What Keska Does.

Let the Sun shine

I thought we would be further along after a long hot weekend of remodeling the bathroom, but considering the amount of work I am pretty happy. All the dirtiest work is done and all the work on the roof (the hottest) is pretty much buttoned down. While Katharine took two days off to watch James, I ripped out the rest of the rot, framed out (with a million peices of deadwood) the ceilings, installed a skylight in the bathroom, and put up new fascia around the exterior. This afternoon we celebrated with a BBQ (real American hamburgers) with friends Judith and Niels. Good times. Good times.

Before.


After.

Before.


After.



Cheerio?

Super remodel

Well, through all the heat, we have been making due with our little pool and trying to get things done in the mornings before it gets too warm. One of the goals is too finish most of the work on the bathroom which unfortunately contained some fifty years of slow rot. Today we finally cleaned out the last of the dirty work; rotten ceilings and old joists. One of several problems was that someone had fixed a leaky roof by just building a new crappy roof over the top of the old one. Anyway, we should have a new bathroom before mid-August and we're pretty excited about that.

Peeling off the rot.

Rotten hole.

Fly 60's bathroom.

New furniture.

The tough guy look. Though difficult to catch fully on camera, this one cracks us up and he'll do it when you ask him who is a tough guy...

Hittegolf

That's heatwave. We've been in the middle of one for a couple weeks now with temps consistently in the 90's every day. Way too hot to sweat over a keyboard describing it... Air-conditioning is a rare thing in this part of Northern Europe and most buildings just open windows and turn on fans. There is a locally famous annual run/walk event in the city Nijmegen in the middle of the summer; two people actually died this year- apparently runners in theirr late 40's who had trained for the event but just misjudged the severity of the heat. We've put a hiatus on most activity, though we have started ripping apart the bathroom for remodeling. James will be a year old in a couple of weeks- crazy. Its amazing how fast they develop into these little people.
Here are some recent photos:

James just up from a nap (yes Mom, he usually wears a shirt but it's 95 degrees...)


Fruit fly trap. yes it works- thank you internet and Australia.


Kat doing her part to inflate our 25 euro pool

Tickle foot.

Busy Bee

We are preparing for our big trip to Finland and Denmark. It took me forever to plan this trip in a cost-efficient but logical way. I first looked into renting a car and driving, but when you start to realize how far away Finland is, that idea is ridiculous. At the same time, for the second half of our trip (Denmark) we want to have car access and we want to bring the dogs. Boarding them is not cheap, and we like to have them along whenever possible. So, we will take a train to Amsterdam, fly to Helsinki, take a train to Tampere (fortunately Finnish trains have playroom cars for kids ). In Tampere we will spend a week at this Rustmokki (log house) which is apprently made of giant Lincoln logs. It should be nice to see some big nature. There are also cross country trails right there for hiking, a sauna, lake... we might not come back. We are especially looking forward to visiting KANGASALAN YHTEISKYLÄ the village of the dry toilets and picking up something from the conference with that logo on it! Mike and Megan-- we have got you covered.
After a week in Tampere attending the Dry toilet conference we will take the train to Helsinki and stay overnight at the Academica Summer Hostel which is literally University student housing converted to a "hotel" in summer. The family rooms in the 'modern' building look great to me. This place is near a sushi restaurant, outdoor flea market and cemetery-- which should keep us busy during our day in Helsinki.
Not to be creepy, but cemeteries can be a great way to learn about a culture. I remember in Dr Rashford's class in Charleston taking a walk through cemeteries and learning about the plants that were traditionally placed there-- lots of evergreens, for example, to represent eternal life. Most of the plants there had meanings behind them. We have visited a few in the Netherlands and they are fascinating. We even heard from a friend that the Dutch only stay buried for about 50 years. Due to lack of space most people do not have graves for longer. I think they are exhumed and cremated-- but like I said, this was just party conversation, so who knows what parts are true.
Anywho-- back to the trip. Our flight from Helsinki leaves early in the morning, and when we arrive in Amsterdam we will rent a car and drive by and pick up the pups at their favorite kennel Dierenhotel Hazewinkel. Then onwards to Haderslev Denmark for the wedding and fun with friends. Keith and Dorthe are tying the knot at the Starup Kirke, which I think is pictured above. Danish and Dutch are related, but not enough for me to totally understand if this is the right church. There will be coffee and cake, and then a reception at the Hejlsminde Forsamlingshus (which I couldn't find a photo of). In Haderslev we will stay at a farm, in the guest house. Luckily we convinced Laurens and Rick to stay here too, so we should have a wonderful time.
After our week in Denmark we will head back to Enschede to buckle down for the fall. Mike will most likely start getting editing jobs (he is finally having a break from that right now, as everyone is on holiday-- which means he is working on the final big house project: the bathroom remodeling). Sorry about that horrible sentence. It is early here. An no, there is no dry toiletry involved with our bathroom. I couldn't convince Mike on that one for now.
And though we said our last trip home was definitely the last one until we move back to the states it looks like we may be visiting Bar Harbor Maine for a conference in October. I have been accepted to the conference, which is about finding a balance between humans and nature; and I have recieved a grant from the Netherlands Institute of Goverment to attend. The conference will be held at the College of the Atlantic. The conference is scheduled for the "changing of the leaves" time in fall, which should be spectacular. So, New Jersey and Rhode Island Maiers-- we may be in the neighborhood in mid-October.

