I am in an (almost) Spring kinda mood. I am in a cleaning and renewal mood. Not only in my personal life but online as well.

The other day, when I tried to come to terms with the fact that I had possibly lost the blog and had to start all over again… *cough* not that I was panicking or anything *cough*… I started looking for possible new themes to tweak into a new template for The Dutch Files. I didn’t want a complete change, as I think my header is the identifying part of the theme, so that one had to stay. But I wanted a bit of a change…

When it turned out that the blog was saved from hell and damnation (and disappearance) I decided to go ahead and do some change and Spring cleaning on the blog. So I messed with a new theme a bit, cleaned out some pages, and sidebar widgets, tried some new plugins, chucked out some plugings, stuff like that… It’s not a major big *gasp* kind of a change but good enough for now… And the background matches my hair color! Very important, of course, LOL

I also changed the theme for the photoblog DutchBitch View (The DutchBitch Photoblog). Especially as I’ve started a new photoseries “Project Dutchy Spring 2010” and also the new lenses that I ordered for my camera (a set of close up lenses and a fish eye lens) will be arriving soon and I hope to start doing more photography… I love this minimalist new all white theme so much! It’s going to be a pleasure posting on there.

And then I cleaned out and re-organized my feed reader as a last project.

So there you go: all new and improved and I didn’t even fuck any of it up! Feels kinda good… I am ready to have Spring start for real now… Ya know… including matching sunny days and temperature…

OMFG … The Kid is developing a nasty taste in soda

He made me buy this yesterday:

I just have one word for it: E.e.e.e.e.e.e.e.w.w.w.w.w.w.!!!!!

I had a bitch of a day yesterday: home waiting for fucking service guy to fix water heater, work being crap while working from home, sick child at home, shit piling upon shit upon shit… If I didn’t know for sure it was the 12th yesterday, it could well have been Friday the 13th…

It was topped off by my dish of stuffed peppers being ready to go into the oven, flipping over, slipping out of my hands onto the kitchen floor. OMFG! I was sooo fucking done with the day when that happened, I cannot tell you… So even though money is tight right now I told The Kid that I was ordering pizza and was going to be done with it… Yeah… or so I thought.

The Pizza Delivery Guy (a snotty 16 yr old that clearly thought he was Dah Cewl) turned up about half an hour after I ordered the pizza’s. I got money out to pay him and he had to give me back several euro’s for change. Which he couldn’t, as he “had no change”  in his wallet. I told him that I still needed my change back, that it was too much to just ” let go”. He tried to haggle with me and have me take 2 euro’s and be done with it but I refused. Money is tight and though it might not be much for him, those few more euro’s, it is for me. And as the pizza place is close to my house (only 2 min ride on his motorscooter) I told him I wanted ALL of it. He bitched and moaned that he’d go back for “just those few euro’s”  if he had to (and yes, he had to). I told him that I realized it was a pain for him but that it was not my problem that he came over with no change in his wallet and to take into consideration that what was “just a few euro’s”  for him, might be a lot of money for someone else.

He came back 15 mins later.. The Kid opened the door, took the money from Pizza Delivery Guy and also was given something else to give to his Mom: the menu of the OTHER pizza place in my town. I saw right away, when The Kid handed it to me, what it was and steam was coming out of my ears. I banged the window to draw Pizza Guy’s attention when he drove off and flipped the bird, to which he just laughed…

Yeah, he fucked with the wrong bitch and on the wrong day. Disrespectful stoopid shit! And I bet he thought that would be the end of it… heh… HELL to the NO! I guess he didn’t realize that *I* can dial the number of his boss at the pizza place faster than he can ride over there. Which I did. I asked his boss whether this was his idea or Pizza Delivery Guy’s idea. And I asked him no matter whose it was, whether this was their idea of funny. Cos it surely wasn’t mine. Respectless shit. Obviously Mr Boss Guy told me that I was completely justified to be pissed off, he apologized to me profusely and offered me a voucher for a couple of pizza’s and told me that Pizza Delivery Guy had surely not heard the last of this, and would be reprimanded as soon as he returned…

I guess he will have found out by now what it is like to fuck with the wrong bitch. I am now waiting for my house to be egged TP-ed pizza’d… *snort* I’ll keep you posted…

For a few days now I have continuously been dealing with service desks of Water Heater company, Landlord and Plumber to get my damn shower fixed. Up to now it’s not fixed, everyone is blaming everyone, everyone is promising to come by again to have another try at fixing things, I have spent two precious vacation days from work sitting around at the house waiting for them to get a move on… I hate it… It’s costing money, time and energy that I do not have to spare… And I am getting pissed off up to the point that steam is coming out of my ears…

Until…

An email comes in from a girlfriend that I used to work with when I started in my current job about 13 years ago… telling me that her son, who has been poorly for weeks now, has been diagnosed with a brain tumor… They don’t know if it is benign or not, they are assuming it is a primary tumor right now, without having spread. It’s in the hollow cavitiy in the brain, not in the brain tissue, they think… And she’s now waiting too, an agonizing wait… for tests, for results of tests, for decisions on treatment…

Of course, getting pissed off about all the stuff going on here at DutchBitch Casa and the incompetence of service people, I always do realize that there is worse things in the world. I always do. I know it’s a minor thing, but it’s still pissing me off.

