This week felt long but quick at the same time. Personally, I have dived fully back into the routine of life but it has also filled up with lots of other obligations and honestly, it’s a lot. I have to learn to say no but man that is difficult. I remember my Mum saying in her 40s “I have finally learned to say no” and I didn’t quite understand her meaning because as a child, I heard that word from her quite a lot. 🤣 Now, I get it. When you want everyone to be happy, turning things down feels bad. But promising to do ALL the THINGS and not doing a good job doesn’t make people happy either.

The murder of Renée Good by Ice Jonathan Ross continues to reverberate in the US and worldwide. I was spurred to action to start organizing protests in the NL in conjunction with “Free America Walkout on Jan 20” with group of concerned citizens from previous protests here. Action Dissolves Anxiety - gotta DO something even if it’s small.

January 12 – Day 12

As it was still super icy, I walked with David to school in the morning to ensure he safely got there. Unfortunately he had fallen twice on Sunday and was quite sore. We made it to school without incident and miraculously on time.

House officially went for sale on Funda.nl - hoping for some good interest from good people to be neighbors.

Enough of the ice had melted from the streets on Monday, that things were starting to get back to normal. That evening I noticed the garbage at the end of the street was working normally again - the container had finally been emptied. It’s so nice when infrastructure works as it should, when things are boringly normal, and it’s distressing when it breaks down.

That evening, I continued reading “Thomasina” to David. It was one of my father’s favorite books; he gave it to me for Christmas in 1985, and I read it to David in 2025/6. It isn’t just an interesting story, but it deals with such heavy issues and doesn’t talk down to children at all, it just takes them along for the philosophical ride of the meaning of faith (of all sorts), of science and the dichotomy of those “two sides” of way of viewing the world. It deals with death and how adults and children process loss differently. It was written so eloquently and loquaciously. I have no idea how much David absorbed, but it definitely increased his vocabulary and he enjoyed the story.

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January 13 – Day 13

In the early morning, our real estate agent came over and stuck a “for sale” sign on the house’s window - exciting times!

That afternoon, I had a meeting with the people who made the Facebook Museum (that we came across at the Utrecht train station last July). We are going to collaborate on some events at IAE HQ in Amsterdam. Their offices had the most awesome DIY hacker vibe as they were actively working on future projects and had ones that they had worked on in the past - such as a robot using a pottery wheel and you could sit behind it and embrace it as if from the movie Ghost. They had the major elements of the Facebook Museum on display awaiting its next destination.

January 14 – Day 14

We all slept really poorly and so it was a difficult day to get up and running, but I got a project done for work and had some good calls.

As I was getting ready to leave the house that evening I got a text informing me that my Eurostar train was cancelled. So, I quickly decided to drive to Brussels. In my rush to make it all work, somehow I managed to reserve a parking space by by Brussels Zuid instead of Brussels Center but even with that mistake, I eventually got to the hotel and to sleep alright. While on the drive down, I was able to make some phone calls for both work and family, but still wished for more. But man the time difference between Europe and California makes things not easy.

January 15 – Day 15

European Public Domain Day in Brussels at the Belgian National Library. I was part of a year-long working group to organize this day and gave a presentation about the “relaunch” of the Internet Archive Europe and what our goals are and how we want to work together with European Cultural Heritage organizations. The collaboration with the team of people who brought this to fruition was wonderful and very smooth - a great group of professionals who care about the Public Domain and Cultural Heritage.

There’s a big write up over on the work blog. I was able to share the drive back with a colleague who also lives in Utrecht. Our conversations made the 2½ hour drive fly by. Luckily David wasn’t yet asleep, so I was able to get an awesome David hug and read him to sleep. Once I was then settled in my bed, I was able to check in with Mum which felt good as it had been a while.

January 16 – Day 16

The morning was spent doing some work and then a personal meeting with a weight loss support group that I have been going to for over a year. It has been somewhat helpful, but also I haven’t really learned much because my being overweight isn’t from a lack of knowledge of how to not be. But, the consistency of checking in with the same group of people and making acquaintances from all different walks of life has been really nice to build community and friendships.

After a family lunch (David’s class was cancelled as his teacher was sick and there were no subs) I drove up to Amsterdam to prepare for a borrel at IAE HQ. I wish I had taken a pictures, but got too involved. The charcuterie board that I made was very pretty and one guest said it was difficult to start picking away because he didn’t want to ruin it. 😝

January 17 – Day 17

Saturday we started some final preparations for cleaning up the house for Monday’s viewings but then I took off for Den Bosch to meet up at a beautiful gothic church which has been turned into an event hall.

Wikimedia Nederland organized a New Year’s party and the presentation of the Owl Awards for volunteers and projects that really stood out in 2025. I met the new Executive Director in person (we had been emailing about other things) and the afternoon passed by really quickly even though it was almost all in Dutch.

That evening we got together with friends. It should have been a “Lady’s Night” with four friends, but one woman couldn’t make it, so we turned it into a family gathering and we brought out kids and had a really nice night eating yummy sushi, playing a game and talking about life and politics. Politics is getting super heavy and difficult and no one likes to go there but we do because it’s a big scary thing on everyone’s mind.

January 18 – Day 18

I made some banana oat egg pancakes and we had a yummy breakfast of that and then throughout the day we slowly made our way through all the rooms packing one up after another and now the house is ready for viewings. We went to Intratuin to buy more plants to make the house feel more alive and less empty.

I also took Pica to a cat-sitter which he did NOT like at all. He meowed awfully during the whole car ride which broke my heart but I knew he would be more comfortable away from all the people coming in and out of the house over the next two days for the viewings.

I haven’t been listening to music much, but podcasts and also Josh Johnson’s weekly show. This one helps to digest the most recent news. He’s so smart and funny and I consider him as much of a national treasure as Dr Heather Cox Richardson. I highly suggest you dedicate an hour to listening to him.

“That arc of justice bends… it usually bends with pressure”

“If your morale compass is based solely upon the laws of this nation currently: that’s a weak compass,”

“They took our sister. You see how a gang works?”