Guus Bosman

Today is my 27th birthday! We celebrated it together this morning, and Sasha gave me a really nice present -- a tripod for the digital camera.

There was a chocolate cake, and a lot of mail and e-mail as well -- thanks everybody for the birthday wishes!

It is also exactly a year ago that I started my new job, so double the reason to celebrate today.

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.

Saturday we went to see a new movie in the AMC theater near us, Good night, and good luck.

The subject of the film is a newsshow of CBS crew in the 1950's, that takes on Senator McCarthy and the way he is investigating people accused of Communist sympathies. The movie was made in black and white, mixed with real TV footage from senator McCarthy's speeches and hearings. This made for a nostalgic movie, so next to the interesting story line it was a pleasure to see journalism at work in the area that TV was a new invention.

Be sure to visit the movie's website, it is a very elegant website with nice previews of the movie. It also has some samples from the soundtrack by Dianne Reeves.

The movie was directed by George Clooney, which he did well, but he was also playing in the movie and somehow the role didn't really fit him. David Strathairn on the other hand, gave a brilliant performance as Edward R. Murrow. Him being casted for this role was a master move, and he looks so much like the real Murrow.

Thursday evening we went to see Lenny Kravitz in the MCI center in D.C.

Sasha knows that I am a big fan of Kravitz, and when she found out he was coming to Washington she had arranged tickets for the show -- a wonderful gift.

We were early at the center, and we had dinner inside -- the real American thing: hotdogs, pizza and Miller beer.

The show started around 20:30 o'clock and Lenny was the first to perform. The stadium wasn't entirely full yet, and not everybody seemed to know Lenny Kravitz, but the crowd quickly warmed up. Especially after Dig In, many people were dancing. He played all the good songs -- Mama Said, Let Love Rule, Fly Away... the best known song here seemed to be American Woman. It was an excellent show, even though Lenny had his foot casted and he couldn't really move a lot on stage. We enjoyed it a lot.

When Kravitz left, it took about 30 minutes for the stage to be re-built and modified. The second show of the evening was Aerosmith. A lot of people in the audience came to see this band from the early 1970s, so there were quite a lot of older people in the crowd, and many ladies with their hair in 1980s style and men with Aerosmith T-shirts.

Even though we are not real fans of Aerosmith is was a good show to watch -- these guys have obviously been doing concerts for more than 30 years so they know what they're doing, and it was a great show. There was quite a lot of songs that we knew, and the crowd was very energetic.

It was over around midnight, so we took one of the last metro's home. It took a while to get home as we had to wait long for a transfer at Metro Center.