americans, we forget that this could be, since every grocery, gas station and party store has ice available in big bags, usually costing less than $3 each. Here, one of my colleagues related a story where she found a place to sell her ice, but she had to meet them in some out of the way, dark alley where they opened a "hidden" door to a cooler full of frozen meat and bags of ice. She said it felt like she was buying drugs or something. Now, ice is not illegal here or anything, but people simply don't expect to have it, and so they don't.

The second is that Ikea does not allow mail order here in the Netherlands, so we have to go back into the store and place our order (and possibly pick up the stuff we want to have delivered, and bring it to the shipping area. That part isn't clear.) So, there's another weekend day shot in that outing.

The third thing is not so much about the Netherlands, as it is about my particular situation. My company has a tax service to prepare my taxes for me. In order to make sure everything is complete by the April deadlines, I need to submit to them all of the relevant information (in other words, I basically have to do my own taxes...) by the end of this week. However, I haven't gotten my tax form from the Netherlands yet. Now, I only got two weeks of pay here (and all of it was vacation) but I did get a big moving payment, and I'm sure that both the Dutch and US governments would love to get their hands on some of it. However, since payroll for the month of December was calculated before I started working, I wasn't paid through the "standard" channels, so I don't know that I will get a Dutch W-2 at all... Lovely...

Now I really do need to get to bed. The Russia trip is off, and I'm planning on taking Friday off as well, so hopefully, we can do something really fun with the kids this coming weekend. I was hoping to go skiing, but that may not be realistic, given that we don't have a car yet. I really need to fix that ASAP, but not right now. Right now, I need my sleep.

Today was, overall, a pretty good day.

I spent the day doing things I do well. I presented my work from the last few weeks to the management at the R&D site. There was more discussion than I anticipated, and some concerns were raised, but overall, it went really well. I do well in these situations, especially when I really know the source material.

I also led a workshop to solve a big problem we have for another part of our business. We came up with one really "out of the box" idea that everyone hated at first, but then gradually grew to love. By the end, we were all convinced that it was a crazy idea, but it just might work. Given that my Dutch colleagues tend to take a 'ja, maar' (yes, but..) attitude to things, it was nice to see them taking more of a 'yes, if...' position on this one. The workshop and its aftermath lasted until after the 5:42 train, so I ended up chatting briefly with a colleague from the US who I haven't caught up with in a while.

On the train ride home, I had (again) one of the cooler experiences I've had in the Netherlands. If the trains are on time, the train to Hilversum and the train to the Hague leave Amersfoort station at the same time. As you accelerate up to speed, the two tracks move very close together. One train moves slightly faster than the other, so if it's dark outside, you can see into all the cars of the other train and watch the passengers as they read, or sleep or talk. Then, a little further on, the tracks curve away from each other, and you get the impression of these floating lit boxes full of people drifting off on their separate ways through this dark sea. Eventually, you lose sight of the individual people and the trains become their own blurs in the night as they go their separate ways. It's hard to describe, but it's really quite a nice effect.

It was also Thursday night, which means that all the shops were still open when I got to Hilversum, so I grabbed some flowers for M as I passed a stand in the station. Flowers are incredibly cheap here. I got 10 red roses (not long stemmed, but hey) for €3. No special reason, just because they were there.

So that was all good, but now I'm up too late again, and I still don't know for sure about Moscow next week. I suspect it will not happen, since it's a four day turn around on the visas, so the soonest I could go now is Thursday, and I hope to take Friday off. I'll cancel my trip if the application isn't ready tomorrow morning. That will make my life somewhat easier, since I wasn't sure how I was going to finish submitting my taxes by next Friday anyway. Wish me luck in staying here.

This post will be a little rant just to get some things off my chest. Please don't take it as an indication of my opinion of the Netherlands or all Dutch people as individuals.

I've been getting pretty annoyed with the Dutch lately. I realize it isn't right to paint an entire country of people (all 16 million of them) with the same broad brush, but I've noticed a tendency over here that, frankly, surprises and annoys me so much that I have to write about it here.