But I will have a cold (a.k.a. DutchBitch) shower any day…

Eva, I am thinking of you so much right now. What I had feared for days now, Daantje turning out to have a brain tumor instead of a cyste has become the horrible truth… I so wish I could turn back the clock and have it all not happen to you and your family… Goddammit… Life sucks big fat balls right now… I have tears in my eyes and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it…

Well, sorta anyway…

First, a day ago my blog * POOF * just vanished… gone… all of it… only thing that was left was a simple line that “it was missing the MySQL files”

My first reaction: * PANIC ! * Over four years of blogging gone… I have been blogging for 6-7 years now and I have once before lost about 2-3 years of blogging…

My second reaction: * DAMN! * It had been weeks since I last made a back up. How is it that I can never force myself to do regular back ups but I just do the panic-back up after something has gone wrong…

My third reaction: * Ooohhmmm * I calmed down, sent out a support ticket to the support desk of my hosting service and then realized that IF the blog was really irreversibly damaged, there was nothing I could do about it and I would just have to suck it up and bite the bullit and start over…

The support desk guy, Brett, got back to me and told me that I had done something that deleted my php.ini file… *I* had not done shit. My blog was working fine, I had not posted, commented, updated or done shit to the blog and mysteriously my php.ini file was gone. Then again, I had no desire getting into an endless ya-uh/nu-uh battle, so I did what he told me to do to fix it and and after a few attempts * POOF * the blog was back… Thanks Brett!

And then…

the goddamn fucking waterheater broke down again… I was at home today because repair guy was coming over to do the annual water heater check up. Cool… he actually arrived in time, he spent about 1.5 hour working on the water heater and managed to get me water pressure I have never ever experienced since I moved in here years ago. Then he left… and I had oodles of water pressure, water was spouting out of the showerhead like crazy, but it was COLD!

So I called the service desk of the firm to inform them that following their annual check up I now did not have any hot water… A few hours later repair guy #2 rang my doorbell, he tried the taps, and the water was hot as hell… Then he left, I turned on the shower and

COLD!

WTH!?! I ran outside to get him back, he tried the taps again and hot water… Then he tried the shower which was indeed cold… he rattled and checked some stuff and then informed me that it was probably my thermostatic tap that was broken.

Why the FUCK does all that crap break down when you are out of money?! Can someone for Gawd’s Sake explain that to me? I called The BIL, went over to the only DIY store that takes gift vouchers, got the cheapest crap thermostatic tap I could find, paid with my last leftover birthday gift certificates and The BIL is coming over in a few mins to install it so we can see if that will actually fix the problem…

Cos ya know… I hate taking cold showers… And there’s someone coming over next weekend that I don’t want to treat to cold showers again. He might think I do it on purpose. Ya know, to hear him squeel… * sigh *

Watch this space. I will be back to let you know if The BIL, a.k.a. The Magic Man, was able to fix the problem by installing my new thermostatic tap…

And you know… after damage to the car in December, slipping in the icy street in January, bronchitis in February, inflamed ankle joint this month and now this… I think it is time, as we say in Dutchyland, for the devil to piss off and start crapping on someone else’s pile of shit… I am quite done for now…

UPDATE Thursday Evening: OF COURSE installing the new thermostatic tap did not fix the problem… so that means another call to the service desk… having to take another day off work… waiting for repair guy to show up… and hoping to Gawd that he can find the problem and fix it this time…

UPDATE Friday Evening: So after tons of phonecalls, and everyone blaming someone else for the problem, repair guy #3 showed up and basically told me, what I already feared, that repair guy #1 had actually fucked up and caused the problem by upping the water pressure. After spending most of his time trying it on with me *GAG* he told me that he could partly fix it but has to come back on Wednesday with a few replacement parts… And how that was us actually having a date for next week *MORE GAG AND PUKE*. So the story continues (the one about the hot water, not the one about the hot date with repair guy #3 *GAG GAG GAAAAGGG*)