Finally ! The first stone has been put down. Yesterday I called the construction leader to ask what was taking so long. He told me they should be working on it as we were speaking. So after work I went over there. I did not see walls, but I did see … a chair. Yes you read correctly … a chair !! I wasn’t too happy and told myself I’d call the guy back if they weren’t working on it the next day. So today Katrien went over there and they had indeed started. So the excitement is back and all I can say now is … FORWARD ! Pictures can be found here.

Time for another update. On Friday Katrien and I went to see Stardust. I must say I liked this movie very much ! It might not be as epic as for example Lord of the Rings but it doesn’t mean to be, it’s a fairytale, which was exactly what I was expecting. The soundtrack was also quite good. I definitely recommend it to anyone who has a good imagination I might be seeing this one a second time.

They haven’t started building yet unfortunately, but they did bring up the materials. In this gallery there are also a few pictures of the neighbour’s house, but for all you lazy people I’ve included the best one at the bottom of this post. Ours will look very similar at the front (except the big window will be a small one since there’s a storage room there), so it should give you an idea what to expect.

Yesterday we went to a Halloween party at the stables where Katrien goes horseback riding. A sort of spaghetti evening for the kids. Was yummy, since it was with meat ! They had organized a nightly game for the younglings as well. A shame I couldn’t convince Katrien to dress up though. Pictures can be found here.

Today we went to visit my mom’s grave. The 1st of November is normally the day here in Belgium (and I guess every Christian oriented country) when a lot of people do that, but we always prefer to go early and not be in the big crowd.

Friends of mine, Tom1 & Wenti, have left for Thailand. If anyone of you are interested in following their adventure, they promised to keep a blog. I’m going on a trip myself in 2 weeks, to Barcelona. It’s for work, there is a Microsoft Convention there, so it should be interesting. And if not, there’s always the city

Picture of the neighbour’s house:

Excellent news ! Stargate Atlantis has just received the approval for a season 5 !! I am so happy about this, I was afraid it wouldn’t happen because ratings were down a bit. Really, this has made my day, so I just had to share May there be many more seasons ! This is without a doubt the best show on air at the moment.

It’s been a bit longer than usual since I posted. I was waiting until they started construction on our house this week so I could post some pictures. Unfortunately they haven’t yet But it should be soon, they said it could be a few days later if they got delayed on their previous construction site, so I’m guessing that is the case. So hopefully sometime next week there’ll be pictures !
Talking about the house, we went to 2 other stores to look at doors for the inside. We had gone to one store before, but we wanted to see if we couldn’t find anything better/cheaper. Well I guess not ! The first store we visited on Saturday gave us a price of 4300 Euro for the doors we liked (we need 7 in total). That’s about 1500 more than the store we first went to. Then we went to another store which gave us a total price of 5200 Euro for 7 of their cheapest doors ! Needless to say, we’ll be sticking to plan A

This morning we went to have brunch at Katrien’s parents. It was very yummy, nothing with small and round evil things to eat so that was good There was also tomato soup which was really good, it had been ages since I had soup and I was feeling like it earlier this week. We even bought some premade soup yesterday, but that won’t beat fresh soup The only downside was that I had to get up early, at around 9:30am. Since I was up until around 4am yesterday (attempting to do Gruul’s Lair in World of Warcraft) that hurt quite a bit when Katrien woke me up.

Oh yeah, about my previous post about the SciFi Channel … major disappointment. As I was saying, it’s the one from The Netherlands and they are aaaaaaaaages behind the US. I was expecting them to be behind a little bit, but not like 5 years. Arwen is even planning to cancel his subscription to it. I guess that bubble has burst

Other than that I’ve been feeling a bit sick and down this week. Had a nasty cold that is now mostly gone. To comfort myself I bought a Ben & Jerry’s Caramel Chew Chew icecream box. I needed the comfort lol. Look at me, I’m starting to sound like a girl :p Before things get too bad I’ll end this post. Hopefully I’ll be able to make a new one soon with news on the house !

Double good news this week !

I’ll start with some about the house. They should be starting to build the walls and such on the 17th of October, give or take a few days. This is just awesome since that means that the outside construction might be finished before they originally planned to start (which was the 12th of November). I’ll be sure to keep the site updated with pictures.

The other good news came to me this morning at 1:30am from Arwen (text messaging me awake :p). Appearantly Telenet, the digital television company here, is now offering the Dutch SciFi Channel ! I always said that I didn’t want digital television until they showed that one. Well it seems my wish has been granted Although I’m not sure if they are very up to date compared to the SciFi Channel from the USA, so we’ll need to investigate.
I talked to Katrien about it and it seems that the WAF is a bit low, so I’ll have to work on that as well

On to the rest of the week, on Saturday Els & Kristof came to dinner. Katrien made a very yummy fish lasagne. It was really good, although next time she’ll add a bit more pasta and some bread on the side and it’ll be perfect It was a pleasant evening, we even agreed to go do some ‘color styling’ together with the 4 of us. It’s basically a sort of test to see what colors suit you to wear and stuff, depending on several factors. Could be fun

On tuesday we had the monthly poker evening at Kristof’s this time (the next one will be at my place). I came out ahead again with 2.5 euros, woohoo ! Only won a few big rounds though, I wasn’t feeling all that great so I laid low for most of the game.

That’s it for now, hopefully my next post will be with new pictures of Castle Jorn

So we come to it at last then, the great adventure of our time. Construction on Castle Jorn has commenced ! As I am writing this I am appropriately listening to the new single of Celine Dion ‘Taking chances’. May the Force be with us ! In any case, so far so good. They put down the foundation and will normally start construction on the rest within the month or so.
I added the pictures to the gallery so you can see how it looks. You’ll also be able to get a glimpse of the neighbouring houses, so you’ll have an idea how the area looks like. As you’ll be able to see on the pictures there’s a huge wall of earth in the back of the garden. At one point I’ll need to spread that out over my land, or remove it all together. Feel free to sign up to help :p I’m sure Katrien will reward all your hard work with a nice meal or something Needless to say, the whole house thing is pretty much the most exciting part of the week.

Last weekend I visited Arwen and the rest of the guys. We played risk, it had been so long since I played that game. At one point I was close to victory, I had to eliminate Bouw and I was really close, but he kept rolling sixes ! Damn him lol ! In the end Arwen won, but it was a great game.

The only other noteworthy event of the week is that I went to the barber, I once again look quite dashing If you look at the pictures of the house, there are a couple where I’m in and you can see it, so judge for yourself