Marco&Niki

Little things (Or: Exchanging grocery keychains)

Posted on August 16, 2012 by Niki

After Marco wrote the blog post about the Hello Kitty keychain, I thought about a few other keychains he and I have given each other. Slightly more practical, but not really…

At one point, I thought I had lost my Shoprite card, so I went to the grocery store to ask for another one. They said they would mail me one, but it would take 4-6 weeks, and that in the meantime I could use my phone number. Sometime in those 4-6 weeks, I found the card and forgot all about the ones that were to arrive in the mail.

But arrive they did – so I had the brilliant idea to give one to Marco. I believe I did so near the end of one of the trips, probably when he was about to pack his luggage. (Though my memory is a bit faulty at times!) He was thrilled, even if it really only has a use for about 6 weeks out of the year. But it does have some use, since occasionally I am at work when Roger and him visit so they need the card if I instruct them to do the grocery shopping!

At the bottom you can also see the tip of a blue key. That’s actually a key made from a New York Rangers mold… and its one of the copies of my house key. So technically he can get in whenever he wants, if there wasn’t an ocean in between.

Shortly after I gave Marco a Shoprite card, he gave me a keychain card of my own.

An Albert Heijn bonus card. Which will probably find a lot of use in about 4 months…

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Hello Niki (Or: Wait..was she somehow trying to tag me as her property?)

Posted on August 14, 2012 by Niki

From Marco…

A short time before Niki and I met, a friend of mine visited Japan.
We joked that she should bring me a Hello Kitty phone charm and that I’d attach it to my phone.
I expected her to forget but she didn’t…
Being crazy enough to be a man of my word in situations like this, I hung the charm as promised.
If I remember correctly it was a little rocker H. Kitty.

At some point in the conversations with Niki I showed the charm (possibly already at the first convention we met, but it might’ve been at another one).

Maybe to give the impression that despite being big and evil, I was not above being silly and cute 🙂
Or maybe it was just a simple and fun topic “hey look, I am crazy, I have a girlish charm on my phone”
I’m not sure if it helped to impress her, but she definitely remembered it.

Because some time later, the cord of the charm broke, so I took it off the phone. Then, not long after that, I got a gift from Niki.
A new Hello Kitty figure holding a pink heart with an even tinier little heart dangling next to it.
At this time we were still “just friends” but now I have to wonder if she wasn’t secretly claiming me already*grin*

To prevent scratching the enamel*, I put tape over the figure & heart. Though the heart has some scratches anyways..

She said I could use it to replace the other one but since it was a bit bigger than the original I decided to hang it from my key chain. (also the original was more of a small figurine, while this is more like a flat charm, I’m sure there’s an actual word for it)
It’s been on there ever since. Usually when I take my keys out of my pocket when I get home from work my fingers search for it just to make sure it’s still there.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a good luck charm or anything like it, but I got it from Niki, so obviously it’s dear to me.

* I had to look up enamel since it’s not an every-day word. Fun fact, in Dutch it’s email (or emaille in French)
Ooops. I bet not many people use it for THAT meaning these days.

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From Marco (Or: Christmas countdowns and Zonderland’s gold)

Posted on August 7, 2012 by Niki

Niki mentioned a few times that for our various trips we’ve had countdown clocks to well..count down to the moment we’d be together again.
When she came over in December 2010 (and only Roger and I knew about her arrival) I decided to mix things up, make an advent type of calendar. Every day a new little ‘treat’, another (lower) number.

It started out as a joke, when it snowed on December 1st, and I drew the number 24 in the snow (24 more days until Christmas in NL)
Then it grew from there and I tried to come up with something new and original every day.
Often the number was either some randomly found digit, a few times I made one myself (like a 17 out of ‘hagelslag’ or a 3 out of jalapenos, or a 24 out of chicken fingers) and I even used a flyer for the pizza place across the street because it had a big seven on it.

The final picture of course, December 24 –one day till Christmas– was taken when Niki was already here (she arrived on the 23rd)
We have only two more countdowns ahead of us. Well, not true. I’m sure we’ll do more.
Counting down until the weekend, counting down to vacations, anniversaries, etcetera etcetera.

