Why?  - Because of the firecrackers, bangers, fireworks and everything else that went off causing my dogs to spin circles.  It’s not just that they wake me up and make me nearly jump out of my skin every five minutes, but they have my dogs totally behind themselves the entire time.   That gets to me because I can’t figure out how to sooth their nervousness without giving into it and feeding it.  It’s frustrating and unnecessary!

I wouldn’t mind if it was just like everywhere else, fireworks going off at midnight.  That is fun and exciting!   A week (or more!) of constant banging is an entirely different kettle of fish.

I was just reading an interesting article on Expatica in regards to this very topic.  Here are a few snippits.

Incidents and accidents
From 10am New Year’s Eve until 2am on New Year’s Day, the Dutch streets could be mistaken for a military zone. This is the only time of the year that Dutch law allows the public to use fireworks.
According to figures from the Ministry of Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK), reported in Elsevier Nieuws on 2 January 2009, there were 7,641 reported firework related ‘incidents’ across the Netherlands over New Year.

The celebrations to see 2009 in resulted in:
•    2,753 reported crimes relating to violence, mishandling, arson and vandalism
•    1,370 cases of arson,
•    800 arrests,
•    more than 325 people admitted to hospitals with firework injuries,
•    216 vehicles set alight,
•    97 incidences of violent behaviour against emergency services personnel,
•    four schools burning,
•    two people losing an eye,
•    one fatality.

Dutch tradition
Fireworks at New Year are a long-standing Dutch tradition, and signify chasing the spirits of the old year away.
Similarly, the custom of the vreugdevuur, (usually fuelled by burning Christmas trees) is a symbol of purging the old for the new.
However, many Dutch are considering the evolution of New Year’s Eve activities and questioning whether the fires and fireworks now have any real ties to the traditions of old.

According to an investigation undertaken by the Police Academy in 2007, it has become ingrained into Dutch culture that at New Year, anything goes. The report concluded that the Netherlands has a fundamental problem with violence and vandalism at this time of year.

Ok – Seriously?!!  When do you decide to put tradition aside for the sake of the safety of everyone involved?

We didn’t go out on New Years this year because we couldn’t stand the thought of leaving the dogs alone.  We did go for a walk around the neighbourhood though and after about 10 minutes we legged it back to the house because we just didn’t feel safe.   At one point this dude with a mohawk was setting fireworks off in front of our building, and he seemed to get great enjoyment out of the fact that they went every direction other than UP!

We even stood slackjawed as he and his friends laughed their heads off as a fireworks smashed into the window and balcony of the senior’s complex across from us.

If people could be responsible I would be ok with it.   If they stuck to the LEGAL period of time when the fireworks can be set off, found safer places to do it and took better care of where the fireworks were going – fine.  Fill yer boots, I say.   They don’t though.  They stand right in front of apartment buildings, in the middle of full parking lots and in playgrounds and shoot them every which way.

When I first moved here, and until just a few years ago, I loved the fireworks… but I don’t think I’m imagining it when I think it’s getting way out of hand in the last 2-3 years.   Apparently last year they took preventative measures which did lead to a decrease in vandalism this year, but going from a shitload to a whole lot doesn’t make for a nice evening really.  It’s still bad.

Here is a quote from the same article about what has been done and the difference this year.

Prevention
Government departments, councils, emergency services and local groups co-operated during 2008 to implement measures to minimise the damage following the widespread rioting and destruction at the end of 2007.
Local councils, as a matter of course, take action to protect or remove public property; rubbish bins disappear from the streets around Christmas and post box openings are narrowed to stop vandals throwing fireworks in.
In addition, this time around, the police set up an anonymous tip line for citizens to report troublemakers for anything from handling illegal fireworks to arson and vandalism.

The BZK launched a national campaign to combat violence against emergency services personnel after 14 percent of those arrested the previous year committed violent acts against ambulance, police and fire service staff.
The four big cities of the Randstad introduced supersnelrecht to ensure swift prosecutions for those arrested over the New Year with courts already open on 2 January to hear cases.

