testicles

While checking strange rumours on a dog's testicles display in the new Ikea catalogue, I found this doggie website.

Very nice, makes for a good laugh if you like dogs! And of course, from Sweden - so it goes with Ikea...

As for the poor dog's testicles: I haven't seen anything strange in the 2007 catalogue - and anyway, pornography is in the eye of the beholder, no?

fire

Rather a scary site: www.brandtest.nl.

But very well done, and rather usefull for us at the moment.

skinheads

This weekend a group of 10 skinheads beat up two Slovak people. Nothing too special - only this did not happen in Brussels or Antwerp, but in our new hometown Tienen.

I thought I left shit like this in Brussels...

update

A very short update, on request of Questingbeast.

The structure of the false walls in the bathroom are as good as done, in fact only the dry plaster panels have to be attached.
It took us till now because we had to replace the entire water system - which now, thankfully, is done. Just needs to be tested :)

In the meantime:
- we had a flood in the garage, caused by negligence (waste water of the washing machine does come under pressure!);
- a small sewage flood in the kitchen (our make-shift pipe end downstairs could not handle a double flusher upstairs - don't worry, there will be a full scale loo attached down there, not some plastic over a pipe like it is now)
- I encountered some 220 Volts on my left arm, again negligence
- I just had a nasty cut in the palm of my left hand, caused by the end of a copper pipe connection
- my right index finger is continuously asleep - no clue why...
- and I'm losing a nail on my left hand; made a mistake with a hammer.

But for the rest, we're going strong. I'll try to post some pictures on flickr later tonight. Now we first have to start painting in our former apartment in Brussels.

Cheers.

monkey-lover

Totally unrelated, and something that could only have been thought up in the Netherlands: online monkey dating.

The original site, unfortunately in Flash, so links are a bit difficult.

Who knows, maybe there are even people interested in this - they might charge money for it. Monkey-porn.

No?

good news, bad news

We visited our furniture supplier again yesterday - and finally ordered our kitchen. What's more: we will have it all done for us! The cost for placing is about 10% of the total cost, but they can place it in one day, where I probably would be busy for over a week... And of course, if something goes wrong, I'm not responsible :)

Not all good news though: after some strange discoveries in the water pipes we decided to replace the entire piping system. The previous owner made it easy for us: we can install all the water pipes without breaking any floortiles. They all arrive in a corner of the kitchen, in the hole you see in the picture. Even better: none of them is properly attached in any decent way, so they're easy to remove. Also note the small unprotected yellow pipes: they contain all electricity to the kitchen - loose in the sand under the tile floor. Better remove and replace all those as well.

Installation of the new water pipes should be quick and easy using the plastic red and blue "pipe-in-pipe" system.

Should.

CT scan

I just stumbled upon this. Now I'm not into enzym analysis or cancer research, but these guys have a very nice site, and same very nifty applications. If, like you should be, you are a Mac user!

And of course a weird sense of humour: look at the CT scan of the previous Apple award they won...

penguin

This is very, very sad.

A terrible blow to the Texan penguin community.

Our thoughts go to all penguin survivors - may they soon find a new fridge.

we made it to the BBC

No comment...

photoshop

Seems to be in the news now: this.

No offense, but even I am better at Photoshop. It does make one think though, how many "retouched" images go unnoticed?

done

We have moved. With a lot of help from my father who drove the van, and who helped carrying all our appliances down the stairs. Imagine a washing machine, an oven and a fridge - who have to go down a 90cm wide spiral staircase. 3 floors!

Now our Brussels appartment is as good as empty; we only keep some chairs and a small cupboard with towels and the like. Meanwhile, in Tienen, we are living out of boxes. But hey, those are large boxes :)

Talking of boxes, I found this cartoon on our companies intranet:

progress

So... we are officially moving this weekend. As in, we are transporting our goods to our new house this weekend. We rented a large van, tonight we'll take apart all the furniture. Everything is Ikea, so you only need one Allan key for everything. In theory. I hope we still have the manuals, to put everything together again...

Meanwhile works in the house are going strong: the sewage piping has been replaced - including two new toilet pots, the electricity system has been updated (thanks, Bram & Jonas!), new floorboards have been laid in the bathroom (thanks, pa!) and now we're placing dry plaster walls in the bathroom. Between all this we also installed our new freezer and a large sink in the garage. Including new water pipes and link to the sewage system, of course! And we have television/phone/internet as well; when the big works are done I'll do a post about digital TV. Very nice technology, too bad the content is mostly crap.

Remains to be done in the immediate future: buying and installing our bathroom furniture, bath and shower; laying the black cork floor in the bathroom; buying and installing the kitchen; etc...

For kitchen and bathroom we made a nice discovery yesterday: black glass mosaic tiles. Things are starting to come together: we decided on the kitchen and bathroom layout, wood types, tiles, ceiling, lights and furniture. We even already bought our bath tub tap. We wanted a nice design tap, untill we saw the price: close to 300 EUR!

All that's left to do now is installing everything :)

I like penguins

Now this is some good news - Brazil's air force and navy will ferry home stranded penguins. Almost makes up for a lost week at home, being sick!