Spring is in the air!

A few weeks ago, I was wondering if spring could actually have sprung early this year. I was hopeful, but realistically, there was still a fair chance that winter would be back with a vengeance. After all, Mother Nature has a funny sense of humour.

But it didn't. No vengeance whatsoever. Spring is here, and it's here to stay. I'm not talking about this spring:

That obviously wasn't there to stay. It came off quite suddenly. I wasn't joking when I was writing about my previous car and wondered 'where did that spring come from?' It's not as serious as it looks, it's just a supporting spring to make operating the clutch easier. The car ran and (according to my neighbour who spotted it in town the other day) is still running fine without it.

The spring I'm talking about is the one responsible for what I call 'the haze'. In the earliest stage of spring, there's an abundance of flowers: the daffodils, the snowbells, the tulips... But for me spring really starts when the first leaves are showing themselves in the most beautiful shade of green imaginable.

Looking at some of the trees, you'd think you're still in the middle of winter:

But upon closer inspection of other trees, you can see that most of them are already sprouting new leaves:

These early leaves create a green haze on the forest. One day you think you might be imagining seeing shimmer of green, but the next day it's ever so slightly more obvious and then one day there's no denying: that is most definitely foliage!

Add a bit of sunshine to that, as well as awakening wildlife and there you are: perfect spring!

Girl Power!

I used to go swimming before work 4 times a week. But ever since I injured my shoulder at archery practice, I haven't been able to. The shoulder is practically healed and I really should drag myself out of bed at 6 am to go have a swim, but the bed is so nice and comfy, and it's dark outside, and, and, and... Too many excuses! But today in a magnificent display of willpower I managed to get up at an impossible hour and be in the swimming pool before 7 am. Now let's try and make a habit out of that again!

Explosion of flowers

A couple of years ago I found one of the most romantic spots I'd ever seen: a cute little park with blossoming trees. But of course I didn't have my camera with me. Every year after that, I arrived either too early or too late to take pictures, but this year I was perfectly on time. So behold the beauty of the blossom trees!

There you are, Perry!

Just in case the title wasn't self-explanatory:

Even though there is no recording of a god or goddess of patience in any religion, he or she must have shown mercy towards me (or simply gotten fed up with me) regardless of their non-existence: the delivery of the car actually got sped up, rather than delayed! At first I was told it would be here the 18th, then it got postponed to 1 or 2 weeks later, but lo and behold: it was there on the 13th! So without further ado: here's Perry!

And boy, is it shiny!! Love the seats, love the amount of buttons, love the way it handles in corners. The 88 page manual for the entertainment system seems a tad much, but then again: who reads manuals anyway? After all, I live by the old gnomish adage*:

So bring on the weekend, I need an excuse for a nice drive and a chance to mess with all those shiny new buttons. Methinks it's time for ice cream. From my favorite shop, which coincidentally happens to be on the other side of the country. Whiiiiieh!

* For those not in the possession of a gnomish dictionary: an adage (/ˈædɨdʒ/; Latin: adagium) is a short, usually philosophical, but memorable saying which holds some important fact of experience that is considered true by many people, or that has gained some credibility through its long memetic use. Now you know.

Hey, where's Perry?

The answer to the question "Where's Perry?" is: at the dealer's! Only a few more days until I get to pick up my new toy!

Ode to kittens

Not many words needed for this post. Heeeeeeeeeeeeeere kitty kitty kitty!!

Tijger

Poekie

 Belle

Muffy

Wammes

Gijs

Tux

 Pippin

Pino

Tommie

Could spring actually have sprung?

In October, I wanted to make an appointment to have my winter tyres fitted. But the weather was nice and the schedule busy, so I decided to postpone until November. Then out of nowhere it was December, and I realised I was still driving around on my summer tyres. They were rather new so there was a lot of profile on them and well, December is an expensive month and the weather was still very forgiving, so I decided I could sit it out a bit longer. But January came and went, February came and went and surprise-surprise: winter never showed up! There were two days where I had to de-ice the windshield, but that was pretty much it. No snow, drizzle, sleet, mud, torrential rain or anything!

