Guus Bosman

Friday evening we finally bought a desk for the computer in the bedroom. It's really so much nicer, a real desk. We got it from Crate & Barrel, a shop a few blocks down the road.

We have been living in this apartment for almost a year now, so we need to think about the lease for next year. We received a letter from the leasing company with the rates, and they propose to increase the rent, quite a bit. Unlike in the Netherlands there is typically no maximum on the rent-increase: you don't like it, you leave. We'll see if we can negotiate the price. The price per month is different depending on the length of the lease you sign. Generally, the longer you stay, the lower the montly rent.

Yesterday evening we made pancakes, for the first time since we're living here. They came out really well. The first ones were a bit thick, but once we got the hang of it they became nice and thin. I made one with raisins, my favorite, and we had blueberry jam and feta cheese for the others.

There is a lot of renovation going on in our apartment building, after the severe leak damage that occured when somebody broke a sprinkler outlet.

Today a large crane was installed next to the apartment building. Our building is over twenty floors, and it's a huge crane. To set up the main crane a secondary crane was necessary.

Jaap took some very nice pictures. Jaap & Mieke are leaving soon -- they'll take a cab at 12:30 o'clock. Their flight is around 17:00 o'clock, so there's plenty of time.

There was a piece of furniture we never found time for to install: the table for the TV.

We got most part of the TV set delivered a while back but since it wasn't urgent we never went back to Ikea to pick up the last remaining part that was out of stock.

My parents offered to go to Ikea together and Saturday afternoon we went to College Park. Our rental car is not extremely large, so Mieke stayed home.

Jaap and I found the remaining part of the TV unit and some other replacement parts fairly quickly. Then we overcame the challenge of loading our Chevrolet Cobalt with the large packages with only one minor injury.

In the evening we installed the first part of the TV unit and it looks very nice.

About six weeks ago there was a serious flooding in one of the apartments on the higher floors. It turned out that someone attached something to the sprinklers, it broke and a tremendous amount of water was released that caused serious damage in many floors. The leakage was on the 19th floor and apartments all the way to the second floor were damaged.

We were lucky that our apartment wasn't affected. It took weeks of carpeting and painting in some other houses on our floor, and some of the worst affected apartments are still not usuable. The carpet in our hallway has not been restored yet.

About two week ago we heard the fire-alarm in our building for the first time. It turned out not to be a fire, but another leakage. The fire-alarm is very intense. there is a speaker in our living room that made the noise, and an automated voice saying that "a fire emergency has been detected in the building". A safe thought that the noise is easily loud enough to wake you up in your sleep.

Saturday afternoon we found a very nice set of balcony furniture at Crate & Barrel.

We were in the shop near our apartment, and we borrowed a cart to carry the table home immediately. The weather is very nice and we wanted to sit on our balcony.

The chairs however, were not in stock, and it would take two weeks to order them. We didn't want to wait that long and the next day we took the cart and brought it with us in the metro.

We went to visit another Crate & Barrel store, in DC. It was an interesting ride with the cart in the metro, especially because we had to change trains in Metro Center.

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.

The Ikea things we bought last Sunday were delivered Thursday morning.

The people from our apartment building let the delivery in, and even signed for it, so we didn't have to be home. It's a great service of our apartment building, because Ikea doesn't deliver in the evening and only gives a very wide delivery window ("between 2 and 6").

On the receipt it said that our delivery was over 200 kilogram in weight... the biggest item by far is the new couch.

I was home very late Thursday night, and it was very nice to see all the new stuff in the living room. Spend an hour around midnight to assemble a chair; very relaxing.

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.

Today we are arranging a lot of small practical matters. One of the things we did was ordering internet and cable tv.

We had been thinking a lot about what exactly we wanted for TV. When we bought it two weeks ago, we also took an antenna. However, the reception in our apartment is pretty bad, and we exchanged it last Friday for a stronger one. Still -- the image and sound quality is very bad, there is simply no good signal in our apartment. So an antenna wasn't really an option.

The thing is: we hardly watch any TV. Since we moved here we've seen the news once, and twice we've been watching some entertainment. Cable TV is quite expensive (compared to cable in Holland), and we were wondering if it's worth it. We decided to take it anyway, partly because getting cable TV would also give us a discount on cable internet, which we certainly want.

The last weeks Comcast, the cable provider, has been sending us a lot of promotional offers and letters, asking us to become subscriber. Yesterday's offer was the "Complete Holiday Package" -- a 50% discount for 3 months on both internet and TV, as well as a waiver for the installation fee. I just called and ordered it, and they'll come and install it tomorrow afternoon.

When we moved, now two weeks ago, it was a very busy time so I didn't have time to put all the pictures of the moving online earlier. I have placed a number of pictures online of the weekend when we moved from Rosa's place to our current apartment.

Yesterday evening we went to Pentagon City again, a mall nearby (a mall is basically a large shopping center). This time, we didn't have to get a lot of things. We took some small stuff for in the bathroom and the kitchen, like a rack for dishes, and we had dinner in a Californian pizza place there.

Yesterday afternoon I went for a drink with two colleagues, that was very nice.