8 Weeks ago we contacted our mortgage advisor to start arranging the whole mortgage thing. About 5 weeks ago we signed the mortgage offer (hypotheek offerte) with 3 weeks left for the deadline. We had to shift that deadline another 2 weeks to last Wednesday. Guess what? It still isn't done!

First there was some waiting for Reaal, apparently one of the slowest insurance companies around when it comes to life insurances. Great, why did our advisor pick that one when he knew we did not have much time left? Anyway, they had to look into my medical history because of the cancer I had when I was 1,5 years old. Great, it never stops following me, does it?

We thought that would be the last obstacle. Everybody was waiting for Reaal and finally they came with their final offer, which we signed and had to sent via three different parties to the final destination. Which of course takes lots of time especially with holidays in between. The deadline comes, and goes. Matthijs keeps mailing Eigen Huis for a status update: is it finally all taken care of now? No conclusive answer. Still waiting for someone to send something to someone else to check to ARHGEL!! And now today we finally get an answer: there's something wrong with our employer's certificate (werkgeversverklaring); the date of the contract does not match the date that is mentioned on our pay slips (loonstrookje)....

WHAT THE HELL PEOPLE?!?!? Why in the name of @#$@#$@#$ did you wait till the last minute to check everything? There's fucking two weeks gone by waiting for an answer from Reaal and you never think to check up on stuff until the deadline is passed. The second deadline I might add. In two weeks - ONLY TWO WEEKS - we have to sign the purchase contract and the mortgage should be ready by then. And now we have this?!

Matthijs has contacted the accountant of our work directly (instead of going via our boss, who is at times quite hard to reach) to get the dates on the pay slips corrected so we can handle this right now. I just hope everything will be taken care of in time. I really hope that this does not need to be sent to three different parties via 5 different checkups again resulting in a delay we really can not have anymore.

FUCK this shit!

Today something happened that you do not expect to happen in an apartment on the third floor of a flat. Heck, you wouldn't even expect it in a normal ground floor house...

A tit (meesje) flew into our living room and was quickly caught by our black and white cat Melisse. I could do nothing to help the little bird, it was dead when I pried Melisse's jaws open.

We live in a third floor apartment with a small balcony. Because of the height and our cats, we have a net in front of our balcony so the cats can't fall down. Besides that I also had laundry hanging outside on the double lines and the door to the living room was only ajar for about 15 cm. What are the odds that a bird will fly into your livingroom with all these obstacles?

Melisse was quick as lightening. From sleeping in the workroom windowsill to the living room within a second. I only got a glimpse of something battering against the window, something quite bigger than a butterfly, so I followed Melisse into the livingroom. Just in time to see her catch the bird and jump down on the ground again. She was reluctant to give up her prey and was very excited about it all. Of course.

We took the little bird and buried it under some shrubs a few blocks away. Poor little thing. Somewhere, some other tit is missing it's partner now. All alone to build a nest, or no nest at all.

I should not think too much about it, it makes me sad and this is just nature. At least, a cat catching a bird is nature. This happening in your own livingroom after the bird flew a very unlikely trail...

The Leviathan special was not canceled so last Friday I drove to Uden with all the gear of my healer Enid, plus some decorative stuff and lots of lanterns. Matthijs did not join me because he had a concert that evening and he did not know what Mottul would do at a special like this. That felt weird. But Cora and Rene would be there, so all would be well.

I was the first person on the grounds, except for our SL's. Made my bed, ate the bread I brought and waited for the rest to arrive. I was a bit apprehensive when I found out that some of the people that I had hoped to see as players were actually npc's. Like the Dvergar men and Baerwhyn. Still, in the end the player group was big enough and we had lots of 'useful' people with us.

There was plenty of fighting this weekend and thus a lot of healing to be done. Even a few fatals and at some point I was right in time to cure Ceryni of a disease that was turning him into a zombie. Enid was kind of shaken by that experience, and that was not because she was vomited all over by Ceryni. Feeling someone turn to a walking corpse while you're fighting the disease that is doing it is hard.

I was very glad that bandages can heal some damage now too. They were needed. I have washed and dried (yay for sunny weather) about 8 bandages I think, so I could reuse them. However, on Saturday night I had bandages and even some mana left because that final battle of the weekend could not be won by us.

Backlight and too much undead that kept standing up (even when they were decapitated) prevented us from reaching our goal (and sometimes reaching the wounded too) and in the end Rydgar (Rene) decided to call the retreat. Most of us were badly wounded and had been running around in circles trying to stay out of the hands of those stinking corpses. It was chaos.

That night we lost Ceryni. Which shook Enid even more. She liked the man, he was good to talk with and quite good looking too. Enid is blaming herself a bit for his death. She just could not get to him in time because of all the walking dead surrounding them. She was once so close, she could (should!) have darted past that one shambling corpse and saved Ceryni. But she was too scared. (She would probably have died with him if she had tried, but she's ignoring that)

So, disheartened we went back to camp to lick our wounds. Rydgar tried to lift our spirits a bit. We had only lost one man, it could have been so much worse. Still, Enid could not shake the feeling that they had gained nothing in that last battle yet lost a good man. And she could (should!) have done something about it.