The Dutch seem to love process. There is a process for everything in the company I work for, and there seems to be a process for every one and everything outside of my company as well. Process can be a good thing, since it can simplify the repetitive portions of people's jobs and can lead to more consistent results. That's not what bothers me. What bothers me is that people over here seem to love to hide behind the process. "I'm sorry, I can't help you, it's the process." "I know it doesn't make sense, but I have to follow the process." And 100,000,000 other statements like this one. Remember that blog I wrote about personal responsibility over here? Well, I'm beginning to rethink that.

So, what's set me off? First there was the secretary on Monday who didn't want to be responsible to help me because I wasn't assigned to her. Nevermind the fact that I report into her group, the reason I need the visa is to do work to support her boss, etc. Nope, can't help you, you aren't assigned to me and that would be against the process... Second, there are our repeated attempts to get M and the kids registered. No one can help us, we just have to follow the process. That wouldn't be so bad if anyone could actually show us (or tell us clearly) what the process is so we could anticipate a little bit. Third, there are innumerable cases of process thinking at work that are making it hard for me to do my job well, hard for us to succeed as a business, and hard for individuals to be rewarded for their innovation and hard work. It's a little bit funny that my company promotes people to positions of responsibility, but then makes so many processes that the responsible person isn't needed anymore. The whole thing could be done by machine, but the results would be shockingly mediocre. The only time you see glimmers of brilliance are when people are actively bucking the processes, but then they eventually get punished by the powers that be for not playing the good soldier.

When there aren't processes, there are policies. This is part of the "every one is equal" issue that I mentioned earlier. I just found out that in our new building, there will be "no offices." Now, that by itself doesn't bother me. I'm not enough into status to need an office to stroke my ego. On the other hand, every time the company has tried this policy, it lasts 1-2 months, then lots of offices get built because there are just some business conversations you don't want everyone in the company to be party to. But everyone must be equal, so no offices. Until there are some.

There are plenty of other cases of this in evidence. When I was in the US, moves from R&D to marketing or visa-versa were cautioned against because they required us to fight the bigger company to get them approved. Now I find out that such moves happen all the time over here without anyone blinking an eye. Hypocracy really annoys me, even though I'm as guilty of it as anyone.

It all makes me wonder how this country has managed to do as well for itself as it has over the centuries. Of course, that success is part of the reason they continue to do things the same way. It's worked for us before, why stop now. Maybe there's something to that... Hm...

Anyway, this too shall pass (my annoyance, that is). Not everyone over here is an unthinking drone. In fact, it seems to be more the case for people my age and older than for the younger generation. The 20-somethings seem to understand that thinking for themselves and only following the rules when they make sense is better than blindly following the 'program.' I suspect this will lead the Dutch to greater success in the future.

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Odd tidbit - There are NO microwave ovens available to me at work. In both locations, there are reasonably large 'canteens' where people eat lunch, but not a single microwave is available. The same is true for the kitchenettes in the office areas. The means that I can't really take leftovers that need to be heated up. And since I don't really have access to a refrigerator either, I'm not sure how so many of my co-workers manage to bring their own lunches. Maybe they're just eating cold cheese sandwiches or something.

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My visa application hasn't gone in yet, and since the turn around is 4 days, it looks like I won't be taking my flight to Moscow on Tuesday as planned. The problem is that you need a letter from your host in Russia 'inviting' you to come into the country. In this case, it's the research facility we're working with, and they haven't been on top of things. I guess it's even more complicated for me, since I need to get official approval from the Russian government (since I'm from the US) and so it may take even longer. On the other hand, some of my colleagues got their letters today, so maybe mine will come tomorrow and I'll be off to the frozen East next week anyway. Why haven't people learned to stop going to Moscow in the winter? Didn't Napoleon teach us anything?

I've been down the last few days. I'm fighting off the cold that the rest of the family has had, and I just finished up a big project, and I'm in the let down phase that always follows. The other problem is that there are still a million little things to do, and I don't seem to be able to get myself organized to do any of them. I feel torn between just getting started, and actually making the list that I'll need to make sure everything gets done in the end. That's got to change soon, since I need to turn in all of our tax information by the 29th and I will probably be in Moscow the end of next week.

We took a trip to Ikea yesterday. The kids enjoyed the bus, train, metro adventure as well as the hour they spent in the ball pit while we shopped for furniture. We didn't end up buying anything at the time, since there was no way for us to haul it home, but we got enough ideas to order things to be delivered. Something we have yet to do (one more thing for the list...)

