Done Since 2024-06-30

A pretty (surprisingly) good week. Considering everything that could have gone wrong... Okay, pretty good if you ignore US politics. But I've spent the entire week in The Netherlands, so I don't have to worry about it until I get back, except at night when I can't get to sleep.

Lots of walking. Which I haven't been logging for some reason; I may have to go back and correct that manually in the file (but not this post). But I've been getting in a decent amount every day except Friday. (My goal on $G Fit is 3,000 steps/day. I don't always reach it, and hardly ever hit $G's goal of 150 "heart points", which represent minutes of "vigorous" walking, but don't take hills and stairs into account. Seattle is full of hills like the one just east of our house, and Dutch houses are nororious for their steep stairs.)

Let's see... Sunday and half of Monday were about travel -- we arrived at 8:15, took the train to Leiden, and checked in at the Golden Tulip (within sight of the station) somewhere around 10:30. After dropping our bags there, we went with j to his new apartment. It's gorgeous vaulted ceiling, wood (pine?) floors, and up a flight of steep stairs.

Tuesday we checked out and dragged our bags up those stairs, then went out with j to buy housewares. Then we took an Uber to our hotel in Den Haag. Which was expensive, but we didn't want to have to get our bags on and off trains. It would have worked fine except that the hotel is on a street that's closed to auto traffic. Oops. After that we took public transit everywhere -- dead easy once we got used to it. The OV-chipkaart works sufficiently like the Seattle area's ORCA card to be familiar.

Wednesday we vegetated.

Thursday we went to Leiden and got j a nice used e-bike. Heavy, but that's what the motor is for. Good place.

We went out again for groceries, because j's Albert Heijn is better than the one across from the hotel. Still has some weird gaps. I have not been able to find either distilled water or chewable calcium carbonate antacid. Not at the local drugstore, either -- they carried distilled water but it's been out of stock all week, near as I can tell. WTF?

Friday we went back to Leiden to help j bring home a second-hand table. The shop is marvelous -- I'm assuming we'll be back from time to time. N and j carried the thing home -- a half-dozen or so blocks -- while I wrangled doors and so on. Naturally it picked that time to rain. Getting it up j's stairs was arduous (for N and j -- I stayed out of the way).

My bladder is behaving itself so far. My back and hips a little less so, but I'm managing.

Link of the week: David Attenborough's Natural History Museum Alive (2014) - YouTube (AKA "David Attenborough's "Night at the Museum".)

Not a link to the thing itself, but Everything, Everywhere, All at Once was a really fun movie -- I watched in the plane on the way over. Hard to describe -- just see it if you have a chance.

( Notes & links, as usual )