Daisy the Flying Squirrel

I had to wait a few days to make sure that she was going to be OK before posting this, but it appears that she is. She's still walking with a pronounced limp, but all things considered she's doing GREAT.

I have posted several pictures of our furry friend performing death-defying tricks on the roofs and gutters above our apartment. Although we try to keep her from getting up there, she does occasionally get past us - she loves to be outside. So it was Sunday night - Holli and I were deciding where to plant some flowers on the rooftop deck and Daisy came up to join us. I saw her and went to grab her, but she ran towards the front wall, from where she can jump up onto the neighboring gutter. Which she did. Once getting safely out of my reach (I always stop chasing her once she makes the move to the gutter so that she doesn't have an accident from going too fast), she turned around to look at me and offer a soft and sweet "Meow." I turned around and started walking the other way when I heard Holli scream and the sound of claws on metal...


Some of you may know Daisy's history with cheating death, or at least her penchant for danger. Before she turned one year old, I got a frantic call from Holli after she had rescued Daisy from the washing machine (front-loader, about 10 minutes on the "Sanitary/ steam" cycle). Seems that she must have jumped in while Holli was grabbing a last-second piece of laundry from the other room:

She seemed to have no ill-effects, and was VERY white after she dried off! She still likes to look into the washing machine from time to time, but I haven't seen her actually jump in again.

With 8 lives still remaining, Daisy was undaunted. Over the next several months, she:
- Got stuck in the Maple tree outside of our house on Kenilworth (requiring a ladder and oven mitts to get her down)
- Had a mix-up with her lab results at the vet which made everyone think that she had eaten rat poison (or had eaten a mouse that had eaten it). She had to take some vitamin supplements and undergo close observation for several days before we found out that the vet had screwed up. I think that we still had to pay for all of the treatment... I'm not the biggest fan of that place!
- Was bitten on the base of her tail by some kind of critter (an opossum most likely). The bite became infect and she had to have some fairly serious antibiotics/
- Was hit by a car on/ near Bardstown Road, resulting in some bumps, bruises, and a chipped/ broken top fang. Took a few days for her to get her swagger back after that one!

With something like 5 lives left, she moved to Casselberry - still with quite a bit of cushion (the double-entendre is not obvious unless you have seen her!). She continued to push her luck.
- She spent some more quality time in one of our cedar trees, requiring me to get her out (those trees are no longer there, but that didn't stop her as described below).
- While visiting our neighbor's garage, he left - unknowingly locking her inside with open rat poison baits. When he came home and found her, it appeared that she had found the bait, so my mother-in-law (who was watching the house while we were on a ski trip) had to take her to the vet for an exam/ testing and another round of vitamin treatments.
- Then there was the weekend when she went missing. We noticed that she didn't come into the house on a Wednesday night. She didn't come around on Thursday, and by the time the weekend came we were very worried as she had never been gone for more than 12 hours. We walked and biked everywhere around the neighborhood and into the park, but could find no sign of her. We had a couple of responses to a Craigslist post, but they were for the wrong cat. A pretty bad storm rolled through town that weekend, and she obviously doesn't like being wet so that would have forced her home if she was out roaming. By Sunday, we feared the worst.
However... the across-the-street neighbors came back from a long-weekend on Sunday night and thought they heard a noise in the backyard, but didn't think much of it. On Monday morning they heard it again and went out to investigate in the daylight. They found Daisy sitting about 15 feet up in a tree - shivering, stinky, thirsty, and hungry. We got to use the ladder once more to extract her, but I'm sure she was very happy to see us this time!
- The last incident at Casselberry may have foreshadowed the most recent incident. While attempting to jump out of the 2nd-floor bathroom window onto the gable ridge above the front porch, she missed the landing, slid down the roof like she was on a playground, and dropped about 7 feet into a bush. As if she meant to do it, she made her way down to the ground and calmly walked off.

Running dangerously low on lives has obviously not affected her here in Amsterdam. She somehow managed to climb/ fall down the wisteria vine growing up from the street to the ledge below our first floor window (although that apparently didn't work out too well for her as she has not tried it again since).

I was 100% sure that she'd used them all up when I heard her claws on the metal gutter, which is about 45' above hard brick. I had to take a couple of pictures the next day to get a feel for how far that is.

Looking down

And looking up. The gutter is directly above the guy in the blue coat.

It takes a little over 1.6 seconds to fall 45 feet, during which time you accelerate to about 35 miles per hour - over 50 feet per second. Obviously (to me at least) not something that you could survive, let alone walk away from! Yet, when I looked over the edge I saw Daisy immediately get to her feet, take off down the street, and duck into a shop.

