A quick note to let you know that George is stuck in one of those very unhandy collars that has him banging into everything. The vet called today while he was having his teeth cleaned to let me know that there was a pretty big growth over his eye and it would be a good time to remove it before they couldn’t. So, poor George is now walking around with a pirate like right eye, complete with stitches. Henry had a wart between his toes that needed to be removed. Amazing what they find during teeth cleaning. It’s a bit of a nursing ward here since naturally we were sent home with two types of pills, an eye salve and gum gel.

Poor George will be banging around until the 27th with his awkward headgear. I modified it with scissors so he can at least eat and drink slightly easier. His urine was too diluted to test so that still needs to be collected. An attentive reader sent me a link on how to collect a specimen from your dog, using the previously mentioned soup ladle or a cookie sheet, depending on which one you think your dog will tolerate more…

It is election day here in the Netherlands. GG got a pass to cast her ballot in Amsterdam instead of Rotterdam so we followed her to the voting place, where she proceeded to unfold an enornmous poster sized paper and armed with a pencil, made her choices. The voting system is differrent here since it is a multi party system. You vote for your party choice first and then one person from that list. However, each party might have anywhere between 1-100 people on their list. From all the votes, seats are assigned based on the number of votes. So even the smallest parties have a chance of getting a seat or two. From there, a coalition has to be formed from the parties for the government to go to work. Mostly it works out.

And as for me, tomorrow morning I am telling my immediate coworkers that I am moving on to another role. I am excited to do it, since I feel like I have been carrying around a secret. It will also make things suddenly very concrete as they will have to figure out what they are going to take over…

There’s a great deal of press coverage over whether or not Geert Wilders and his party would win here, building on the UK and US elections. While final results won’t be in until Friday, right now, that’s not looking so likely 🙂