Pirate treasure

As part of my crap-herding efforts I finally cashed in all of the loose change I've accumulated over the last 3 years. Fortunately Commerzbank has a cool machine you can pour change into, it counts it and puts it into your (or Annette's) account.

Total treasure: €71.22

Reasons for this... I've realized that i've been treating 50 cent coins as laundry tokens and anything smaller than that as balast...

Knives

Great knife block (bad photo)

Ultimate deckchair

Saw this in Munich, I wish they still made deckchairs like this...

Farewell tour

Am currently wandering around Europe saying goodbye to everyone.
It's quite a strange experience, feels a bit like I'm hosting my own wake.
Also feels a bit like a condemned man's last meal (in the sense that I can eat whatever I want, but with a lot of nostalgia)....

Lost Potter...

Watched the end of Season 3 of Lost last night. I'm impressed at how they managed to
end the series and still somehow manage to leave it open for another one...

Also saw the Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix last night. Wasn't as disappointed as I was expecting, although it didn't really build tension very well and had the general feeling that they had made a much longer version which they will release on DVD (a la Lord of the Rings).
Still I quite liked the wizard fight at the end, and the Dark arts training scences were quite reminiscent of the 'Room full of ninjas training' scene in You Only Live Twice (which is a good thing)
.
Am about to start reading the new Harry Potter book, am guessing it will be more disappointing than the film but less than the end of Lost

England is sinking

Water water everwhere... the whole place is being sent the same way as Atlantis

To walk around London is to bleed money with every step...

Little Miss Sunshine

Watched Little Miss Sunshine last night. Its pretty off-beat comedy about an ugly kid and her family driving across America to enter a beauty pageant. I thought it was fantastic, it has a lot of 'laugh out loud' moments, and is really sweet and moving at the same time. It also paints a scary picture of beauty pageants and how they sexualize small kids without really admitting it...
(I can't really explain more without spoiling the film)

Probably one of the best films I've seen all year.

Garbage haulage

Just spent most of yesterday driving a large fraction of my junk-footprint back to England.
It actually worked out quite well, although it seemed a bit symbolic of the difference between England and Europe.... Drove 6 hours through France to Calais without any problem, rarely more than two other cars on the road... as soon as we drove off the Eurotunnel train into England we got stuck in traffic for the next 3 hours.... Oh well, I guess it isn't too bad, although we have to do the same journey again tomorrow :o(

Electronic Crack-Cocaine....

Picked this up on a whim at the airport on the way back from England.

In principle, its a cross between Sudoku and Minesweeper... It looks really easy but is a good pure logic puzzle and is totally addictive... spent much time either doing puzzles or fighting with kat about who gets to play... :o)