Educational Mainwaring

I couldn't quite put my finger on it all week, but while watching a Best of Dad's Army DVD it finally dawned on me.
One of my professors (and I'm not naming names) has an uncanny resemblance to Captain Mainwaring of Dad's Army fame.
They might be related. I think we should be told.

Room Makeover Day 2

This is day two of the makeover. All isolation plates are in place now, those around the window had yet to be fixed. And the first round of plastering the seams has been done! \o/



Mouser was in all states and darted out of the house the minute the front door opened.

Room Makeover Day 1

This is Day 1 of Room Makeover part 2. Work has gone very well today. Here are some before and after pictures.



The wooden and stone plinths have been removed, the radiator has been removed, new places for electric sockets have been made. The remnants of shoddy building work from previous owners has been laid bare. The walls with isolation have been put into place.
Quite enough for one day!



What a difference already. The room is a little smaller due to the thickness of isolation, but when the white coats of paint will be on, it will look very different.
But, hopefully next week, it will be goodbye to that hideous decoration of the walls.

I don't know what kind of house-hobby-idea rock that pattern crawled underneath from, but it will be cast into oblivion very soon! It's some kind of horrific 90's sponge technique. Yes, it is that horrible shade of orange, there is nothing wrong with your computer monitor.

Mouser steered well clear of all the noise by hiding under couches today. But at the end of the day Kitteh surveyed the building site as a genuine feline health and safety inspector (minus hard had, hi-vis jacket and steel-nosed boots). That curious cat did manage to walk out of the room with dusty paws. Have to be on the look out when the painting starts. One little accident and we could have trouble with Pépé Le Pew.

Finally

Mouser's bed-in protest seems to have worked.
We have something resembling a government.
Radio presenter Koen Fillet finally got to shave his beard after 320+ days.
Dr Livingstone said he'll not shave until this new government throws in the towel.
Or, I guess the price of razor blades drops dramatically.

Out of the door, line on the left, one cross each.

Mouser's bed-in protest seems to have speeded up the negotiations, the formateur announced they had reached an agreement on the budget up till 2014.
Eerily enough, the press photo's show a vaguely familiar scene.
I seem to remember someone sitting in the middle being crucified a short while later.

Bed-in protest for quick Belgian government formation

Bedroom eyes. My bed has eyes. Pretty scary ones too.
Oh wait. It's not monsters. It's just Mouser having a little bed-in protest for a quick government formation. We are currently 531 days without one after june 2010's elections. I think we have broken all intergalactic records by now.

The White Room

Yes! The room is completely white now. But just not quite white enough. I think I should add another layer just to have it absolutely right. Light was failing before I could see it dried out. I do not want a hint of pink shimmering through!
And I have to paint the door too... But I need to buy another kind of paint first. And lift the door out of its hinges. And then sand the door down. It's an oak door, and extremely heavy. My guess is it weighs almost as much as myself...

Polly Filler

No time to waste yesterday (I sound like an 80's Greenpeace slogan). I hurried back home to finish up filling up some holes in the wall. We're redecorating our former bedroom. This will now become an office and those hideous pinkish colours just have to go.
Unfortionatly Dr Livingstone put pollyfilla on some silicone leftovers and I can't fix it. There are bulges as huge as Mount Everest and I can't overlook them now I know they're there.
We put the fugly wardrobe on the internet and two Belgo-Turkish Copts came and dismantled it for us for free. Dr Livingstone heard them speak, he asked in is usual tacktful way: "What kind weird language are you two speaking?". The answer there came 'Hebrew mixed with a local Flemish accent.'
Apparently there is no Hebrew word for 'upper overlay'. You learn something new everyday.

Today is D-Day. The silicone is going around the edges of the ceiling, tiles and door and then the first lick of paint will be put on.
It is going to be an all-white office, with a simple cupboard with sliding glass doors. The same kind we've got in the livingroom.
Hope it'll be finished next week.

