I said I probably wouldn't update based on my experience over Thanksgiving. But I didn't catch cold and run a fever then. I suffer, you gain.

So howdy from Haarlem. It's cold here. Given that I coughed all night and woke up feeling feverish, I chose to pass when Emily and Patrick said they wanted to go skating. If I hadn't felt bad, I'd have gone. I was even kicking around the idea of paying DFL 75 (about ) for an intensive skating course, since I can't get relaxed enough to skate very well otherwise. Something about the memory of splitting my chin open at the Williams Center Forum twenty years ago, I guess.

Anyway, Patrick picked up some cough syrup for me this morning (the Dutch word for phlegm is slijm -- literally, slime), and I'm now weighing leaving the house against sitting around inside where feeling slightly feverish is much less potentially complicated.

The trip so far has been great. Dulles was extremely crowded, so I decided to bypass the waiting-in-line part at the Departures entrance and go straight to the gate. This was a calculated risk, as I was one bag over United's carry-on limit. I was planning to attempt to charm my way past the gate agent, and failing that, just have them gate check my second bag. They didn't even look at me twice, and I had the added benefit of not having to wait in line at all in order to check in at the gate. Considering that the line at Departures would have taken almost all of the hour and twenty minutes I had before my flight, and I probably wouldn't have gotten away with the extra bag, I was quite pleasantly surprised. I sent Emily an email from my pager, saying that I'd gotten straight on the plane and had no checked baggage, which portented a speedy arrival.

So we arrived at Schipol right on time, I got through Customs by about five after seven, and I waited. And waited. And waited. I waited an hour, then bought a phone card, went to a pay phone, and tried to call Em's cell phone. Wasn't turned on. So I called the house. Answering machine. So I started talking to the answering machine, hoping that Mom would hear it and pick up the phone. Somebody picked up all right -- Emily. She hadn't left the house yet.

I took the train. Em and Dad met me at the station. "Your name is Mud. Hi, Dad. Her name is Mud."

Aside from the hour cooling my heels at the airport (twice Emily's let me down in two trips in two months), the day went well. I had suggested to Emily that we might all pool our resources and put together a new computer for the kids, and said I could buy the parts in the States for less than what they'd pay here. It turns out that's only about ten percent less than what they'd pay at the store across the street from their house, and considering the benefit of having the place that sold you the parts right there for support, Em and Patrick decided to pay the extra. So when I got here Friday morning, we got out the price lists, came up with a shopping plan, and rounded up all the parts. For about DFL 1300 (that's 0 to you and me) we put together a 700mhz machine with 128M. The only shortcoming is that we reused the hard drives from their old computer, so it's only got 2.5G of storage and the drives aren't UDMA. For playing Blue's Clues though, it's more than sufficient. I suspect Emily will buy another hard drive before the end of January though. She's even more impatient than I am.

The kids love the new computer. Renger, at sixteen months, has already figured out that he has to put a CD in the drive to make most of the games go. He doesn't know how to do the rest and tends to bang the mouse on the table or his fist on the keyboard in order to get results, but then he's pleased when any menu pops up or window opens so I guess he's getting what he wants. He also managed to get Dad to play on the computer with him, probably tripling the total amount of time he's spent at a computer, and that includes the one in his office which he mostly refuses to use.

Christmas was fun. Because of all the travel involved, none of the gifts are wrapped until Christmas Eve, so it's kinda cool to see all the gifts materialize under the tree that night. I think I would have hated that as a kid, but then I'd never known anything but the way we did Christmas, which involved one gift each on Christmas Eve and then all the rest of them the next morning. I can see it both ways, but I actually think I like this better. More surprise. It also snowed all day on the 24th, giving us a White Christmas. Darcy was great. "Look, Mom! It's snowing! It's Christmas! It's amazing!"

The Lego "Clik" toys I got Renger were a big hit, and Darcy loves her new computer games. I just want to know, why is everybody (for sufficiently small numbers of everybody) buying me calendars this year? It's not like I've ever used one or asked for one.

We went skating on the second day of Christmas (the 26th, which is still a holiday here) and I managed not to fall once. Ice skating is much smoother than inline skating is, but it's also easier to lose your traction and go right over. I didn't. I considered the day a success. I could stand to be much better at it -- and that's probably worth the 75 guilders -- but hey, I'm on vacation.

(28 dec)