November 2004

This weekend we found a new apartment! It's a beautiful place: an apartment in a 20-floor building on the 9th floor, very close to metro station "Court House". It's located in a great area and very close to our work, both Sasha's and mine. Later I'll write much more about the apartment, of course with pictures, but for now let me just say we're really happy with it: it's a great place.

Sunday we went to Ikea with Ed and Mila who brought us there by car (thanks!). We had lunch together there, Swedish-American cuisine.

On internet we had already found some of the things we wanted to get, but it was very useful to see them in real. We didn't buy any furniture yet, but we've made up our mind about a number of things we would like to get in our new home. We'll come back another time with a big car.

Yesterday we got some things for sleeping: a quilt (dekbed), sheets and one of the pillows. I really enjoy creating a new home together. Choosing an apartment, and now choosing the furniture and home equipment is very nice.

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Between Middenmeer and Washington D.C there's a time difference of six hours.

The first night in the States I was rather tired and after a brief waking up at 2:45, I slept nicely until 9:00 o'clock. The second day, which was my first working day, I woke up around 5:00. On Thursday I woke up at 5:45 in the morning, and yesterday around 7:00 o'clock. I went to be around 22:00 o'clock each night.

Today, Saturday, we slept in, and I woke up somewhere around 9:00 o'clock, which is a great feeling. I think my body is now pretty much adjusted to the new timezone.

Yesterday was my third day at work, and I have actually started working on a project.

It's a very interesting project and I have the feeling that I'll learn a lot in this new job. Yesterday I worked in our company's office.

We are also looking for a new apartment, and we'll probably take our final decision today. It's really fun to look for a new place. The location we are looking at is much closer to my work, as Sasha's, than where we're staying now.

When I went to work yesterday morning I took a few pictures. It was raining, the first day since I've been there.

Today was my second day at work.

Yesterday I spent the day in my employer's office and today I went for the first time to the building of a large customer of our company. I'll work for this customer, and in the morning I received a badge with my photo that will give me access to the building. The building is huge, and when you enter there's a booth with security guards checking your ID.

Somewhere in the next few weeks I'll also get a magnetic card so I can open various security doors inside. All these security things require a lot of signatures and paperwork; quite a difference with working at Chess. Really interesting. And I'll work in a cubicle! Many people in our company use "AOL messenger", so I've also installed that. My AOL name is "guusbosman".

At the end of the day Sasha came and we went to see an apartment. It's really close the our customer's building. The apartment looked very nice and I liked it a lot. Tomorrow we'll decide -- it's available immediately so we can move in quickly.

In the evening we saw the beginning of "Van Helsing": a seriously bad movie. It was "Veterans Day" in the U.S. today, so I expected there to be less traffic, but in the morning it was very busy on the road to the metro station.

Today was the first day of my new job and it was very interesting. A lot of new experiences, new people, new habits. On the way back from work I didn't exactly know which busstop was mine, so ended up many kilometers far from home and had to take the bus in the other direction.

Sasha and I celebrated my birthday tonight and we went out for dinner in a Brazilian restaurant. It was a very nice evening together.

Today is my birthday! Well, in the Netherlands it is, here in D.C. it's still November 9th.

Tomorrow will be my first working day and I'm really looking forward to it. Tomorrow evening Sasha and I will go out and celebrate.

Ettie will receive her propedeuse diploma today (on November 10th, that is).

The room we are staying in is located in the north-west area of Washington. I thought it might be interesting to put some pictures of our street online.

Today I am not working yet. My new job will start tomorrow so this is my last day off in a while. Sasha left this morning for her exam and we'll meet at 16:30 o'clock.

I like it that I have some time, after a busy weekend and the traveling yesterday. Finally I can update my website, unpack my bags and configure our new computer. Sasha bought a new PC last week, as she needed it this weekend. It's really fun to have such a new computer: it has DVD, it's quick and comes with a lot of software. The internet connection is an old-fashioned dial-up line and is not completely reliable, but it is great to have internet in our bedroom. The internet provider we have is the apt-named "America Online", or "AOL"; the computer came with a free trial AOL subscription. The computer works very nicely with my digital camera, and I have just installed one of the two harddisks I brought from the Netherlands.

I downloaded a lot of programs in Middenmeer and brought them on CD-ROM (such as Eclipse, various Java version and Mozilla Firefox). I'm very happy that I did that; dialup is too slow to download these large tools.

Sunday was a busy day and I didn't even have time to update my website. After Jaap and I moved the last things out of Haarlem Friday I had a long night of sleep and an easy Saturday morning. I finished some paperwork and in the afternoon we left for my grandmother's party.

We met in a party center in Akersloot, where my grandmother Bosman was celebrating her 80th birthday. Virtually the entire Bosman family was there, as well as many other friends of my grandmother. Various people gave speeches and small performances, which were very nice. It was a nice party, and it was wonderful to see so many people just before I left to the U.S. (thanks everbody for the kind words and wishes). My grandmother gave me a bible, the new edition with a new Dutch translation. Unfortunately I don't have time to put the pictures of the party online; if you're interested please send me an e-mail.

We were home around 22:00 o'clock; time to go to bed. Sunday Mieke had a birthday, and we celebrated our birthdays together with the family. Ettie and Gerben gave me their portraits, and my parents gave me a book "Righting English that's gone Dutch", on the subtal mistakes Dutch native speakers often make when writing or speaking English. I loved to be able to celebrate my birthday with my parents and Ettie and Gerben in the morning; it's a very old tradition.

In the afternoon my parents went to give a concert with the orchestra they're playing in. I visited Bianca and her family. That was a very cosy get-together; a while ago they were also in the U.S., in Florida. They gave me a lot of nice presents. The DVD you had made for me was just fabulous: thanks a lot!