For your entertainment I've put up some 'before' and 'after' pictures of the wall where the brownish wardrobe was standing.
And also a picture of the very dubious shades of pink that are currently on the walls and screaming out loud to be covered with a nice and safe colour of pristine white.

Small book gems

I managed to contain myself and put most of the books back I had picked up.
I walked away with just two!
One of the books is a guide to the South Kensington Museum. It is a catalog printed in 1897 and sold in the museum in that same and the following year.
It is in pristine condition and lardered with funny ads, nice crisp ground floor plans of the Science and Art museums. A true gem at only 3€.

And then another surprise as I unearthed a catalogue of the Salon d'Anvers of 1855. I worked on the Salon on 1843, I bought this as a little memento. It feels like I stole it from the archive and now treasure it like some art thief who steals for pleasure.
A stamp on the inside does tell me it once belonged to the collection of the Antwerp city library. I should wrap it in some protective paper, the back is half torn and it is an annoted page. This rare thing set me back just 10€, so I stayed below the 20€ threshold I had agreed with myself.
And I managed to save on a train fare this morning, as the conductor failed to show up. So I have permitted myself to spend an extra 3,90 + 7€, if I have some more time to spend idle amongst volumes of knowlegde.

The Irony Elephants are back

I was trying to remember the title of the Agatha Christie novel I am currently reading. It has the word 'elephants' in the title.
So my memory come up with 'Elephants never forget'.
A good title by any standards, but not a novel by written by Agatha.
The book I am really reading is called 'Elephants can remember'.
It is obvious that ze little grey cells are not what they used to be...

Books & Boots

I could not help but linger in front of the disgarded book section in the faculty library.
I picked up yet another book for some public transport reading. This time I found a neatly bounded hard cover volume (all black, no letters on the cover). It is called The Battle for Modernity and neatly groups the social movements and denominations in Europe since 1830. This is volume 10 in the Kadoc-studies series. It should give me some extra background info or some little sparks for new ideas for my big paper I'm writing on and should be due around June.

And I went on a double shopping shoe spree when I headed over to the store to get some copy paper.
I bought two (!) pair of boots (the kind Dr Livingstone likes) and a new wallet.
That'll be enough for the rest of the decennium me thinkst (shoe-wise).

Tomorrow there is a book sale at the University Central Library and I might browse around...

Looking at the title of this little blog post; would that be an idea for a bookshop come shoe shop? A walhalla for the educated woman? You already have these coffee-bookstore things.
Why not shoes and books? I think I have just coined the brand name right here and now. Books & Boots. Oh wait. My google-fu just came up with the Richmond Walking & Book Festival 2011.
Right.

Moar Books

I'm all keyed up for the book sale on the 23rd and 24th. I picked up a leafled as I was leaving my faculty library on Thursday evening.
The Central University Library is selling off their double or irrelevant volumes. Maybe I can unearth a little gem. Who knows. I must however agree with myself on the maximum amount I am willing shall allow myself to spend.
There is no place for new books. And actually no money come to think of it. I think the only ones I am allowed to buy are the ones we can chuck into the fire to keep warm this coming winter. Those stupid petrol prices keep going up. Where's a good recession when you need really need one?

A scolarly day

I had a lovely day today: all my time I had today was spent immersed in books, history, architecture and paper writing.
I feel elated and don't really know why.
The train ride was spent by further reading the Loving Frank novel, the connecting bus ride was the same.
The an architectural theory lecture on a fascinating architect I seem to have a faint memory of having seen some of his work: Juliaan Lampens. His puristic concrete architecture has a very Japanese feel to it when seeing '70's grainy pictures of the house he built in the late sixties/early seventies.

Then I dashed to the next lecture on Costume History. Don't know why but the professor just had to mention he heard a rumour Kate Middleton is pregnant. Makes you wonder what strange pre-occupations these academic scolars have...
Right. I missed professor emeritus Guy Delmarcel's book sale on the 4th floor of the faculty building during lunch hours.
I did manage to buy a book at the library sale (a steal at only 1€!) on Religious experience and aesthetic experience from professor J. J. Aerts' personal library (known for his psychological-anthropological approach toward literature and authors).

