Week 1 in the new place has come and gone without any major incidents, aside from a few items that were damaged in the move (which we will hopefully be reimbursed for, since some are essentially vital to our existence: pie dish and popcorn maker) . We've spent a lot of time unpacking and turning boxes into furniture items that we suddenly discovered that we need with the arrival of all our stuff. With any luck these will be replaced by real furniture in the future. The rest of the boxes are stacked to the ceiling so that they effectively block out the majority of the light to the living room. Trash day is Wednesday, though, so we should be rid of them shortly. Unfortunately, this means that I will have to give up my nest. It heats up in there pretty quickly, and all you can hear is the rustle of paper resulting from your breathing. It's very soothing, and it makes me understand why homeless people seem to sleep so much--I mean, how could you NOT sleep under those conditions?

Friday Jack had the day off because Thursday was a holiday (the Ascension) and he switched it. We went to a matinee of "Da Vinci Code". Here's a tip for you: if you're living in a foreign country where you don't speak the language, don't go see an American movie where some of the dialogue takes place in another language, since they will translate it into the language you don't speak, not into English, if they translate it at all. The movie has Latin, Spanish, and a good deal of French, so the only reason we were able to follow it was that we had both read the book. Otherwise it might have been very confusing. My expectations were pretty low so I thought it was not bad.

That evening we went to see Jolie Holland at the old botanical garden. It was an interesting venue, in what would have been the central round section of the glass building usually reserved for the tallest plants (the "rotunda"). A room had been constructed inside so that you couldn't see the sky. Half of the semi-circular space was taken by the stage and the other half by the seating. It was designed for 125 sitting or 250 standing, but that would have made it pretty danged crowded, and since most people were sitting on the risers it was a good thing a huge crowd didn't come. They had beer available next door to the rotunda at a bar, and due to the size of the room it was difficult for someone to slip out, get beers and return without being a distraction to those of us who were trying to watch the show since you had to walk in front of the audience to exit. Would it have been difficult to carve a little nook out of the overly-large stage to facilitate easy beer purchasing? Sadly, we will never know. Jolie sings in a thick, warbling southern accent, but she talks just like the rest of us. It was a strange split-personality thing; I wasn't sure if that was how she learned to sing or if it was an affectation or what.

Saturday we bought some necessaries, such as a free-standing rack for hanging garments and a vacuum, both of which we promptly made use of. The vacuum is made by Daewoo and puts out a nice hot-plastic aroma, which almost makes me believe that we've got a toxic fire going in one of the two non-working fireplaces. It's so homey. I made couscous on for dinner with onions and peppers and pine nuts and it was good to have a home-cooked meal without a lot of pre-processing (I did not, however, make the couscous from scratch). Sunday, the first sunny day in the 60s in like a week, Jack and I went to watch some of his coworkers race in a 20k. There was something like 50,000 people participating, and from our vantage point about 3 km from the start, where we could see the runners milling about and heard the starter pistol go off, a sea of people came surging towards us. It was a little alarming, actually. I kept cheering people on in English, and then realizing the futility of it. Most people were dressed like runners, but there was a waiter in a bow tie carrying 3 bottles of water on a tray, some cavemen, two giant pink babies, etc. All of the people we were supporting managed to make it, in spite of supposedly lackluster training efforts on some of their parts. I got to feel like I was really part of the action when one of the women running passed me her sunglasses to hold. Unfortunately it was already at the 15k point, but I'm sure the reduced weight helped her finish.

Tarragon is "estragon" in French and "dragon" in Dutch, so I kept encountering these bottles of what appeared to be vinegar with "dragon estrogen" in the store. Thankfully I finally remembered to look it up. Crazy languages.