Dutch Adventure: Week Three

Week Three: F1, Headaches, Celiac Allergy, and Gaming

Sunday 26 August, 2018

I lived in England for two years between 1998 and 2000, and one of the things I enjoyed while there was watching Formula 1 auto racing so I’ve been looking forward to watching F1 in the Netherlands.

On Sunday, I finally watched my first F1 race since we moved here, and it was being held in nearby Belgium. There’s a young racer – 20 years old! – named Max Verstappen who is Belgian-Dutch and races under the Dutch flag, so people at the race were pretty excited. There was a lot of orange, the national color of the Netherlands (yes the flag is red, white, and blue, but don’t worry about that). He did well, coming in (spoilers) third.

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I haven’t talked about it a lot, but I get headaches. I was diagnosed with cluster headaches in the early-mid 1990’s, which means they come in clusters over a number of days or weeks. They vary in intensity and length, but I generally get low-grade headaches for a bunch of days and then sometimes there will be a really obnoxious one, and how bad that is varies, and then I usually have only a few bad days immediately afterward. Sometimes they’ll fade away without a bad one. I don’t seem to have a clear pattern for these things. So at this point in our journeying I had been getting headaches for a few days. I use a numbering system where if it’s between 1-3, it’s present but not interfering with life, 4-6 is getting annoying and noticeable and interferes with some things, and 7-8 is where I maybe shouldn’t be driving and my ability to think, see, and concentrate gets very narrow. I don’t get to 9 or 10 very often, thank goodness.

So the summary is that I have headaches over some groups of these days, generally in the 1-3 range.

Monday 27 August

I was still recovering from the bicycling of Friday and Saturday and not feeling so great first thing in the morning. We had a gaming session set for the morning though, so off we went on foot and played Scythe.

After gaming, I was starting to feel better. We walked to a few nearby errands (grocery, etc) and then walked home. We’re renting a room in a house (it’s the bedroom of the owners), and their adult son also lives here. One day early on, he came home with a new, fancy coffee maker; some nights when he comes in, he makes coffee, and this was one of those nights. It was rather yummy. 🙂

Tuesday 28 August 

I still haven’t gotten into a decent sleep schedule. I tend to fall asleep late, as late as 4 am one night, so I’ve been sleeping in a ton in rebound. Tuesday I actually woke up at 8:30 am, but still didn’t make it downstairs for a few hours.

The rest of the day was spent in household chores, like vacuuming and laundry. Ooo, exciting!

Wednesday 29 August

We got back on the bikes! We bicycled to gaming at our friend’s house in the morning, played another game of Scythe (4 player this time), then bicycled to the grocery and home. Apparently my muscles enjoyed the previous days’ rest as I bicycled up the hill we live on, making it all the way to our door for the first time! Hurray!

And then I was tired the rest of the day.

Thursday 30 August

We received 2 letters from the IND!!! In one they let us know that they received my application (woot!) and in the other they gave instructions on how to pay the filing fee. Payment was wired immediately. Next: we wait to hear that they received the payment, at which point we can set an appointment with IND for fingerprints and picture for ID. Two steps forward in the dance!

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I’ve been communicating with a lot of people online; via email, in groups, via messaging, and on social media regarding a huge variety of topics including looking for housing, getting together in person to meet more people, and holding & attending gaming nights (as well as convention business back in Colorado). I made a lot of progress on this date, including chatting with a friend of a friend who told us about a comic con happening in Amsterdam that weekend.

One other place of progress: Billy talked to a rental agency about a room they had up on their website. Generally, this means renting a room in a house, sharing things like the kitchen and shower & toilet with the other roommates in the house. We seem to be running into a wall there, and it came out that rental agencies are reticent to rent a room to a couple. Ah ha. So we are renewing our search to looking at apartments, not rooms. Since rooms will run around €600 while an apartment will run more like €1000, a larger budget is called for, so time to reassess the budget buckets.

Friday 31 August 

Another day of up past 1 am, up late in the morning. Did laundry. I made a casserole with potatoes and grilled onions. We ran out of cheese earlier in the week (don’t know how that happened), so no cheese. Sad panda. The casserole was pretty tasty anyway.

We bicycled to Vendetta for the standing Friday night gaming they host. Gamed until 10:30 pm, chatted for a bit, and then bicycled home. That was pretty neat, being in charge of our own transportation. I was rather cold by the time we got home, even though I brought my cardigan and rain breaker, so I’ll need to come up with more ideas for that.

Saturday 1 September

I have celiac disease most likely – it’s a long story, but ends with a Doctor and I agreeing that my symptoms and resulting actions to deal with the symptoms are in line with celiac. What is that? Basically it’s an allergy (saying the word “allergy” helps Dutch people understand, as “celiac” doesn’t appear to be a common word here) to things gluten, found in things like wheat, barley, and rye. Those things go in and damage my cilia in my intestines and inhibit my ability to absorb nutrients. That sort of thing is kind of important for healthy living, so I avoid the glutenous items.

I can tell when I’m having a celiac-style day (where I’m feeling under the weather and things could go badly), and this was one of them, so Billy ran errands late in the afternoon without me. The weather has gotten slightly chillier, so I wanted a warmer duvet, and he obliged. He also picked up a new wall charger so I don’t zap myself like I did previously.

Random house showing Dutch architecture in Arnhem, with trolley electric lines visible over the road.

That’s all for now. Sorry there are no interesting pictures. Maybe I’ll start taking random pictures and have you all guess how they’re related (or if they even are). That would be amusing.

Anyway, more summary coming soon!