This is most definitely summer. It reminds me a lot of the summer days we had in the Midwest when I was growing up. It is about 85 degrees and very humid. We have been having hard rain with thunderstorms in the late afternoon and early evenings. It's hard to sleep because it doesn't cool off, but by morning, it's cool and fresh.

The rain yesterday was so hard, it overwhelmed some of the drain systems and we had a river running down our street for a while. We have some windows that have the hinges at the top and open outward and the rain and wind was so strong we had to close even those to keep the water from coming in. M went out and stood in it and watched the water flow across the street and vanish into the rain. Thunder and lightning were all around. As suddenly as it had started, it ended and the sun came back out.

Before the rain, we spent the day running errands and doing yard work. The owner of our house is coming by for a visit so we tidied and mowed and generally tried to get the house presentable for him. I'm not too worried about it, since we are, overall, good tenants. He just wants to meet us and put faces to the names and make sure we're happy living here. It sounds like (from our neighbors) that this place has had a series of tenants lasing about six months. That must be frustrating, both for the owner and for the neighbors. We hope to be here a little longer than that.

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We haven't really settled back into our life here yet. Not too surprising, since this is the first weekend that M and the kids have been back. I seem to have found some kind of odd balance at work where I'm accepting that a bunch of things aren't getting done, but somehow, no one seems to mind or notice. I'm still being productive, and important projects are moving forward, but I'm struggling to ignore the call of my laptop. On the other hand, I was home at more reasonable times this week, and I hope to carry that forward from here on out. It would be good for me to worry less in general, and if that's the only thing I come back from the Netherlands having learned, then it will have been worth the trip.

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M and I are starting to discuss how to plan our weekends. We have a long list of people to see, and I'd like to plot out (roughly) our holiday plans for the next two and a half years. I get five weeks of vacation a year, and we've taken roughly three of those so far this year which means we have something like 12 weeks left to use while we're here. That doesn't include the occasional "bank holiday" or longer weekend, but there are surprisingly few of those here. When you start to break that up into one or two week chunks and start to think about all the places we could/would visit, it isn't very much, really. We may need to negotiate a month or so off at the end of this adventure to spend driving around Europe and seeing the last few things we want to see.

That said, our list of places we definitely want to go is not so long, really. So far, we've already planned a week in Nice at the end of August and we've talked tentatively about a week cruise along the Scandinavian coast, a week in Northern Italy, a week in Rome and Southern Italy, and visits (at least) to Berlin, Scotland and back to Paris. There's still room for a few more trips, but we haven't really decided how far East or West we'd like to go while we're here.

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I'm definitely learning more Dutch. I can read most basic sentences now, and I can follow casual conversations that aren't too complicated. Still, I catch myself pretending to understand more than I do. That probably isn't good for really learning the language, and it leads to some slightly embarrassing moments where I have to explain that I really didn't catch that last bit I nodded to. I think I do it to avoid the complication of explaining that my Dutch isn't so good, but people find out eventually anyway, so I should just get it over with up front. I really need to learn the phrase "I'm sorry, but would you mind if we spoke English." I just haven't taken the time to learn that one yet.

I'm (again) considering buying Rosetta Stone, which I've read some really good things about. There are still two things holding me back. The full version is $400 (including shipping) and I'm not sure when/how I would get to use it. The best would be on the train, but my work laptop lacks an internal CD drive and the program has voice recognition, so I'd need to be talking to it. Not the most comfortable thing to be doing in public, but, again, I should just get over it. The Dutch seem willing to let you do whatever you want as long as you aren't disturbing them, so while I may get shushed for using my cell phone in the no-cell phone car (something I generally avoid), I doubt anyone would say anything if I was quietly speaking Dutch in the back of the train.

You'd think by now I'd be over this uncomfortable feeling of sticking out. After all, I wear my bike helmet every day, I speak with what can only be an American accent, and I'm rude (by Dutch standard) by not bluntly asking for what I want. I clearly don't and won't fit, so I should stop fighting it. Funny how social pressure works, even when it's not actively applied to you. The Dutch, generally, don't care much if someone sticks out, although they don't like to stick out themselves. My uncomfortable feelings are my own, and I need to start letting them go. Easier said than done. I do wonder if I will be considered rudely blunt by the time I come back to the US. We'll see I guess.

It feels like a lot has happened since the last time I really posted. That may have something to do with 9 time zones and a whole other country between then and now.

Our trip to the US was wonderful. It was good to see friends and good to rest and recover. M and the kids are still there until Tuesday, but to be honest, I was ready to come back. I didn't see as much of everyone as I wanted to, and we skipped my family entirely this trip, so we'll have to go there next trip back, but I was looking forward to getting back to our daily life.

The trip back was uneventful. Customs didn't look at me twice. My plane landed just after 10 and I was home by 11:30. The letter to let me pick up my NL driver's license hadn't arrived yet, so I broke the law a little bit by going to get the pets anyway, but I kept to the speed limit and had no problems.

I've been fighting jet-lag for the last week. I don't do a good job of going to bed when M's not around. I don't know if I'm subconsciously trying to recover my bachelor days of staying up late watching TV, but it wasn't that much fun then, and it just makes me tired the next day.

Work is going well so far. I'm letting my self feel a little bit behind without freaking out about it. I spent a lot of time back in the US talking with my Dutch colleagues over there. They pointed out that for the Dutch, almost everything is a negotiation. When someone tells you they need something by Friday, that's just the first bid. Of course, these are generalities, but some of them play out a bit.

