It's now 2:36 at night and for some reason I just can't sleep. I lay in bed awake and restless and decided to just get out and do something. So I first poured myself a glass of water and now decided: why not update my journal now. As I can't sleep it won't hurt to do something useful, right?

I know at the moment my updates are few and far between and I apologise for that. Lately however, life is just so weird, weirder even than it has been and I guess that takes time adjusting. Also it looks like time is something we have got less and less of as it flies past. Do you know that feeling: you want to do so many things but in the end you finish so few as you don't have time or energy finishing all of them? That is exactly how I feel and have felt for the past few months.

Friday a week ago my parents had to sing with their choir in IJmuiden. As the conductor of their choir also has 4 other choirs (of which one is and IJmuiden choir). So I had called Tiny (dad's girlfriend) to ask whether she would like to come. She said she would like that so we arranged that I would be there at around 19:30. Angela would decide later whether she would come or not. In the the end she ended up going with us and the 3 of us set of per bike. It was not too far and the weather was good, so no problem. All of us had a mixed feeling about the concert itself, as some of the choirs you could hardly hear what they sang. However it was good to hear my parent's choir again and to see my parents too. Before the concert began I saw my dad and then in the break we talked to both my mum and my dad. Mum especially was surprised to see Angela but did say that she was shocked by how old Angela suddenly looked. I guess the stress of the last few months does indeed rub off a bit. And you know: it is weird to think about the fact that my parents are all Angela has got now. So when the break was almost over and we had to return for the rest of the concert I gave both mum and dad a big hug. It suddenly feels different and special knowing I still have them. Even though they are not my birth parents, they certainly feel like my parents and that starts happening more and more. It is difficult though as I totally don't have that with my brothers and sister. I talked to mum about it and for now just decided that our lives are so different and that we can hardly imagine each other's lifes that this is how it's gonna be, at least for now. I don't think they feel I'm their sister and I don't feel them as my siblings either. I don't know how it feels to have siblings, but I don't think this is the way it's supposed to feel. So we will meet each other at birthdays but other than that I guess we will go our separate ways and mum & dad will do separate things with Angela and me and with my brothers and sister. On one hand I'm ok with this, on the other I am sad about it. But dwelling over it doesn't change anything so I better use that energy for something else I guess. However, I am grateful for having mum & dad around, they mean more and more to me and I am happy that it's going to great, also between them and Angela, as they are all the parents she has got left now.

Saturday last week we first had a cremation of a friend of dad's. She heard she had cancer in the same period as dad became ill. Angela wanted to go and I told her that I would not let her go alone. So we indeed went together. It was also the first time she saw her sister again after emotions had run so high the Tuesday before that she had walked out of the meeting they had (I won't go into detail about this at the moment), what can I say: obviously it was difficult and emotional, but I guess we managed to get through it the best we could. While on our way home we cycled home past an icecream shop (the best one around), so we decided to stop for an icecream. This was really good and helped our summery feeling and the summery weather a great deal.

In the afternoon we had visitors. Unfortunately Angela had guess who they were after I dropped that one of them was vegetarian. But luckily, even though she had guessed before they arrived it did not spoil the evening at all. Liz and Wendy came to visit (we had secretly arranged this) and this was great as Angela had not seen them for at least 8 years. Circumstance just permitted this from happening, that's how life goes. Immediately when they arrived it felt like I knew them, even though I had never met them. This might be because I had been emailing them in secret for some time to arrange this. Whatever it was: the evening was just great and way too short. We will certainly take them up on their offer for coming over to them in Limburg for a weekend. We talked about all kinds of stuff and did not even get around to showing some pictures, so we are still waiting to see some pics of what they have been up to and they are waiting to see the pics of us of the last couple of years. Thanks to them (especially Liz) I now switched my attention from PHP to Perl and have already written a couple of very small program of the second chapter! How proud I felt! That is one of my priorities in my spare time, get to know programming. Hopefully, just hopefully I'll be able to make it my job. I'm still very far away from that though, but the first step is there! Anyway, they arrived around 16:00 and left around 1. They are both real sweethearts and I'm glad I got to meet them, hopefully it won't be too long until we meet them in their neck of the woods!

Our Godchild Marija had her birthday 4 days ago (1st of June) and she turned 4! Unfortunateleywe could not be there, but I did call her. However, we have now decided to go to the Czech Republic/Ukraine for 2 weeks at the end of July so we will meet them then. We have been invited to a wedding in Ukraine, so that is going to be specially. Actually I know I should learn Russian, to be able to speak to Grandma and also to the rest of the family but it's so difficult to concentrate. And also I need more hours in a day for that! We will see how it's gonna work out though, at least we will see Marija again and the kids in the Ukraine and grandma and Ira's dad... We are looking forward to it big time and I think it will be very good for us. We will need a holiday by then!

This weekend are the fielddays and we are at Beeckestijn with the radioclub. However, the weather is not too good and they sorta could forget the contest before it had even started. The mast came thundering down from a hight of almost 30 meters and a couple of people think they broke the world record for sprint! It's definiteley a write-off so I'm curious how we are gonna get it off the field. And basically now it was really just a fun weekend. However tonight I didn't feel like I belonged there somehow: I was not in on the jokes and so felt a bit left out. Angela had the same though so that was ok, I just sat with her and then we decided to leave to get some sleep. Last year was fine, this year the group was just too big to actually enjoy it and with deviding the booze I was not there so that probably helped with the left out feeling too. Never mind I enjoyed other parts of it up until now so we will see how it goes tomorrow. Angela wants to get up early tomorrow so we will be able to have breakfast at the field. It's now 3:15 and her alarm will go off again at 8!

Anyway: I'm gonna restart my computer now as it totally lost the network/internet connection. And then I'll post this rather lenghtly update. Sorry for not updating more often, I know I should but sometimes I just can't get myself to doing it and sometimes I just don't have time. Hopefully the next update won't be too long away!

Bye you all: enjoy life!

ps: As you all can see: my journal looks a bit different now. It started acting weird again and now I just had it. I'll try to get something decent up in the coming week, until then you can at least read my last journal entry.