Every morning after the kids are gone to school and I have cleaned up the mess they have left behind, remade the beds, aired out the rooms, ad infinitum, the first thing that I do at around eight-thirty is read all of my email. Here is an example of one of my favorites:

Geachte heer Gish,

U hebt aangegeven dat u regelmatig op de hoogte wilt worden gehouden van het vacature-aanbod. Hierbij zenden wij u de zoekresultaten van onze e-mail service over de afgelopen 1 dagen. Het aantal resultaten is ingesteld op maximaal 15. Zowel frequentie als aantal zijn instelbaar.

Aantal gevonden vacatures: 0.

In case there might happen to be any readers out there who are unfamiliar with the Dutch language, basically this is a daily email notification which says that there are zero openings available at this time. So much for my job search.

For the last two weeks, this magical number called nihil has not changed. Hey nihil, how are you doing today? I guess you could be positive about it and say that at least it is not getting any less, what a nice round number. Oh well, I will keep my fingers crossed. For the time being, I will just finish off going through my piles of emails (I am so very popular).