It is now 5 and a half years ago that I first set foot on American soil, on July 4th 2004. After that things went kind of fast, and since September of 2006 I am officially a resident of the United States. You would think that after all that time I wouldn't really feel like a stranger anymore, and most of the time I don't. But still there are certain things that I will never get used to. For somebody that grew up in The Netherlands, the US can be a strange place to live. And I'm not talking about the fact that there are 12 McDonalds restaurants within a 10 mile radius of my house, or the fact that some stores here are open 24/7, but more about the way people think.

While spending a couple of hours in the garage, trying to get it back in a condition where both cars would fit in it again, I was wondering why this was necessary.

When we first moved in this house, there was so much room we didn't really know what to do with it. I admit, we did put some stuff in the house that made it look a little less roomy, like a desk, furniture, a TV, a bed and some other stuff, but that really made the house more comfortable to live in.

In the last couple of weeks, I noticed that most of the visitors to my humble blog get here after searching Google for 'Renée Hartevelt'. This is because of a post I wrote in November of 2008, in a series of articles about bad people, so I thought it would be nice to rewrite it in English.

I have some strange fascinations. One of them is that I'm interested in everything that has to do with serial killers. Believe it or not, I actually own a bunch of books on the subject, though the person this article is about is technically not a serial killer (as far as I know, he's killed once). Nevertheless, the story of Issei Sagawa is bizarre.

Ok, I understand that driving a snowplow during the darkest hours of the night in a blizzard is not the easiest job. But overlooking a complete mailbox? It's not like it's white...

Last night a snowplow knocked over our mailbox (which is, for reasons that are still mysterious to me, across the street from our house). Now what? Is the city of Hudson going to put it back up after the snow is gone, or maybe just buy us a new one, or do they expect us to do that ourselves?

Als het aan uw aandacht voorbij gegaan is: sinds kort probeer ik wat aan de digitale snelweg te timmeren met Windmill Web Work, mijn eigen web design agency, zoals dat zo mooi heet. Uiteraard is er hoegenaamd geen geld in te verdienen, en er zijn veel te veel kapers op de kust, maar ik heb toch al wat opdrachten binnengetakeld. Zo in het begin is dat best aardig, en een mooie gelegenheid om een beetje bekendheid op te bouwen.