28 February 2007

Grief


I wanted to show you this picture I found of my cat, who died a couple of years ago. It’s a really cool picture, but I forgot the CD with the pictures at work. I’ll try and post it tomorrow if I don’t forget it.

Nothing special has happened the last couple of days. I’ve been really tired, because I didn’t get enough sleep. Like right now, I should have been in bed at least half an hour ago. I played Guild Wars tonight for about 2 hours. It was really cool. I finally reached Droknar’s Forge, which is a city that I really wanted to reach. You can buy really cool armour there and it’s basically just a high-lvl area. That makes me feel really cool.

Next Tuesday I have a meeting in Almere to select an urn for a tiny bit of my father’s ashes. When I have selected one and ordered it, we can make an appointment to distribute the rest of my father’s ashes. I have postponed this meeting for a while, because I’m not really looking forward to it, but it really doesn’t matter how long I postpone it. I have to do it someday anyway.

I’m having a hard time in dealing with the grief. I usually cry at night, because I can picture my father best when I’m in bed. I also cry when I hear the song ‘Hurt’ by Christina Aguilera. The text doesn’t completely apply to me, but it really touches me. I can’t really define what I feel. I just feel sad. Usually when I work things are all right and I can just go to class and do what I need to do. It’s when I’m at home that I have time to think and to realize and feel how much it hurts. And I know the pain is there to stay forever. It will become less and I will learn to deal with it eventually, but the truth is I don’t have a father anymore. I can’t buy a card for Father’s Day, my father will not be at my wedding, he will never see my children, and my children will never know their grandfather. Those things just really hurt.

Like I said, it’s not like I’m crying and blubbering about these things all day long. I do go to class, I try to prepare all my homework, and I still play Guild Wars. It’s just so very hard.

My grandmother sent me these lines:

There is no death

When you think of me, I’ll always be with you

*Edit 1-3-2007* Here's the picture of my cat.

25 February 2007

Lots of Achievements Weekend


This has been a really productive weekend for me even though I had to work last Friday and so missed one day of the weekend. Yesterday I finished all the grammar exercises I had to do for this week and a read many pages in Bleak House. Today I actually finished it. I’m really glad to have finished it, because I was afraid it was never going to happen :) I really enjoyed reading the book. It’s written by Charles Dickens. I can’t really say what the story is about, you’ll have to google around for it, but it’s really great. He has so many characters, and each of them is totally different from the other. The book has almost 1000 pages, so it took me a couple of weeks to get through it, but I finished it today!

I also made a presentation for the Language Acquisition course. I had to pretend to give a presentation to the sixth form of my former secondary school about the pronunciation of the ‘th’ sound. I made a Powerpoint presentation of it and I also finished that assignment. I burned it on a CD and I will hand it in on Tuesday.

Tonight I sent an application letter to a company. It’s a small, relatively new company who deals in gadgets, small appliances which cost a lot of money and really have no use. They are looking for someone at the office to do some customer-service work and to do other administrative work. Tonight I sent them my application letter including my cv and passport picture via e-mail, so I hope they will respond quickly. Their office is very close to my house, so that would be really cool.

And after that I played some Guild Wars and I had my first character ascended! I was so thrilled about it. It was a bit of an anticlimax after that, because I wanted to do the next mission, but I couldn’t find anyone to do it with me. And then I wanted to do it alone, and then I had a fight, nothing serious, with my boyfriend and I just quit.

And tomorrow I gotta work, as always, and I’ll talk to you soon.

18 February 2007

CameraManHamster & Muis, Huishoudbeurs, My Father, GW mini pet, Memory, Tomorrow



The two little friends you see on my screen are the newest additions to my stuffed bears family. The one on the right is my Cameraman Hamster. He is given out by one of the largest supermarket brands here in the Netherlands. They appear in TV-commercials. Martijn bought it for me as a Valentine’s Day gift. The one on the left is Muis, which is Dutch for ‘mouse’. He doesn’t have a name yet, although I like Muis a lot as a name. I bought him at the Huishoudbeurs last Friday. He doesn’t have any special features. I just liked the looks of him and that’s why I bought him.

The Huishoudbeurs is a bit hard to explain for people who don’t know anything about it. It’s like a trade fair for housewives. It just to be about the newest inventions for the household, like the vacuum cleaner was first introduced on this trade fair (in the Netherlands at least). Nowadays it’s just a commercial gathering where are the big brands try to sell as much as possible. I went there with my boss and we had a fun evening. I bought lots of food and then mostly cookies and chocolate and such.

Last Monday I spent all day at work scanning the pictures of my father. It was really quiet and I had promised my grandmother I would send her some pictures. The downside was that I was really depressed and sad when I came home. I’ve been crying for most of the evening afterwards. It’s so annoying that I have to consider myself before doing something, like putting together a photo-album with my father’s pictures. I just know I have to wait in doing it. I don’t want to upset myself too much and I still need to deal with my emotions. It’s so confusing to go through a period of mourning. I wish I had no need for it.