Then I spent a couple of agreeable hours finishing up a paper on the Pavilion of Catholic Life at the 1935 World Fair. Fascinating building designed by little know Belgian architect Henri Lacoste.
Will blog on that building in a seperate post.
Then I had to attend another lecture at half eight on Gothic churces in China. Again fascinating stuff.
And to top it all off: I found a book I had ordered on the doorstep. Luckily it hasn't rained today and this time the postman didn't try and stuff it all the way down the letter box. My guess is it was non too flexible and decided it would be best if he just left it out in the open instead of putting it in the car port where it would be safe in case of rain...


The book in question is Ingenieurs en Architecten op de drempel van een nieuwe tijd (1750-1830) by Dirk Van de Vijver. I'm hoping to get some inspiration out of it

Anyway, I'm growing sleepy and just waiting for Dr Livingstone to come home. He's had a decorator in and paint the walls of the workshop all nice and white.

Loving Loving Frank

I'm really loving Loving Frank by Nancy Horan. I was sucked into the book and nearly missed my train stop on the way back home this afternoon. I'm half way through till now.

A man came to measure up the windows and front door. He's making us a quote for new ones, which will save us quite some money in a couple of years. We want to have the whole house isolated so we can cut the costs on heating and so on.
We're doing it in phases as we still haven't won the lottery or found a duffel bag stuffed full of euro's on the doorstep left by an anonymous philantropist...

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

The lecture finished ten minutes early on Monday so I managed to pop into the book shop on my way to the bus. I was looking for a Boudewijn Büch book on Goethe, but they didn't have any.
On my way out I skimmed a row of fiction novels and found a very cheap copy of Loving Frank by Nancy Horan. It's a novel about the love affair between Mamah Borthwick Cheney and architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
It was recommended to me as a little light reading by a professor of architectural theory.
It'll last me a couple of bus rides I guess.
I'm have a hard time concentrating on reading school stuff because of all the pointless banter all around courtesy of all my fellow passengers.

A little friend

An unlucky Jay flew right into our double glazing and was quite dazzled by the experience. I picked him up, to steady him, Dr Livingstone said I was no good and took him with his bare hands to keep the poor bird warm and recover from the huge smack and woozy feeling.

It sat quite stil and did not fight or struggle to free itsself rom his grip. He then sat down in the garden and stroked it. Its eyes were alert, its pupils reacting to movements and it seemed all ok. No serious concussion, maybe the bird experienced a slight headache, but it seemed fine.
It flew out of Dr Livingstone's hand and perched on the chair next to him and then flew, not in a complete straight line I might add, into a nearby tree. It struggled to perch on a branch but then flew away reassuringly.

Train (ed) dog

My grandmother is in hospital after a fall. She's having surgery on Monday to mend her hip. She was quite comfortable in hospitable, her leg in traction to keep the break nice and aligned for the surgeon to fix it.
I visited her Saturday, the train on the way there was packed with people.
All of them speaking different languages. The guy with the dog was talking Japanese on the phone, in front of me a Tunisian living in Brussels was speaking English with two Turkish girls studying marketing and engineering, behind me some Germans were either arguing or having a normal conversation (sounds alike in tone of voice to me). Across from me two Russians students, behind them Polish folk, and behind them very loud Spanish people.
They were all talking, everything went crescendo. It was very hard to concentrate on the reading material I had brought with me. If they were talking languages I can't understand, then I would have managed but I just gave up after 1,5 pages and nodded off. I slept the whole ride just up to the terminus.
The dog belonging to the Japanese guy was sprawled on two seats and seemed to be all relaxed and comfortable.
Right up until the train conductor janked him off.

You are all remembered

At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ends.
The First World War left nine million soldiers dead and 21 million wounded, with Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France, and Great Britain each losing nearly a million or more lives. In addition, at least five million civilians died from disease, starvation, or exposure.