Holli and I flew down the stairs and ran after her, finding her below a table just inside of the shop, breathing heavy, but without any obvious major trauma. We got her back to the garage and inspected her more closely - a couple of small cuts (no bleeding to speak of), and a larger chunk of the same broken fang missing. Overall, she looked OK but she was breathing very quickly and had a little bit of a glazed look.

It took a little while to locate an animal hospital (given that it was a Sunday evening, I was somewhat surprised that one was even open considering much of the city closes down at 4:00 on Friday). An agonizing 15 minute drive brought us to a very nice facility on the West side. They did some x-rays, but Daisy would not cooperate with a thorough exam. She has developed an intense dislike of vets since we've been here. The x-rays showed no internal injuries nor broken bones; the doctor recommended giving her pain medicine and forcing rest for several days, keeping an eye on her breathing.

So far, so good - she's eating, drinking, and eliminating - all good signs. It hurts her to walk on at least one of her paws, but all-in-all she's doing very well. No matter how you count them, she's near the end of her "9-life" allotment.  Hopefully this will be a learning experience for her, but I have a bad feeling that it will not (she is, after all, a Hoosier).

I wondered if other cats had survived falls like this. Turns out that this is not at all uncommon, and there's a whole wikipedia article on High-rise Syndrome. So much for what is "obvious to me."

More entries about the family to come soon - just felt compelled to write this first.

School's in!

It has been a busy couple of weeks. Clayton was in town, the girls started school, Lilli turned 11, started soccer and had a multi-day field trip, Holli visited Moscow, and I got to drive for 2 hrs/day or more!

Copenhagen must have really tuckered poor CC out - he spent much of his time here in the horizontal position. 

While Clayton was sawing logs, we got out of the house for a little while and rode over to Vondelpark.
The girls have really gotten good at climbing trees!

Same tree, different angle!
This is but one example of the seemingly endless number of trees that have fallen over but continued to thrive for years.

Clayton and Daisy spent a lot of quality time together during his visit. I would have thought that he was used to kittens following him around all the time, but apparently not.

Daisy was particularly interested in CC's exercise routine. She must have been worried that he was going to hurt himself because she kept pouncing on his head in an effort to stop his histrionics. I really enjoyed watching the show. 

By the time we were ready to go see the Amsterdam nightlife (first time for me), the two of them had become very close!

 The first day of school was - as is often the case - also Lilli's 11th birthday. They stopped for a quick "first-day photoshoot" at the bridge closest to our apartment:

Something that we didn't know until a few days before school started was that for the first 5 days of school, Eliza would be getting out early - at noon. At home in Louisville, this would not be a big deal - school is a 5 minute drive from the house. Here, it takes between 10 and 20 minutes just to get to the highway and another 10-15 to get to school, which translates to me being in the car for 2 hours on a normal day, and 3 hours when I have to make an extra trip to get Eliza! 

Since Clayton was likely to spend the day sleeping (again) if I didn't roust him, and I didn't want to have to make the extra car trip to Amstelveen, we decided to bike down to collect her - he on my mountain bike and I on my city bike with the trailer - about 16 km/ 10 miles. I did NOT have my bike legs yet, and we left a little late and had to make up time. Pulling the trailer on the city bike while trying to maintain a decent speed was too much so CC and I had to switch up about half-way there! We made it about 5 minutes later than we should have (not the best impression to make on Eliza's teachers), but everything worked out ok...

Eliza had a great first day. She won a rose "for being the best behaved" - Ha!

We stopped for lunch at a restaurant on the Amstel river - Eliza has developed quite a liking for cheeseburgers!

Eliza didn't make it home before crashing in the trailer. This has become the norm even in the car!

We decided to rent a boat and cruise the town to celebrate Lilli's birthday after school. Many of the boats that we see around here are electric; this was the case with our rental as well. It was my first time driving one like this - very quiet, but not much power (kind of like a Prius?). I managed to overload the motor within the first 10 minutes when I went full throttle in reverse to move to the side for a tour-boat. We were dead in the water for a minute until we figured out that we needed to cycle power to clear the overload. Evidently the boats are more PC than Mac.

Eliza suckered CC into sitting in his lap for much of the ride. 

Lilli stealing a piece of "cake" while Lucy is hamming for the camera.  

Lilli again showing her age 

This swan wanted to join the party

Lilli showing off her gift from Lucy - a quill that she was dying to have!  

Family shot with the Waag in the background. It's worth reading about.

