The temporary apartment we’re staying at in Somerset is furnished, and many kitchen utilities are included. This is convenient. The coffee machine though, makes truly terrible coffee and we often resort to getting coffee from Starbucks or from the office of our apartment complex.

This morning we’re having coffee from the new machine we ordered on-line: such a difference. It’s small, for 4 cups, and makes great coffee.

If you look closely, you can see my reflection in the coffee pot and the filter holder.

Our office is closed for today due to snow, so I’m working from home again today. Sasha’s flight is today, let’s hope it will go.

I had plans for dinner yesterday but had to cancel it due to the weather.

Here are some pictures I took two weeks ago; it’s much the same outside now.

Mike, an old coworker, came for dinner yesterday which was fun. This morning Sasha left to North Carolina.

There’ll be snow tomorrow and possibly on Friday.

Today is Sasha’s birthday and we had a fun time celebrating it. Lots of phone calls, e-mails and messages, and in the afternoon the Zanes came over for a visit.

The apartment was decorated with balloons and we had a great balloon fight in the evening.

When Julian was disappointed that Sasha blew out the candles we lit them again and let him do it also.

I woke up early today and spent the morning programming. I’m now managing a second team, and that product using Adobe Flex technology. I made some small UI changes to get a feel for the technology and how to do builds.

Then I went for a long run until 2.30 pm, followed by an afternoon of shopping. At the Franklin Township Library I picked up some books. I read David Brinn’s Uplift Novels in the last few weeks (a great find) and I was without a book for a while.

Sasha arrived in New Jersey on Friday. On Saturday we went for dinner and a movie.

We went to the movie theater in New Brunswick and watched Avatar.

The film showed a beautiful alien world, with great flora and fauna. It was an entertaining movie and great to see it in 3D. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a movie in 3D.

I know, I know, not healthy… but so delicious!

Tonight I made kroket for the very first time. It’s a deep fried meat snack, and very popular in the Netherlands.

I compared three different recipes to create my own, and it worked well. The crust was great, the filling tasty. Not 100% like in the Netherlands yet, but very close.

Saturday evening we had a fun dinner with friends at home and the dessert turned out quite well. On Sunday morning I traveled to New Jersey.

In the plane I met a researcher from Penn State, and I gave him a ride from the airport to Princeton. The car, parked near the airport, was covered under a foot of snow which was kind of cool. The roads were are all clear. Pennsylvania is obviously better prepared to deal with snow than southern states.

In the evening there was a Super Bowl party which was a lot of fun; very diverse crowd of people.

Tonight I cooked koolraap — rutabaga in English, as I recently learned. When I was a kid I didn’t like it at all, but it was delicious. Simply boiled, with boiled potatoes and a meatball.

Sunday the world was still covered in snow. We went for a walk at the Al Buehler trail, around the Duke golf course. It was beautiful. We even saw a few runners, braving the icy conditions.

When I cleaned the car on Saturday I used a kitchen utensil to get rid of the snow. Worked pretty well. This is a rental, our own car is at the airport in Philadelphia.

I arrived Friday afternoon in Durham. I took an earlier flight since I didn’t want to get caught in cancellations due to the snow storm here. Sasha and I went for dinner in our favorite restaurant in Durham; that was great.

Yesterday we woke up in a white world. Since North Carolina rarely gets snow the roads were plowed or brined, so it was tricky to drive. I made it safely to the grocery store in the morning but it was difficult to drive up some hills because it was so icy. Strange.

In the afternoon we went to the Duke Chapel to witness Bia’s baptism. That was beautiful. She grew a lot in a few months and didn’t cry much during the ceremony.

In the evening we visited friends for a fun dinner. We walked through the snow.