Six times as many reinforcements were available from the national police service, Korps landelijke politiediensten (KLPD), than last year to support regional forces, and police made home visits to talk to known troublemakers.
In the Haaglanden region, special ‘car fire’ teams were set up as a preventive measure as more than 100 cars were set alight a year ago in the Hague area.

Happy 2009
The consensus seems to be that the celebrations this time around were quieter than last.

Arsonists set fire to ‘only’ four schools this year, compared to 23 last year.  In Zuid-Holland, there were ten percent fewer calls to the emergency services this year than last, and in The Hague vandals set fire to 50 cars, half of the damage done in 2007/8.

However, whilst the damage is less, there is still justified consternation from different parts of Dutch society following incidents across the country.
It was necessary to deploy riot police (ME) in Haarlem to protect fire officers, 150 people threw bottles and stones at police in Rotterdam and in Nijmegen a group bombarded police and fire officers with Molotov cocktails.

In Wijchen, a police station was the target of a firebomb and in Uddel emergency service crews had bottles thrown at them. Police made 52 arrests in Friesland for obstructing the emergency services.

Oh, only four schools on fire – problem solved!   I’m completely gobsmacked at the fact that people are attacking firemen and other emergency service workers.   What kind of people do that?    You know, even as I said it I saw random faces of the lower class “Rotterdammers” and knew exactly what kind of people would do it.

Thankfully, the last part of the article discusses that there actually are people pushing for change here in the Netherlands.  People who want to ban the legal sale of fireworks completely and have large firework shows put on by each of the cities.  They do have one here in Rotterdam, but that doesn’t stop everyone from lighting their own too.   The problem is that I’m guessing most people in Rotterdam wouldn’t dare venture out in the city center to SEE this big fireworks show, because they are too afraid of what else is out there.

I know I am.

It will be interesting to see how this changes over the coming years.   At some point they will have to make a change.  New Years should be for everyone, not just the hooligans who own the currently own the streets at that time of year.

What are your thoughts?

I’m sure there WILL be a movie someday, books this popular don’t go without becoming a movie at some point.

Here’s what I was thinking.

Sandra Bullock as Stephanie Plum.

I think it’s her role in the Miss Congeniality movies that make me see her in this role too.   I CAN imagine her dodging dinner with her parents, keeping her gun in her cookie jar and having a hamster as a best friend.  Can’t you?

She’s just hot enough, but also just clumsy and endearing enough to bring Stephanie to life.

Queen Latifah as Lula.
When I think of a ‘big boned’ black woman with major attitude, who can kick some major ass, there is only one woman who comes to mind.

QUEEN LATIFAH!

I can see her breaking down doors and threatening to shoot people.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Joe Morelli.
Yummmmm.  If I have to imagine a rough around the edges, steal your virginity as a teenager kind of guy, it’s this one.  I can’t think of anyone more perfect for the role of Joe than “Denny”.  He can be hot when he needs to be hot, but he can be sweet and even a bit adorable at times.

Plus, can’t you see him and Sandra Bullock together as a movie item?

Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson as Ranger
Ranger… ooooooh Ranger.  Could there possibly be a sexier fictional character than Ranger??

It’s hard to cast this character because he has to be big, lean, sexy, caring but scary and mean a the same time.   Having seen The Rock playing a gay guy in a previous movie I wavered on this one… but in the end, I think he’s our guy.  Yum.

Ellen Albertini Dow as Grandma Mazur
Grandma Mazur is one of those old ladies who just doesn’t grow old.  She may spend all her spare time at viewings (wakes) but in her mind she’s still 19 years old and on the go!

I have never thought of Grandma Mazur without seeing the Rapping Granny from the Wedding Singer in my head.   She also played that drug toting old lady on Studio 64.   Perfect!

Jason Mewes as Mooner
Sort of like with Ellen Albertini Dow automatically making me think of the crazy Grandma Mazur, Jason Mewes (or Jay from the Jay and Silent Bob movies) has always been in my mind when Mooner was in the story.

Stoner = Jason Mewes = Mooner.  It’s just the way it is!

There are a lot of supporting characters as well, like Stephanie’s parents and sister, her cousin Vinnie and a wide range of cops, but the above characters are the ones I hold most dear and make true mental images of in my mind.

