Getting settled into Holland

We're in our house, and almost all the boxes are unpacked. Living room is set up so that the projector projects onto the front window blind, which is white, so at night it actually shows through to the outside. I'm not really sure what the neighbors think, but no one's complained yet.

Just bought a white 2005 Volvo V50 Summum, 2.4i 5 cylinder with manual. That 5 cylinder sounds really sweet in the upper revs. My first Volvo. We'll see how it ages over the next couple of years.

Andrew is just over 14 months. He crawled up the stairs yesterday and today. I'm so proud, and he's growing up fast.

My job has been keeping me really busy. I've been to Douala, Cameroon, Luanda, Angola, and Lagos and Port Harcourt, Nigeria. I'm glad I live in the Netherlands.

I've finally opened Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. I'll have to get everything linked together. Thought I'd finally jump on the bandwagons.

I've been trying to decide whether to get my HTC Touch Pro fixed, which has a busted screen, get a Blackberry, get an iPhone, or get a Windows Phone 7, of which I like the Dell Venue Pro best. I typically ride the bus to and from work, and each way is a 10-15 minute ride, which would be just long enough to browse my Social feeds and post updates.

Once again, time will tell...

Walking to work such a treat

Right now, at the Grand Winston Hotel where we are staying, I'm close enought to walk to work. Yep, walk. Only takes me about 15-20 minutes. Walking to work; it's such a foreign concept to me, as an American. I'm used to driving everywhere. My first job location out of college had me driving 75 miles one way to work. I lost over 2 hours each day during that commute. Now I walk to work. It's so sweet, especially with the nice sunny weather here in the Netherlands.

Nine months and now crawling

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Originally uploaded by mechanicaldan1

Andrew is nine months old today, and has been successfully rolling around for some time now, and being able to get into a sitting position without assistance. He's been able to push/crawl backwards. With some stacking cups to motivate him, Andrew crawled for the first time today; repeatedly! Dena was reading through one of the baby development books, and for his age the book said he'd like stacking cups or blocks. We had some in the tub, but never put them out on the floor, so we did, and Andrew's face got real focused, and he crawled toward the stack, and then knocked it down. Dena grabbed the video camera, and I restacked, and Andrew crawled some more, and Dena recorded. We repeated this several times. It was very momentus. We're proud parents.

Paris Gaud de Nord train station

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Originally uploaded by mechanicaldan1

I had a train set growing up that was on a 4' x 8' sheet of plywood in our basement in Widconsin. It wasn't anything special, but I would look through model railroading magazines and dream of having a huge complex track layout with a big roundhouse for all the trains. Well, my first train trip in continental Europe landed me in Paris at the Gaud de Nord train station, and it was a childhood dream come true! Lots of tracks and trains all gathered under one roof. The pictures were taken on my HTC Touch Pro and came out pretty good.

I rode on a Thalys HiSpeed train from Rotterdam to Paris, and it was high speed indeed. I had the GPS going at one point and briefly saw 168 mph!!! That faster than I've ever been on any of my motorcycles. I'm know I'm going to really like travelling by train. It's so much less of a hassle than flying on a plane. You just show up to a train station, and get on the train. The seats are comfortable and have a decent amount of room. Plus there are electrical outlets and Wi-Fi available.

What will 2010 bring?

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Originally uploaded by mechanicaldan1

So it's a couple of days into the new year and new decade, and Andrew is just over 4 months old. It's just incredible how quickly he's growing, and how his motor skills are improving. It'll be a couple years until his motorcycle skills start improving. :)

So what will 2010 bring? For my son, it will be a lot of firsts; sitting up, crawling, solid food, maybe a couple words or walking.

For Dena and me, it'll be a different global location where we live, different house, different cars, different motorcycles, different job.

I got an XBox 360 for Christmas, so I'm really looking forward to playing that, although I had to bring back my UK region system, so that I can get a US region version. I can guess that video games just like DVDs have different regions because of release dates, different languages, different government rating systems, but it is unfortunate for globally active consumers. I'm looking forward to playing some of the racing games on our projector. Should be really sweet!

And speaking of cars, the Red Bull New Year's No Limits stunt was just crazy. Jumping a car 269 ft is just mind blowing. I love Red Bull, Travis Pastrana is awesome, and I really like the new Subaru WRX STi hatchback body style, and may just have to get one in the US to replace our UK BMW 120d.