Guus Bosman

Saturday afternoon my plane landed in Sofia, and Milan and Sasha were there to pick me up from the airport. It's really good to see everybody again.

Our first dinner started with shopska salad and rakia, and chicken with a great side dish kiselo zele (one of my favorites). Kisole zele is pickled cabbage and it's baked in the oven with the chicken.

I slept in until 1.00 pm the next day; we had an easy day and spent a nice evening with Rangel, Iordanka and Renche.

The previous two times I was in Bulgaria in the middle of the winter; it's nice to see everything so lush and green now.

I realized late at night that I was out of yogurt.

Since I hate starting the day without a decent breakfast I went to Kroger. A thunderstorm was just getting started; big lightning flashes everywhere but no rain.

To my surprise, in between the doors of Kroger stood a security guard and she told me that the store was closed for floor repairs. It was 11.00 pm, and luckily she made an exception for me if I promised to be back quickly, which I did. Interesting how you get used to the grocery store being open 24/7.

The last few weeks have been crazy in many different ways. And boy oh boy, what a mess the economic system is in.

Today the Dow Jones saw the sharpest drop ever, after the bailout plan failed to make it through Congress. I was not a big fan of the plan, with its proposed massive government intervention in the market, and some say that a 'correction' would have been healthy. It's impossible to know of course, but a lot of very smart people have warned against the dire consequences of not passing such a bill. Let's hope it doesn't come to some of those scenario's. Last night Wachovia was taken over; Wachovia has its headquarters in Charlotte, NC.

Once thing is clear: neither Mr. Obama nor Mr. McCain, let along President Bush, have a strong control over their parties and their voting on this issue.

We left work early today, with Tropical Storm Hanna approaching.

The storm is expected to become a weak hurricane tonight before it makes landfall between South and North Carolina. We won't have much problems here in Durham, but there'll be a lot of rain and obviously a lot of wind.

So far it's quiet. It started drizzling around 3.00 pm and raining around 7.00 pm, but no real storm yet.

We're enjoying a cup of Dutch coffee that our guests brought last week.

Some final touches for the release this weekend, but it looks like we're in good shape.

Ettie and Gerben left for New York Tuesday morning. We had a really nice time together, and it was sad to see them go. Tuesday morning we celebrated Gerben's birthday, and we had apple pie for breakfast.

On Monday night we went to Peony, a favorite sushi place of ours, and we afterwards we had ice cream next doors.

Work is going well, the release date is approaching soon so there's the usual rush of last minute bugs and things to resolve.

My parents returned to the Netherlands last weekend, and Ettie and Gerben spent a week down south.

It's been a busy week -- we're working on a 1.0 release and that is always a lot of work. I'm excited about the product; it's stable, and looks pretty good.

Ettie and Gerben will be here tomorrow and in the evening we'll see another baseball game, Team USA will play against Canada tomorrow night in Durham.

Yesterday we spent another great day with Ettie and Gerben. In the late afternoon we went to see a ball game of the Durham Bulls. The weather was good, and it was an entertaining event. I still find the sport somewhat slow but with all the different side shows in the breaks it was fun to watch. The Bulls won with 2-0 over the Louisville Bats.

We had dinner at Tyler's. This morning Ettie and Gerben are leaving to Savannah, Georgia, and they'll be back in Durham in a couple of days.

The week with all our guests has been great. Yesterday we had a nice dinner in our home with the 6 of us, and we had a lot of fun. Ettie and Gerben showed us a video of their new house.

Today is an easy day. After lunch Jaap and Mieke left for the airport. They are flying back over Detroit, and will arrive in Amsterdam tomorrow morning. We're taking it easy today -- it's been a tiring week, both at home and at work with a 1.0 release coming up.