DIY and the pool

Memorial weekend was all about DIY'ing, we spend a lot of time at the old house, taking stuff down, weeding, painting and closing of a drain. Lots of work left, but also lots of work done. Yesterday evening we finally took Max to the swimming pool; he was so excited he kept running and jumping around. The pool is in the "Mountain Park Home Owners Recreation Centre" which also includes steam baths, saunas, fitness facilities, a basketball court and other fun stuff. And the best part of it all is that it's freely accessible for residents. Well, of course it's not free, but it comes with the house and you can not choose not to pay for it, so you might as well take advantage of it. I intend to pick up swimming again and go down to the pool on a weekly base to work out. Of course it's always questionable whether I will actually do this but since it's there and it's only a 10 minutes walk from the house, why shouldn't I? Max already asked us if we could go 'every day' but we managed to convince him that's a bit too much. This morning at breakfast however he already said "Wednesday is a good day for swimming, I know it" Well at least he likes it and yesterday after he was convinced there was no way he could sink with that life jacket on, he even swam 4 laps, unsupported! Considering it's an Olympic sized pool, that's 50m per lap and at the deepest point I guess it's about 3.40m deep, and Max is only 4 (well, almost 5), that's quite an achievement! Okay, he is still scared to put his head under water and he was swimming with 'diver's feet' as he called it, but it's a start and a pretty nice one.



Although Ian has worked hard on the car thing, it didn't work out yet. It's the wrong time of the year and the wrong price range to find a car. All the graduating high school kids are getting the cheap cars as a present and it remains a guess whether a car under 3000$ will not cause any major problems really fast. Since I don't have the money to spend more and I don't want to get into any complex financing arrangement we found another solution. I can use Martin's VW Jetta for now, as long as I can be flexible in using it (picking him up from work every now and then). Martin can use his bike to go to work and they still have the van for everything else. Martin and Angee were already planning on buying a 'new-used-second-car' after selling the other house, which will hopefully be in a week or two. If they do so I can just use the Jetta till I go back to the Netherlands and they will sell it then, instead of right away. I am lucky to have these people here; they are really nice for me and very helpful. And it's fun to stay with them as well.

Bleg, I just made my worst cup of coffee ever.. It tastes like water with a tiny little coffee flavour, it's awful. And I gave Vadim a cup too... I'll better apologize and make a better batch because this is just not worth it to be even called coffee. I guess Neal will be back from Italy later today or tomorrow and we can finally discuss what my project is going to be like and get to work. Right now I'm off trying to get myself a real cup of coffee.....