Andrew's birthday!

Today is Andrew's birthday!

In the late morning I went out and bought him a cake for his birthday at this wonderful patisserie downtown called Michel's:

Then I walked down to the Albert Heijn store at the other end of town for groceries (much better selection there). On my way back to the house I stopped at Liquid Gold and got Andrew some nice scotch for his birthday, and the tobacco shop where I bought him one very nice Cuban cigar (they are very expensive here!).

I brought everything back to the house and had a little lunch, then went out again to the bike shop. We had gone there the other day and the salesman had said they would put a bicycle aside for me and work on lowering the seat a bit. They hadn't worked on it, so I decided I would wait and get a bicycle when I come back next time. People here are very tall, so most of the bicycles are too high for me!  He told me about another store (in a town called Bloemendal) they have that keeps in stock more bicycles with the smaller frames.  After I left the bike shop I stopped at The Phone House where I got myself a new cellphone. I will be shutting off my U.S. phone next month, so I wanted to be sure to have a new number to give people.

Andrew got home around 1900hrs. We went to dinner at a nearby restaurant called Parck. The menus were only in Dutch so the waiter was kind enough to stay at our table and help us read through it. We can kind of "wing it", but there are many things we just can't read yet! Andrew had beef (rundvlees), (looked like filet mignon) and I had the salmon (zalm). Our dinners were very good!


The other day I was reading something in a book that kind of hit me.......that could pertain to anyone in emergency services:

"Someone laughed, and he could hear the other cops join in, participating in the usual bullshit bravado that made it possible for them to do the job"

After working as a dispatcher for over 33 years you find you have to have a "thick skin" to get through some of the horrible things you deal with on a daily basis. People in emergency services tend to laugh about strange things that most "normal" people would cringe at if they heard it!