World War I was known as the "war to end all wars" because of the great slaughter and destruction it caused.

Presentation Time

At the university today I had to give a presentation on the Antwerp Salon of 1843. It's an exhibition much like the more famous counterparts held in Paris.
It went well, had positive feedback and a few laughs, which is always good. It was great fun researching the subject. I love the nineteenth century. It's so alike today, but yet so different. And the newspapers are always a bundle of laughs.
Art critics are very very harsh when it comes to reviewing some art works. 'He could have saved himself the trouble. What a waste of paint'-kinda stuff.
Some quacks have very big advertisements claiming to -among other things- cure most known diseases.
Which is interesting.
And false.

Meh. Need rest now. No more blogging today.

Mock Pantheon

I had the most boring lecture this morning. I've never known anyone able to give such an uninspiring lecture on Dante and his Divine Comedy.
So I had some amusement staring up at the ceiling of the auditorium. It's located in the former Jesuit College. The neo-classicist auditorium was built in 1824 after a design by Hensmans. It's a kind of mock Pantheon. Less ambitious in being semi-circular. Here's a blurry picture I took with my phone out of boredom.

Hey! I almost sound like a real student!

Stasi HQ

I firmly believe we have the world's most nosiest neighbour. As soon as even a leaf falls on the driveway, she's out lurking behind some shrubbery or peering out from behind the drapes.
She doesn't know we can see her. Especially when it's dark outside and her livingroom is lit up like a Christmas tree. We can see her staring silhouet.
Dr Livingstone is now even playing with this. When we come home from work or uni, we need to stop in front of the gate to open it. Now he stops just a few meters in front of their house and waits until he sees the curtain shift.
Even when we got up a couple of Sundays ago to watch the F1 (the circuits at the other side of the world have inconvenient tv hours) we got to hear: "You guys were up nice and early today. I saw the woodstove burn."

It's even infected her slow son. When we're out stargazing, we can see him fumbling about in their garden ajoining the chicken shack. He thinks we can't see him, but he carries a small torch with him.

/facepalm

It's like living next to the Stasi headquarters.

Four basset hounds and a concrete mixer

Rude awakening this morning around 6 am. Some truck with stuff in it for concrete flooring started up just a couple of meters from our doorstep. At that time I was just in the middle of a dream. I was riding the bus to uni and a lady next to me got up to give room to another lady getting on the bus with four basset hounds. They all jumped up on the seat next to me.
Then I woke up.
I'm guessing what might have happened next. Possible scenarios:
1) Hounds slobber all over me and I'd have to change seats.
2) One of them bites me.
3) One of them comes and sits on my lap and I can't seem to shift it because it is staring at me with that über-sad look.
4) The bus has a head on collision with a concrete truck jumping a red light.

Books! Blogging! Blimey!

Hello everyone!

I've been out of the blogging loop for some time. I've hardly had time to gasp for breath once in a while.
I'm back at university, I've had a spell of heart trouble, we've been doing all sorts around the house, we've been busy at the workshop etc. etc. etc.

Best to start blogging again once in a while.
And my first post in a long time will be about ... BOOKS.
How could it not be?
I had a spare half hour before my next meeting for a talk I'm giving with two fellow students, so I strayed into a bookshop.
I got away with:
1) Barry Pitt, Zeebrugge: Eleven VC's before breakfast. A book on the Raid on Zeebrugge in 1918.
2) a book on Belgians in Somalia during operations in the early nineties
3) a book on an evolving borough from the mid 19th century up till the 70's
3) The bedside book of chemistry by Joel Levy. A book on -er- chemistry. I know, I'm a freak.
4) Michel Peeters, Beelden voor de massa: kunst als wapen in het Derde Rijk. A book on art and how it was used as a propaganda tool by Nazi Germany.


I did manage to update my LibraryThing now and then. Which I also other books too that are compulsory reading this semester.

