Today it's my 29th birthday. Just a normal workday except for a 'happy birthday' mail from Eyewish (blah) and bol.com (a whopping 2,50 discount on my next order within 14 days of today... ). However, as boring as today may be, so much fun was last weekend.

On Saturday I had invited about 24 friends and 16 of them dropped by bringing various nomsies for the evening picknick. My chocolate pie was eagerly devoured and fun conversations lasted into the late hours with 2 friends staying until about 00:00, after which Matthijs and I watched the lightning show outside and then went to bed.

On Sunday a lot of my family members came over and again the (new) chocolate pie was a success, as was the left over cake that Suus had left. We finished some left overs from Saturday and had way too much new stuff to eat it all. As usual. I'm always afraid that we'll run out of stuff so I always buy too much. At least now we know what to eat today, and tomorrow.. and perhaps the day after. :-p

The weather was great! On Saturday we got a thunderstorm with rain that lasted for a couple of hours, but everything was dry again by the time the first guests arrived. We spent the whole day in the back yard. Sunday was a bit cooler, but that was just fine for my grandparents and the garden was again the place to be.

I got lots of lovely presents, among which 2 puzzles (one of them could not be ordered at bol.com but my grandfather went through a lot of trouble to order it from Spain at last), a frame for a puzzle, a goody bag with eco-friendly food products, discarded jewelry, a box for all kinds of knickknacks (prefilled with some stuff), 4 Terry Pratchett Discworld novels, a storm predictor, a pink festival barbecue, a new colorful vest (the former one was stolen on the train), a very colorful swing chair (like a hammock) with pillows, a decorative butterfly and puzzle glue. From Matthijs I got a book with spiritual guidance for determining what to do with your (work)life, since I really need to switch jobs but I don't know where to go.

So, into my 30th year of life, let's see what it will bring!

And of course the next blog did take more than a month... *sigh*

Coursera coursers are done for now and because of all the stress I had from them I've decided that for a while I'll not attend any more courses. Something to do with workload and wanting some time for myself away from the computer. I did pass the Python gaming course with great marks and the guitar course well enough. Haven't been playing guitar since the end of the course though... shame. Did try some of the exercises yesterday and they still went fairly well. Muscle memory FTW!

So, what has kept me busy? Well, work, for one thing. There's more clarity about what needs to be done before which date, after lots of frustration and demanding a list of priorities. Most of the functionality works now, that was my part. Still need to do something on statistics, maybe tomorrow. The other programmer is struggling with the html and css and trying to keep everything 'responsive' while the design was not thought out that way. For me there are 2 more projects added to the stack with deadlines in the first half of September. However, I will have my vacation from 12th to the 26th of August (includes the Summoning). And man.. do I need a vacation!

The other thing is, of course, Xenophobia with lots and lots of writing (a setting book of 13 chapters). Of course I didn't do all the writing by myself, but still a nice chunk of it. Besides that I also helped Matthijs with one of the main props. Lots of stress in the last week for the event, even Matthijs got stressed.. that's saying something!

The 'end of year show' of A-Dance was a blast! I was in the Streetdance 4 Tuesday group, which is a really nice group of people. We rocked! And dude, did we look awesome! (Though white is so NOT my color) I ordered the DVD (much cheaper on the day itself than later via the web) and am really curious how it all looked. Sadly this performance was also my good bye to this group. I'm switching belly dance groups next year and that means that I'll also have to switch streetdance groups. I'll be going to streetdance on Wednesday next year with Marit as teacher instead of Adam. I tried out one Wednesday lesson and it was ok, but it always takes me some time and effort to 'fit in'.

The belly dance performance at Dara went great with 70+ people as audience. The only downside of the evening was the incompetence of the Dara employees. Not all tables got their food, ordering drinks took ages, there was not enough small change or a price list etc. Dara acknowledges this f*** up and notified Annet (my teacher) that they won't be hosting parties like this again, they are 'not up to it'. Well duh! However, Annet found a different location already (Zandvoort aan de Eem) so we're good to go for next year. I hope I'll be able to perform again, it's so much fun! (And a good excuse for another new outfit!)

Next up: Friday cleaning the house, evaluating Xenophobia and meeting the new crew, on Saturday and Sunday I'm celebrating my birthday. Weekend after that sees CastleFest and another Sibbe Sunday and for the latter I still need to finish my new dress, which is longer than my current dress and dyed with onion peels and madder roots (meekrap). Then there's a weekend with Cora and Rene, just hanging and having fun, no real plans yet. Then a two week vacation and the summoning. Meanwhile we're attending two wedding parties, both in the evening hours and I am planning on sewing more funny little hats to IT sell at the Summoning (and there's 2 ordered hats too). Perhaps I'll ask Rene if he'll suffer me again at the Wednesday Night Skate in Rotterdam, which was fun last year (but cancelled way too often).

That's my blog for this month. See you next month, do poke me again Jojo. ;-)