Queen's Day and a fork

19 May: fork in belly image removed. email me if you want to see it!

Yesterday was Queen's Day here in the Netherlands. It's a day off, usually great weather, lots of drinking, and the free market. My favorite is the free market. In a land where garage sales are not done, once a year, people gather in town to spread their old stuff on blankets and tables in order to sell it at cut rate prices. At least it's usually cheap. I loaded up on a bag full of baby clothes, poker chips, a printer for two euros (hope it works), and an umbrella stroller rack for my bike. The rack you can see on this site, it's called a "buggy drager."

So basically, I had a good day. Not so for others. In Apeldoorn, someone tried to ram an open bus carrying the royal family, killing a number of bystanders in the process. It was a horrible and shocking incident and as a consequence, a lot of major Queen's Day events being either canceled or scaled down. The driver died overnight in the hospital. It's a shame that a holiday that I always think of as fun, hopeful (it is spring, after all), and benevolent will carry a shadow from now on.

Closer to home, someone drank too much on the night before Queen's Day and decided to swallow a fork. See evidence above. As a result, someone in our family spent all day working. It's an IKEA fork.