Soon of course the final countdown will start (cue the cheesy Europe song) Wooohooo.

In other news; During the Olympics we often get to watch sports we usually don’t see on tv.
Gymnastics is one of them. Today a Dutchie wrote history by winning ‘our’ first ever gymnastics medal, and it’s gold.
OMG. I know little about the high bar, but his routine was so much more spectacular than his fellow competitors.
The aerial moves he did have never been done before (in competition) as he combined 3 difficult moved into one crazy flowing display of awesomeness.

Do yourself a favor, look around for a proper video. And IF you can, watch it with the Dutch commentary.
The man goes nuts, and rightfully so. Amazing. It makes the routine even more spectacular.

[Edited to add by Niki: There’ s a proper video at nos.nl but it’s not viewable if you have an American IP address. Try this YouTube video but it might disappear at any moment.]

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Hijacking (Or: Marco takes over)

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Niki

Marco: I’m taking over the blog again. nWo style.


What? You might ask yourself.. What? I’m taking over. What? Coming to power. What? Assuming control.
If you are thinking right now “Could you please shut the heck up!” You might not be with one of my favorite forms of entertainment.


If you are thinking “Awweeeesome!!” You probably know that the above lines are filled with references to pro-wrestling.

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Categories: Marco&Niki | 8 Comments

Birthday cards (Or: Marco’s viewpoint)

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Niki

As Niki mentioned she sent me 13 cards in the past few weeks.
It’s hard to explain why that’s so cool.
What I mean is, on one hand it’s sort of cliche to send cards.
But that is probably what makes it so cool.
And then there’s the factor that she didn’t just send one card.
No, she kept a steady stream going. And that’s what makes it awesome! 🙂

The backs of each of the cards, showing the numbering system.

I live two floors up, and the mailbox is downstairs.
So often I’d get home, get the mail (leaving the spam in there) and when I saw the card from Niki,
there were only two choices. Either RUSH (needs to be capitalized) up the stairs and read it once inside.
Or..and this was usually the case, I’d rip it open while going upstairs, and at least look it over, big grin on my face.

Often I couldn’t help but chuckle because Niki has the tendency to write a LOT on those cards.
One of them was written with such fine print that I think she managed to fit about a thousand words
on that tiny piece of paper. But for the record. I love it. 🙂

The first 9 cards, non-birthday themed.

I think it took me until card #3 to realize there was a serious pattern developing.
Probably not coincidentally that was the first time I noticed she had numbered the cards.
Of course she denied everything when I brought it up (and sly-ly asked her if I she would be sending more)
It was after card 7 or so that I realized she’d at least keep it up until my birthday.

So last night, during our chat, I actually asked “Do you have any more cards?”
And I got a “There are no more cards in my home” back. Which of course made me laugh.
Since that could mean “I shipped five more this morning…” but we’ll see.
I do know that for the next two-three weeks I’ll sort of eagerly open the mailbox 🙂

It does remind me of the count down I did when NIki came to the Netherlands two years ago.
I created our own little advent calendar. One picture with a number on it a day 🙂
Maybe that’s another blog?

Another thing that I’ve mentioned to her is that now I cannot randomly send a card back.
Though this is 99% a joke, it does feel like a cheap trick to send her one.
Maybe I’ll think of something else soon. Send her a candy-gram or something 🙂

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Birthdays (Or: A flood of cards)

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Niki

Today is Marco’s birthday! (Well, technically due to the time zone differences it’s already over for him.) But I had some fun with my scheming…

In early June I got the idea to send him lots of cards in advance of his birthday. Someone I knew back in the day mentioned sending cards to a friend of his: one for each of her years (thankfully I think she was only 18-20 years old) to surprise her.

When I first had the idea, I didn’t know how many cards it would end up being. First I went to Shoprite and picked up some cards, with a mix between birthday and non-birthday. That same weekend I went to the mall, and got some more. I ended up with 6 non-birthday cards and 4 birthday cards. About halfway through I went back to Shoprite and supplemented that with another 3 non-birthday cards, for the eventual total of 13. And when I get an idea I try to go all out… each card had both sides filled out with smallish letters to fit more in.

