One of my goals for the day was to get a great picture of Liam to mark his actual birthday. I got some good ones, even very good ones, but not a great one, in my opinion. That’s not going to stop me from posting some of the better ones.
The day itself was pretty busy – the power adapter for my computer broke some time ago, but I’d been using Cyrille’s. However, she needed it back, so I was finally spurred to get mine replaced – turns out it was covered by warranty. But I had a bad experience with the shop I went to get it replaced – after turning in my cable I asked if they could charge my computer because I was working on a project that needed to be done by the next day, a sort of project that should melt anyone’s heart, but they wouldn’t do it, saying that then they’d have to do it for everyone, despite the fact that it costs them nothing in effort or materials. It pissed me off because it’s another example of the poorest sort of Dutch customer service, ie, non-existent – I know that with the situation I presented almost every Apple shop in North America would have done it for me. I left the shop just hating being in this “rules are rules” country. But then I remembered another shop I’d visited once before when my previous laptop was dying, and thought I’d go ask them since they’d be great then – it’s a shop that handles the super duper media macs, the ones that specialists use, not really the consumer stuff. I walked there, and sure enough, they had no problem charging it for me. When I came back (with nice chocolates for them) I asked them about fixing my cracked topcase – the other shop had pointed out that it was also under warranty since it was a known problem for MacBooks – and they said, “Well we’d have to order the part and then there are a few jobs ahead – would Friday be OK?” The other shop had said it would take weeks since they’d have to send it out. Guess where I’ll be doing any Mac related business in the future?
After dropping off the computer for charging, Liam and I did some shopping, with the requisite stop for coffee and Liam’s lunch.
The centre of Utrecht is especially pretty right now, with lights up for the season. It’s especially pretty at night.
And the ever-lovely Dom Tower.
At home, the plan was to get a picture of Liam. However, Ivo was out for the evening so I had no help posing an increasingly wiggly kid.
I really wanted to get a picture of him wearing this crown that they made at daycare for his birthday – apparently super typical here. But he wouldn’t keep it on his head for more than a milli-second.
After dinner he got some more birthday cake.
Then upstairs and one last try to get that monumental photo, but I just got crazy kid.
Then bath and bed.
Amazing that one year ago we were doing this and he looked like this:
