Delft

Today has been a slightly productive, somewhat lazy day, depending on how you look at it. I did manage to take out the trash and the recycling, do the grocery shopping, take a shower, and clean up the place a little bit. (I’m still ignoring a bit of the dust that I see here and there… sue me!)

It seems like the town has gone full-blown Irish overnight. The grocery store was a sea of people wearing green attempting to buy mass quantities of beer and food for parties tonight, all of it shoved into their overflowing carts. One of the workers in the meat department spent most of her time shoveling packages of beef briskets from her work cart into the freezers for folks to snap up by the armful. And then there was the Irish diddy that kept playing on loop over and over again on the store speakers. (Even some of the workers were muttering about it to each other!)

My random purchase of the day was pork loin chops. I have never cooked those before, so it should be interesting, though I might wait and have them for dinner tomorrow.

Thankfully I never get much due to having to carry it all on the walk home, so I could go into the express lanes. The person in front of me was trying to buy a single can of beer, and it was ringing through as if it were from a 6-pack even though the person got it from a cooler. This reminded me of shopping at Albert Heijn in the Hague. You are allowed to pull an item from its pack (say a 6 pack of beer) and pay for it separately without the cashier batting an eyelash. That is a foreign concept over here!

Today’s picture comes from the Oude Kerk in Delft. Another stained glass window. It amuses me how it is called “Old Church” and yet it looks so vibrant and new, especially compared to the Nieuwe Kerk (New Church). Perhaps it is the white walls and the bright, welcoming atmosphere.

Stained glass window, Oude Kerk

Het is vrijdag. I say that a lot, but I do mean it. Of course there’s a fairly small chance I might have to go in tomorrow as well – but it’s quite unlikely. Here’s hoping my phone doesn’t ring!

I can’t say much about today except that my brain has effectively turned off at this point. About all I have managed to do tonight is get a grocery list set for tomorrow. On the plus side, it’s under 4 weeks until I see Marco and Roger again — they will be visiting me and nearby New York City for about 10 days.

To celebrate the weekend, here’s a random picture of a plaza in Delft:

Delft plaza

As is usual for Dutch buildings, they are narrow and wedged in against one another. Reminds me of Amsterdam… with much less people milling around.