Geert Heijnen's Weblog

Home is were the heart is….

Geert Heijnen — Mon, 02 May 2011 15:36:44 +0000

Just a short photo update with before and after pictures of our new home.

Painting the unpaintable…

Geert Heijnen — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 13:55:16 +0000

Since boardgaming is one of my hobbies I got a lot! of miniatures that goes with those boardgames. Some are prepainted but most often they are not. I like the look of the prepaints but I couldn’t dream to paint those little things with my two bare hands… But this winter I finally made the decision to try at least. And I’ve got to say: yes, it’s hard and painstaking but it’s also fun! And it’s also quite easy to surpass the quality of prepaints that you get.

From left to right: 1st attempt, 2nd attempt, 3rd attempt.

Engineering a gingerbread house….

Geert Heijnen — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 17:25:15 +0000

It’s a recurring tradition: the making of the gingerbread houses. This year we decided to stay clear of the traditional gingerbread houses and make something more exciting instead. So we downloaded some building plans. Cut the templates, baked the individual parts and waited for our yearly gingerbreadhouse-party. There we put it together and did the interior and exterior decoration. Have to say it came out looking pretty good….

Click to view slideshow.

Half a greeting from Mexico

Geert Heijnen — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 18:19:38 +0000

Somehow this postcard from Mexico arrived in half, it seems there is nothing left to do but wait for the other half...

The invasion of the white plague!

Geert Heijnen — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 16:10:23 +0000

Today is the day I’ve been dreading for the last 8 months. After the snow of last year was FINALLY gone, it has returned more powerful than ever. SNOW; the white plague, the destroyer of summers and crusher of all hopes. This means that unless the weather will change drastically that the next 4 months will be white. At least I don’t have to dream of a white Christmas….

When the cat’s away…

Geert Heijnen — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 16:17:58 +0000

So Linda is on a girly trip to Riga for 4 days and I’m stuck at home doing all the things I love including:

- Lying with my feet on the table

- Have seriously unhealthy eating habits

- Sleep/snore without being woken up

- Leave the toilet lid in the upright position

- Play as much PS3 as I want

It’s Man-Heaven!

Sing a long

Geert Heijnen — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:47:00 +0000

Before the Japanese got Karaoke, the Norwegians invented Allsang. Allsang is a typical nordic activity: consisting of a group of people singing songs together, and this time striding against every norwegian social law there is no alcohol involved. Now that we talked about allsang, let’s talk about a more local activity: allsang på grensen. Allsang på grensen is the local variety on the allsang concept, located here in Halden. It’s a huge tv-show with people (about 5000) going to the fredriksten fortress to sing along with their favourite artists, every wednesday (televised on thursday) during the whole summer. When I agreed to go along with Linda to Allsang på grensen, I was expecting a concert. I couldn’t have been more wrong. This is a tv-show, you are there to clap your hands and have to act happy and look like you are enjoying yourself. This isn’t THAT bad, the bad thing is that there are actually retakes, where singers have to sing again, or even worse the audience has to more enthusiastic but this time without the artist actually playing. Got to see Katie Melua and that made it all worth it, was fun to go there and perhaps go another time when there are some good artists.

Now short bulletin news:

- I’m having vacation in the middle of august so will in all likelihood take a week vacation in the Netherlands

- Got my contract elongated to the end of 2010

- Got myself a swedish™ haircut because me and Linda are going to Goteborg for the weekend and I wanted to blend in.

Trebåt festivalen

Geert Heijnen — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 16:58:24 +0000

So last weekend it was trebåt festivalen in Halden (wooden boat festival) and it was pretty fun! I think I never seen so many people in Halden! Not even 17. mai seemed this big. It’s basicly a norwegian festival which includes ancient norwegian traditions like: drinking till you pass out, fall in the water trying to get on a boat in stilletto heels (yes even norwegian boys wear stilleto’s on this day) and going out to eat and listen to svorsk music.

Also there are these beautiful wooden boats all over the Halden harbour area. It was really nice weather and we enjoyed both of the days we were there (we went on friday and saturday) It was really beautiful weather and we had a good time together with our friends.

17 Mai!

Geert Heijnen — Wed, 26 May 2010 17:41:22 +0000

Click to view slideshow.

Gaming…

Geert Heijnen — Tue, 11 May 2010 17:11:12 +0000

So as you may or may not know. I love to play boardgames. And no not monopoly or risk (well I do play them but I enjoy something else) it are more complex boardgames. So I had a lot of boardgames in the Netherlands that rarely got played because it was difficult to find people to play with. Now in Norway I got a friend group that actually like to play games. So once in a while or so (biweekly) we get together to play board- and or cardgames. This means that my poor old boardgames finally get a chance to get played more often. Most of them are pretty dusty. And some I really end up liking and others are more so so. But my favourite boardgame at the moment is Cosmic Encounter. It’s a very old boardgame from 1977 and got about 5 different versions published since then.

I usually go to find the newest of the newest in boardgames because it’s getting the most buzz. But now I got an interest for older boardgames. Buying old classics is pretty hard. After some research I decided that the boardgame I wanted to buy was: Dune the Boardgame. The theme based on the Dune books, the game itself published by the same publisher as Cosmic Encounter and it was getting positive reviews. Now this game was published in 1979 and 1984 and never was published again, if not for a french version in the 00′s. So getting an english version was pretty hard, some boardgame stores in the States are buying up copies and selling them for a big profit but than you’d have to be interested to pay 150 and 200 dollars. So instead I got on ebay and hoped to get lucky. After 3 months or so with bidding, being outbid, incomplete versions, I finally won the 1979 version of Dune the boardgame in an auction. Now I just have to wait for it to get shipped and get it in the Netherlands. So is gonna take some time but I now know I got the boardgame I wanted and hopefully will get played a lot.