Nimavenl - Nicole's Random Ramblings

The bird photos have been posted. Here are the duck photos... There's something about these first two photos that makes me want to quote a song. Oh you know what, I will - It's a great song that always makes me smile! It's just a jump to the left And then a step to the right With your hands on your hips  You bring your knees in tight Okay, after the second line the lyrics no longer match the photos, so I'll stop quoting Time Warp lyrics from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Although, now that I'm quoting lyrics I might as well keep going... It's just a jump to the left And then a step to the right With your hands on your hips You bring your knees in tight So, lyrics. Unless Dakota Moon want to sing "I want to be a duck" instead of "I want to be an eagle," quoting Another Day Goes By doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Although, neither did quoting Time Warp with regards to ducks. So, what if we just p...

A description of my day so far. Dramatised (if only a little) to insert humour, edited because my exact daily schedule is no-one's business really and polished because certain things simply don't need to be shared online with strangers! Wake up. Get dressed. Make coffee. Sit down to drink coffee while reading. Make myself breakfast and head out for the morning. Come back home, make coffee, then sit down to write down some thoughts. Get up to make more coffee - Walk to kitchen, rinse coffee cup and turn Senseo on. Wipe bench and stove, promise myself I'll clean the kitchen floor today. Fill sink for first load of dishes. Load washing machine and turn on. Sit down again. Turn laptop on, check emails.7 Remember I wanted coffee earlier - head back to kitchen, actually make cup of coffee. Check Twitter and reTweet interesting Tweets from my timeline. Sit while staring into space contemplating gender inequality and literacy rates around the world. Remember that I made coffee and ...

Dear Reader,  This is a bit of an angry rant.  Please read at your own discretion.  Dear Google, I use your services. Well, I use Google Search, Gmail, Blogger and Translate. Most of your other so-called services I just complain about. Or actively avoid, as in the case of YouTube. You see, dear Google, I am liking you less and less. We became close friends some ten years ago -- our 'ten year anniversary' is coming up... Will you congratulate me and tell me you love being friends with me? Of course not. At most you'll hassle me about buying something, spending my money on something, installing something that will allow you to better track my online movement or... No, wait. Let me start over. What will happen is this: In your quest to learn more about me, who I am and how I behave, you will only collect more information that gets passed on to more parties wanting to use that information to send me advertising you or they think I might like, send me offers to s...

In case you read last night's post and are wondering how getting to sleep went... The imaginary little shoulder devil was right. I heard music almost as soon as I'd written the words. The music dulled the voices a little though, so it was more like a blessing in disguise, thankfully. After being unable to sleep last night because the noise from next-door was bugging me, I decided I would try to 'write away' my frustration while listening to some soothing music. It worked, which I'm quite happy about. I usually enjoy being awake in the evening or at night when it's quiet and there are no noises to remind me of how many people live in The Netherlands and how crowded it can feel here. I like city life, people and living in the middle of Europe, however after almost ten years in New Zealand I've grown to appreciate peace and quiet as well. I don't mind having neighbours as most of them are friendly and living in a building full of people makes me f...

Music is playing on my headphones yet the noise behind the music is still bugging me, just a tiny little bit. I can't quite relax, can't get to sleep. My brain keeps thinking "hey, something's up" because I can hear the voices next-door so well. Normally voices heard that clearly are nearby, as in right outside my house. Voices right outside my house means there are people outside my house, people in my garden, people by the door, people who shouldn't be there; strangers who are too close to the house. Hearing noises outside my house signals DANGER danger DANGER and means I need to call the police, need to be sure the doors are locked, need to be sure the windows are closed, need to be ready to scare intruders off, need to be ready to hide, need to... No. Stop. Wait. There is no danger.

I've got a feeling this is going to be another random ramble. There have been goings-on in the world at large and in my personal world that I've wanted to write about. The plane crash of a great number of Poland's officials for instance. The ash cloud hanging over Europe after a volcano erupted in Iceland. People I talk to. Things I'm reading about.  In the end, I didn't write about any of these things. They mattered, I followed the news, read more about things that interested me, however didn't feel I had enough to say about any of these things to write an opinion piece about them. A general recap definitely, however a well-researched and thought-through story, argument, anything - no. Life is going on. It's going well. I'm doing well. Coming to terms with several things, learning new things about myself, learning new things about life. I'm also starting to realise that some people I thought of as good friends maybe aren't such good f...