Belgian Wheelchair Rugby team secure place at 2012 Paralympics

The Belgian Wheelchair Rugby team has secured a place at the 2012 Paralympics today.
England defeated Poland this morning and so Belgium is through.
So far at the European Championchips in Nottwill, Switzerland Belgium has pummeled all teams they played against (Finland, Netherlands, Austria and Denmark).
The toughest competitor is yet to come today: Sweden. Let's hope their Ikea chairs are missing some bits or wheels come off.

So now on to the medals!

Currently the Belgian wheelchair rugby team is 7th in the World Ranking.

The doctor is in the hospital [literally]

A solemn apology for the lack of posting, but my life has been turned upside down lately.
Well, the doctor was in the hospital last week. And kind of discharged himself at the same time, on account of driving himself completely bonkers.

Dr Livingstone got home all right last time; the week after my last blog post. He was extremely exhausted, but not entirely different from previous month-long-stints-away-from-home-working-20-hours-a-day-for-4-months-on-end.
And when he got back we worked some more; a full week in our own workshop over here.
And on Friday we closed the shop early (well, actually two hours later than we planned) and went on a small get-away-weekend. Just the two of us. No computer with us. No hassle. Even telephone at a minimum. \o/
It was all relaxation, Hefeweiβ Beer & jummy Schnitzels as far as the eye could see (=Sunday).
Had lovely dinners and relaxing walks, even the land lady of the place we stayed in lent us her dog for walkies in the evenings. We saw foxes and deer while having a stroll in the German countryside. What strange shapes of heads these German cows have, so unlike the ones over here. My one big ambition in life not yet fulfilled: To stroke a cow. They always tend to shy away from me. [I haz a sad]
They did present me with my own private cloud of insects. A handful of irritating flies hovered above my head for about 300 meters until we reached the cover of the forest. Much to the amusement of Dr Livingstone, much to my chagrin.

So after a lovely 8 km walk on Saturday morning, some lovely hot Goulash soup and excellent coffee and a rummage around the local discount supermarkets we had an early dinner (Schnitzels und Hefe) and an early night. Utter and complete relaxation.

Dr Livingstone had a turn for the worse on Sunday morning. He started coughing up blood. I drove back home and we went to the emergency room at the hospital. Last time we were there they sent him home with a pain killer without even examening him.
Funny how you mention the word 'BLOOD' and they immediately take you seriously.
Within 1 hour he had had some X-rays taken, a heart monitor diagram, some antibiotics, anti-bloodcoagulants and the right diagnosis.
And Dr Livingstone thought they would just send him home again with some pills.
They kept him in for FIVE whole days. It was necessary because he had had a lung stroke and still has severe pneumonia. 'Normal' people would be kept in for at least two weeks.
So he's home all right, and at work at the same time. He fooled the doctor into believing he won't be lifting any stuff and be relaxing for at least two weeks.

Fat chance. Luckily, or should I say unluckily, one of his colleagues crashed his car about 100 meters from our shop and Dr Livingstone kindly lent his car to him. So he needs to be driven around. That was the deal. No driving cars for two weeks.

Today we just discovered Dr Livingstone had been taking an OD of anti-coagulants (that was the reason his sight was all blurry and he had a hard time remembering things).

As I am typing now, he feels calm now, a bit better then when he heard the news he had had an OD. He is sitting in his super deluxe armchair which we bough a couple of days ago to make him more comfy.

Will post an update on how he is feeling and how things are here once we have shifted this work load that has been piling up and weighing down and hovering above us like Damocles' Sword.

/teletext-type blog post

Summer Film Camp 2011

I'm off for an entire week to summer film boot camp. I should probably leave out the boot notion, but it really is a survival of the fittest to sit through every lecture and every movie seven days in a row. The first lecture starts at nine sharp and the last film usually finished around midnight. It is not uncommon to hear someone snore their head off during a movie. After day three your feet start to swell up from all the sitting down. Over the years I've managed to devise some sitting techniques to endure all the movie magic. This year it's in Antwerp. This twice yearly event had been hosted in Bruges in years gone by. So I will have to devise a new sitting strategy because I'm not familiar with the seating arrangements in the theatre.

