An Invisible Souvenir

This second quarter, my only Thursday class starts at ... 17.00.  This frees half the day for me to do other things.  Today, I put away things, ironed what was dry enough, cleared the dishes morning and evening while hubby did the stove, ran the dishwasher and cleared that, attacked the bookkeeping and closed 2014 and, a favourite activity, chipped off half of the remaining principal amount of what's left of our mortgage.  Fun things.

All the time, and up to way into the evening, nothing but rain outside.  Positive note -- it wasn't all that cold, just like yesterday.

Other things I did: followed up on the news in Paris and watched the coverage of our own freedom-of-the-press manifestations in Amsterdam, the Hague, Utrecht and Rotterdam.  The mayor of Rotterdam is a Moroccan and he's terribly popular with practically EVERYone.  "If you can't stand the freedom by which we live here in The Netherlands, and don't want to appreciate our sense of humour, you could just get out of the country."   Strong words.  And my translation here is decent by comparison.  "My name is Ahmed Aboutaleb and, normally, I'm the mayor of Rotterdam.  Tonight, however, I'm a Parisian and my name is Charlie."

This is a shot of the welcome letter I got from the travel agency in Delhi and some of the entrance tickets that got us into some of the most exotic UNESCO World Heritage Sites during our holiday.  I thought I'd shoot them, too, before either keeping them for a long time and then putting them with the recycling box, or just plain putting them with the old paper as early as now.  Don't know yet.  I need to look for the keepsakes of 2 years ago as well.  Fond memories I'm comforting myself with, reminding me that not all of the world is ugly.