What made you smile today?

So many things....saw a fantastic, beautiful performance by the NYC ballet....had dinner at a nice restaurant....found out my second cousin, who is in the marine corps, has returned safely from Iraq....and heard from an old friend...

It was a special day.....

sun and warmth. gardening. aaaaaahhhhhhh. spring is here, and i don't care even if it freezes again. it's here. basta.

A reminder that no matter what, even when things get really hard and I feel completely insane and out of control,

I am loved.

That's the most important of all. Good wishes to you, Marycat, take care..

I was reading a magazine here this morning & saw a picture of a basket of kittens.

Awwwwwwwwwwwww

Yesterday, two magpies were strolling around my front yard. I went out to watch them. They were so beautiful. They made me smile.

They let this old homeless guy with a white beard sleep with his head slumped on the table in front of him for the longest time in the pub ...

I went to a play tonight, with Esther and a friend of hers (one of the actors being a friend of Esther's that we met in the pub last week).

It was all in Hungarian and the texts were sung, too, so its not like I could follow much of the dialogue - but it was pretty cute, and even for me hilarious enough too! Good music as well.

Plus, it was a nice evening, period.

Actually, just the fact that I'd been kinda stewing over - well, stuff - and that she ended up being the one to call me and being very enthusiastic at that, making me instantly embarassed about having stewed in the first place, made me feel good already.

It was fun even if - or perhaps also kinda because? - Esther's friend was a bit of a character, and was definitely hard to get a word in edgewise of. All the evening he reminded me of someone - from some film? I couldnt figure it out until it struck me: the character in A Confederacy of Dunces!

Oh, and reading up on the results of today's local Dutch elections afterwards made me feel pretty good too!

nimh, You need to find a "more" permanent significant person to share your mental and physical needs. That's only an observation from way out here in California. Good luck, buddy.

Thanks for the advice c.i., but I think the very last thing I need right now is an actual (serious, long-term, 'real love') girlfriend!!

Gotta get myself together better than this still before getting into anything like that again.

But some fun in the meantime wouldnt at all come amiss, asides from the hugs and friendship I got (some more of those wouldnt be bad either)

You know yourself best, but it's been my observation that most of us have our ups and downs - with or without partners. For most things in life, tomorrow never comes. We do the best we can with all the plusses and minusses. None are perfect.

Had a nice little party tonight .. friend of "Susannah"s had her birthday. Eight or ten of us in the kitchen, close together around the kitchen table with cake and salad ... just being cosy, talking. Course I (still) cant understand most of what they're saying if they talk among each other (I can follow roughly what its about, but not what they're saying about it), but it doesnt matter much ... its a nice little group of people, all "soft" people ... and you just feel immediately at home, and welcome. Perhaps more at home than at home, even <nods>. I was really glad Susannah had asked me along again.

There was this guy who's a school psychologist who had all kinds of stories everyone laughed about, and nice gestures. (Three of em were psychologists btw, odd that, but two of them worked in schools - every school has a psychologist here apparently, but there's no public psychological healthcare for adults, only expensive private practices. Well, hopefully they wont need it after all the care in school.) There was also a nice boy in a Fenerbahce shirt who was surprised I knew it when I gushed all enthusiastically about it. (Of course I know it, I'm from Holland, it's a Turkish soccer club, hello ).

Also got to see this one girl again who was at the last party of this friend's as well, last autumn, whom I joked around with then and who was really nice. She chatted with me a long while this time, and when Susannah came into the room called out at her, "your friend is so nice!", at which Susannah with an unexpected edge called back "yes, thats why it is my friend". Hee, that made me smile too

Afterwards a few of us went to a pub - the other half of 'em seem to work in pubs - chatted some more. Nice people, all. And that girl's really nice too, yeah, but she was with her boyfriend, tho they didnt seem to be getting along very well.

I so dont mean to make this like, my Dear Diary thread or anything, by the way...

Oh, and what also made me LOL was finally hearing the legalise-weed song that the (Christian-Democratic) mayor of Dutch bordertown Maastricht recorded with the punk band De Heideroosjes ....

... and the unhhuh-oh-no-we-will-not rap track that the Dutch Minister of Justice Piet Hein Donner (also Christian-Democrat) recorded in response, with one "Master G."

Yes, no kidding - for real. Both tracks were recorded last month during the local election campaign season - and the Minister's "De Don" was downloaded at least 50,000 times.

More info and links to the MP3s in this post...

Oh, and the night before last, walking home, two guys who stopped me to ask where I had bought my coat, what brand it was, etc - "Oh, I didnt know Bjorn Borg made coats too" - heh ;-)

I was in a meeting today with a bunch of folks who want to be my friends. Real estate was the topic and the dollars involved contain quite a few zeros. The main man finally spoke up, attempting to summarize their sales pitch. He is a pretty animated guy, who perhaps talks faster than he thinks. He started a sentence with "John, you are a lot smarter than you look..." There was a bit of a collective gasp from his employees and partners, and he stumbled to recover from his perceived verbal gaffe, his face getting more and more flushed.
I finally laughed and said that he was perhaps right. He spoke not another word for the rest of the meeting.

Ouch!

the little jack russell we happened upon this afternoon -- he was more than excited to see us.

mere words can not describe how incredibly happy he was...

Bumper sticker on a parked car with a picture of a bird: "If you can identify this bird, you are too close"

Also, on the large Bajczy-Zsilinsky avenue, there was an official convoy of sorts: police car with flashlights on in front, five, six official-looking posh cars floating behind it, rather slowly. Behind them, however, two tourist buses, who had neatly shifted into the convoy's slipstream and were riding along merrily - sovereignly ignoring the honking and flashlights of the panicky second police car that was supposed to 'close' the convoy, and was now dithering and zigzagging behind them.

Happy in a schadenfreud kind of way by seeing what an idjit Bruce Tinsley (the "artist" behind the awful comic strip Mallard Fillmore) is for yapping about how wonderful Senator Tom Coburn is. Coburn is beyond arch-conservative and loopy as all get out, including objecting to an airing of Schindler's List on TV because of the nudity. Nudity? So, erm, those scenes of people trying not to be killed by Nazis were no problem for ya?

Yeah, I'm twisted.

Receiving a sample from a company Id been emailing recently.
On got on well with the person on the other end of the emails adn he called himself Arnie.
Along with the sample he sent a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger.