Guus Bosman

software engineering director


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dailylife

Running past the White House

It's pretty cool to live in downtown D.C. When I go for a run in the evening, I pass the White House, the National Mall, the Lincoln Memorial... There is something different going on every time I run.

Tonight I saw the cables of the crew that is rappelling down the Washington Monument, to inspect it for damage after the earthquake a few weeks ago. A week ago there were last minute protests against the execution of Troy Davis in front of the White House, and a week before that protests against the Keystone pipeline.

When we went for a walk last weekend, the Race for the Cure had just ended. Many of the participants put their pink ribbons on the fence in front of the White House.

ourhouse

Signed the lease

We signed the lease for our new apartment! We will move back to the Courthouse neighborhood in Arlington, Virgina, just across the river from Washington, DC. It's the same area where we lived before going to North Carolina, and in fact we are just across the street from our previous apartment building, Courthouse Plaza.

We knew we wanted to rent a place in Courthouse or perhaps Clarendon, and we had selected several apartment buildings to visit, but we ultimately found the Wilson by just walking around the metro in Court House. They showed us two apartments, and we already liked the first one, but the second one was even better and has a great view.

It took a few days to get all the paperwork worked out, but we will move into the new apartment in a few weeks.

dailylife

Looking for an apartment

Yesterday we went looking for a new apartment. The current place we stay in nice, but it is only temporary, so we were on the road yesterday.

In the morning we drove around with a real-estate broker who showed us various condominiums for rent. We looked in DC and Arlington. The rest of the day we walked around through Arlington, mainly at the Courthouse and Clarendon metro stops on the Orange line. We're close to making a decision, we'll probably decide today.

dailylife

2400M at night

I went to CVS just now to pick up some cereal for tomorrow morning.

Our apartment complex is on the crossing of M and 24th Street, and is appropriately called "2400M Apartments".

dailylife

Freedom Tower

Yesterday afternoon we went for a walk in Newport, a neighborhood overlooking New York City. We had lunch and enjoyed the view. We saw the Freedom Tower, or '1 World Trade Center', which will be the tallest building in the United States when it is complete.

We left Secaucus at 6.00 pm or so, and arrived home a few hours later. A well-spent weekend.

work

First week at work

I had a great first week at my new job. There is a lot to learn -- many systems, many acronyms, but I feel it's getting there. The people I have met are all very friendly and helpful; it seems like a great place to work. And by the way, I have a job opening for an engineer.

I took the metro to work, except on Thursday when it was raining a lot. Still have to figure out what I'll do going forward. The metro is nice, but by car is still faster and parking is cheap.

dailylife

Living downtown

There is a European bakery right across the street from us, and they have real whole grain bread! It's amazing to live downtown. This morning we walked to buy a bread, groceries and Starbucks coffee; we were done within 40 minutes or so.

Here is a picture of our living room, as seen from the kitchen.

ourhouse

First mail arrived

We received the first mail on our new address this week.

Ettie and Gerben were the first this time with a nice card for the house and jobs.

plants

Picking up the plants from North Carolina

On Wednesday I made a round-trip to North Carolina to pick up our house plants.

I left DC at 8.30 am and just after lunch I dropped off my laptop at my old work. It was nice to say hello there, and we had coffee together. Then I drove to Esteban's house in Durham; it was great to catch up. Our plants had stayed there for a week (thank you guys!).

Around 4.00 pm I left again, with the car full of our plants. There were eight plants in total, three small ones and five large. They filled the entire car and I couldn't use the rear view mirror on the way home.

The plants survived the four hour journey pretty well, except for a few branches that were exposed to the sun at the rear window and got too hot and burned. The last two hours I put the air conditioning very cold, and I think that helped.

The plants are now in our home again, and they cheer up the apartment.

driving

D.C. licenses plates and license

Yesterday I took care of the car registration and got my DC driver's license.

To get the car registered in the District it has to go through an inspection. There's only one inspection station in the city and I've read stories about people waiting in line for a long time, but since I went during working hours it went smoothly.

Fromt the inspectation station I went to the Department of Motor Vehicles in Georgetown, and took care of the paperwork. It was more busy there; I waited a hour or so. Initially I received a license made out to "Guustaff" and fixing that took a while too, but now I'm the happy owner of a DC driving license, a car registration and Zone 2 parking permit, which allows me to park unlimited on the street anywhere in the District.

The only thing remaining now is to install the license plate in front of the car. In DC you're required to have a plate both in front and on the back, but our car doesn't have a mount in front so I'll get that installed today.

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