Neighborhood Nerds

We’ve all had these folks living beside us at one time or another in our lives, right? You know the ones – they’re nice enough people, but you just have to shake your head and wonder “What in the hell are they thinking?”

It started out with the house in “oh-so-posh” Bethesda where they would bring lamps out onto the front lawn to drink beer and play croquet after dark.

And then there was the house on 9th street that built a sprawling, multi-tiered deck which covered the entire back yard and caused people going up to the back door to have to duck under the high-tension power line. Gezellig!

There was also the place on Winsome Road where they got the wild-hair idea to grow wine grapes on a prominent hillside behind the house and they spent weeks putting in terraces and fences and watering systems only to have the vines quickly wither and die on the north facing slope. Duh!

In Sterling, Virginia it was the crazy guy who hated the traffic which short-cut through his neighborhood to save a minute on their way to the local Kohl’s strip plaza, so he would pull branches out of the woods and throw them into the street to slow the cars down. Funny how it was ALWAYS so windy in that neighborhood.

And Oakland, Maryland? Well, let’s just say that many people in that fine, upstanding, ultra-conservative community are feeling very lucky that those whacky city-folk that moved in on Herrington Manor Road built their house out in the middle of nowhere where the locals didn’t have to deal with them. It just might have shaken the community’s moral foundations to the core if they’d have known what was REALLY going on back that mile-long gravel driveway. Thank god for gates with locks on them!

And now it’s happened again here in Haarlem and it is time to finally admit that WE are in fact the blight on any neighborhood that we move into. It’s a long, complicated legacy of which I am very proud. But It has special meaning here in The Netherlands, because even though the Dutch have a famous tolerance for the eccentric within their society, they also have a strict code of conformity for those people within their inner-circles. It’s a sociological petri dish better left discussed in a different blog entry.

In any case, much to the early dismay of our neighbors, we’ve entered the realm of plastic lawn ornaments. At least it wasn’t garden gnomes or pink flamingos. No, no, no. I just hauled a plastic owl back from America and put it up in the back garden on a 15 foot wooden pole to keep the freakin’ seagulls from setting up a nest on the roof. Once these flying vermin have a nest, it’s a daily 4:00 AM “screech fest” which can pierce even the heaviest earplugs. And since seagulls are protected here in Holland (and guns don’t fit into the “tolerance” model), I didn’t think that the authorities would appreciate it if brought my 12-gauge shotgun along to “scare” the gulls away…hence the plastic owl.

At first, the neighbors didn’t know what to think of our new lawn ornament. It was pretty in-your-face in the back yard and we got hesitant, sideways greetings for the first day or two. Then Hans, a bit eccentric himself (singing-Adel-at-the-top-of-his-lungs-in-the-garden sort of stuff), got up the nerve to ask me about it. He laughed, said it was “worth a try” and put up their own plastic owl on the roof of their shed.

Once Hans was on-board, the other neighbors sighed in relief that conformity was protected in the neighborhood and started treating us “normally” again. And the best part? No seagulls nested in our immediate area this year and we’ve all been able to sleep in the mornings.

Eccentricity? You’re welcome!

Stockholm

This Nordic city has been on our list for a long, long time.  I've always thought of it as a place of Soviet spies and cold war intrigue, which is usually enough for me to want to visit.  But then a good friend recommended it as one of his favorites (now we know why Patrick ;-).  And finally, I'm still wrapping up the third book in the Millennium series, so it was definitely at the top of my list when we were looking for a short weekend away.  Enjoy the pics!

Gamla Stan

Gamla Stan - classic view

 








A Swedish Market Hall.  The fish and wild game selections were awesome!

Blue Sky - special meaning for those of us enduring the "summer" of 2012 in Holland.

Basking on the bay.

The nice weather made it great for...

Bikes...

Hikes...

Boats...

...and Boules.

How cliche...reading Millennium on the docks of a little island in the Archipelago. ...for all I knew Blomkvist's summer cabin could have been set here. 

 "Playing" on the island.

Trying to get the "cool" photo with us laying on the dock.  Can you tell she's annoyed?

Misty morning on the quay.  Outstanding vibe!

Stockholm has some great nightlife...here in the Ice Bar.  The ice comes from a northern river every year and is kept frozen through the summer.  Even the glasses were made of ice!

Okay...it was a bit touristy.  But still very cool - cheesy pun intended.

The other nights were the "real deal".  Here at an Irish Pub in Sodermalm.

But if I had to pick a favorite?  Hands down, the Vasa Museum.  It was impossible to capture the grandeur of this 16th century battle ship which was pulled from the bottom of the nearby river.  95% original, it was truly amazing!

Glamping

We recently spent a long weekend in the UK and decided to split our time between city and country.  Our first stop was at a "Glamping" site south of Gatwick, in Surrey.  Glamping (Glamourous Camping) is huge in the UK and we've been toying around with the idea of opening our own Glampground on our land in Maryland.  But we had to experience it first hand in order to really plan out our own American version.  It was fantastic!  This place was way the hell back in the woods and made our 1-mile gravel driveway in Deep Creek look like the autobahn.  But what made it "glamping?"  No tent to set up.  Soft bed.  Clean sheets.  All the comforts of home with all the nature of camping.  We chose The Magic Bus because it had a small wood burner and the weather predication was a bit on the cold side.  Not quite the first magic bus "Further", this would have made Ken Kesey proud.  There was also a selection of Yurts, dome tents, and small cabins.

Fire ring, tapas, wine, loads of owls, and the occasional badger sighting capped off the relaxation portion of the tip.

The 62 acre site was classic British countryside.

Setting up for a Celtic forest wedding.

Inside the Magic Bus, solar LED lighting and everything!