So, emo, emo... Fortunately Oog (Verik) suggested to play "Wortel en Waarheid" (truth and carrot) which is quite a hilarious game. It's like truth or dare but there's no dare. It's a questioning game; you ask someone an (embarrassing) question which has to be answered truthfully. However, if you do not want to reveal the truth you may stuff your mouth with carrot and speak with your mouth full so that nobody can understand what you're saying, which makes it all the more hilarious. This lifted Enid's spirit a bit.

For Brenda however it was not such a good idea. It meant that I went to bed around 04:00 and I felt sick. My stomach was bothering me. I now know what "her bowels turned to water" means... It appeared to be a food poisoning (however there was no vomiting or nausea and it did not stop when there was not much left to dispose of), but Sunday afternoon I was still ill so it might have been a virus. Whatever it was, it did not allow for a good night's rest and I was worried about the 1,5 hour drive back to Enschede. Fortunately, that went well enough. I think driving is a bit like sports: it gets a bit of adrenaline going so that the parasympathetic nervous system gets laid low and digestion is put on hold.

It took me till Monday afternoon to get better. The stomach cramps had subsided the night before, but I was still weak. The bicycle ride to town to sign our civil partnership (we now officially live together!) exhausted me. In the evening I felt much better and we made the pizza's that had been planned for the Sunday.

I bought some Loperamide which will from now on accompany me to LARPs. At the Dela 'fruitwisseling' I had been ill too, so if this is a promise for the rest of the year... I'll be prepared. Still, I'm looking forward to the LARPs this year. First we'll have the Symbols epilogue and the weekend after that the Moots where we'll continue our quest to finish of Wulthgar.

We now have 3 of the 5 'emotions' that Wulthgar wants to get rid of: compassion, faith and doubt. Saturday night we were looking for humility and then we'll have to find out what the last one is. These pieces correspond with wooden sticks on a board, which will in the end probably from a pattern of some sort. And then what?

I am glad that we did not solve the whole problem this weekend. The teaser text kind of suggested that the npc's would come to solve our problem entirely, I'm glad that it was not the case, though they did help a lot. They may have found us a bit dense every now and again. But that's players. ;-)

Three birthdays in one weekend combined with a lot of logistic puzzles makes for a tiring experience. Fortunately the weather on Saturday made up for a lot.

Friday evening we would go to The Hague for the birthday of Matthijs' cousin, Ivan. We'd go by car to pick up a lot of boxes for the move too. Somewhere that week I was browsing Marktplaats and I found a nice desk for our new house, that had to be picked up in The Hague. So we decided to go for it. We measured the car and concluded it would just fit.

We didn't see much of Ivan's birthday because the whole picking up the desk adventure took a lot of time. Matthijs had to leave me behind with part of the desk to bring the top of the desk and one of the drawers to Ivan, unload and come back for the other drawer and me. The desktop took a lot of space because it could only fit in the car in one way, nearly resting on Matthijs' shoulder. The back seat and front seat had to be flattened, so there was no room for me. And the second drawer would no way fit either. So I spent about 45 minutes with an elderly couple that I will probably never see again. That was weird, though they were very hospitable and gave me tea during the wait.

With lots of Tetris skills and the use of some space in Rob's car we managed to get the desk, 20+ boxes, 2 suitcases of books (meant for Laurens, they had been stored in our shed for over a year), some more assorted stuff and all passengers into the two cars to go from Ivan to Harderwijk. Matthijs was driving alone, the car packed almost to the roof. I rode with Rob.

Saturday we stored the desk at Harderwijk so we didn't have to take it to Enschede (which would have been impossible any way) and back to Amersfoort later. This gave us more room to properly load the boxes and a drawer that we will upgrade, paint and use for my hobby stuff, into the car for our way home on Sunday.

At first we had planned to go find a secondhand store in Amersfoort, or visit the Ikea. But the weather was so good that we decided to take full advantage of it and stay at Harderwijk some more and do nothing. In the evening we went to yet another birthday (friend of Matthijs' family in Ermelo) and stayed there until 01:30. Then we took our bicycles and went back to Harderwijk again.

Sunday Matthijs' brother Laurens was celebrating his birthday in Utrecht. We dropped of the suitcases with books and enjoyed the high tea goodies. We didn't stay long. The room was cramped with all the visitors and we were tired and had a long way to go to get home again.

At 17:15 we were at home again. We unloaded the car, made and ate pancakes and started planning on the upgrade of the drawer we had brought from Harderwijk. This will have to be finished before the move. In 5 weeks we'll get the key. Then we watched some TV and went to bed.

So, now it is Monday again and I'm still tired... bleh. Next weekend we might have a Leviathan special, or we might not if there are not enough 'monsters'. I would not be overly sad if the special got canceled..