While we were out, M pointed out the utter lack of drinking fountains or of water available at the soda machines in the Ikea restaurant. I hadn't noticed it before, but she's right. There are no drinking fountains at work either. I think drinking fountains are almost mandatory (and maybe literally) in the US, but people must get their liquid intake through coffee here. Oddly enough, I've read studies saying that US citizens are more often chronically dehydrated than people in other industrialized countries.

Today I had a secretary at work (not the one assigned to me) tell me she "didn't want to be responsible" for helping me get my application for a Russian visa submitted. If someone in the US was caught saying that, they might be immediately fired, but this seemed like something that those around her found frustrating, but not unusual or out of line. I know there are plenty of people in the US who avoid responsibility at all costs, but they aren't usually quite so direct about it.

I've started to pick up on little bits of Dutch conversation going on around me. If I know the context, I can usually guess the subject matter, and for things like the train announcements, I can get the gist from the words I know (tien minuten = ten minutes). I got word today that they've found us a Dutch teacher and that we can start our classes very soon. I'm looking forward to it. We only get 30 hours of training, but I'm tired of not being able to read all the signs, bills, etc. Even if I can only read, that will be a big leap forward, since speaking and understanding are something that can be worked around for the moment.

The older has been working on a school project for the past few days. They are having a job fair tomorrow at school, and he needs to come and represent a job of his choosing. He picked vet, and he spent the evening with his brother practicing treating the stuffed animals with his toy doctors equipment. He was making real sounding diagnoses and prescribing bed rest, special diets, etc. depending on the imaginary ills of that animal. It was neat to see their collective imaginations at work, since the Younger had to play his part by coming up with the reason he brought the animal in, and symptoms to be diagnosed.

Well, off to bed again. It's another long day tomorrow, full of trains and meetings and more trains. Hopefully I'll get my visa application submitted, but even so, there's a good chance the visa wont be back in time for the trip next week. That won't exactly break my heart (nor M's), but it's just an indication to me that the bureaucracy isn't over yet.

It has been an up and down week for me. When we got our stuff on Monday, I think we all expected to feel more at home and in control of our lives. Of course, that hasn't happened yet. The house is a bit of a mess, but improving through M's efforts. It's full of boxes and packing paper and missing several key electrical appliances (like a vacuum cleaner...), but we'll get there. Tomorrow we plan to trek to Ikea and place an order for delivery.

I did get a couple of very positive compliments on my work this week, but it feels a bit empty, since I don't yet feel like I'm living up to my standards. I suppose I never do, but that doesn't make me feel any better about it. The next several weeks (much as the past several weeks) will be busy and messy and such. I've realized that I need to schedule my time off for the rest of the year now, or meetings will be scheduled on top of my work and I'll never get my vacation.

As one friend pointed out, we should really be trading money for time and spend it playing tourist around Europe. He's right, and that means we should just buy a car and plan some trips. I'm not sure how we'll deal with dog and cat yet, but it's possible that the kids have friends at school who can help cover pet sitting. Not sure about that yet.

The boys rejected the idea of separate beds, so we'll probably buy a "platform" to put our mattress on. It will probably be futon frame like, but we'll see what Ikea has tomorrow.

Not much else to say, except that I want to be in bed before 1am, so I'd better hurry.

I'm very tired right now. There are several reasons for this, but the main two are that it is now almost 1am, and that I was awake this morning at 6am, since the furniture rental people were here to get their things at 7am.

We all got up really early and that seemed to work out fine for the most part. The boys took the opportunity to watch one of their favorite animated shows, The Backyardigans, in Dutch. Unfortunately, the Younger was not clear on the concept of a 30 minute TV show. They're both used to the DVDs where they can happily play 3 or 4 episodes, one after the other, so not being able to play more when the first show was over was very difficult that early in the morning.

The rental movers were very fast in packing up all of the rental furniture, but even so, when I left to take the kids to school, they weren't done and the truck with all of our stuff was just pulling up. M and I agreed that she should be the one to coordinate the unloading, and that seemed to work out pretty well. Now we have a house full of boxes, but the kitchen is unpacked (but not fully put away) and we're sleeping in our own beds. Well, mostly. The box springs for the boys' bed would not fit through the window or up the stairs, so it's currently in the garage. I suggested we have a bonfire this weekend, but I think we'll sell the whole bed on the Craig's list equivalent and buy two singles at Ikea. I think they're ready for their own beds and they'll probably sleep better that way anyway. Not sure what M thinks about that yet though.

I also went out to play games this evening, thus avoiding the bulk of the unpacking (a clever ploy!!!) There is a gaming group here in Hilversum that meets once a month in a local bookstore, and I was invited to join by someone I met on BoardGameGeek. I wasn't sure it was a good idea to go, but I forced myself into social mode and went anyway.

It was a lot of fun. There were about 7 other people there, and I played two games, Railroad Tycoon and Ticket to Ride, with the same two people. It was my first game of Railroad Tycoon, but I'd played Age of Steam before, and that's a very similar game. I ended up winning by an embarrassing margin, but my opponents were gracious and claimed to enjoy playing with me anyway. I also won Ticket to Ride, but I was behind most of the game and any of the three of us could have won with small changes to the circumstances.

Everyone was quite friendly, even though they mostly spoke Dutch during the evening. I think that will be helpful in the long run if I can keep going, since it was somewhat easy to follow conversations about the games. My only disappointment with the evening was that I got the impression that very young kids (like ours) might not be completely welcome. That would be a shame, but we may be able to work up to that going to one of their other game events at someone's house, or having a game night at ours.

Well, now it is very late, and my own bed is calling to me, so I'm off to sleep.

So here I am, only 10pm. The kids are in bed, and I have a chance to sit down and work up that list I mentioned in a recent post. Now, you'd think it would be a simple matter to just start writing down the things you know need to get done, right? Well, I am a master procrastinator. So my thought process goes something like this:

Hey, I should get that list started. I wonder how I should organize it?

I know, I need lots of categories. One for addresses to change, one for work stuff, etc. I can put it in a spreadsheet!

But wait, some of the things need more than one category. spreadsheets are bad at that... I need a database!!!

But wait, I don't know how to use the database program I have...

I know, I'll just have to learn it first!

Well, you get the idea. I just need to sit down and start the list, but here I've half convinced myself that I need to learn a whole new (and less than useful for me) skill before I can even start. The thing's I'll do to put off work.

Of course, this is nothing compared to what I would do in college. Where I went to school, the act of putting off work was 'flicking'. The things you would do to put of work were 'flicks'. I once went on a flick with some friends to watch the automatic toilets flush in a building across campus. Of course, I'm just an amateur compared so some people, but it's still pretty sad that I can't seem to put together this simple list, especially when you consider that the list itself is a way to put off starting the work. *sigh*

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Tomorrow morning at 7:30am, the furniture rental people will come and take away their stuff. At 8:00am, our container arrives and the movers start filling the house up again. It will be interesting to see what we have, what we need, what we'll miss and what will be extra. I'll take the kids to school in the morning so M can be here the whole time the movers are here. I figure some consistency will be a good thing, and she's going to have to do more living with the results than I will, so better her in charge.

I imagine there will be a lot of buying things going on over the next week when we find out that we don't have something vital. I hope we can challenge ourselves to reduce our quantity of stuff while were here, but I'm not sure we won't just fill up the attic and basement with extra things until we move them all back to the States.

Well, morning comes extra early tomorrow, so I'd better finish starting that list and get to bed.

The weather has been most excellent the past couple of days. Spring is in the air and some of the flowers are starting to bloom. I know there will be several more weeks of cold and rainy before spring is really here, but it's nice to have a few good days of weather.

My trip to the UK was uneventful. I made all of the connections and got to London Luton airport with only a little of my typical travel stress. I always get very nervous when I need to be somewhere at a particular time. If it's just going to visit friends or something casual, then it's no problem, but if it's catching a flight or showing up for a job interview, then I'm always anxious before I get there. Once I'm "in the system" then I relax again. Basically, I don't want to be responsible for being late, but if a flight or train is delayed, then I did everything I could and I don't worry about it.

The driver who picked me up wanted to chat. He told me his whole life story and I was barely able to get a word in edgewise. Apparently he played piano while he was at University in London. He was pretty proud of the fact that he'd made enough money to live a pleasant lifestyle while getting two degrees and graduating with no outstanding debts. He'd lived a very interesting life, actually, moving around quite a lot. He's now semi-retired and claimed that he's driving just to stay busy and meet interesting people. Ironically enough, he didn't seem that interested in actually knowing anything about me, so maybe he just likes being able to tell his story over and over.

