This weekend was rather nice. People were nice. The weather was nice. Conversations were nice. Time spent was nice.
Dealing with the Filth
On friday evening, while visiting my mother’s, I mentioned that I really needed to clean my house. You see, when you’ve just had six or seven guests stay in your house – the last of which left on friday afternoon – your house tends to be left more than a little filthy. Not that these guests were especially filthy people, or that they disrespected my house in any way, but if your living room has much in common with an Sudanese refugee camp, where you’ve got a living room in which you need to dodge sleeping spaces when crossing it from one side to the other, you tend to leave cleaning work until after everyone leaves, so that you’ll at least have some room to maneuver. It looked like it had been overrun by Turkish rebels, and I wouldn’t have been at all surprised to find malnurished, brown children with bloated stomachs, carrying a cup of water and a handful of rice, while flies were making their homes in the corners of their eyes and mouths.
Yeah, shit was dirty.
The following day, when I returned from Kung Fu, I found my mother and sister slaving away trying to clean my house. Bless them. They had been at it for about ninety minutes, which, with my mothers no-nonsense work-ethic, meant that they were already almost done. Later on Eva joined us, offering us some necessay refreshments, as well as another pair of hands, and by the time she left to drop my mother and sister off and head out to her parents’ house, my house was as clean and spotless as it would ever be. It smelled nice. The stuffiness was replaced by the clear, crisp smell of cleaners and cleansers. Oh, and high-powered, concentrated cleaning spirits. You know, the type that’s flamable.
Yeah, shit was dirty.
Relaxing Evening
I headed out to Mark’s afterwards, where I resided in good company for a couple of hours, having really good burgers, and marvelling at house spirited their child is. Mark had arranged for some Mechwarrior game CDs through his friend, Peter, for I love the music of those games, which are on the game CD as normal audio tracks. Kuddos to Mark!
At around seven o’clock I headed out to Amsterdam to meet up with Eva and Sam to watch War of the Worlds. In one word, this film was amazing. Fuck what everyone says about Tom Cruise nowadays, he did an excellent job, and he was hardly the egocentric superhero that he was in, say, Mission Impossible II. I’m glad that he can alternate between masturbatory roles like that and simple, down-to-eart, showing his talent roles like the ones in War of the Worlds. Steven Spielberg is a genius. Between the steadfast consistency of Spielberg’s talent and some of the hit-and-miss talents of some up-and-coming, Hollywood, hot-shot directors, I’ll take Spielberg any day. He might not have the occasional umph and bang, and he makes crap like The Terminal, at least the direction leaves you with nothing but respect. War of the Worlds was no exception. It left me with good, measured build-up of tension, even though I know the story through and through.
Afterwards, Frank joined us and we had a quick drink at Harry’s Bar. It’s a small bar that do incredible cocktails. I wowed everyone with my knowledge of Iced Teas, knowing that A Hollywood Iced Tea came with Champagne instead of Coca Cola, and I had the wonderful Tokyo Iced Tea myself. During this I had a really good conversation with Sam about films, and the bane of being a well-known actor, while Eva and Frank were busy loving eachother. After the one drink I decided to go, and said goodbye to Frank and Eva. Sam was going to walk me to the station, where I got a big bag of french fries because I was very hungry. I said goodbye to Sam, ate my french fries while I waited, and went home.
I finished the evening off by talking to Moulsari for a bit. She’s been feeling ill almost all weekend, and like me, she doesn’t deal well with being ill.
Getting to Know Yourself
For a while now I’ve been meaning to strengthen my right ankle. For those of you that aren’t aware, about two years ago I ruptured some tendons in my right ankle, and it has been a very slow recuperation. My ankle is getting stronger now, but it needs to be even more so in order to compensate for it’s permanently weakened state. The fysio-therapist had told me to go running, but not on the street, or in a gym, but to go running through dunes, un-hardened wooded areas and the beach. The uneven ground would allow my ankle to start developing it’s (long-lost) fine motorskills, and strengthen it even further.
Dennis II – Dennis the Lesser, Dennis mkII, or however you want to call him – had shown an interest in shaping up just a little more, so we had devised a plan to go running in the woods near the sea. We’ve got woods, dunes and beaches to traverse, so it seemed like a really good idea. And it was, but it was tougher going than expected. In total we went about 12 kilometers, of which we ran about 7, I’m guessing. Especially the dunes are an ass kicker. The loose sand is such an energy-sink, and the up-hill battles are pretty gruesome. The woods were really nice. We had shade, which helped a lot, and we had some nice paths to bound down. Not hardened, not too uneven, but an interesting challenge for my ankle especially, but also for our stamina.
On the way back we got some food and went to join Richard and played an interesting game of Shogun. It’s an awesome game. I am not very good at strategy games, to be honest, but this one I really enjoy. I can’t wait for Edwin to get back from his archaeological trip to Italy so that we can play it with the four of us. It should pose for some very dynamic game-play.
As the day before, I finished the evening by talking to Moulsari. Her illness was still kicking her ass. Poor girl. I hope she feels better soon.
