I came home early this evening after my mini tour of the Netherlands to see a bright yellow envelope on the counter. I have a thing for paper mail and cards and so I was determined to delay my gratification as much as possible. Which is not hard to do around this joint, especially when all four pets want attention at once and all I want to do is get out of my grownup clothes and run for the bathroom because it was a long drive with one too many bottles of water!

After the inmates had been cared for, I then had a bunch of things to follow up on from today and get in order for tomorrow. I am back in Rotterdam tomorrow, different customer. Today I barely managed to avoid the milieu zone. They have one in Rotterdam and now they are enforcing it. Cars older than 1992 are not allowed in the zone and it is a 90 euro fine per incident. At one point today, I deliberately took a wrong turn because if I hadn’t, I would have ended up in the zone. Oh, and it is all electronically monitored, complete with license plate registration and shocks. 😉 Okay, not sure about the shocks but they are controlling it electronically.

The building I went to today is on the UNESCO list. It is the Van Nelle Fabriek In it’s long and varied history, it has produced coffee, tea, cigarettes, Chiclets chewing gum and lots of other things. When you walk into the building, it smells exactly like an old factory. Due to the heritage status, there’s so much intact, including fixtures and floors. I wanted to take some of it with me. I know that’s not possible but if I ever do any remodeling, I might be looking for some vintage things like that.

From Rotterdam on out to the countryside, in the direction of Eindhoven. It was a good 90 minute drive where I was hoping it would rain enough to wash off the enormous piles of bird poop that the local Angry Birds flock had dumped on Astrid overnight. We’re not just talking a splatter here or there, we are talking so much that it didn’t even come off in the high pressure car wash all the way. Mental note: don’t park under that tree again, even if only overnight!

Back to my original point, the birthday card – from Rupert and Meredith! So fun! Full of useful wisdom like remembering the phrase “Hold my beer, watch this ___” which might be part of the Great Snack Swindle. And a wish for a list of things I love this year from Meredith… clever how well she knows me with some of the entries on the list 😉

Okay, I really have to stop staring at the computer now since my eyeballs are turning square, even behind my glasses. Did anyone else’s parents tell them that? That they would get square eyeballs from watching too much TV? I assume that wisdom applies to computer screens now too, since we didn’t even have electricity until I was 13  😉