Busy

It has been two busy weeks. Didn't have much time to post, although I have some new pics to share. Today I'm busy too, but maybe I have some time later today to post some pics. But in case I don't have time I wish everybody a happy, healthy and prosperous 2006 now.

Pub Cat

Once, sometimes twice a week I pick up Noriko from the pub. She discovered this typical nearby local pub last summer. She liked the friendly atmosphere and since last summer she often goes there after shopping
on Saturday and sometimes Thursdaynight for a coffee or a beer. When she arrives there she gives me a call and then I pick her up on the bicycle. We drink one or two beers and then go home.

In this pub there's a quite big pub cat walking around. He is a former straycat but the people of the pub took care of the cat and now he belongs to the pub interior, always lying on the table (and when it's too crowded lying under the table) or sitting in front of the door begging to go outside.

Here are two pics of the cat that were taken by Noriko. BTW the beer next to the cat on picture two was Noriko's. As far as I know the cat only likes milk and coffeecream.

Oops

About once every 4 to 5 weeks my mom gives me a haircut. She always use a set of clippers and gives me a few millimetres length haircut. So it's always pretty short. Only last Sunday the set of clippers broke down halfway the haircut. I couldn't go home with a weird screwed up kind of short mohawk, so my mother used a device she normally only use for my sidebeards. There are no combs on this device to set any hairlength, so the only model that was available was a model football hooligan. It's not completely but very close to bald as the pictures below will show.

It's a relief to see how fast my hair grows back. There is already quite a difference between my hair now and one week ago.

So cute and fun to watch

Today I visited my sister and parents. I brought some Sinterklaaspresents with me for our nieces Iris and Fleur. For Iris it were some kind of fairy- or angelwings and for Fleur Sinterklaas brought a wooden puzzle.

For those who don't know what Sinterklaas is you can check this link for information about the origins of Santa Claus, which sounds close to Sinterklaas.

Anyway our nieces liked their present a lot, especially Iris was very exited about her fairy- or angelwings. She wanted to wear them immediately and they matched very well with a princess outfit that she got some time ago. After taking a picture first with her wings she wanted to change to her princess outfit and wear the wings with this outfit. When Irisi changed into her princess outfit Fleur also wanted to put on her "Pieten"costume which consists of some trousers and a hat. I shot some pics of both of them and they looked really cute on most of them. They are so fun to watch.Their characters are completely different, but they are cute and funny in their own way.

Here are a few pics of them.

Colorado (6)

This probably will be my last post with pics from my trip to Colorado. The pics that will be shown here are from the "Garden of the Gods" a collection of red sandstone rock formations which were formed through 300 million years of erosion.

During the ride through the park we saw some spectacular shapes. Unfortunately I don't have pics of those. The pics below were taken from the parking place near the visitor's centre and from the viewpoint at the visitor centre. Another amazing thing for me was how quickly light conditions can change. If you take a look at pic 2 and 3 it's hard to believe that there is just a few minutes difference between the two pics when they were taken. I found it rather amazing that suddenly the sky changed from a bit blur light to a more red coloured sky. If you want to see some more online pics from the "Garden of the Gods" to get an impression of all the different and spectacular shapes you could check this .

It was getting a bit dusky when the last two pics from me and my friend Julie were taken. In the back in the middle you can see Pike's Peak with it's top covered in clouds. We were really lucky it was so clear when we were there on top.

The pics only will give you a slight idea of the beautiful scenery that I saw. It's almost impossible to grasp the grand and gorgeous panoramic views that I experienced. I'm not a religious person, far from that, but this kind of impressive scenery always makes me feel small and humble.

Anyway, before I get sentimental: Enjoy the pics!

Colorado (5)

I returned home last Tuesdayafternoon ftom a nice and exiting two week trip to Colorado. I promised I would post some more pics, so here they are. The pics are from the last weekend from my trip into the mountains with my friends Julie and Alan. The pics were shot at the top of Pike's Peak and because of the good and clear weather the views were excellent and spectacular. Some more info about the trip you can read in my previous post. Later this weekend I will post some pics from the "Garden of the Gods" where we went after coming down from Pike's Peak.

Julie and Alan

Colorado (4)

The past few days I didn't do much from a sightseeing point of view. A had a very relaxed time these days. Spend my days with reading, watching some tv, sleeping, internet to check the news and some of my favorite websites en weblogs and had some talks with Julie, her husband Alan and Julie's son Brian. I met Julie's sister last Thursday and that night Julie and I went to a sportsbar to have dinner and watch an ice-hockeygame on a big screen with some of Julie's friends.

This Saturday Julie and Alan took me on a ride into the mountains. This time a bit more further away than the weekend before. After a nice ride with nice scenery we first checked in at the motel in Frisco where we were suppose to stay for the night. After checking in and a short rest we drove up to Southpark (the real city not from the cartoon). The town itself is not much special, basically it is a kind of ghosttown/old miningtown. I just wanted to have a picture from me with one of the Southpark signboards, because I'm a big fan of the cartoonserie. On the way back we came through some nice ski resort (I forgot the name of the city) where I bought some t-shirts for presents.

