Guus Bosman

The parking meters in Arlington have a nice slogan:


All may park, all must pay.

It's early March and the weather is just amazing today. It's in the 70s -- more than 22 degrees Celcius.

We went to Ballston where there was the Shamrock festival but when we arrived around 3.30 pm the line for entrance was about two hours and we decided not to wait that long. Instead we went for a nice walk and got some of the special top Grolsch bottles that we drank on our balcony in the sun.

St Patrick's Day is only next week, anyway.

Today I am in Puerto Rico again. I arrived this morning, after spending a few days in Arlington, where it was snowing this Sunday and it was pretty cold.

I am not sure if it's the temperature difference or not, but Sunday evening my throat started hurting and sure enough I have a cold now. Feeling better than on Monday though, and at least I won't be cold in Puerto Rico.

It's high season here, something I didn't really take into account so it was a bit difficult to get a room in our hotel and all rental cars at the airport were taken.

I really enjoy being here, and the work that we're doing right now, but I am much more looking forward to next week... Sasha and I are going on vacation!

When we I left the office in Puerto Rico I thought it it will be my usual routine.

First put the luggage through agricultural control, check the suitcase in and get my electronic boarding pass printed. With a little bit of luck the lines for security are not too long and I have some time to get dinner, followed of course by a visit to Starbucks for an espresso.

The flight to DC used to be at 5:40 last year, but it was moved to 7.10 pm and we left the office around 5. Rather late, and the traffic was very bad. At one point I was rather sure we wouldn't make it, but we arrived at the airport about 45 minutes for take-off. We were running for the the check in counter.

It turned out that our plane had a delay, so the rush was not necessary at all and we had plenty of time for dinner & Starbucks. We were told that the aircraft we were taking had a mechanical problem on its original departure point, St. Thomas, and it was not until 10.40 pm that we left Puerto Rico. I was home around 2.00 am.

It's a quiet Saturday morning. Sasha just left for her French lessons; she has conversation classes on Tuesday and regular classes on Saturdays. My Spanish is only once a week, but in March there will be a conversational course on Saturday's also; something I will definitely sign up for.

At work everything's well. Next I'll go to Puero Rico, so we spent a lot of time preparing presentations and materials for there. Some of the presentations we needed color printed -- this is remarkably easy with Kinko's "remote printing".

I finished reading "A People's History of the United States", a book that -as I started realizing while reading the book- was written from an American socialist point of view. Now I'm half-way a great new book by Davic McCullough, 1776 -- an account of the military campaign of Washington against the British. I just read about the Battle on Dorchester Heights in Boston. This was an early victory of the Colonial Army, when they occupied this strategic point overlooking the harbor in one single night, forcing the British to leave the city.

On my way to work I passed by a car with a nice license plate.

A real "Hokie", an alumni from Virginia Tech where I was a few months ago.

We went to Tyson's corner Saturday, the largest mall in North-Virginia. It's not really conveniently nearby -- it's a bus connection from West Falls Church, but it's a beautiful mall and it was worth the trip.

We spent a long time there; it had been a while since we had a chance to buy the clothes that we need, and the prices were lower than in Arlington.

Sunday during the day I worked on a set of presentations with my colleagues.

Tonight's evening TV was filled with the story of the TV appearance of James Frey on Oprah's show.

Last year Oprah had recommended his book on her Bookclub show. Then two weeks ago the Smoking Gun published a long article about the lies in the -supposingly- real memoirs of Mr. Frey.

In a Larry King talkshow Oprah initially defended the book, but today she made it clear that she felt very angry about the lies of the author.

It was a very public confrontation on Oprah's show, and I enjoyed watching those fragments on CNN a lot. I didn't read the book, but it just feels morally wrong that the guys made so much money with a autobiographic book that is based on lies.

It's busy this week, after a relatively quiet period with the holidays.

Tuesday evening I went to my third Spanish lesson. Sasha's French course is at the same time so went had a (very) quick dinner together in a sandwich place in the Rosslyn metro station. It's nice to go together to school.

Today I read a nice article on CNN.com.

Apparently Reese Witherspoon was wearing the same dress as another girl three years ago on the Golden Globes awards event.

A scandal, of course.