Guus Bosman

Yesterday morning we celebrated Sasha's birthday with presents and the postcards that she received. We had breakfast together, fresh bagels, and I went to my work late.

In the evening we went out for dinner. We went to Club Sake, a Japanese restaurant in north west D.C. The food was very delicious: we had sushi and other Japanese dishes. I like the dishes in which the food was server: authentic and very stylish. The restaurant itself was beautiful in real Japanese style.

We had a desert at home, hazelnut cake with cream. We learned a useful lesson about "magic candles": when it says you should put only 12 of them of a cake then that's probably a good idea.

Today was a nice and easy day. In the morning I wrote a couple of e-mails and verified some things for work, but everything's under control and the UAT push worked out nicely. In the afternoon I went to the office for a little while; my parents called me there because I still don't have a cellphone.

Below are some pictures of last night, when I was assembling our new furniture. So far I've installed the couch, one bedside table, a chair and two lamps.

I'm not done yet, but I'm missing one (crucial) box with things for the cupboard that was supposed to be in one of the big packages but wasn't there. I wanted to assemble the cupboard this morning but without the bolts and screws that won't work. I'll have to call Ikea tomorrow.

This week Ikea will open a shop in Haarlem as well.

Monday morning is an important deadline for the project I am working on. We want to deliver a new release of our software, with a lot of new features, that is ready to be tested by the customer.

Our company has a strict quality process for such a release that includes a separate, professional testing team and 'certification' of the software to determine whether is good-to-go or not. It's been quite busy the last day, but we've made very good progress. This is the first release that will contain functionality that I've designed, and it's exciting to see it getting ready for its interaction with end users.

Sasha left to New York this morning; of course I'd rather be with her and her family in NJ but there's no way I could leave this weekend.

Tonight I was home earlier than the previous few days, and it's great to have some time off. It's the first night I'm alone in a long time. I'm assembling the furniture, which is very rewarding to do, with a glass of triple beer, incense (wierrook) burning, and while listening to relaxing music.

Sunday we went to Ikea. The shop is located in College Park, Maryland, which is north of DC. it's quite a distance from where we live and it's one of the times that it's really inconvenient not to have a car. Especially on Sunday public transport is not always available. However, we figured out a decent schedule, and it tooks us about an hour and 15 minutes to get there. It was fun anyway; traveling together.

Ikea is a wonderful place to go shopping. We were there two months ago. There were so many things that we just never had time for to get, and it felt great to spend the whole day choosing how our apartment will look like.

The most important piece of furniture was the couch, and we also got a beautiful bookcase. On the way back we brought most of the small items with us. Tomorrow, Thursday, the large items will be delivered -- it's gonna be really fun to change the apartment with the new furniture. I'm really looking forward to see them in our house.

Work's been pretty busy this week, and will probably be so until Monday. Still having a lot fun though and learning a lot, which compensates easily for the long days. Very sad news from my mother's school this weekend.