Now, here’s hoping they actually make a movie of it someday.  I’d be curious to see if any of my picks make it in!

If you haven’t read this series yet, I seriously suggest you do.   I am on the 9th book now and they just keep getting better and better!

A warning though, make sure you get two because I guarantee when you finish the first one you’ll be dying to start the second!

It was just a few days ago I was telling Xander how happy I was that I could actually have things around without cats knocking them down or breaking them.   Spencer has been so good since he’s been here without Salem and I’ve noticed he’s a lot more careful about walking around things for some reason.

I looked over last night to find him laying smack in the middle of my Christmas village, and when I yelled at him to get off I startled him and he jumped off, sending everything askew in the process.

Last night I looked over to find him perched snugly between the mini tree and the village.   He hadn’t moved anything but managed to find a big enough spot to lay in without disturbing anything.   I knew better than to yell at him this time, instead grabbing my camera and snapping a few photos before making him a little bed on the windowsill.

He looked like a giant monster in with my little mini village, well… he is a giant monster, really.   A giant monster who has a terrible habit of squeezing himself in where he doesn’t belong.

Ah well, what can ya do?!

Every day I visit the website daily dose of imagery because I have serious photo envy, and because I like to torture myself by looking at photos of Toronto and getting homesick.

Yesterday he posted this photo of one of the big shopping centers in downtown Toronto at x-mas.   When I first saw it wondered why it wasn’t busier with Christmas and all…. then it dawned on me – holy crap that IS busy by Canadian standards!

My concept of ‘busy’ has changed completely since moving over here to the Netherlands.   Smaller country, more people, less malls - it all makes for crazy shopping conditions at pretty much any time of day / year.

Seriously, if you went to one of the malls here in Rotterdam on a Tuesday afternoon in March, this is what you would find.   It’s not considered busy here, it’s just the way it is.   Busy is when you are taking that photo and can’t see the floor anymore.

This reminds me of how much I miss space sometimes.   It was such a huge adjustment to get used to everything on such a smaller and more crowded scale.   Now when I go back to Canada it feels weird when everything is so big and far apart.

I am - so - assimilating.

… and I am SO avoiding the malls here until January!

p.s. If you have a minute visit his site, I guarantee you’ll be still clicking through his pics an hour later!

Holy crap, can you believe it?!!  I remember when I started the countdown on my header, it was 68 days until Christmas and now it’s here!

This is where Xander and I will spend Christmas Eve – in front of the tree, behind our laptops, just the way we like it!  Ok, I’m sure I’d probably prefer to be visiting family, and I did have a minor meltdown about that last night, but it was to be expected.  I don’t think any expat truly makes it through the holidays without at least a little jag of homesickness.  That has passed now and I feel better.    Maybe we’ll go out and do something, perhaps a movie… but if not I’m happy to stay home and just hang out and be geeky together.  It’s what we do.

On Christmas day I’ll be cooking up a bird and our friends Penny and Yuri are coming for dinner with their son Noah.  It’ll be his first Christmas and the poor thing is sick with a cold.  I know what you are thinking, I’m sure I’ll be whining on here before New Years because I caught it, and you’re probably right… but it’s worth it to be with friends on Christmas.

This is my deco addition for this year,a cute skating rink with a Christmas tree in the middle.   The skaters go around and around and stop as they come around the side because Santa is there waiting to take their photo!

It’s so cute, but it does look better at night, I should try to get some photos then.   It plays Christmas music too, but I can only stand that for so long before turning it off.

Well, that’s it… I hope you all have a great Christmas, however you plan to spend it!

Oh yeah!  Bailey and Pixel wish you a Merry Christmas too!

(Dammit, I should have turned on the fireplace for these photos. Drat.)

This is my favorite photo from my trip to  Cologne, and it’s of a complete stranger.

I was trying to take a photo through the crowd of a really beautiful stall with Chinese lanterns.  It was towards the end of the day and I was getting tired and a little frustrated with the crowd.  This guy saw me taking the photo and decided he wanted to be in it.