Cowboy

James and I were experimenting with how many costumes we could make out of one bandana. Our total was three:
The Gangsta
The Cowboy, and
The little beggar (aka Fiddler on the Roof)

Mike's suggestion: "I have a toothache" (think Little Rascals) was spectacularly unsuccessful. James was only willing to submit to photos as the cowboy. The others were out of the question as far as photos go.

Cruel denouement

It has been a busy weekend for us. The Wimbledon finals and soon the World Cup final. We saw Germany destroy Portugal in the third place match last night. It is a shame Germany didn't get to go to the final, but we were really glad they were there to take Portugal out.
We enjoyed the Wimbledon finals-- we really liked everyone who made it this far, so we didn't mind who actually won. The Women's final was good-- I was rooting for Mauresmo, so I was happy with the results. The Men's final was tough to watch. We just love Nadal, but are also fans of Federer. I was satisfied with Nadal's performance (lets face it, he is easy on the eyes), but Mike was hoping for more of a challenge against Federer.

Back after a break- Federer wins his fourth Wimbledon and Italy adds their fourth World Cup on a long day in front of the tv. Not an easy game to watch at some points and though I (Mike) didn't have anything really invested in anyone, I did pull for an upset from Nadal and a fitting end for Zidane's French side. Both the Spanish player and the French side were surprised a little to be in the a final at all...

After a decent first half that at least saw some scoring, France played a stronger 2nd half among 22 guys noticably exhausted after a grueling month of matches. It seemed for a moment, after the shock of seeing Zidane land a massive headbutt into the chest of Materrazi (wasn't that the name of the choir leader at Holy Spirit?) that nothing made sense. Later, it felt like we'd entered an alternate future, one where Zidane is sent off in disgrace and France loses on penalties- instead of the one playing in my mind where Zidane's brilliant header goes past Buffon and France wins in normal time. Again, I'm not a huge Francophile but I just wanted want to see a better match.
There is no excuse for acting like that in front of billions of people; it was a brutal hit that shamed a great carreer. That said, there is more to the incident than meets the eye- in 1998 Zidane stomped on the back of a Saudi player after alleged repeated taunts about his Algerian background; he was later suspended from Juventus for several games for another headbutt. We will probably never know the content of the provocation- but for me, though it was embarrassing and low, I still want to believe in Zissou.

Stop! In the name of love

Clearly, if you want something to go with your ancient giant hinge (see April 10, 2006 entry) you would of course choose a railway lantern! Mike spotted this at the Enschede market this weekend and could not resist. According to the seller it is a working model, but we are not about to pour oil into it any time soon. We love the zandloper motif (that is hourglass to you)-- it shows up a lot here, and Mike even chose it as one of the shapes for the panels on the balustrade of our staircase. Staircase is not finished yet-- but rest assured we will blog about it when it is!

Sporty Spice

This weekend promised to be action-packed for the Wimbeldon and World Cup fans among us. After a busy Saturday we are totally deflated. The England team lost in a shoot-out to Portugal (our Dutch-defeating nemesis). Ohh, that was tough to watch. They lost Beckham to an injury and Wayne Rooney to a red card and still fought valiantly, only to lose in the end. The BBC commentators could not hide their severe disappointment. Later in the evening, Brazil lost to France. I (Kat) wanted Brazil to go on, but Mike was rooting for France. At this point we barely care who wins. In some ways it would be nice if Italy continues to do well (bringing legitimacy to the American group).
We watched Agassi lose to Nadal in the early match. That was tough-- its is so strange to watch the intersection of these careers-- Agassi finishing off, Nadal just starting up. You could see Agassi tearing up as he thanked the crowd-- and Nadal was very sportsmanlike in letting all the discussion center around Agassi. He didn't even react in an over-excited way about his win. Very classy.
The BBC followed the match of American Andy Roddick and Scot Andy Murray-- and were so thrilled when he won. You've got to give the Brits something. This is their tournament, and their players do not often dominate. Though Roddick is American, we like both he and Murray so we were happy with the results.
We missed Venus Williams' defeat, but saw the highlights this morning. We've been disappointed with her since her post-win speech last year. She never thanked her opponent, Davenport, even when prompted by the BBC commentator who after several minutes said something like "of course we're sure you want to thank Lindsey". Venus sort of mumbled a response-- but it seemed really unsportsmanlike. Her opponent at Wimbledon yesterday also mentioned that Venus wouldn't warm up with her before the match. Not cool.
To go along with this sports update, we'll add more James photos for the fans.