This will be my 8th Summer Film School I will be attending. I feel like a veteran. And I do feel a bit guilty too. While studying in Brussels (waaaay back in the nineties) I used to attend the Film Museum every night, read the glossy magazines, bought second hand books on cinema, worked on film sets. I ate, slept and breathed cinema.
Over the years, moving to an area where most movie theatres are over 15 kilometers away (and expensive), my movie going experience has dropped to an alarming rate. So far this year (or last year) I haven't even set foot inside a cinema.
So this week is very important to me, to keep connected to my very first love for images.

I will have to face up to the music and decide how to spare my strenght. I will be driving to Antwerp every day, so I will need to be alert and wide awake before venturing onto the roads.
This means I will have to skip a movie to get safely home. When in Bruges I could just skip a movie I'd already seen and have a nap in my hotel room. This will be an entirely different challenge.

David Bordwell will be lecturing on Storytelling strategies in 1940s Hollywood. His morning lectures have been very entertaining and enlightening and no doubt his seven Dark Passages-lectures will be of the same high standard I have heard over the years.
He blogged about the Summer camp for cinephiles in 2007 and in 2009.

This year the umbrella theme is Art & Painting. Lisa Colpaert, Tom Paulus, Wouter Hessels (freshly appointed director of Cinematec) and Steven Jacobs will be lecturing on a wide variety of themes i.a. tableau vivants, art documentaries, interiours and landscapes.

After years of whining I finally get what I asked for: A Greenaway movie! Three cheers for the Vlaamse Dienst voor Filmcultuur!

I don't think I will have time to do any blogging during the coming week. Or even a couple of days after that. Dr Livingstone will be home!

Nature's answer to LED

I got my tripod out to make some decent long exposure pictures of the glow worms in the front yard. They are amazing. The only trouble is they do not sit still. The female Lampyris noctiluca waves it luminous behind about to attract males. On a 30" exposure it just blurs.

The F.A.R.T. to the Rescue!

I neglected to start Dr Livingstone's car and drive it for a bit while he's out on the road. So it failed to start (obviously). The alarm system had drained the battery. No sweat, just had to open up the hood, connect the battery charger and leave it overnight to charge.
Alas, the bonnet wouldn't open. I thought it was just me at first matching all the stereotypes: blond, female.
So I had to call on my neighbour to help. He showed up with his wife, their son and daughter in law and his best friend.
The bonnet did not budge. But then he borrowed my flashlight and took a look at the lever which opened up the bonnet.
The wire had somehow broken. Great.
So I had to call the roadwatch people to help out. They showed up two and a half hours later then announced.
My guess is they were having a threesome in the truck at a layby somewhere.
It was a F.A.S.T. truck (Files Aanpakken door Snelle Tussenkomst); an acronym which translates loosely into Tackling Traffic by Fast Intervention.
I will call them F.A.R.T. from now on. The Flemish Automobile Rescue Team.

The King's Speech

The King's Speech was something almost worthy of an Oscar. I ran it through wordle and here is the word cloud it came up with.

Most used words are:
Onze (Ours)
Alle (All)
Land (Land)
Regering (Government)
Europese (European)
Europa
Nieuwe (New)
Samen (Together)
Burgers (Citizens)
Moeten (Must)
Recht (Right)

Surprisingly he only used België once.

The Party Crasher King

King Albert II of Belgium, delivered a landmark speech yesterday. Today we celebrate our National Holiday and are officially 402 days without a government. Very touchingly he expressed his anxiety about all Belgians suffering under this and the impact it has on the image of the country on a European scale.

Surprise in all media about the body language the King used, wildly gesticulating with hands. This is what he also probably looks like while enraged with his son Laurent.

Alas, no one has noticed the similarity between the King of the Belgians and The Party Crasher in the excellent John Badham movie The Hard Way. I think everyone must be told.

