Free flowers!!

yesterday, there were free (!!) tulips available on the dam square in amsterdam. last year, while still in boston, i had seen the pictures on biebkriebels blog (here), so when i read this event was coming up again, i wanted to see it for myself! it marks the start of the tulip season; tulips are now available everywhere again, and it is a way for the florists to promote the tulip (and flowers in general). the girl with the orange jacket was with the organization of the event. her jacket says; "its time for tulips again!"

when we arrived, the event had been going on for 2 hours or so. i was a bit surprised and disappointed that the flower-pick-area was fenced off (but maybe without the fences it would be totally uncontrollable?), and i also didnt see the "artwork"; the tulips were placed in a pattern so that from above it looked like a particular painting. i think we were too late; many tulips had been plucked already! in total there were some 200,000 free to pick for anyone who was willing to stand in line a little. thats what we did; we both got a plastic bag and were free to pick as many tulips as we liked! we both filled our bags and that was more than enough (now at home we have 2 full vases, its so pretty!!), but some asked for a second bag or brought big bags themselves; i really wondered what those people were going to do with SO many flowers... they came with the bulbs still attached to them, so i am now in the process of drying the bulbs. then i have to wash them and get all the green and roots off and then they can be planted later this year (i had to look all that up, i had no clue!). so... i hope my mom wants some bulbs, as we dont have a garden. apparently, most tulips need to be taken out of the ground each year after flowering, dried, cleaned and kept till its time to plant them again...

Decaying beauty

june 1st! another month has gone by, its theme day and our apartment is empty... this months theme is the "beauty of decay". i actually have quite some pictures of abandoned places (i like to visit those), but currently we are busy to "abandon" our apartment... so, heres another picture... :) its all i can think of right now....

we sold the dinner table and chairs on thursday. since we had some boxes left, tim immediately set out to make us another table, as you can see (compare with the original situation here!). today we also got rid of our bed and couch. we got the couch out really easy, and also carrying it down 2 flights of stairs was not too bad (it was horrible getting it here when moving in, so we were a bit worried about that). while getting that all done i was also doing laundry and baking bread as we had a goodbye BBQ this afternoon; when we had gotten the couch down one flight, i had to run back up, just to check on the bread.... not to rest, ofcourse.... ;)

we went to goodwill to drop off the couch, only to find out they didnt want it... it has a small tear and the guy accepting "donations" said he only takes things he would want to buy himself. having brought numerous itmes already over the past days, that really pissed us off. moreover, now what to do with that huge couch??!! certainly the soaring heat (35C!!, around 95F) did not help to cool us down... after some ideas of where to secretly drop the couch, some weirder than others, we finally figured out that we could bring it to the "solid waste station". i was very sad to see our couch being brutally dumped into a huge, disgusting, smelly pile of waste.... it didnt belong there at all!! buhuhuhuhuh. moreover, we had to pay 6 dollars and 40 cents, as dumping goes by the pound, and we dumped 160 lbs of couch.... :(

for more beauty of decay, go here!

Last park....

i think today we visited our last park for this trip. we drove to zion national park, an hour or so from where we stayed for the night. another 25 dollars park fee (just like grand canyon, but you can actually also buy a pass for 80 dollars, which will grant you access for 1 year to all national parks... somehow we didnt do that...). and yet again; it was so pretty! and the scenery was so different once again! to me the mountains looked really delicate, like silk or something; but yet again it was hard to photograph... :) it was great to walk around, however. the weather was perfect too; not hot (as would be in summer), and not cold, as it was very sunny. we needed coats and so on, but we had lunch outside. unfortunately many of the hiking trails were closed (some halfway, so we had to turn around), due ice on the paths.

in 1909 this park was named mukuntuweap national monument, but in 1917 the visiting director renamed it zion, as mukuntuweap was very unpopular (now i just wonder why he named it zion, but im too tired to figure it out tonight).

and now, we both have had a bit of an overload of natural beauty. i didnt know it was possible, but we both have seen so much, that it is actually enough for now... :) and so... this evening we gained another hour as we are in the pacific time zone. to be specific; las vegas, nevada! in the city itself we dont have to fear for natural beauty, thats for sure... ;) we are here to cash in the 2 free nights we still had at the trump hotel... we are in a very fancy room, at the 40th floor, and it might be that tomorrow we will just do nothing.... 

(this evening we went to see django unchained from tarantino. it started out great, showing a lot of the wilderness we saw for ourselves the past days, but somewhere halfway it started to become really weird and bloody and now im still not sure whether i liked it or not. lets sleep on it.... good night!)