Today I played Guild Wars and there was the Canthan New Year event. It was so much fun. I got many gifts and I received a mini pet! I got a mini pig! I am so happy with it. I’ve never had a mini pet before and I just got this one for free. A lot of people received it, so it’s nothing special anymore, but I’m really glad that I’ve got it. I even sent a letter to ArenaNet, the producer of Guild Wars, that I really appreciate the fact that they organise these events and that I love them for it. I hope they’ll continue doing these things.

Last Sunday I bought some upgrades for my computer. I bought a new hard disk, 250 GB and 2 new RAM memory modules, 512 MB each, so that I have a total of 1536 MB RAM memory. I’m very happy with it and I hope this will make my computer last a couple years longer.

And tomorrow there’s work again and the day after I really need to do some serious homework. I haven’t done that much this weekend, at least not on the homework front.

08 February 2007

Snow


Snow in the Netherlands!
You wouldn't believe it! The whole country was in an uproar today because they had predicted some snowfall today. They actually predicted very heavy snowfall, but it was kind of disappointing after all. Most had disappeared at the end of the afternoon. I got to leave work early luckily, and the trains were only a little delayed. Nothing too serious.

I didn't have class tonight because the university got a new rector today. I don't know who came up with the idea to skip all of the lessons for the rest of the day, but apparently someone did. I only heard about it yesterday from a classmate I met in the train. No one had bothered to tell us anything about it. I called the secretary this morning to make sure I had no class.

Well, I'm gonna read some pages of Bleak House now and then I'm going to sleep.

My Father's Ashes

Tonight in the train home I talked with my mother on the phone. Her best friend died two weeks ago. They had been friends for a very long time, I guess since my mother was 18 or 20 years old. The woman died of lung-emboli. My mom was pretty shook up by it of course. Her friend was only 52 years old. I have seen her a couple of times, but I didn’t really know her. We also talked about the situation with my father of course.

I still have to decide what to do with my father’s ashes. My mother suggested that I should have the ashes spread out in Almere where my father lived and that I should keep a bit of the ashes myself in a small box, so that I have some left. I have been thinking about this tonight and I’ve browsed over the Internet to see what I could find in the range of mini-urns. I have found some nice ones. I found some really cool glass-urns in which the ashes are distributed in the glass itself. It looked really nice. I’ve also seen some simple small urns.

It’s so very hard to think about this and to make the right decision. I can only decide once and I can never do it again. I really don’t want to decide and I just wished my father hadn’t died. It would have been so much easier for me.

05 February 2007

Mini Holiday, Exam Tomorrow


This weekend we went on our mini holiday. We have had a really good time. You can see some of the pictures at: http://flickr.com/photos/charda/ It felt so good to be away from home to these ‘vacation-like’ surroundings. We brought many coordinates with us to look for geocaches, but we didn’t really succeed in it. We found one on Saturday, but we couldn’t go looking for the next, because we had to walk to the village which was closest by so we could buy some groceries. There was a small supermarket on the terrain itself, but it was really expensive and they didn’t have any fresh fruits or vegetables. We just wanted to visit a real supermarket and get some decent groceries.
On Sunday we tried to find a second geocache, but we failed. It was a multicache, which means you need to look for some clues and figure out the next coordinates for yourself. The problem was that we couldn’t find the first clue and from then on we couldn’t find any other hints either and it was one big failure. We walked back home and we planned to eat out in the restaurant on the terrain that evening. But we hadn’t made any reservations, and the restaurant turned out to be completely full when we got there, so we couldn’t eat there. We just went to the snack bar next door. On Saturday afternoon we went bowling for one hour. This was fun to do. Martijn and I had never done that together, but it was fun to do with just the two of us. I think Martijn won. He was better at throwing all the pins down, while I kept throwing only 8 of them over.
Tomorrow I have my Linguistics exam. I haven’t studied at all. I just glanced over the mock-exam this afternoon, but I don’t know anything. I can’t answer a single question. I can’t not go, because I requested this special exam for me. I’ll just go and fail and I hope I can do it again in August.

01 February 2007

Ill, Vacation

The last couple of days I have been ill. It wasn’t much fun. I went to visit my cousin last Saturday. I hadn’t seen her in a couple of years and it was good to see her again. I think I picked up a bug of some sorts at her place. Afterwards I remembered that she told me they had been sick last week.

We visited them for almost a complete day. We just hang there a bit and we talked to them. Mainly Martijn did the talking, but that’s okay. We ate there as well, and it was a really nice dinner. We had a fondue, like I had with the Brothers at Christmas. The only difference was that this wasn’t made with oil, but with bouillon. It felt a lot healthier at least. The last days I’ve basically spent in bed. I felt really weak, but I’ll spare you the details. Tomorrow I’m going back to work.

The day after tomorrow I’m going on a holiday. A really tiny one that is, only 3 days, but it’s the only thing close to a holiday we’ll have in a long time. We’re going to the Eastern part of the country and spend 3 days in a bungalow. We’ve already looked for some caches nearby that we might look into. And of course we’ll also bring Edward and Yolanda with us.

I don’t really have much to tell right now, so I’ll get back to you soon.

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