the last week of my life has been composed mostly of fryalator oil

this morning i couldnt find the frying pan i wanted to make an omelette in, and i had to settle with bran flakes. which normally would make me pretty souped, cos we know i'm all about unprocessed bran. today though, i wanted to add some spice to my life. anyway, i couldnt, because i am terrible at trying hard to do anything at 6.15 in the morning, even if it is find the pan to make breakfast in. :C
but twisting flapping ear dog made me feel better. i keep him perched on the arm of the couch for convinience.

zingende hond met bewegende oren, if you're feeling particularly up for a challange.

anyhow,
sunday was muh burfday. as is the norm in nederland, we had a little feestje :D
may i just say, the dutch have family birthday parties down to an exact science. they are all exactly the same, simply because it is such a good formula for low-commital celebration. my party had all the things that are required (possibly by law) to be present, such as festive triangular streamers!

yup, this variety right here. a must have item if you might want to celebrate anything ever.

vlaai assortment! 

my particular stuk of vlaai was "ski kersen" flavored

i need to stop this party train in its tracks for a little while to talk about vlaai. google vertalen translates vlaai as "flan", but i feel that that is not giving vlaai enough credit.

this is flan.

those raspberries really do a lot for you, flan.

this is vlaai

just to clarify.

 i personally define vlaai as "cakepie", but it is sorta the dutch celebratory pastry, and its good. really good. ski vlaai, as i have come to understand through first hand experience, is normal vlaai topped with copious amounts of sugar. like straight up, inches of sugar. i know, what an amazing idea. i thought so too.
technically, it's not clumps of sugar, it's "schuimvlokken", which literally translates as "foam flakes" and is something i cannot find the exact ingredient list for but i'm pretty sure its meringue? maybe? we'll never know.
anyway, i was super excited to have a vlaai of my own :)

koffie + tea + snackies! 
we had a cozy afternoon pow-wow full of refreshments and smalltalk. it was lovely c:
and oh, oh, we even broke out the deep fryer. i know, it was a really big deal. we not only had bitterballen, (which, as we know, are the little, ??? filled, deep fried balls of ultimate beer food), we also had sate sauce bitterballen, deep fried balls filled with actual distinguishable meat-matter, and mozerella sticks.
mozeralla sticks are such a bad idea. because you eat one and you're like
"i am totally feelin' this whoever first decided to deep fry cheese was really onto something"
but then you decide you want another.
and only after eating another do you realize that one was more than enough. like, for your entire life.

why... were you created...?

 [i want you to know that in browsing pictures of mozzerella sticks, i found a picture of grilled cheese filled with mozzerella sticks. oh denny's, you always know just what the people want.]
cheese enduced death aside, i fully enjoyed my verjaardag :D

then, on tuesday, jelle and i went to go see harry potter!
since the first show of the day is at 7:30 though, we also had to putz around hengelo for six and a half hours. which was fun, 'cept for the fact that it was butt-ass freezing.
hengelo has begun looking particularly festive these days, probably due to the gratuitously sized kerstboom and ice skating rink they've set up in the centrum. it turns the space from cold and depressing to frosty and christmas-y!
anyhow, i wanted to get my ears pierced that day with some of my birthday money, but fate didn't want to let that happen. both the piercing places told us to come back the next day, so instead we spent our time wandering and looking for somewhere that sells tea cheaper than 2 euros a cup like la place, because that is criminal.

so, that would be 20 cents for the teabag, 90 cents for the hot water, and 90 cents for use of cup and saucer. gotcha.

we found a place, called cherry's, that sold it for 1.75 and reminded me of friendly's. it was a nice place. :D

also! i had my first oliebol. the stands have already been up for a few weeks, but i hadn't gotten one until now. an oliebol is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, if you think about it. it's a fluffy, oily dough ball that is deep fried and then coated in powdered sugar. sort of like a dough boy, but ball shaped. and better. you can get them plain, but they also fill them with things like raisins, apple, and banana. apparently they're a winter/new years food. it was pretty fantastic, not gonna lie. though admittedly something i probably wont be eating too often. :p

nothing warms your soul on a cold night quite like sugar-coated oildough.

 they are sold in big truck-cart things that are popping up all over everywhere. they're kind of wonderful, and they smell like sugardough C:

tis the season

with krokets, bitterballen, oliebollen, patat oorlog, and frikandel broodjes, and hagelslag, i think maybe the netherlands should consider stopping making fun of americans for mcdonalds and fast food. just sayin'. you are just as deep fried as we are, and don't even lie i know you guys sell chocolate covored oreos too. come to terms with it. don't try to pass off a hamburger bun filled with butter and sprinkles as having nutritional value, let's be serious here, holland :P

i'm sorry, but as much as you want it to, this doesn't count as real food.

anyway, harry potter [the original topic of this section of blog, if you recall] was good. i thought i was gonna make it through the whole thing without crying, and i was going really well, but then dobby. dobby fucking got me. dobby is totally my hero.
the only thing i didnt like about it was that since it was only half a movie, it felt [appropriately] like only half a movie. so waiting the year to see the other half is going to be painful.
AREN'T WE JUST LUCKY WE HAVE NEW KIDS TURBO TO HOLD US OVER UNTIL THEN?



i think we all know the answer to that.
guys, i plan to single-handedly spread this film to the US. i mean it, they need to know about it.

today, besides my omelette and other things, was pretty stellar. i had double art study hour last period, which usually causes me physical pain due to the sheer boredom. but today i actually made myself useful and poorly inked a drawing of en edo period lady. i obviously have not mastered the use of india ink yet, as made clear by my creatively uneven and blotchy linework. its artistic!
then after school i went back to hengelo to get my ears pierced. decided on claire's, cos its the cheapest place. after struggling to place the two studs on one ear correctly, we were all ready to pierce my ears with pretty light pink crystal studs. 'cept first, i needed to fill out a form. no big deal. except that all of the forms had evaporated from existance, so i couldn't sign them. since they couldnt continue without, i have to come back again another day to get my piercing.

but then, they told me that they'd give me a 20% discount on said piercing. which is great! cos extra money i was bummed about spending for the pink studs [as opposed to the ugly metal bobbles] makes up exactly 20% of the price, actually. everybody wins!
so i'm thinking i'll go back on saturday n try to do it then. but i'll call first.

a sidenote, i'm beginning to pick up the questionable grammatical and punctuational choices of my peers. like, today i actually justified the use of the commallipse,..
because to be fair, that's how i talk,.. i like to be non-committal about when my sentence is over.
i also seriously considered saying "i'm not sure how much beds we are going to have," as if it was the appropriate choice of wording. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME.

okay this was a lot of words. i'm going to go to sleep now in hopes that the omelette pan i want magically appears in the kitchen tomorrow morning. fingers crossed.