My Fire

Last weekend, I decided to do some work in my "forest" better know as my backyard or as they would say here my garden. To give you a little background, I think it has been a while, since my "forest" has been maintained. Whoever was here before me piled small piles of twigs everywhere, on the fence line, by the garage... everywhere. They also never raked the leaves and did not touch the pine needles.

So, I had the bright idea to burn the debris. I also need to mention it was drizzling outside making the fire seem like a good option, yet a challenge. After I decided to burn the debris, I went to my handy friend google and tried to look up if it was legal or not the burn in town in The Netherlands. I could not find anything, all I could find was a blurb about nuisance laws and it said if the smoke interferes with the neighbors then they can call the police.

So, out I went, I lilt a small fire, wishing all along I had lighter fluid or gas. To say the least, the fire was LAME. I got sick of the small lame fire, so decided to pile a bunch on pine needles and debris on the small fire to suffocate the fire and go inside.

I went inside to take a shower. I looked out the bathroom window to my surprise, there was a HUGE plume of white smoke. I knew then I was going to jail.

To end the story, my smokey fire burned all night and no one turned me into the police. I am not going to attempt it again without calling legal first.

In a country where pot is legal I thought for sure I was going to jail for a backyard fire. Next time, I am going to let the gardener deal with the garden.

Despite the gardener's best intentions, Nature will improvise. ~Michael P. Garafalo

I heart Europe

So far my move here to The Netherlands has been awesome. I am blessed to be working with great people who do their jobs well, while respected each other. I miss my co-workers in Japan and my good friends there, but I will say the change in working enviroment has made life so much better.

I feel like there was/is a big weight lifted off my shoulders that I did or didn't know was slowing my life down. I was hesitant about this move because I took a drastic pay cut and that was scary to say the least, but even with that life here is wonderful. I know there will be some hard days, but I am grateful that I was brave enough to make the big move.

Here is a picture of my basket full of groceries from last weekend's shopping. I live right around the corner from a bakery and a little market. I love it!

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.” ~Seneca

Internet

Internet, a novelty or a must?

I just got Internet the other night after not having it for over a month. I was still able to check my email at work, so it wasn't that bad, but I didn't have FB, Skype or anything like that. Due to the firewalls on govt computers a bunch of sites are blocked.

For me internet is a must, in the time I was offline I was not able to use Skype therefore, I could not make phone calls, this made me feel very cut off from civilization. But is it really a "must"? Doubtful, in the weeks I didn't have internet, I read 5 books, went on runs, and always made it to bed at a reasonable time. I have decided that I am going to shut off my computer an hour before I want to go to bed and read, we will see how that works, but to be honest I really enjoyed my time reading, so this is my way to keep it up.

Here's to Facebooking, Skyping and reading. :) And we wonder what is happening to kids these days... that is definitely for another blog.

For now I am back online, yay!

"Never let a computer know you're in a hurry." ~Author Unknown