June 19 - June 28, 1999

On Saturday I went to Haarlem. This city was described as this picturesque city in the travel books. Well, it was a nice city, but looked quite the bit the same as other cities around here. Walked through an antique market. Didn't see anything I liked. European garage sales look quite the bit the same as American ones. I guess junk is junk.

Sunday Morning...Its rainy and miserable. I lay around the house and turn on BBC, the English TV channel. Since the live sporting event has decent weather, I know that if I wait a couple of hours the weather here will improve. So I sit and watch Cricket. This game is kinda like baseball only with very strange rules and played in a round stadium. After a couple of hours I figure out the rules and start to enjoy it. I think Mark McGwire would rule cricket.

Went to a movie on Sunday after the weather cleared up. How was it different from the States?

1. I sat in the Balcony. Not many chances for that.
2. There was an intermission.
3. They sold beer in the theatre.
4. The coffee was in a cup and saucer. No plastic cups. Actually I wouldn't trust coffee in a US movie theatre. I don't think 15 year olds know how to make it. And forget Cappucino.
5. The ticket cost $7.50 (Oh that the same as the US).

I spent the whole week in the office. Lots of bugs and weird stuff to find. Lots of braincells devoted to programming and debugging. I've fallen into a rut where after work, I come home, its overcast and miserable out, so I take a nap or get dinner, watch TV, and fall asleep. I literally did nothing interesting for a week. Watched Tennis at Wimbledon.

Well, I did initiate the death of my investment club, one of my favorite things. We just never had the same level of interest since a couple of friends moved away. I tried to keep it going probably longer than anyone else would have. Why wouldn't more people be interested in an investment where we were making 20% returns? We had good stocks, good prices, quite a few things going for it. We'll disburse the money and I'll invest it on my own. I learned quite a bit from the club, so thats good, just kinda sad that it had to end.

On Saturday the 26th, I went into Amsterdam with the intention of going to the newly remodeled Van Gogh museum, but coming out of the train station I saw at least 15 different Van Gogh bags and realized that it might just be packed on the first weekend its open. Then I discovered that Waterstone's, the English book store, had Thomas Harris's newest novel in. I devoured it over the next day. Hannibal is the followup to Silence of the Lambs and in many ways surpasses it. I absolutely loved Silence, I think it was one of the first videotapes I ever had (Thanks Grandma Dahl!). I still slip it into the VCR when I want to be frightened badly. Anyway, the book is truly scary and mesmerizing. I don't think that they will be able to make it into a movie, probably too graphic. But I desperately hope that they do, and they must get Sir Anthony Hopkins back as Lector. He's the best movie villian in the last decade.

Top 5 Movie Badguys:
1. Anthony Hopkins - Silence of the Lambs (Oscar Winner for Best Actor)
2. Tommy Lee Jones - Under Siege. And it is very difficult to be good in a Steven Seagal movie.
3. Jack Nicholson - Batman
4. Alan Rickman - Die Hard
5. Alan Rickman - Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

Anyone else think that Sean Connery would be an awesome James Bond Bad Guy? I acknowledge that he sucked as the bad guy in The Avengers, but in a Bond film......

Sentimental entry- the bad guy from the first Karate Kid. He was blonde, cool, tough, and I rooted for him to beat the little brat Karate kid the whole movie. Quite the disappointment. But anyone knocked down by a crane kick, probably deserves to lose.

Sunday - I took pictures today. The graphics guys at work have a very cool digital camera, I borrowed it and took a bunch of pictures around my place. They will go up on the website soon.

Download a .zip file of all the Pictures here . Its about 5.0 megabytes with descriptions.

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