Guus Bosman

software engineering director


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dailylife

Durham Haunted House 2007

Haunted House.Yesterday we went to help out the Durham Jaycees with their Halloween Haunted House.

A Haunted House is a maze with different scary rooms, through which customers walk (with guides). There are many special effects, lots of different lights and sounds and of course, the actors. I was a 'scary clown' for the evening, and that was a lot of fun.

This is an annual fund raiser for the Durham Jaycees (the Raleigh Jaycees have one as well). The House was set up in a hallway in the Durham Bulls Stadium.

It wasn't very busy since it was raining and a weekday night, but there were guests coming and going and it was an entertaining evening. There is something very satisfying about being allowed to scare people and say "booh".

dailylife

New restaurants Erwin Road

New restaurants.In a new residential building on Erwin Road three new restaurants will open, including Chipotle and T.G.I. Fridays.

This is nice since there aren't a lot of restaurants in walking distance from our house. There's Nosh, which I really like, but some more variety, even from chain restaurants, is always good.

northcarolina

NC State Fair 2007

Tobacco.Saturday morning I went to the North Carolina State Fair. I took a smarter route than last year so parking was no issue this time.

The fair is a lot of fun, many different things to see and so many different people. I spent an hour or two walking around. I liked the agricultural exhibitions: weirdly shaped pumpkins, wonderful roses etc. Food is important at the fair, and I tried banana pudding and had a hushpuppie in a corn mill.

The best part I found by accident: there was a very nice music & dance show in a big tent near the water rides at the Midway. There was blue grass and regional music, and a number of traditional youth dance groups.

Lots of pictures below.

dailylife

A surprise in Durham

Thursday evening I had a great conversation over good beer in Tyler's Taproom, in the American Tobacco District. I got the advise to check out "Sam's Quickshop", a few minutes driving from our house on Erwin Road.

I've seen the store many times -- it's right on the way to Whole Foods and downtown Durham -- but I could never be bothered to go in. Although I had read about a 'nice beer selection' on-line I figured that the author meant they had both Budweiser and Miller. The store looks like a typical gas station store with cold beer, cigarettes and car things, and I never paid it real attention.

How wrong could I have been!

dailylife

To the Fair

I'm leaving for the NC State Fair now, so I'm ready for a long time in traffic and looking for a parking spot. I'll bring a cup of coffee with me in the car.

Yesterday I made a very, very nice discovery here in Durham, later more.

Work NC

Decorated cake

Decorated cake.After last week's pumpkin cookies we had a cake at work.

It's a home made cake, and it's decorated by someone is a doing a course (with good results, clearly).

I like this tradition of people bringing baked goods into the office.

dailylife

Turkey Shoot

Turkey Shoot.Yesterday I worked for the Raleigh Jaycees Turkey Shoot at the North Carolina State Fair.

For $3.00 a shot you can shoot a real 20 gauge shotgun, together with 11 other contestants. And no, it's not about shooting real turkeys: the targets are pieces of paper. The person who shot a pellet closest to the cross hairs wins a frozen turkey.

The Jaycee group in Raleigh has been organizing this game since 1952 at the State Fair, and it's a major fund raiser. Some people come back every year to win their Thanksgiving turkey at the fair.

I was at the Fair at 5.00 pm, and we closed the game at 11.00 pm. In my dinner break I went to get some fair food, a big roasted turkey leg of course. It was great fun to do, people really enjoyed the shooting and it was a nice group of people to work with.

The Jaycees website has a slideshow with some older pictures.

foodanddrinks

Whole wheat pizza

Pizza.I felt like cooking something special tonight and I made a pizza.

I used a different recipe than usual: I used whole wheat flour for the pizza's dough. I could say that this is more healthy and that's why I choose it, but the reality is that the regular flour we had was expired.

Whole wheat flour is great for a pizza! It makes a delicious and strong crust. I baked the crust without topping for 5 minutes on 500 degrees before baking the whole pizza on 425 degrees, and it turned out to be crispy and just right.

A next time I should buy a different meat. I wasn't quite satisfied with the Genoa salami I used tonight: not enough spices and not tasty enough. The sauce worked out quite well, I made a light tomato sauce with a bit of garlic and fresh oregano.

dailylife

Wine tasting trail

A grape field.Today I went with for a wine tasting tour in North Carolina. We were five people and drove in one car, a big truck, from Chapel Hill to the area around Burlington, which is between Durham and Greensboro. The Haw River Wine Trail is a tour along a different wineries in rural North Carolina.

Over the course of the afternoon we went to four different wineries, and we had a great time. There are some quite drinkable North Carolina wines out there. It was inspiring to see how on a small scale products like these wines are being made. In one of the wineries the owner told us how she and her husband decided to switch to growing grapes in 2001 after having grown tobacco for years.

I bought two bottles, both sweet white wines. One nice blend from the Grove winery made of grapes from along the Eno River near our house, and the other is a delicious (sweet) white wine.

dailylife

Party in Middenmeer

Party.Saturday morning Jaap, Mieke and I went shopping in Wieringerwerf and Middenmeer. We got some really delicious Dutch cheese from the market, and Jaap and I bought some extra memory for our server. I installed it later and the server now has 1 GB of fairly fast RAM (before it had 512MB).

Ettie and Gerben came to Middenmeer also, and we had nice chats. In the afternoon I went to see Bianca and Patricia, and when I came back with had coffee with home-made Dutch apple pie -- delicious!

In the late afternoon the guests started arriving; many of my friends came over to Middenmeer and we had a great time together. We went to bed really late, and the alarm went off at 5.00 am to leave for the airport. Rob joined us and at 7.00 am we arrived at Schiphol.

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