Anyway, there's still lots to do, but it's all moving forward at a reasonable pace. I finished moving my to-do lists fully over to the little black notebook and it feels much better to have everything in one place. I've also started moving my address and e-mail files over to Google Mail so that I can have access to them anywhere I have access to a computer.

I'm trying make sure I get a few things done before M comes back. I've already cleaned up the downstairs (although, with two pets, I to vacuum again.) I'm going to try to fix the leg of the kitchen table that was broken when our things were moved. Since I have the table upside down, I'm taking the opportunity to put some latches on the table leaves to try to keep them from sliding apart, as they have been for the last 13 years or so.

On Tuesday, both the letter to let me pick up my Dutch driver's license and my renewed US license arrived in the mail. I picked up my Dutch license on Friday, so I'm legal now. Of course I haven't used it less (gas prices are higher here too) but I'll at least be legal when I go to pick up M on Tuesday.

We have some friends coming to Nice (in southern France) for a conference at the end of August. We're planning on joining them there and I managed to make the final arrangements for the trip today. We'll go down a few days early and spend our time in the city itself (and maybe on the beaches) until our friends arrive. Then we'll head a little bit north into the mountains. There's a big park up there where we can hike and generally get away from it all. We'll be renting out an entire bed and breakfast between the two families, so it should be a great time.

I'm going to start making notes in the little black book about topics for blogging. I remember thinking about lots of other topics to blog about, but I can't remember any of them at this point.

Well, time for dinner, then I'm going online with a friend to play some games. He needs to do chores later today, so we won't stay up that late. Tomorrow is the day to tidy and get ready for M to return. I'm really looking forward to picking them up on Tuesday. It will be good to start making the changes we've talked about.

but too tired to post a decent blog entry. Suffice it to say that I have landed safely and recovered the pets. The house didn't burn down or get looted while we were out. Now to sleep (hopefully!!!)

We're currently back in the US and I'm a little tardy with posting, since we've been busy getting ourselves back over here. Lots to think about as we compare and contrast our home country with our adopted one.

The last week of work before vacation went surprisingly well. I took the opportunity to focus on what needed to get done before the two week break and I felt like I'd done a really good job of dropping a lot of needless stuff to really move ahead the important projects. I got a phone call yesterday morning (Thursday) that put that a bit off kilter. Seems like some things weren't wrapped as tightly as I'd thought and my boss had to step in to clean up a bit of a mess. Not much I can do about it at this point, but it tainted the day yesterday at least. I need to work on letting this sort of thing drop away instead of carrying it around for over a day. When I was meditating more regularly, it was easier to do. Maybe I need to get back into the habit.

Our trip was uneventful. M and the kids didn't sleep at all on the flight and I only got about a hour, but we've all recovered fairly well. We all find ourselves wanting mid-afternoon naps, but that may be more due to our unscheduled days than anything else at this point.

I've been running twice since we came back. I need to go again this afternoon/evening, but I haven't been that motivated. There's a nice little three mile loop around a lake up here that's both familiar and scenic. It's good to get out and run again. I need to make that a habit too. No problem, just sleep, eating less, exercise and meditation. If I can do those four things well... Ok, maybe one at a time is a better idea. I'm still sticking with sleep first and foremost.

Speaking of which, I'm getting plenty while we're here. There have been no really late nights and all followed by sleeping in well. The sleep challenge seems to have fallen off the rails for the moment, but this is probably something I need to self motivate on anyway.

Otherwise, the trip has been a lot of fun so far. We've seen most of our friends here at least once already, and there's a big game night planned for tomorrow where we should see them all together including a few we haven't seen yet.

In our spare time, we've been shopping quite a bit. We all need clothes, shoes and various electronic widgets, all of which are cheaper and more available here. M already grocery shopped at 2 am on our first night here, something that's not really possible in the Netherlands. We have to admit we've been reveling in our ability to buy what we want when we want it. It's a silly thing, but it's really nice.

I've also been taking the time to shape up my organizational systems. I redid my notebook, and I think it will be a big improvement. I'll try to post the changes I made in a later blog, maybe with some pictures. Ironically enough, I'm pretty much set on getting myself an iPhone when we get back to the NL. The deals over there are much better than here, but it will make the little back notebook obsolete. Oh well. I'm not sure about the iPhone yet anyway. We'll see how things develop.

Tonight's the fourth, so that of course means grilling and fireworks. We'll all stay here and watch them over the lake. Then maybe we can get the kids off to bed and have time to chat with our friends before we fall asleep as well. These celebrations aren't a much fun as when we were younger, but I still enjoy them a lot.

Next week, we've got more shopping and seeing friends. We've already renewed our licenses, but we don't know where they will get sent (if anywhere.) If we're lucky, they'll show up in the NL. If not, we might have a problem getting M a license. We'll try to call before we leave the country to make sure everything is ok.

One last point. M and I are focusing on changes to make when we go back. I'm going to make the commitment to be home from work earlier, even if that means opening the computer after the kids are in bed. I think I can make myself more efficient if I can stay focused on the important things and let the small things go. It might not endear me with some people, but at the end of the day, my boss would much rather discuss the big initiatives I've successfully driven than the multiple spread sheets I've filled out so someone else can measure us in yet another way. I'll post more on our changes as we finalize things.

Happy 4th to everyone.