Fall Has Arrived

Fall has arrived in Amsterdam. There's a chill in the air, but it's still pretty sunny so people are okay with it. It's sort of windy and it rains intermittently. When I left today, I donned my new gloves for the first time. They're sort of the perfect gloves for fall. I was surprised that they kept my hands so warm and that it didn't annoy me that my finger tips were cold. I'll wear them again tonight when I ride my bike to choir rehearsal. That's the true test. I thought of fall bike riding when I made them. We'll see how that turns out.

Fred and I went to the Stedelijk Museum yesterday. I wrote a snarky little review of our visit for HotelsbyCity.net. I signed up with them a few months ago and I was supposed to be contributing regularly, but I have only posted twice. I'll make a point of posting more often and I'll put a little link in the sidebar. The short review was that I didn't enjoy it, but go ahead and read the whole article if you can.

We also stopped for some patat, which is the Dutch word for "french fries." Lekker!
My new job seems to be picking up speed. I was there this afternoon and I got some books to study for the classes that I'll be starting on Tuesday and Thursday of next week. Lots of business terminology and talk about retirement plans. The people there are really great. There's always a smile and a friendly greeting and they seem like they want to use me a lot in the future, which is fine with me. One woman in particular, Nikki, is really good for sitting and talking about all sorts of stuff. She American and she doesn't seem to be particularly influenced by living here, but she's not "green" either. She's got that nice balance between being knowledgeable about Amsterdam and having a good sense of where she's from. And she's oh-my-god so energetic.

Speaking of Americans, I had my knitting group (Stitch 'n Bitch) last night, which was very interesting. There were quite a few Americans, including a woman from Berlin (with a French boyfriend in tow) and her sister who lives in Paris. The two girls are the kind of people who were raised bi-lingually and have that very international feel about them, living all over Europe, citizens of the world. (The sister is moving from Paris to Switzerland.) My family is so not like that, which is fine, I guess. The woman, Fabienne, seemed like a little bit of a smarty pants, but not in a bad way. "Smarty pants" sounds sort of mean, but I'm not sure she would disagree with me about the sentiment. It's different when someone is a smarty pants and they really do know what they're talking about. I kept thinking that she reminded me of someone, but I couldn't figure out who. When I got home, I realized that it was first girlfriend, Amy Boyd. Amy was just more of a smarty pants for the sake of being right.

Fabienne sort of stuck her foot in it she and the other male knitter, Robert, were talking about how people in Quebec speak French. Fabienne said, "It sort of sounds like how Texans speak English. That twang." She just smiled and shrugged when I informed her that I am originally from Texas. Very good response. You can't really argue with that twang comment, can you? Someone mentioned that she didn't hear my Texas accent. I said, "I have my Patty to thank for that."

So...

I've got lots to read in preparation for my classes, which start in a week. Once again, life has handed me a fabulous new challenge. I always say, "Everything will be alright." And it (eventually) is alright. It's such a great job situation that they didn't even blink when I said I had to go to Ohio for Thanksgiving.

I like that.