Hmmm, pizza!

today we had a pizza from this place for dinner... somehow i got to know about groupon one day (and then livingsocial, and then bloomspot, luckily for me, this was only a few months ago), and now my inbox gets loaded every day with their "daily deals". grrrr.... essentially it means that i now sometimes spend money on things i otherwise wouldnt, "because its so terribly cheap now!". this time it was a coupon for 10 dollars, giving me 20 dollars to spend at upper crust, the pizzaplace. there are always nice rules coming with such groupons (only one coupon per table, only valid till..., not for alcohol, have to spend the entire amount at once, etc etc). ah well... the pizza here is really good, and actually too expensive, so with the groupon it was worth it...  (and then we went to the movies with another groupon, the ticket now only was 6 dollars instead of 11 or 12!)  :)

picture again from last week. all the snow is gone! it was very, very sunny today, didnt feel like winter at all!

Boston's great!

this evening we saw a movie at the hatch shell, as you can see above! next to the charles river, boston organizes free friday flicks starting in june until august. the movie starts at sunset, today that was at 8.14, and thus every week the movie will start a little earlier, funny, no? we got some pizza, sat on some scrubs (tim brought them from work, we fogot to bring a blanket like real americans), enjoyed free salads and beverages... and finally a movie. this time it was despicable me, an animated film. i liked it so much!

on wednesday's you can go to the hatch shell as well, then to enjoy some classical music, as i posted last year. in the meantime, it was really, really hot today. at some point the temperature was 39.5 degrees celsius, or 103 F. the only day it was hotter here in boston was on july 4th, 1911, when it was 104 F. when stepping outside for lunch today, i had the feeling i stepped into a hair dryer, as it was very windy, somehow i liked it! anyways.. authorities take the heat very serious, you can goto "cooling centers" in the city, and i now know that the MBTA has distributed 66 extra fans throughout the subway stations, where it can be real hot. as such, the total number of fans is 276. just so you know! :) here you can read it all.

Just weird

we didnt really know what they are implying here... ? are they implying anything in the first place.. ? something real americans understand, but we dont?

we were in the BJs this weekend. thats like the dutch makro, where you can buy stuff in bulk (even bigger bulk than in normal supermarkets.. :) we now have a free trial membership for a few weeks (a membership for a year costs 40 dollars or so), for that you can buy stuff in this store, and you can get gas at a lower price (but the gas king is still cheaper or the same and doesnt require a membership!). but i guess we now came to the conclusion that we do not need a BJs membership. whenever we go there, we buy a lot... for quite some money... and its always crappy stuff (like a million oreo cookies, or reese's peanutbutter cups.... etc). its probably best if we stay with the market basket... we anyways dont need wet ones, and surely not a dozen of them...

At home

buuugggghhh... thursday morning i got the second shot for hepatitis B vaccination (as for the type of work i do its better to be vaccinated; i also got a flu shot! in fact here they strongly advise every one to get a flu shot (why?!!), and i heard from a real american that hepatitis B vaccination is required to get into college (?)). thursday evening was a fine evening full of american culture (i had my first eggnog and we saw the tree lighting at the boston common), but thursday night i got high fever, terrible headache, muscle ache and i dont know what... :(  1 in 15 people get some side effects from hep B vaccination, so probably im this 1 person.... didnt get out of bed the entire friday... and also today i spent most of the day in bed....

havent been this long in our apartment yet! above it is.. not the best pic, but currently its even more messy, so therefore i choose not to take another picture. its a real american apartment, with a bar, and fancy (yellow) barstools. i also like our dinnertable and red chairs a lot. the table comes from a yardsale, and the chairs we got for almost nothing on craigslist. we also have a map of the US (found in the messy basement of our previous apartment), and underneath is a bench we bought for only 40 dollars. its sooo beautiful! it originally was a bench in a ship, you can open the top and we keep our shoes in it.. the bookcase we got for free, as well as the couch. also the wall was painted purple (i choose the color) for free, since we work for "preferred employers".. (whatever that may mean). although it probably looks messy in the pic, i very much like our apartment and am very happy we managed to get such nice furniture for almost nothing.... :)

ah, the big lamp we bought new at ikea last weekend, as you can see there are no ceiling lights at all in the living room, and it was much too dark...

US suffer

hahahaha, i loved sylvia's remark of yesterday.. and yes, the people in the pool did watch US suffer... especially when we had to move this couch... (and the kitchen table was hell as well..). even though the stairs were easy. there were 2 of them... and the couch was big and heavy and not elastic, unfortunately (if u look careful, you can see tim sitting in the corner, totally exhausted). getting it into our apartment also needed some higher math calculations.. and it was soooo warm! but we managed. now every muscle hurts and the apartment is one big mess. but its beautiful! we have 2 purple walls (light purple in living room, dark in bedroom), and we have many windows. lots of trees outside. i was woken up by hundreds of birds singing.. looking out of the window there is the pool in the bright sun... its as if we are on holiday!!