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Cotton (Or: A boyfriend’s good intentions)

Posted on June 23, 2012 by Niki

Before one of my trips to the Netherlands, Marco was trying to be a good boyfriend (note: he passed with flying colors and double rainbows). He knew that I use cotton balls to wash my face each morning. So he had the bright idea of getting me some cotton from Albert Heijn:

Yes… he got me a bag of watten (cotton) … but it was not in ball form at all. Nope.

As it turned out, I also brought some cotton balls on the trip, as I didn’t know that he had gotten anything for me. But, as unluckiness would have it… I had packed my cotton balls and my face cleanser in a sandwich bag. But I didn’t realize that the cleanser wasn’t fully closed, so all of the cotton balls were wet and ruined when I opened the luggage. So Marco’s odd zigzag cotton saved the day!

But let me tell you, it was a bit weird to pull apart bits of cotton to use. Usually I got a piece that was three times larger than I needed! I think that stuff was better intended for arts and crafts projects.

But thank you, Marco, for saving the day yet again!

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Paraplu (Or: Caught in a downpour)

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Niki

Today was a day where I was glad I brought an umbrella (paraplu). While the morning bus ride to work wasn’t too bad, the rain started around 9:30AM and then rained/poured on and off all day.

As I was waiting at the bus stop to go home, the skies opened up and the rain started coming down. It was pouring by the time I got off the bus. I stopped at the deli to pick up some milk, and then steeled myself for the 10 minute walk home. It was a good 30 seconds before I told myself Okay – you have to go outside again. It’s not going to stop any time soon. About halfway home, the rain came down even worse. Just for a minute.

That reminded me of last June, when Marco brought his mother over to see the NY sights again (she first visited in the ’70s). One day we wanted to go to the mall, but it was raining pretty hard. We took a chance but got soaked in the process. I had an extra (old) umbrella so we each had one, but it was barely enough.

It was like being in a monsoon without the accompanying wind to back it up, and then of course the wait for the bus was about 40 minutes (thankfully under an overhang) because it was late.

One very swollen creek

Here’s a picture that Marco took of the local creek. Let’s just put the insanity this way: that’s about 3 1/2 feet (107cm) of extra water raging past. Normally the creek is about 2-3 inches (7cm) deep.

On the way to the mall, we witnessed one car that was literally half submerged in the water — only the back end was visible. The driver had tried to take the exit ramp off the highway but misjudged and went into a dip in the grass. Byebye car!

By the time we got to the mall, we had to run into the bathroom and crouch in front of the hand dryers to try and get some of the water out of our t-shirts. It was only partially successful…

Ah, memories.

Categories: Marco&Niki | 5 Comments

Random finds (Or: A quarter to call you)

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Niki

Well, it’s not quite a quarter to call, but you get the idea. I found this in my closest last week:

4 quarters from Marco, taped together

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… I was but a poor Masters student with not much money to my name. While I had had a part time job after college to save up some money, 90% of it went towards rent during my one and a half years at Rutgers.

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Categories: Marco&Niki | Tags: | 2 Comments

Care packages (Or: That’s a LOT of tape

Posted on May 12, 2012 by Niki

While Marco and Roger were visiting last month, they ordered some t-shirts to be delivered to my place. Unfortunately, those t-shirts went on back order and didn’t arrive until last week. So it became my job to get them from New York to the Netherlands. I became intimately familiar with the Post Office’s USPS.com and international rates – it’s a bit expensive.

It was not, actually, my first time mailing something internationally. The first time was in June 2007 when the Anaheim Ducks took hockey’s Stanley Cup, and Marco sweetly begged me to let him mail stuff to my parent’s house in Chicago so it could be sent onwards (by us) to the Netherlands. At that point we’d only been hanging out as friends for about 8 months, but it was still fun.

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Categories: Marco&Niki | 2 Comments

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