After that we went back to the motel, took a rest again and went out for dinner. In the mean time it started to snow pretty heavy. We were suppose to go to Pike's Peak on Sunday, but that also depended on the weather. After checking the weather forecast we decided to leave early at 7:30 A.M. Despite the heavy snowing from the night before the roads were not that bad, the weather was excellent and we arrived ahead of our schedule, so we were able to take an earlier train up to Pike's Peak with it's top at 14.100 feet (about 4.300 metres). The 80 minute trainride with some very steep parts was very nice and showed the change in landscape from trees, huge rocks, creeks, small waterfalls to just snow, and ice above the treeline. The views from the top with it's high and very cold winds, was very spectacular. After looking around and the trainride back we drove up to the nearby "Garden of the Gods" a collection of red sandstone rock formations formed through 300 million years of erosion.

After taking a look around, visiting the visitor's centre and taking some pictures we went home. On the way back we had dinner somewhere to finish off a very nice weekend with some spectacular views and sightseeing and to finish a nice and relaxed two week holiday with Julie and Alan.

Tomorrow I'm flying back to Holland, so this will be my last post from the USA. I'll post a few pics from our weekendtrip to Southpark and Pike's Peak and I will post some more pics later after I got back to Holland. I hope you like them.

A view from the parking place at our motel In Frisco

View from the train to Pike's Peak

Here and there you might see some reflection from the train window

View from the top (more pics later)

Funny

Create your own Einstein image and put in your own text. The result you can save. I saw the link to this website on my brother's weblog. I thought it was funny and put in my own text and put the result here.

Colorado (3)

Julie and Alan (Julie's husband) took us (me and Becky) for a ride into the mountains last Saturday. The scenery was very pretty. We saw some wildlife like mountaingoats (forgot how they are officially called) and a huge number of elk. I shot some nice videos with my digital camera from the car, while we drove around. And we made two or three short stops to shoot some pics. Here are a few. Enjoy!

New items added

Every now and then I'm trying things out on my template and doing some maintenance on the right sidebar. I have added some new links, some (extra) newslinks and some new movielinks about Asian movies.

As you can see I also added a new item which provides news headlines from the BBC divided in World, Europe, Americas, Middle East and Asia. These headlines will be automatically updated every time you visit here again.

I also added two links under the title: "This day in history". I got the idea from my brother's weblog (Dutchblog Israel). You can check what happened on today's date throughout history.

Update service

Just added a new simple item in the right sidebar: An update service.

You'll find it below the newsitems.

By sending an e-mail (just click on the link) You will be added to an addresslist and you will get automatically a notification when this weblog is updated.

Colorado (2)

During Julie's lunchbreak (she works from home) Julie, Becky (a friend from Minnesota, with a hawribly funny Minnesotan accent) and I took a walk down the trail, that starts from the end of the street where Julie lives. The trail goes down to the foothills. It was really a nice walk. It wasn't as colourful as it probably looks during early autumn or spring and summer, but the scenery was still very nice, at least it was for me, being a cityboy who isn't used to nearby nature. We saw some deer and snakes (one dead, another alive). Also shot some black and white pics. Here are just a few pics to give you an impression.

Almost the same pic as the previous, but then B&W

These were the deer I was talking about

Colorado

Arrived yesterdaynight at Denver, Colorado, where I was picked up by my friend Julie. I'm still a bit jetlagged, but I hope I can catch up some sleep tonight.

Julie took me this afternoon for a short ride around the neighbourhood to the nearby waterreservoir. The neighbourhood is real nice and beautiful. I can imagine why Julie likes to ride her motorbike around here. If the weather is okay on Saturday we will go for a ride a bit higher up the mountains. The scenery must be very nice up there.

I took a few pics, just to get started. Almost have two weeks left to catch up. :-) It has been quite dry lately, so that's why the waterlevel is not very high at the reservoir. More pics will be posted later.

More Crete pics (6)

This probably will be my last post from Holland for the next two weeks. If I can find some time I might post a few more pics tomorrow, but I can't promise. Tuesday I'm leaving Holland for two weeks to visit my very good friend Julie in the USA. I'll take my laptop and camera with me, so I probably will be able to post from there. Don't know yet, but I think this also will be the last posting with Crete pics. If I want to show more pics from Crete I probably will post them on my online photo-album at Photobucket .

Anyway here are the pics and this time some pics from people. Sometimes they are aware of the camera and pose and sometimes they are unaware of the camera.

Noriko has a cute smile, doesn't she?

This handicapted guy looked tired

But it gave me a good photo opportunity. Because it was at the beginning of the evening and it already started to get dark and I didn't want to disturb the older guy with my flash I had to overexpose the picture a bit.
I'm quite satisfied with the result.

This is father Dimitri (if I remembered the priest's name correctly) who takes care of the cave of St. John the Hermit and also runs some kind of free shelter. The friendly and funny older lady is, by what I understood, a regular visitor of the cave. She was dressed in black so I assume that she is a widow.

Noriko don't like this in profile close-up picture of herself, but I think it's a nice shot

This pic was taken by Noriko at the local Saturday market at Chania.

And finally another pic that Noriko took from a little Czech kid at the beach at the Gramvousa fortress