our rockers? To the races? Like a dress on prom night? 😉

It’s 1839 and I have just checked my work email for the first time in 48 hours. Primarily to check and see if there were some things I forgot to take care of (there were) and to delete the many emails that are from various companies wanting to sell me their technology solutions. I am running a pilot program on my mailbox at work to calculate where my time goes. I would like to know how much time per week I spent deleting emails of that kind. I already set my phone to manual sync on Sunday evening, while waiting for Marianne to join us at De Parade.

We barely made it to De Parade this year – closing night! However, we were there! Marianne and I have been to De Parade every year since 2013, even before I moved here so we are on a streak. We saw some interesting shows, ate dinner and sat at a table under a tree ’til nearly midnight working our way through 4 bottles of wine (shared by three). It was a really, really great evening and a good way to start thinking about vacation.

However, this morning, getting up early to get the boys ready before leaving for The Hague, was another story. 😉 Let’s just say that while hangover was too strong of a word, slightly muddle headed was not far from the truth. We had an appointment at 10 to see a house in Den Haag dating to 1894. We liked it but not enough to see ourselves living there. Of course, from there it was 10 minutes to Oma and Opa’s old house so we drove by there so I could show GG where I used to hang out the living room window waiting for the mailman with the exceptional blonde mullet deliver the mail when I was 14. Okay, let’s just say I have been socially awkward my whole life 😉

From there, we went to Kijkduin and overlooking the beach and the North Sea, had Dutch pancakes. There were lots of ladies of a certain age there with their dogs and reading the papers. I could completely see my mom fitting in there. All the papers, cover to cover, coffee and dogs sitting in the terrace chairs next to them on their blankets. It was good to be near the sea.

That would be a selling point for living in The Hague, the proximity to the sea. Tomorrow, we are going to look at another house, this one in Schiedam. Then we’ll stop looking until after we are back. I have a feeling that between the one tomorrow and the one when we come back, that’s where we will have the debate. Specifically, I think GG will be the big fan of the one tomorrow and I will be the fan from the one when we come back. We’ll see.

In other news, we’ve awarded our first scholarship and notified the recipient 🙂 🙂 🙂 so you could say the foundation is off and running!