Stimulating ambiguity

I went to Leuven on Monday, to read the feedback my professor left for me concerning the paper I'd written. It was very flattering I must say. He called my piece 'wayward & original'. Wayward. Hmmm. I shall send him an email to ask if that was a good or bad thing. Don't want to shock these academics too badly.
And congratulate him on his little photo exhibition. I will omit the fact one of his cadrages was a little off and he'd have done better reworking his Nests picture.
Meh. I can do this too. Chuck in some poetry for good measure. These are the kind of pictures I was taking in a dilapidated harbour twenty years ago.
Maybe I should.
I could give him a few pointers in the pictures area. I'm a trained old skool pro. He's a clever professor with a camera during a sabbatical.
I can be a Renaissance woman too! Havat you!

The Methodologies of Art

Another book arrived in the post last week. I have only read thirtysomething pages of Laurie Schneider Adams The Methodologies of Art and can see plenty of things going awry. This is not a book I'm going to enjoy very much, as I'll get more and more frustrated as I progress.

In her preface she talks about the prolifiration of methodologies, but I am lacking a small side note to this: stressing that not all methodologies are equally 'scientific' or are masquerading as scientific.
She draws an analogy to the interpretation of dreams. 'Works of art, like dreams are multiply detemined'. Ok, I smell parapsychology right round the corner there. I do hope it was poetic license and not to be taken literally.

In the first chapter Adams tells the reader that all methods reinforce one another'. Again, this could very well be the case, but not all could pass the rigours of scientific research.

Anyway, I'm going to delve deeper into this book, and see if I can read on without bias.

The humanities have always teetered on the edge of 'pure' academic (=scientific) research, but it is just that fine line that needs a bit of scrutiny.

I have written on skepticism and art history before, maybe I should do a full length paper about it.

Passed

I forgot to mention I passed all my exams this semester and will be finishing up my bachelor next year and hope to progress on to the next level.
And finally finish my graduate in Antwerp, which has been hanging in the ropes for some time. I just need to write up a paper and that's it. I'll give it a good think around, maybe I can combine it with the research I'll be doing for the university next semester.
Already looking forward to putting on the white gloves again and rummaging around in musty archives.

Belgium Bastards

Right. I will commence blogging once more. I have just had a 5 day visit from my 83 year old grandmother.
I though she would only stay 2 or 3 days tops, but she stayed almost a full week.
Maybe she misunderstood me when I said I'd be in Belgium from the 11th 'till the 16th; it implied she could pick some dates in between those days. I had to work anyways, except on Monday.
So when she rang me up to confirm whether or not she'd be coming two weeks ago she said: 'Right. So I'll be staying with you from the 11th up until Saturday.'

I could hardly tell her she couldn't stay that long. She wasn't any trouble really, except when she fell over in the middle of the night and I had to pick her up. I had already, as a precaution, removed all possible tripping obstacles. And there are no stairs in the house she could fall off. But she still managed to stub her toe on something and tumble over in the bathroom.

She even accompanied me to the workshop in the morning. On the way there I bought her a newspaper, which she read back to front. Even the street where I live was in the paper on Wednesday due to some vandals spray painting over some roadsigns and a toad. Honestly. Must be those groups of children camping here.

Anyway, granny got on with Mouser like a house on fire. On Friday I brought her home around midday and planted her in the garden. When I got back from work Mouser was lying next to her in the shade, keeping an eye on things.

Sometimes she's very funny, in a Blackadder-sense: being old and annoying people by pretending to be deaf. She's not deaf, really. Her daughter (my mother) insisted she'd wear hearing aids. So she went and bought them. She just pretends she can't hear 'your mother's whining and moaning'.
Sometimes she's very annoying. And blatently racist. Like out in the open. Like pointing to black people and then (in a very loud voice) hurling abuse at them in the most appalling. Then I try to navigate her away from the people she is focussing on.
Not very easy as she's a very slow walker, so I tend to spin her around so she's facing the other way.
Depending on which group she concentrates on she either calls them spaghetti eaters, rag women, tree climbers or riffraff.
Yes, she is the most intolerant, politically incorrect gran on the planet.
But she can be a bit rock & roll at the same time. She washes down her pills during meals with beer or other alcoholic beverages if they are at hand.

This is what I do on Sundays

Yes, this is what I do on Sundays. Climbing up remnants of wood that have been shaped to look like a machine. Making sure all the loose bits are hammered into place, the axis is lubed with pig's belly fat and looking out for wood worm activity.
And that's just the first half hour.

And yes, that is part of my leg about 3 meters off the floor and 12 meters off ground level. Not bad for an acrophobic I might add.

Moar books!

I have been a very naughty girl. I had to console myself after having those appalling exams. Two of my four books have already arrived. They're all architecture and course related. One of them is an obligatory read next semester. But I'm guessing here. None of the courses I take have summer reading.
So, on a quest to broaden my mind (or clutter it with unnecessary details) I surfed teh interwebs and ordered some at my favourite online bookstores. The ones I ordered cheap from Holland have arrived. One being delivered at 8.30 pm. Strange hours for a parcel service. But anyway, two books added to my Librarything.
Architectuur en kritiek van de moderniteit by Hilde Heynen has an endorsement on the sleeve by Kenneth Frampton. I attended Heynen's architectural history of the 20th century classes last semester. Frampton 'Modern Architecture a critical history' was obligatory reading.

The other one is a liber amoricum for Ed Taverne called De Stad edited by Mieke Dings.

Two other books are making their way from the US. I don't expect them for another week or so. They were the cheapest editions I could find anywhere.

One Door Down

I decided to do some odd jobs around the house. I've cleaned the stables, weeded and cut some overgrowing greenery in its vicinity. Someone is coming to look at them, hope we can rent them out.
I've also mowed the lawn and a bit of the meadow behind it. And I've had to dig a bit so the fence opens up without too much difficulty. Mouser and Bonnie came and went to scrutinize my labour.

Now I'm sanding down some fugly doors. The people who lived here before us tended to favour dark brown over pretty much everything else as a colour. I dub it Granny Brown™. It's a very sombre colour and absorbs so much light. The rest of the house is more or less ok. Luckily they had it redecorated in whites and lighter shades, but the doors remained untouched and are dreary. It is a pity to remove them or paint them over in a light colour. I examined them more closely, they're high quality oak.

So I decided to sand them down to their natural look and just give them a coat of non-colouring varnish. They're fairly easy to sand down on the streight bits. The little corners and bends are tedious and make my elbows go sore.
I've managed to machine-sand four little doors up till now and managed to finish one by hand-sanding.
It seems like this chore is never ever going to end. But I'll have to finish it no matter what. Don't want to be stuck with a mix-and-match closet. But the result is pretty amazing.
Some people remarked at how much better they looked already.
They could of course have said that to just to be polite. I hope they did it just to encourage me.
As I said, these are the small doors. There's four more and they're about 1.5 times longer.

Green LEDs in the flowerbeds

What an awesome sight. After I figured out what it was.
At first it scared the life out of me. When I was letting the roller blinds drop I noticed some faint light through the window. It was in one of the flower beds. It looked like a green LED. My first thought was: 'We're being spied on' and there is some remote transmitter thing hidden among the flowers.
Then I opened up the door to see what it was when I noticed about six more of these strange green light dots! OMG we're surrounded.
Then it finally dawned on me: Fireflies! Luckily my paranoia settled down.

Lampyris noctiluca. Smashing. I fumbled around for my camera and took a 30 second exposure photograph. Alas the only light is from the street lantern so the picture looks decidedly orange.

This was the first time I've seen them here. It's only the first season in this house. We didn't have any at the old house, probably because the farmers there sprayed everything with insecticide and killed off everything, including this species.

It was only the second time I've ever seen them IRL. And that was last year when on holiday in the Eiffel mountains.