Lilli holding up her planner, a gift from Nanna.
This particular "inspirational" bit, for some reason, reminded me of Gina.

We made another Sunday evening trip to the beach for dinner, and found a restaurant near Zandvoort owned by Bjorn Borg.

The food was as good as the atmosphere - we will be back!

The kids had a great time, as they do every time we hit the sand. 

Notice the stylistic differences - Lucy in a bathing suit, Holli in a winter coat.

Last Sunday we attended a birthday party for the Sneen girls (their dad, Alex, works with Holli for Finlandia). The party was on the pannenkoekenboot (pancake boat). Getting there was somewhat of an adventure - our first real bicycle trip through town with all five of us (Eliza was in the trailer of course). We biked up the Prinsengracht all the way to the IJ (the body of water to the north of "downtown") and followed the waterfront over to Central Station where we boarded a ferry. The ferry, which is "free" - at least to those who don't pay taxes - took us bikes and all across the IJ (~2 minutes). On the other side, we had another 10-15 minutes of biking to get to the party. It was worth it - all you can eat Dutch pancakes (and coffee, beer, etc.)!

The toppings bar

Spek (bacon) pancakes were the most popular option for the adults. The bacon is cooked into the pancakes! Other options for starting points were plain and apple.

There is a Zulu-class soviet submarine parked next to the pancake boat.
It's in pretty bad shape now, but I can imagine that it was pretty impressive 50 years ago!

After eating her fill and playing in the ball pit, Eliza was worn out and - again - didn't make it home.

Lilli had football (soccer) tryouts the first Monday of school, and also received an invitation from our neighbor to come to their "hockey training" (field hockey practice). The timing worked out so that she could do both, but she was pretty worn out by the time we headed home - especially after not getting all that much serious exercise over the summer. While she was practicing hockey (the coach spoke Dutch by the way, which was quite frustrating for Lilli), Eliza and Lucy picked up some sticks and played a little. Eliza did much better than I would have expected given that she had never hit a ball before!

This pass - like many of hers - went right to Lucy!
Just don't stand near her when she's swinging!

During that first 5 days of school, Eliza and I had to find something to do for a couple of hours every day while her sisters were still in school. The Amsterdam Bos (mentioned in a previous post) is very close to school, so we went there one day for a walk and saw some interesting things!

One of the many beautiful lakes in the area

Eliza discovered a dragonfly in the water that appeared dead. She touched it and it moved, so we had to rescue it!
We carried it with us on our walk while its wings dried and then set it free - she was very happy to have saved it!

Translation: Naturist Meadow. Forbidden for dogs from Apr. 1 to Oct. 1.
What could be terribly interesting about this?
Naturist can be roughly interpreted as nudist, as we discovered - fortunately from afar - when we walked into the meadow.
Also note that the triple X is the symbol of Amsterdam; nothing to do with "adult content"

The four of us had to kill some time after school and before the first of three "back-to-school nights" a few days later.

The color-coordinated girls before we went into the Nemo last night for a Brown-Forman get-together.
The Nemo is the Amsterdam Science Center; we visited in April during our visit. Very cool!

Bonus picture of Eliza sleeping - they pull the barstools together and lay down on them periodically. This picture was taken while I'm writing this!

Lilli's grade-level trip
Starting in upper school (6th through 12th at ISA), the entire class takes a 3-day field trip during the first full week of school as a team building exercise. The 6th grade went to Apeldoorn, which is about 90 km (55 miles) east of Amsterdam. There they explored the national park, did some "ropes" climbing, and visited the Apenheul monkey reserve. Lilli had a ball!

Other stuff:

Our new painting and the view that inspired it (from the bridge over the Prinsengracht just north of us.)

This post's entry for "favorite boat"

College football is finally here!

My view - I was able to watch two games at once, but it was 11:00 pm at halftime of the 3:30 games.
At least the house is quiet during the games!

Some things I've seen while biking

You can't believe how big these rabbits are!

My new favorite ride is to the beach at Zandvoort. It's about 27 km (17 mi), which takes about an hour with traffic.

I decided to ride home from the beach one day through the forest via IJmuiden. Had no idea there would be wild horses!

This race track, which I discovered on google maps, is just behind the dunes from the beach in Zandvoort.
I will be figuring out a way to drive on it... They have several exotic cars available for track time!

Geeked-out Alfa at the track entrance

Just outside the track entrance, BMW was holding an event for their dealers to drive various cars around an autocross-style course in a parking lot.

This is a typical fill-up for the Q7. I seem to recall wanting something with a lot of power, just can't remember why...