It might still happen of course. Both March and April are notorious for their capriciousness, but I can't help but notice the days are lengthening nicely and that the spring flowers are popping up everywhere: daffodils, crocusses and snow drops (my favorite!) are bursting out of the ground and even the tulips are poking their leaves through the soil. The predictions for this weekend and all of next week are excellent, so I'm hoping that this year we'll just skip winter entirely and move straight on to spring. After all, Mother Nature owes us, for all the years where spring went straight on into fall without a decent summer. 

Once upon a car

Right. So there was this radio silence due to a slight gnomish meltdown. Every year when my car has to have its annual checkup, I get absolutely insufferable. Even though my car functions just fine, I get these premonitions about something being seriously wrong with it: last year they mentioned the clutch was getting worse, there's something in the steering that doesn't feel right, was that sound there before, where did that spring come from? All of that is fixable, but needless to say, it involves money. Usually quite a bit. And I got severely traumatised on that specific topic the day I took my beloved car SopHie to the garage only to find out she needed repairs worth 5 times more than the actual residual value of the car. So that was 'bye bye SopHie' and 'hello tremendous annual checkup anxiety'.

To put an end to that, I had the ludicrous idea of treating myself to a brand new car. It's stupid, right? I mean, paying full price for a car when there's plenty of suckers that do that and when they buy their next car, they allow you to drive in a nearly new car at a much lower price. But the thought kept gnawing at me. For once in my life I wanted a car that I actually picked myself, rather than make do with someone else's hand-me-down. And my (12^th) 29^th birthday seemed like the perfect excuse. So a new car it had to be. But which one?

That easy, huh? Yeah, right, if only! If you thought picking a phone was *drama* for a gnome, that was NOTHING compared to picking a car.

Seriously, we're worse than the dramatic chipmunk. We don't even need a drama button, it's built in!

The phone was relatively easy: I don't care much for phones, they pretty much all do the same thing, and the only criterion I had was 'it has to be shiny'. So that worked out fine.

With cars it's different: I like cars. A lot. And I enjoy driving them too. So for a car I actually have standards. Naturally I want it to be shiny, duh. But when it comes to cars, there's a lot more to it.

My favoritest car in the world is still the McLaren F1, partly because it was lightyears ahead of any other car ever created (yes, I *am* aware of the fact that 'lightyears' indicates a distance, not a time frame, it just sounds cool and in this context it's correct either way!), partly because of this clip from yonder year, when Tiff Needell was still in Top Gear and Top Gear was still about cars. Ah, those were the days.

One of the lucky owners of this car is Rowan Atkinson, a surprisingly gifted driver, considering his alter ego. Sadly he wrecked it. Twice. He probably had to veer to avoid a Reliant Regal that wanted revenge...

Considering these sell for around 3.5-4 million pounds these days, I'd be better off having my current car fixed. For the next 100 years. So I had to settle for a slightly smaller budget. But even then, the choices and options were overwhelming. I do have a preference for certain makes, so make-wise I managed to limit the choices fairly quickly. After that came the types, the equipment level, the accessories and – not unimportant! – the financial aspects. Words cannot express my gratitude for all the help I got from my better half in helping me pick and calculate everything over and over and over again for every car I felt was a plausible option. Not to mention his patience with my endless indecisiveness and talking about cars, and the various test drives I dragged him into, even though he is a cyclist at heart. I couldn't have done it without him.

So the choice has been made and hopefully my new shiny four-wheeled friend will be here in a month. And in good tradition, it will have a name, like all its predecessors. For now the working title is 'Perry'. Just so I can walk into a parking lot and say: "Hey, where's Perry?"

Either that, or Bubbles. It's not a cat, but it'll do. Then again, a month is a pretty long time. And patience isn't really my strong suit. Remember how long it took for the phone to arrive? Exactly. So chances are the name will change a couple of times before it actually gets here. But once it does...

Meltdown

Here I was, thinking that picking a new phone was a tricky undertaking. I was wrong. Picking a car is ten times worse. At least!

My brain has suffered a severe meltdown due to all this, that's why there haven't been any blogs lately. I'll make up for it in the next few days/weeks!