I didn't get to see much of Cambridge. My hosts took me out to a very nice dinner then we stopped by the Eagle Pub for a pint. The Eagle is a supposedly famous pub where the RAF and US forces hung out during the war. There is a lot of war paraphernalia all over the place. We arrived just in time for last call (at 10:30), then I headed back to my hotel to get some sleep before the long day of meetings on Friday.

I had made the conscious decision to dress down a bit for our Friday of meetings, and initially it felt a bit awkward. Everyone I met was in full suit. I suppose that's the difference between US and UK business meetings. Initially I felt quite out of place, but then I realized that I was the guy with the money, so I could pretty much dress any way I wanted. I hope I didn't offend them too much, but the meetings all went well, so I don't think that was the case.

After the meetings, I took another car to Stansted Airport and had a very pleasant conversation with the driver about nothing in particular, but including UK history, the Dutch, and US vs. UK politics. I was at the airport hours before my flight, so I had dinner and generally hung out. It was nice to hear English spoken all around me, and it was disappointing that I didn't get to see more of the country while I was there. We'll definitely go back to visit and as soon as we get over this initial settling in period, I want to start planning trips.

While I was away, M got her bank card and got it activated, and also got a letter from the IND tell us what the next steps are. Apparently, she needs to go back to the town hall and get evidence of our official marriage certificate as well as documentation of who is living with her here. We have six weeks to get back to them or they'll make a decision based on the documents they have. I'm not sure what that means, but it sounds like we'd better give them more information 'or else...'

Today we went shopping for cables. We got a power strip and power cords for all of our computer equipment coming on Monday. We also got a set of computer speakers and a toaster, since we didn't think we could last a day without one. I've arranged to get some other things through work, but we may live low on electronics for a while.

We still have a lot of things to do to settle in, but I've found it hard to get any personal traction on that lately. I haven't even been able to really put together a decent list of what to work on. Whenever I have a free moment, I prefer to be playing computer games, or surfing the net, or something other than being productive. I think part of the problem is that work has been really busy lately, so I want the time to goof off, but I really need to buckle down and just make the list. Nothing that's left to do is really that hard. There's a bunch of calling companies in the US and a little bit of changing addresses, and some amount of filling in forms or ordering things online. Most of this can be done from the comfort of our couch, but it takes some time a bit of planning to make it happen, and that planning isn't getting done.

I'm also eating more than I should and exercising, drinking water and sleeping less than I should. None of that really helps my overall sense of health and wellbeing, but even so, I'm pretty happy at the moment. I guess I'm learning to let things go a little bit, since, at times, I don't have a choice. For example, if I have a technical problem with pretty much anything, I can't call after hours, since everything is closed then. I just have to wait until the morning to make the call.

I hope I can clean up some things over the next week or so. Having all of our stuff will both help and hurt, since there will be a bit of unpacking and sorting out and buying and probably reducing to be done before we have a fully functional household again, but at least we'll have a desk we can work at and our own bed and comfortable couches, and all of our kitchen things. We'll even have our bikes so we can all take rides into the woods on the weekends, but there's a small hill to climb before we're that organized again, so I guess I'd better put on my boots and get climbing.

So I finished playing Half Life last week, and I started on Half Life 2 this week. Needless to say, that has put a damper on my sleep schedule, and I'm paying the price right now. No playing tonight, but I still need to pack for London.

Tomorrow will be a very tiring day. First, I get up early, buy a new monthly pass and head off to the R&D site. I stay there until my meeting finished up around 2pm, then I catch the train to the airport (~2 trip) then I fly to London, get picked up by a cab and driven to Cambridge where I will meet my hosts for dinner. The next day, I get to visit their facility and see what it is they do for us. Should be a good trip, but I suspect I'll need to sleep in on Saturday, a luxury I probably won't get.

Our things come on Monday, which is good. However, all of our rental stuff also goes away on Monday, which, in some senses, is bad. We need those things out to fit our things in, but that will require unpacking all of the dressers and managing without things like an iron, a tv, lamps, etc. until we manage to buy ourselves replacements. We're making a prioritized list of what we absolutely need to get this weekend. A toaster seems to be the top of the list, followed closely by a vacuum.

