Yesterday there was a blizzard in Somerset; more than a foot of snow. Most of it was cleaned up nicely this morning, but a big part of my run was essentially on ice. I looked for the more rough spots, less slippery. It was a little slower than usual, still good.

Friday was my last day at work. I’ve had two really nice years, learned a lot and formed a number of very good relationships with great people.It’s sad to leave, but the relationships will remain.Friday afternoon we went to Reston, to look at the company’s new office there and we had lunch in Champs, a nearby restaurant.

Yesterday evening I had a goodbye happy hour with my colleagues.

It is sad to leave the company I have worked for the last two years. I have had a good time and enjoyed working here a lot. At the same time I am looking forward to my new job in Raleigh, North Carolina. More on that later.

We celebrated in Four Courts, an Irish bar at Court House. It was a fun evening and we stayed out long. The moving company called and confirmed our pick up date: they’re be there between 3 pm and 6 pm tomorrow.

Friday evening was the Christmas party of my company in Philadelphia. I took a train with three colleagues from Union Station. I don’t think I had ever taken an Amtrak train before, so this was a nice experience. We left at noon and it’s about two hours from Washington D.C. to Philadelphia.

It was a very nice party, in a restaurant in downtown Philadelphia. When the bar closed around 11 pm we went to a Southern style restaurant with a live jazz band. I spoke with a lot of clients and colleagues. We closed the evening with drinks in the lobby of the hotel.After Thursday’s Christmas happy hour of Augusto and Ewa this was my fifth Holiday celebration in little over two weeks.

On my way back the next day I saw that my train had a three hour delay. I was glad I could exchange my ticket for an express service that was leaving only 40 minutes later.

Tuesday was the Christmas celebration of my company in Washington.

The party was in Georgetown, in the Four Seasons hotel, a beautiful location. We arrived at the party at 7.30 pm. We had drinks and it was nice to introduce Sasha and my colleagues to each other. The company has been growing a lot, and there were more people attending the party than last year. Dinner was very nice, and we had a lot of fun at the table. We left the party around 11 pm.

A colleage took a lot of pictures; the picture here is one she sent.

Wednesday we had an easy evening. I cooked Polish kielbasa which is pretty similar to Dutch sausauge (rookworst), I felt it appropriate to cook some winter food in this weather.

It was a good weekend, with work to do but with some free time as well. Today I went with Anup, a colleague, to the Prime Outlet stores about 30 minutes from San Juan.Back to work tomorrow morning. This picture is the highway we take from the hotel to the customer’s premises.

Monday evening I left for a career fair at Virginia Tech, a university in Blacksburg, Virginia. Steve, a colleague, gave me a ride and we left Arlington around 21:30 o’clock.

Blacksburg is about four hours from D.C. and we arrived around 1.30 in the hotel after a smooth and pleasant drive. Finding an open gas station in this part of Virginia after midnight to get some water wasn’t easy, it’s a really rural area.
We are here with four colleagues, and we had breakfast together. We started the interviews today at 9:00 o’clock, and the sessions ended around 16:00 o’clock.

Friday we finished the integration testing of one my projects. There’s some complex interaction with a back-end system, and I’m glad to see that everything works. This weekend the code will be deployed to the user acceptance test servers, and Monday morning the UAT team will start testing.I’m flying down tomorrow with a colleague. It’s been a while since I was in Puerto Rico; I’ll stay for a week.We’re having an easy weekend. As always, there is some work to be done from home, but it’s not as busy as it has been the last few weeks.

I arrived this morning around 11:00 o’clock in Puerto Rico. Waking up at 4:30 is never really fun, but the journey went nice and smooth. I took a cab to the airport, and the driver was from Afghanistan. He was a friendly guy, and we talked quite a bit which was a nice start of the day.

On the airport I got my American breakfast — coffee and a bagel from Starbucks.

After we landed I first went to the hotel to check in and send the e-mails that I wrote on the plane and get changed. I was at work around 13:00. I actually met my colleagues in the sandwich shop across the street. At 14:00 o’clock I had a long meeting at 14:00, and after some document writing and reviewing we’ll be leaving the office in a little while.

I’m leaving to the airport now, together with a colleague.We’ll take the 5.30 flight to Washington, a direct connection this time.