For those who do math (one of my favorite quotes from Rohm and Haas):
Gas is €1.859/l, which equates to $9.11/gal
The Q7 apparently holds nearly 100 liters (25 gals), so this fill-up cost €179 or $232.

I love some of the cars I've seen:

The Lambo was at the track (can't wait to drive it!), the (very blurry) Ferrari and Tesla were out and about in Amsterdam.
I've also seen several Fisker Karma's, a Rolls or two,  an i8, some Bentleys, dozens of Tesla Model-S's, and several other Ferraris and Maseratis!

Warning - rant coming.

On the other end of the spectrum, there seems to be no end to the European variations of a tiny cube with 4 wheels. And it's not just the "all-but-unknown-to-Americans" brands (Skoda, Opel, Peugeot, Renault, Daihatsu, Rover, Citroen, Fiat, Daewoo, .....); the luxury brands are in the market too. BMW 1-series hatchbacks are everywhere, Audi has an A-1 (with a 1.2 liter engine making 86 hp?!?), and even Mercedes has an A-series. It's awful! 

I'm sure their owners think the same of me in my mammoth SUV, and I might agree with them by the time I get out of here, but for now I can't stand them!

I can't even bring myself to take pictures of most of them as it would seem to give them legitimacy, but I did snap one of this "X1-M", of which I'd never heard. Further research tells me that this is an X-1 with the "M-sport package", which likely attempts to boost apparent speed with decals and leather. The "xDrive28i" version of the X-1 (the marketing guy that approved the naming of these should be transferred to the mail room) does have respectable numbers, despite the "28" being used to describe a 2.0 liter twin turbo instead of its former designation for the non-turbo inline 6 that served the 3-series so well for so long. My experience driving the turbo-4's as loaners in Louisville was not at all good however; maybe they've improved...

That's all for now - thanks for reading!

School's almost here!

We have spent the better part of the last couple of weeks getting the apartment set up and preparing for the start of school (tomorrow - I can't wait!). The place is coming together very nicely; we lived in our home on Casselberry for 1.5 years and didn't have nearly the "degree of completion" that we have here. Kenilworth either for that matter, after 8 years! I guess I would attribute it to bringing less - the result is certainly more!

Here are some shots of the pad:

First floor (above street level) - front / Living Room area overlooking the Prinsengracht.
Note the ridiculously small green car across the canal. These things are everywhere!

Our new painting, which is a scene from just down the canal.

Middle of the first floor / Kitchen area

Rear of first floor/ Dining area

Second floor - Master bedroom

Second floor - Eliza's bedroom.
Not much extra space in here!

Third floor - Lilli's room (she's hiding behind the TV)

Third floor - Lucy's room

Terrace (above the 3rd floor) - looking towards Prinsengracht

Terrace - looking towards the rear

The girls and I have tried to continue venturing out to find new parks/ entertainment during the days. We are now doing so mostly by bike, which is quite an adventure in and of itself. Lilli and Lucy are on their own, while Eliza is in the trailer.

Westerpark
We took our second tour of Westerpark recently (the first was when Lilli was out with Mrs. Beck & family so this was her first trip). Westerpark is a large park on the north west side of Amsterdam - pretty close to us and a reasonably easy ride. On the north side of the park (through a "tunnel" under the train tracks) is an "natural outdoor adventure"area where we spent most of our time. Here they loan out small nets to capture creatures from the marsh for closer study, provide a fire (and supplies) for making bread and popcorn, and provide some natural and man-made climbing/ swinging challenges.

Small trees (Willows I believe) are braided together to form a tunnel.
We have seen several similar examples around the city - very cool!
Eliza couldn't be bothered to take her biking helmet off until we had been there for a while.

Inside the tunnel, and light at the end!

The swing is also made of (mostly) natural materials. This kind of swing is popular here - kind of a basket where multiple kids can climb in and lay down. The girls love them!

Eliza on the zip-line going over a "canal" (about 1' deep).

On our way home from Rembrandt Park we happened on a small park tucked away on one of the canals. After letting the girls run for a few minutes, Eliza discovered that there was a petting farm just through a barn in the corner. Amazing the things that you find when you're not even looking:

Rotterdam Zoo
Since we visited Amsterdam's zoo (Artis) over spring break, we decided to take an afternoon trip to Rotterdam to visit their zoo. Lots of cool stuff here, including some "walk-through" aquariums. Unfortunately, it was difficult to get decent pictures of many of the critters using my phone, but I did get s few good ones.