M and the kids went to the IND today and got some kind of sticker in their passports that makes them legitimate for the next six months. Apparently the process isn't over, since they will all end up with the same type of permit that I have, except none of them will be allowed to work here. M can get her status changed (the kids are too young to work legally) but it would be a pain in the butt. She has no intention of working while here, preferring to volunteer and work on her writing, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Not much else to say tonight, and I need to get my sleep. I'm overdue for a post on my observations of the cultural differences and how we're doing adjusting, but that can wait for Saturday as well.

As most of you know, yesterday was the most important of holidays - Ground Hog's Day. We would normally celebrate this by eating hamburgers (It's not ground ham, it's...) but instead, we traveled to the far south of the Netherlands.

Now, keep in mind that the Netherlands is a somewhat small country, so the far south is an hour and 45 minutes away by train. We live in the center, so that implies (correctly) that you could travel from one end of the country to the other in something like 3 hours if you managed to make all of the right train connections.

As I mentioned in our last post, we'd planned to go to the bank before our trip, and so we did. Things went very smoothly this time, with M being added to my account by simply showing our passports and signing the applications. She should have her own bank card by the end of the week, which is a good thing, since I'll be out of the country on Thursday and Friday. If she runs out of cash then, she'll have to pull from our US account, and now is not the time to be converting dollars to Euro.

The boys weren't sure they'd been on a train before, and M and I tried to remember if they had or not. I'm pretty sure the older was at some time when we visited friends in the Chicago area, but I can't actually be sure. They both enjoyed it quite a bit. They especially like the way you didn't have to be buckled in like in a car or on a plane. I also got a chance to show everyone how to buy tickets and read the schedules, so M should be able to navigate the train system at least a little bit now. She'll need to go to the neighboring town of Bussum on the 14th for the Older's dentist appointment, so it's good to have some practice under her belt.

We hadn't realized it, but Saturday was Carnival in the south of the Netherlands. In Hilversum, we had no idea anything was unusual about the weekend, but by the time the train got to Utrecht, we started to notice people dressed in funny costumes and consuming way too much beer. For those non-Catholics among us, this is the big celebration just before the start of Lent. Historically, the Netherlands was split between the Germanic Protestants in the North and the more French Catholics in the South. You can still see this clearly from the types of churches and the celebration (or lack thereof) of Carnival.

By the time we got to Roremond, most of the rest of the people on the train were dressed for the event. I guess people from the North who want an excuse to party, just jump a train to the South. It was amusing to watch from afar, but we didn't actually wander the (packed and crazy) streets or dance to the bands on the major street corners. Our friend picked us up at the station and took us back to his place where we had fruit tarts and coffee before heading off to dinner.

These are the same friends I visited back in November. I would have loved for us to be hosting them to return that favor, but with only six forks and eight plates in the house, it would have been tough. Our things are due on the 11th (if I've mentioned that before, I'm sorry. It's a bit of a watershed date for us...), and we'll plan to have them up here toward the end of the month if everything goes well.

We had a lovely time (again) and the kids enjoyed playing at a very large playground before dinner. Dinner was a 'Chinese' buffet with a combination of various Asian dishes from sushi to dim sum to spicy noodle dishes. It was a lot easier than trying to cook something the kids and adults would both enjoy and it let us all sit and talk for a long time. Their son will be one on Thursday, and he's just started to take his first steps. He's clearly going to be a bundle of fun in the near future.

On the way back to the train station, we saw a guy in a chicken suit lying on the sidewalk. His friends were gathered around and I imagine they were discussing the inevitable "what do we do with him now" question. "Well he's too big to carry - but we can't leave him here..." I'm sure the police (who were out in force) were by a few minutes after we were to help sort it all out. As I said, we didn't wander around in the middle of it, but it looked like it was mostly harmless fun without the violence that you might expect with so much drinking involved.

We had another (mostly) lazy Sunday today. M cut all of our hair, then we took the dog and the kids out to a nearby playground. They ran around with the Younger hurting himself on the swings twice and almost running in front of the swings another time. I think he's forgotten the rules of playgrounds, so we'll have to go more often.