Our wood burner, a bit funky to operate, but effective.

We're thinking of going more the cabin route.  These 12 x 12 units were perfect!  We can't find this kind of thing (yet) in the states and may end up shipping over a 1/2 dozen of these from the UK.

Then it was in to London for a weekend in the city.  As a side note, this is the first time that I've driven on the left. I was pretty nervous and even updated the will.  ("STAY LEFT!").  But, it all worked out and there was only minor damage to the rental car.

An old wharf's view of Tower Bridge.

The almost complete Shard.  Not bad from a skyline perspective, but when you walk along the base it is  100% out of character for it's location above Borough Market.   They should have made the first 3 stories more classic to fit into the neighborhood.

"I wonder what anti-climb paint is?"   A sticky, smelly mess!

Classic London park.

A night in a West-end theater...Wicked!

And no trip to London is complete without a street food extravaganza!   Borough Market produce THE best sandwich I've ever eaten!  Crispy Duck!   Then it was over to Brick Lane for more ethnic fair.

Why doesn't Beth get this?  It's meat!  It's on a stick!  What more could a person possibly want?

Commuter bliss

 

I think that it’s safe to say that I’ve had an extraordinary number of different commutes in my life.  Between moving from house-to-house (14 times) and changing jobs (13 times) and changing office locations within a job (5 times), it adds up to a huge variety of combinations of getting from home to work.  My shortest commute was from the bedroom to the office in my jammies, (I did that in three different locations for two different employers).   My longest commute was also my worst, from Haarlem to Utrecht.   Awful roads, awful drivers, awful weather, awful traffic jams…just awful.  My favorite commute is still from the house in the Boise Highlands over to Park Center on the mountain bike.  I used to love ripping through the deserted city at 6:00 AM in the crisp mountain air.  

But my current commute is a close runner-up.  Over the 18 KM route from Haarlem to Lisse there are no red lights, no traffic (except the occasional tractor), plenty of woodlands, wildlife and small villages.  28 minutes door-to-door no matter what time I leave in either direction.  Did I mention that Lisse is THE heart of the flower economy here in Holland?  In the spring, the scenery can’t be beat.  Enjoy the pics!

The speckled orange are my favorites. 

Bulb Barons.

The world famous Keukenhof...5 minute walk from the office.

An old castle always adds a touch of class to the flowers.

Lisse traffic jam.

Misty morning as the flowers were "popping". 

And finally to the destination.  We're moving out of this office in July which means that I'll have yet another commute ahead of me...back on the train to Leiden!

The Sand Storm

It was one of those slow-burning feuds that helps to keep marriage interesting.  After 20-some odd years together we’ve managed to figure out how to navigate these little conflicts without physical injury or divorce. 

This particular “disagreement” has been smoldering for almost a year – not a record for us, but certainly up there in the top 10.   It all started last spring when we were back at our place in Maryland and cutting logs for a few new benches we were building out in the woods for our rental guests.  After cutting a thick slab from a large log, Beth got the brilliant idea to use these slabs of wood as part of a pathway somewhere around the house. 

Having grown up in the country and experienced first-hand my parent’s many failed attempts at just this sort of thing, all I could envision were moldy, ice-slick slabs that would need replaced every thee years, or 2 lawsuits  - whichever comes first.  But Beth would not let go of the idea.  In fact, it grew (festered?) over the summer and culminated in a test layout last fall.  Once she saw that the slabs would look pretty silly by themselves, she extended the concept into an elaborate patio structure that would also incorporate the half-dozen flagstones that she nicked from someone’s trash 10 years ago and we’ve been hauling around the country ever since. (it’s a wonder that she didn’t have these rocks shipped to Holland).  This beautiful patio thing would all come together for her if she could just get some sand to set all of these stones and wood slabs on.  Then it would be perfect! Her plan all centered on “the sand”.

Generally speaking, I’m not apposed to indulging her in these little endeavors  - god knows that she indulges me in my own off-beat ventures.   But getting the house ready for the summer rental season is stressful enough with plenty of work to keep us busy 110% of our short time back, so the last thing that I wanted to do was to create even more work for ourselves – especially work that including ripping up the front entry to the house that couldn’t be left for “later”.  But she persisted and insisted that I wouldn’t have to do anything.  She would do all the work.   And she would get the most important bit - the sand.  If she had a truck.   Normally I’m not much of a person to go for a big truck (you saw the Smart car we rented in Sicily…much more my style).  But it had been years since I’ve driven such a beast, so the idea of renting one actually appealed to the Y-chromosome in me.

So, we spent an extra $175 to rent a pick-up truck instead of a car.  In Appalachian speak, this wasn’t just a “truck”.  It was a big, honking “rig”.  Then we drove that big honking rig across the state.  We had to put $120 in gas into it once we reached Western Maryland (and we put another $120 into it to get it back to the airport).

So we were more than $300 into this little escapade already.  Anyone want to guess how much we paid for that load of sand?  $13 lousy dollars!  And we only used 1/3 of it!  So now I’ve got all kinds of sand “projects” around the house.  Sand in the flower pots.  Sand under the porch.  Sand in the horse shoe pits.  Sand in every little nook and cranny imaginable.  You get the idea.  Ok, now who wants to guess who spent all day of their last day (re)setting all of the ice-slick, moldy wood slabs and 10 year old stolen flagstones into that freaking sand?  Well, let’s just say that their name didn’t start with a “B”.

Which all really sums up who usually wins these little feuds in our relationship….and their name DOES start with a “B”.   But the verdict won’t be final until we see how much the first lawsuit is going to cost us.   Of course the person who actually set the slabs will get the blame…ain’t marriage grand?