Sometimes you just fold over laughing about absolutely nothing. Laughing so hard you start to cry and when you realize you are laughing about nothing it’s just more funny.

Last week my friends from Chicago were visiting, and they pointed out to me that my downstairs neighbors have a little plate on the door with their names on it. In addition to their names there is a very prominent picture of a native American, an Indian. Of course I had seen the sign, but I never really thought about it. The family living in the apartment could not be less related to any native American.

The initial discovery of the name sign resulted in a good laugh, but now, every time I pass the totally incorrect sign with the Native American I start to laugh.

It is just too funny that a typical Dutch lower class family, a husband, a wife, three children and three dogs somehow for some strange reason placed a sing with their names and an Indian on their door. I suspect they selected the Indian because it is a very colorful image, but it still remains such a funny mystery. I think I’ll just go and have another look. :-p

This Thursday Lauren, Jenny and Diana arrived. To make things easy they took a plane to Eindhoven. This resulted in a very early morning for me, and the need to drive a lot. Clearly the Americans have a different concept of distance and they cannot grasp the idea that in a small country like the Netherlands even a relatively small distance of 150 kilometers can be very far. Well, all things considered it was okay. The girls recognized me when I went to pick them up and after a trip to Leiden we directly went on to visit Amsterdam. :-p

Friday was a working day for me, but we had agreed to meet in Amsterdam in the afternoon. After my work I went to find the girls. Not easy, because my knowledge of Amsterdam is very limited, and it was difficult for the girls to give me clear directions. Eventually I did manage to find them and of course when I found them they were just visiting a coffeeshop :-p. What a surprise!

Number of miles driven: from 10500 to 19200 means nearly 9000 mile!
Weight: from 74 to 68 means a decrease of 6 kilos!
Countries: Mexico, USA and Canada
Number of Bud and Miller beers: a lot
Other beers: Heineken, Gulden Draak, Duvel
Other cocktails: Long Island Iced Tea, Margarita, White Russian, Sex on the Beach, Strange pink drink, …
Free drinks: A lot!
Number of times drunk, impressing even an Australian guy: 1
Number of times I could not remember the night before: 5
Number of times embarrassed by not remembering the night before: 2
Number of times my site was down: +/- 10
Number of times my site was hacked: 1
Reaching the cars maximum speed: 1 (in the desert so it was safe)
Money won in Vegas: $40
Money lost in Vegas: $80
Money won elsewhere: $10 (bet: $2)
Photo’s made: 5 rolls (disposable) and 1170 digital
McDonalds visits: +/- 6
Burgerking visits: +/- 1 (tried the new angus) (pretty nice!)
Subway visits: A lot
Duitse au-pairs: 4
Days that I spoke German: 3
Postcards send to Holland: 12
Postcards with objectionable content: 1
Postcards and packages that were lost: 4
Still to arrive (I hope) because being send by boat: 1 (posters)
Sites where you could speak German: San Francisco
Sites where you could speak Dutch: Brice Canyon
Weirdest monologue: Fat black guy in Detroit
Accidents with planes: 33%
Luggage lost: 1
Illegal substances brought to America: 0
Illegal substances offered to me in America: A lot!!! (hash brownies, mushrooms, XTC, heroine, marihuana)
Illegal substances used: 0
Manga books bought: 3
People interested in reading my manga books: A lot
People addressing my driving: 1 (park ranger)
Talking about ocmputers: 0 … yes, really zero!!!!

I think this will be my last post from the US of A. The PC that’s at my home in Holland seems to be slowly dying… but still it worked for quite some time (thanks to webmaster Frank!).

See you all in September!

Yesterday I arranged to spend the remainder of my time here in the hostel I’m at. I also got a public transport card so I can use public transport for a week and make the city a little bit less safe.

Today I’ll just hang around town and maybe visit a submarine that’s docked at the harbor. For the rest of the week I don’t have any plans yet but I figure I’ll take it easy and get some rest. :-o (=yawn smiley)

The visit to Alcatraz was nice. The entire island seems inhabited by seagulls and everywhere you look things are covered in a little layer of bird shit.

Today I also returned by car to the rental agency. I notices that during my trip I accumulated quite a large amount of souvenirs. :-(