While we were there, I talked to a couple with a three year old. He was from the UK, but has been in the Netherlands for nine years now, and she was Dutch. We didn't interact enough to exchange phone numbers, but it was nice to chat briefly, and I hope we see them there again. It would be nice to have a few friends outside of work and school.

Tomorrow, it's back to work for me. The electrician is also coming to make it possible to wash and dry at the same time. I'm glad the landlord decided to spend the money for this upgrade. It was going to be a long three years if we'd had to do all of our laundry in serial. I'll probably work from home in the morning until M gets back from dropping the kids at school. That way, someone will be here while he's here to answer questions and generally keep an eye on the place.

These next two weeks at work are going to be a bit crazy. I have to get my planning done for the year, but once it's complete and I have everyone bought into it, then my job should get a lot easier. I don't have much work left to do on my part of it, but then there's a lot of talking it over, adjusting it slightly, talking it over again work that needs to get done before the end of the month. I'm looking forward to getting through this, since then the plan will be fully mine instead of the current, inherited thing which is simply too ambitious for anyone to do. On that note, I'd better get to bed so I can be on top of my game in the morning.

I have nothing much to say here, but I feel like I should say something, so please don't expect scintillating insights.

Here's a few things of (small) note that have happened lately:

I've started eating more again. I think I'm adjusting to more exercise and M keeps the house stocked with cookies better than I used to. On the other hand, I ate a lot of cookies while I was here by myself as well, so it isn't just that. Mostly I've done a good job of finding the hidden candy machines. A habit I need to quit.

I've started understanding a few Dutch conversations around me. It's a very weird experience, since I haven't had any classes yet, so I don't think I'm learning except by repeated exposure. Work conversations are easier, since they can be very technical (and many technical words are close enough to understand) and they are about topics I understand. I haven't successfully understood a conversation on the train, so I'm not there yet.

M's bank card hasn't shown up yet. At this point, we assume it's not coming, so we'll go to the bank first thing tomorrow morning. Fortunately, first thing means no earlier than 10 am, since that's when the bank opens.

We're taking a long train ride tomorrow to visit our friends in the south. The kids and M haven't been on the train yet, so it will be a chance to show them how the system works. The kids love trains anyway, but I suspect they'll get a bit passe by the time we move back to the US.

Speaking of the kids, they were both a bit sad tonight. The younger said he wanted to fly back to the US and that he didn't like it here. I suspect it was mostly being tired, but he expressed some concern about being able to adjust back to the US. M assures me he was referring to the big time change, which was pretty hard for both of them coming over here.

I'm flying to London on Thursday next week, spending the day listening to customers, then taking the train to Cambridge for dinner and a visit to a supplier on Friday. It's a short trip, but I hope to get a feel for London and see how interested I'd be in coming back with the family for a longer visit.

I had a long talk on the train with a Chinese colleague. She's been struggling with the systems here as we have. Her family came over recently (she's been here almost a year already) and they're still adjusting to the new lifestyle. She'd like to eventually go back to China, but she's not sure how her son will manage adjusting back, since she believes that school and work are much more competitive over there than over here. She also said that the education system is very different, with the Chinese digging deeply on a few subjects like science and math and the Dutch more broadly exploring learning in general and how to apply the things you learn.

I'm just starting the process of looking for a car. So far, that's consisted of noticing other people's cars, especially when I get to ride in them. Today, I rode in a VW Golf. M had a Golf when we first got married, but this was much bigger and nicer than that one. I'm not sure if that's just the US vs. European difference, or if the Golf has grown since then, but this looked like it had lots of room for kids and dog and luggage. Worth considering.

Not much else to tell. Wish us luck tomorrow at the bank and Wednesday at the IND and the next Monday with our shipment arriving. I keep being overly optimistic about the next hurdle being the last big one. Every hurdle seems equally hard to jump when you're directly confronting it.

Oh, the sleep experiment... Well... Here are the going to bed times for the last week:

Mon - 11
Tue - 12
Wed - 12
Thu - 1
Fri - 2 (so far.)

So, I failed to follow the test protocol and we can't draw any conclusions from this except that if I stay up until 1, I am not likely to catch the 6:57 train the next morning.

Better get to bed now before it gets later!!