Did 3 laundries today, cleaned the toilet and bathroom, cleaned the fridge and freezer, vaccuum cleaned the whole house and did grocery shopping for whole next week.

Next to that I also finally finished my report on the Singing Week in Spain (Dutch), I have a purring kitty on my lap and we have a weird glow in the dark like fungus in one of our plant pots. Life's nice!

Damage of kitties so far: one teapot. Found it in shards on the kitchen floor one morning, one of the cats probably tried to pull herself up on the tea cosy. No big deal, we had a spare.

Training with the cats is going rather well. Lina (the tabby with brown) is learning to sit on command and Melisse (black and white) is learning to lay down at command. We could not make Melisse sit, even guiding her with a treat didn't work. She's more one for laying than sitting anyway.

Managing Musilon has been a lot of work lately, even though it is still summer holiday. We have a lot of problems with our external (non-student) members; we have way too much of them and need to bring the percentage down. So we had to form a policy and will have to put off some former members... it sucks. Then there was the introduction during which we are supposed to find new student members, but singing is 'not cool' so we only got about 5 truely interested people at our information stand. And just 4, of which only 1 stayed, participants for our first workshop. Next Thursday we got three more workshops, but I'll be surprised if every workshop gets one participant.

I'm getting a bit depressed by all of this, and I'm really looking forward to the first of September, when the rehearsals will start again. Finally a bit of nice singing again. Though the worries about our external members stays of course. We have got till October to fix the problem. Yeah.. right.. as if the new students will have settled down before that time and thought "Live's so easy, let's join a choir".

Meanwhile work is getting out of the holiday-mood as well. With lots of new, big, difficult projects. I'm going to have to ask for a priority list again soon. Getting swamped here. This week I'm also completely on my own, without Matthijs to give me feedback. He's on vacation with his family and won't be back until Sunday.

There's also some fun though. Been to a party yesterday evening of Moes and Daphne, who had both graduated that day. They threw a balfolk party and there was quite some dancing. Had a lot of fun. Next balfolk for me will probably be the 7th of September in Utrecht.

I'm sorry I still haven't finished my report on the trip to Spain. I'm (still) in the process of picking and adding pictures to the story. I should really try to finish it soon, because this is taking way too long.

Finally, after some nagging by Matthijs and having to give him back his desk chair since his internship ended, I decided it would be time for a decent desk chair of my own. And while we were at it, also a keyboard to connect to my laptop. So yesterday evening we went to IKEA and MediaMarkt and got both.

I have to get used to this keyboard... the spacebar is a bit tough and the board is divided in two areas, with both areas slanted outward a bit. So sometimes I hit the wrong keys.

Since July has been a bit of a quiet month if it comes to bloggin, here a short update.
Played at Black Box, one of the roulette victims. And yes, I died eventually, after some gun f*ck-ups and heroic actions. Was a good one-shot if you ask me. People can be such bastards when given the chance.

Went to the 13th Summoning with a group of friends, playing 'barbarians' (actually: non-Roman people). Had a lot of fun trying to convince Jans character to come back home with us and be a good tribal chief. He refused; lots of conflicts and emo-play. The weather was a bit icky at the start of that long weekend, but fortunately it got better in the end, and we could pack up everything in dry state.

Also went to the musical Tarzan that Saturday. Drove up and down from Ommen to Scheveningen especially for that, and it was well worth it. What a show! Costumes were marvelous, the set was brilliant, songs were really moving and the various people hanging above the audience a real surprise. A wonderful day. Matthijs bought the CD and a DVD with the making of.

The weekend after the Summoning I went to Spain to participate in the Singing Week in Tarragona (1 hour by train under Barcelona). I kept a diary about that week, but I'm just halfway in typing it out, so you'll have to wait a bit longer for that. It will be in Dutch, and I will post a link to it here. Hopefully I can illustrate it a bit with the photo's that Rob and Marcel took.

Had a very quiet birthday the Tuesday after my return from Spain and then celebrated it for family on the 1st of August. Got lots of books and kitty toys. We had a very nice American chocolate cake (home made of course) in the afternoon and two pasta salads for dinner. The last people left at about 21:30 and we went to bed at 00:00 after some preparations for Castlefest.

Went to Castlefest on Saturday August 2nd with some fellow EE'ers to spread some flyers and have fun. Bought cute necklaces for my mother and her girlfriend, 2 sets of felt-wool and lots of mead. I got a very cute bookworm plush doll from Cora and Rene, which is now residing in my bookcase.

Next weekend our second try at a 'stockruim' and next week we will be getting two kittens from the shelter. Can't wait! We'll probably do clicker training with the kitties to teach them a few basic manners and perhaps some tricks (like 'sit' and 'high five').