Sick and boring

Sorry for the lack of posts for the last couple of weeks. Dennis got back from the US a couple of weeks ago and he managed to pick up some kind of super-germ on the plane. He flew in on Saturday and got sick on Monday. By Friday, I had it as well. So, we've wasted two weekends just laying around the house sniffling, sneezing, and coughing. Not only is this cold quite severe, it seems to last a long time. Dennis has been sick now for two weeks, but is finally starting to feel better. I'm a few days behind him so I am still miserable.

I'm hoping that we will be healthy by Thursday when our vacation starts. We booked a 15 day tour of Spain and Portugal. It's supposed to be a lot of walking so I really want to be feeling good for it. Of course we had hoped to be out walking every night for the last two weeks to get ready, but the cold-from-hell pretty much wreaked that plan. The most walking we've done has been to buy more kleenex and soup at the store!

Now that Dennis is unemployed (a man of leisure), he's been spending some of his time on the job search. At least this seems to be going well. He posted his resume on Monster.com ona Friday. On Monday, the phone wouldn't stop ringing. Every headhunter in the Netherlands was calling. Dennis is working with a couple of the recruiters who called and he's already had two job interviews. This week, he has two more interviews lined up. It's too early to have any job offers, but we are excited about the number of opportunities out there. I suspect Dennis will not be a man of leisure for very long!

Today is one of those rare summer days in Holland where the sun is shining and it's warm. After several weeks of clouds and rain, this is like a miracle. We are planning to ride our bikes over the little beach and try to cook the cold germs out in the sun. Wish us luck!

In the canals around the Naarden vesting, rowing is quite popular. If you look closely at the first picture, you can see a row of ducks on the other side of the scull boat. What copy-cats! The second picture is a swan on one of the canals. Swans are pretty common here. The third picture is the little bridge that I bike over to get to work. The last picture was taken from the same bridge. There are homes on one side of the canal and cows on the other. This canal connects to the larger canal around the Naarden vesting. The people in the boat had to duck to get under the bridge although it's technically a drawbridge. There are some serious rusted padlocks indicating that it doesn't "draw" very often.

More Pictures

The first three pictures are of the town center in Bussum. This is where I do all the shopping. In Dutch, they say boodschappen for buying groceries and other regular stuff. If you are shopping for clothing or just browsing, it's called winkelen. The shops are called winkels. One of my favorite shops is the cheese shop - but probably because it has such cute cow-decor! The town has two church clock towers, you can see one of them in the first picture. The bells chime, but I rarely even notice it when I'm at home.

The next picture is one of the bike paths. The farmer had just been out cutting hay when we rode by. Actually this is not just a bike path, it's also the access road for the farms. We thought it was just a path because it was so narrow, but we have seen cars on it. Fortunately the cars yield to bikes so you don't have to worry about getting run down.

The last picture is the Vecht river. It's one of the few natural rivers as opposed to being a canal which would be straight. The Vecht is a favorite place for the Dutch people. It's really pretty and there are really cool houses (and house boats) all along it. When the weather is good, there are plenty of people on sailboats, speedboats, and yachts playing on and in the water. There is a great bike path along the river which is also a popular destination. What you can't really see from the picture, is that the land behind me as I took the picture, is actually lower than the river. It's really strange and hard to capture in a picture.

I've been getting around taking more pictures, so check back soon and I'll post some more. I know I've been putting up a lot of posts lately, so I'll try to give you guys a break. But I'd love to see some comments!