Jellyfish!

Sea horses - one on the shirt too!

This is from the Amazon exhibit (think rain-forest). Butterflies everywhere!
Eliza tried sneaking up on this one.

I didn't get the species, but believe it or not this butterfly is one of the most beautiful I've ever seen. You can see why below.

Lilli took a more scientific approach and got a little juice on her fingers.

I took about 30 pictures trying to get one with its wings open and finally got one!

A few other critters of interest:

Red panda - first saw it crawling across the top of a cedar bush.
First one we've ever seen, but immediately recognized it from one of the girls' animal books.

Roo jumping into momma's pouch!

Wolf pack - we were able to get very close to these guys!

This polar bear was (as I learned very shortly after this picture was taken), if not disproving the old axiom, providing at least one example outside of a forest.

I love raptors - owls and eagles especially!

Surprisingly, this was their favorite "exhibit."

We then found a pelican that apparently had an itch:

And on the way out of the zoo, we heard a very loud noise around the lion area. We investimigated...

Amsterdam Forest
On the recommendation of a couple of locals, we checked out the Amsterdam Forest (Amsterdam Bos). It reminded me somewhat of Bernheim Forest in Kentucky. The girls spent their time up in the trees in a ropes course, while Eliza was grounded due to height/ age requirements. As anyone who has spent any time with Eliza can imagine, she was NOT happy about this slight. But after some encouraging (read: threatening) words from her wonderful and caring father, she made the best of it.

Lucy's ready! Eliza reminds me of that olympic gymnast that placed Silver...

Lucy tore it up!

Lilli ended up a little bored by the end and ready for the next level - she's an athlete!

THIS ONE - well, like I said, she enjoyed herself immensely (on the ropes closer to the ground)!

Prior to this trip, I rode my bike through the forest earlier in the week and found a huge "farm" area with cows, horses, sheep, goats, pigs, and various large birds; a lake with a swimming area and boat/ canoe/ kayak rentals; and a 2,200 meter long rowing course called the Bosbaan (the oldest artificial rowing course in the world, dating to 1936).

Hosting the 2014 World Rowing Championships later this month!

Closer to HomeNot everything was far enough away to need transportation. We finally found a great, fairly large playground right around the corner from us. Eliza immediately made some friends:

Eliza is surprisingly good at throwing the Frisbee!

All three girls got haircuts at Rob Petoom (a very fancy salon just around the corner from us). They all look fantastic:

While the other two were finished within 20 minutes of sitting down, Eliza had established quite the rapport with her stylist... When she was asked "would you like me to do anything with your hair", her eyes got big...
"What can you do?"
She was very bouncy on the way home since her new curls were up to the challenge!

I've had the chance to get out on my road bike twice now - the most recent trip was up the Amstel, which is the city's namesake (Dam on the Amstel - Aemstelredamme, first recorded in 1275 - developed into Amsterdam by 1325). It was a beautiful ride, although I'm not a big fan of the wind and there is no shortage of that here (one of the many reasons I prefer mountain-biking is there is no wind). When I returned home, Holli had a snack-dinner ready to go on the terrace, where we enjoyed ourselves for a couple of hours in the great weather:

This is a popular meal method in the Netherlands - apparently how they do lunch every day at Holli's office.
Beats Wendy's by a long shot!

These three LOVE their books.

Always in a good mood after biking, especially when there is good beer involved!

Daisy continues her death-defying antics on the roof.

Watching the birds go overhead from one of her favorite perches

We've had a couple of arrivals in the last day. Clayton began the third leg of his European tour (after a couple of days each in Dusseldorf and Copenhagen. I'm thinking the entertainment will be somewhat different here, but we are all happy to have him - especially Lucy!

Lucy learning to eat chicken wings at a Tapas place with her Godfather.

The other arrivals came this morning: packages from Nanna & the Highfields and from Leah. There is a lot of excitement in the apartment right now as the booty is divided up!

Tomorrow is the first official day of school - and Lilli's 11th birthday! As a result, we will have much more to report next time!

One final section - and one that may appear from time to time. I've seen some interesting things going down the canal, so I decided to document a couple of them here. Hopefully there will be more as the weeks go on!

These two guys are driving a hot tub. I think this is my favorite one so far!
We smelled wood burning in the apartment a couple of times, and couldn't find the source, then I looked outside and saw this floating by. I think the thing must be wood-fired!

We saw this one heading south in the morning (upper) with a few nasty-looking bikes that were evidently pulled out of the canals. Then later that afternoon it came back by (lower), piled high with junk bikes!