Moving day!

the living rooms are already pretty empty... (we loaded the car yesterday)... and look, still such a mess! :) (dont mind the yellow cart there... have no clue how it got there... ;) ). surely we will have to drive a few times. its nice, sunny and hot out. and we will have to move, while all the other residents will be around the pool, watching us suffer, as our apartment is opposite the pool. ah no, surely they will marvel at our great furniture we managed to collect the past months!
so... maybe tomorrow a pic of our new place..! wish us luck...

King bed

i thought everything in the us of a is big. i thus couldnt quite understand the bed the people we are subleasing from left for us. it is so narrow! it is not very long either, even my legs notice and i dont think im that tall. up till last week i thought we were sleeping on a "queen bed". checking craigslist and furniture stores it seemed however the most common bed... so that made me wonder even more... how can all these... ummm... bigger people than me sleep on a queen?!
last week the people we are subleasing from came to get some of their furniture back, and then they told me we are sleeping on a "full bed" right now. so i catched up on my wikipedia reading and now know there are twin/single beds (for 1 person), full beds (for 1 person in my opinion; 135 cm), queen beds (a little less space than a normal 2-person dutch bed; 152 cm), king beds (essentially 2 twins; 198 cm) and californian king beds. the latter i expected to be enormous... but more reading taught me that it is in between a king and a queen. pfffffttt.
but all that reading did not turn our frustrating full (every night i wake up several times) into a king. but look at the pic: there is everything, except a mattress, to build a king, even a fancy nightstand!!!! jeeeejjj!!! another visit to craigslist yesterday; there was someone so very kind to give us their not used anymore bedframe..! so... thanks again to everyone who gave us their furniture; the couch, the bookshelf, the lamps (see pic), the huge tv, the futon (my sister will visit us in august) and now the bedframe!! :) the us of a is not that bad at all....!

Getting furniture

.... is supereasy in boston! i love craigslist, there is soooo much.. for free, or just a little (the red chairs perfectly fit the table, i think, and they were very cheap). and the table, as mentioned before, we got from a yardsale across the street, which are also great... every weekend its like queen's day somewhere around. i dont need to (or try not to) buy new books anymore, you find easily books in yard sales, goodwill stores, or thrift stores, and never more than a dollar... :)
then today we also got a verrrryyy nice armoire (i like the word) for almost nothing; now i finally have a place to put my underwear etc.., and a big, beautiful bookshelf for free!!! when we came to pick it up, the girl also gave us 2 lamps she did not need anymore, and they are also pretty!
so... i think by now we have our household more or less complete, and for very little money :) only very important thing that is still missing, is a good bed.... and thats not so easy here...
and when one day we leave boston... we can do a yardsale ourselves... and sell/give it very cheap to others like us! :)

Treasure couch

This is what i wanted to post yesterday, but i had left my laptop in the lab; we went to view an apartment (yet another frustrating experience).
anyways... the beautiful couch we got for free, also harboured some treasures, we discovered. on the sides and behind the pillow there was some space, and it was stuffed with things! as you can see on the pic... there was more, like a plastic fork and other stuff that belonged in the trash... :) hahahaha. i emailed the previous owner to ask whether there was something he wanted back from this, and he sent me a pic of his son, the guilty one that enjoyed hiding stuff in the couch..! now isnt that cute!
oh, and no, we didnt find a fortune in there....

Big TV

this TV is huge. and we got it entirely for free. the man who gave it away bought it in 2004 for 8000 dollars. just like that! i dont think that i am that nice..... it is not entirely sharp, but yesterday for watching the "water-news" it was good.. it is really soooo big and heavy. and i am not even interested in watching TV (but tim is)..... space-filling?

Busy day

we did a LOT today. did laundry at the laundromat one block further, seemed to work better than in the basement. then there was a yard sale.. there people put all furniture etc they dont want anymore in their yard and try to get some money for it (so we had our little queen's day rommermarkt here!). we got a beautiful table!!
then we walked really far to see an apartment that was not worth our time at all. :( most stupid thing: here they dont tell you the actual address until 30 minutes before or so (WHY?! but it seems a common thing; same will happen tomorrow). pic here was taken on the way; next to yard sales people also just put stuff outside they dont want anymore. tim tried on the free shoes (maybe another day i put a pic of that..). then we went to the Natural Museum of History (free entrance), and then we went to the beach; it was hot today!! back home we cleaned the apt, so now im exhausted....

Free furniture

this is where we needed the truck for.... i discovered the free section on Craigslist (http://boston.craigslist.org/zip/). we emailed several people. most did not answer at all, that was very disappointing. but look! we got this beautiful couch for free!! now we finally have our own couch and something in that second empty living room. we also got an enormous, really huge TV, but thats for another day to show. ah, and we got a futon (also a very weird story that deserves a pic by its own), and we drove around a LOT.... ah yes; today i worked very hard in the lab. i hope to start pipetting next week monday, finally.
dont you love the couch?! i do...! (but it was not easy to move)