It all happened in the matter of a few seconds but this was the result.   He just stopped and smiled in my photo and continued on in the crowd.   It’s hard to explain but it was really cool just having this ‘moment’ with a total stranger.

Everyone always says what a small world it is but this photo reminds me just how small a part of it we are.  I’ll probably never cross paths with him again, he’ll probably never see this photo.   I do wonder about him though, he seems to have such a friendly face but for all I know he could be an axe murderer.    I wonder where he is from and what language he speaks, is he a dad? a dentist? a construction worker?

I’ll never know, but I’ll always have this really cool photo.

Saturday myself and Penny were off to the Christmas market in Cologne, Germany.   We’d been looking forward to going for weeks on end so we were both totally stoked.   I think we weren’t really prepared for what was waiting for us though.

We knew it was going to be busy, since it is getting closer to Christmas and we went on a Saturday but christ on a crutch – it was insane!!

The above photo was taken just after we got there at 11am and that was when it wasn’t even busy yet, by comparison anyway.  At this time we were still able to weave our way through the crowd.   By the end of the afternoon there was easily 2-3 times as many people and we didn’t move through the crowd, we stepped into it and beyond that it was completely out of our control.

I hate crowds with such a passion, but amazingly I didn’t lose my mind.  I think my excitement of being there outweighed my irritation.  I just wish I had been able to see more as it took so long to go through the one market by the cathedral that before we knew it our time was up and we had to head back to the busses!

There was a lot of hand painted ornaments, wood carvings and other Christmas decoratings, but also a surprising amount of non-Christmas things that made me go ‘uhhh’ like the dude making the belts or the entire stand for nothing but boomerangs.  Seriously… boomerangs?

And the food…

Oh my god, the food!

For every stand with ‘stuff’ there were three with food.  Whether it was chocolates, crepes, bratworst, potato pancakes or pasta… there was food everywhere you looked.   It wasn’t cheap either!  That doesn’t stop anyone from getting it though, because everyone else is and you don’t want to miss out!

The most impressive thing of the whole trip was the Cathedral.

I’m so glad it’s there year round because I really want to go visit sometime when it’s not completely insane and see more of it, and the rest of the city.

There were so many other little things to tell about that day, like how we got ripped off 3 hours of the trip when the bus actually left at 5pm and not 8pm like we were told when we booked it, or how the bus driver had the temperature in the bus at just a level above the temperature of hell, making us both feel incredibly carsick… but who really cares about those things?  We were at a Christmas Market in GERMANY, and I don’t think either of us ever thought we’d be saying that before we moved here.

Tonight I was talking to a friend and he was telling me that last years he used 300m of gas and this year in the same house, under the same conditions, he supposedly used 1000!   That reminded me of my Eneco fiasco and that I hadn’t given an update after getting our end of year bill from E.on.

This year, we are getting €175 BACK from E.on.

BACK.  We are getting money BACK!

So now I am 100% convinced that Eneco are a pile of mental midgets who don’t know their asses from a hole in the ground.   We always got money back every year, yet last year they took hundreds and hundreds of euros out of our bank account with no warning.  Claiming we miraculously used a fuckton more energy than previous years.

Well, we’ve switched and we are happy… but Eneco still phones us at least once a month trying to get us to switch back.

I can’t WAIT for them to call this month.

This guy makes sculptures the size of a GRAIN OF SAND!  Paints with the hair plucked from the back of a house fly.   Can you imagine?

I have trouble painting normal sized things because my hands are not that steady.

Now if only I had about $250k, I’d totally buy one!

She hung it in her dining room, which is the exact spot I had in mind when I made it.   I’m so happy she likes it because I really enjoyed making it for her.

I got a message from someone asking why I haven’t been posting much lately.  I’m not really sure.  I’ve been in a bit of a weird mood which could be chalked up to being sick last week an still having trouble with that tooth.   We’ve also been playing a bit of World of Warcraft, which has been taking up some of my time.

I’ve always had highs and lows when it comes to writing on here.  Sometimes I am on a roll, other times I just can’t be arsed.   Don’t worry though, I’ll always be back!