Guus Bosman

Yesterday I had to pick up something so I worked from home in the morning. I was a bit out my usual morning habits, and for one reason or the other I forgot to drink coffee. Typically, I'd arrive at Starbucks at 8:20 and get a coffee, which usually lasts until 10.30 or so.

Sure, enough, around 10.30 am I started getting a headache. It's a sign that I'm really addicted. I know I am, but it's different to actually feel the cold-turkey pain... There hasn't been a day in the last months that I didn't drink at least three cups of coffee.

Is it a sign of addiction when you look at your drink and think: "did they start making those large coffees in smaller cups?"

This morning when I went to work the metro stopped for a minute in the tunnel as it sometimes does when there's a train ahead. I noticed how quiet it is in the metro at 8.15 -- nobody talks. If you take the metro home in the evening it's quite different.

One of the projects that took most of my time this summer is almost out of UAT, and it will go into production next weekend.

Things in the news here are the indictment of Mr. Libby, the funeral of Rosa Parks and since today a publication of a e-mails by Michael Brown, the former FEMA director who resigned after the criticism on FEMA's handling of Katrina's aftermath.

This weekend our apartment building switched from airconditioning to heating -- right on time, it's really getting cold.

Yesterday Milan, Sasha's father had a birthday and today it's my grandmother's birthday too: congratulations to both of you.

We saw Seinfeld yesterday on TV, absolutely brilliant. I especially love Kramer a "hilariously outrageous, completely insane character", who almost killed a whale in yesterday's episode.

Friday night stayed at Jonathan and Irena's place (thanks a lot guys!), which was fun. We had a couple of beers in the evening. Irena just came back from Charlotte, NC, where she had been a week for a week for a her work.

Slept in Saturday morning, and Jonathan later gave me a ride to the busstop in Secaucus. The bus I took to Times Square got stuck in traffic (again!) and I made it just on time. Another long, bus trip, but no work this time, I read "the Secret Life of Bees" instead (marvellous story).

We spent our weekend nice and quiet. It's nice and sunny and I spent some time on the balcony on Sunday, but it's really getting a bit chilly.

Friday I left the office very early, and took a bus to New York at 1.00 o'clock. I had bought a sandwich in the morning from my favorite place near work, Tivoli. When I wanted to eat it in the bus I saw that the cheese had gone bad! A big disappointment.

I had a great seat in the bus, right behind the bus driver. I enjoy that spot because it gives you a great view of the road and there's no seat in front of you so there's more space for a laptop. There weren't a lot of people travelling and I had two seats for myself. I spent the afternoon working. It was a good opportunity to clean up my mailbox: I had about 2000 messages that needed to be filed, deleted or dealt with. The only thing missing in the bus is an internet connection -- perhaps in a year or two, three. I reviewed some documents and spent a lot of time on the phone, it was quite a productive ride.

Unfortunately Friday afternoon is probably the worst time of the week to travel to New York. We left D.C. at 1.30, but didn't arrive in New York until 7.00 o'clock, an hour later than the schedule had said. It took more than an hour just to get from the turnpike to the Lincoln tunnel... Apparently it was the first time for our busdriver to travel at this hour, he was not very pleased with the traffic either and got rather cranky at his colleague who kept on calling him to see where he was.

I listened to the same CD about four times, and I had a few MP3s on my computer that I listened to as long as I could take. I really want to get a noise-cancelling headphone one of these days.