Guus Bosman

Work is less busy than the last few weeks, which is nice for a change because it's been quite hectic.

The first days of the week I was home early but yesterday I wanted to finish something and I left work late. Sasha was also still at work, and we didn't feel like cooking. We went for dinner at Cosi's, a nice place near the Courthouse metro station. they serve a lot of different salads and sandwiches, the bread for which they bake themselves in a wide oven. I had a cobb salad, which is my favorite salad there, with a small bowl of chili.

This morning it was snowing; a stark contrast with the previous days. In fact, a "winter storm" warning was issued by the government and all schools were closed.

Yes, Rob is the one who read between the lines correctly.

The cake we had for dinner on Sasha's birthday was a birthday cake, and of course no such cake is complete without candles.

I had accidentally bought "magic candles": when you blow them out, they automatically go on again. The only way to turn them off completely is put them in water. Now, that by itself would have been okay, but it specifically said "keep 3 inch between the candles and don't use more than 12 per cake".

Well. Pictures below.

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 is Sasha's birthday!

A nice start of the day, with presents and a lot of mail to open.

Saturday we visited Tala and Mouayed. Tala is a colleague of Sasha, and they got married a few weeks ago. We were invited for a lunch party that was organized for them.

The lunch was outside of Baltimore. It was really fun to meet so many different people, and the party was beautifully organized.

We were back in DC around 19:00 o'clock, and we went to do some shopping that we didn't have time for during the week.

So yesterday was the Superbowl day, and I must admit that we didn't even see the game. Yesterday I was chatting with a close friend in Holland who was watching the game, even though it started at midnight Dutch time.

A big news item after the game are the TV commercials that were played in the breaks. Even the Wall Street Journal had an article about that today. On Petra's website I found an article with many of the commercials online.

Today was a regular working day of course, after a busy weekend. The things I did Saturday and Sunday paid off and I also learned quite a lot about our software in the previous days.

It's been quite a busy weekend. There was something I wanted to finish at work, which took me quite some time yesterday and a few hours today as well.

I like it that Sasha came with me to the office, she was also working and it was much nicer to be together. Tonight we treated ourselves to a very nice meal; we had dinner at Cafe Asia. As an appetizer we had the best dumplings I have ever eaten since our trip to China -- very fresh and with a fabulous soy sauce. I've had lunch there a few times, and the food has always been great.

Tonight is also the evening of the Super Bowl, a big American football match. Most bars have the match on TV screens, but it wasn't as busy as I expected; it was nothing compared to the soccer championships in the Netherlands.

It hasn't been snowing anymore the last few days, and today will actually be a sunny day.

The snowman that was all of a sudden there, in front of our apartment building last Sunday is disappearing.

Sunday evening we visited Bella, who was hosting a Bulgarian dinner party.

Bella lives in an apartment near Pentagon City, about 15 minutes by car from our place.

It was nice to meet Bella's friends and it was a very cosy evening. The food was great: there was banichka, two (excellent) types of surmi and shopska salad with real Bulgarian imported feta cheese. Saturday evening we prepared our first mlechna in the U.S. and everybody liked it. There were home-made brownies for desert.

After dinner we stayed for real Bulgarian tea. We really enjoyed closing the weekend like this.

Yesterday evening we went to do some shopping, and when we opened the door we were surprised by snow.

It's a very gentle snow -- not so strong as a last week but it covered the world in a nice white layer.

It's been a very productive weekend for both of us. Yesterday I arranged a lot things that I wanted to do for quite some time, such as getting my photo ID, getting a haircut and wrapping up some paperwork. I've also set up a new backup system for my website. All the same it's a very relaxing weekend; a great combination.

This afternoon I went to the office to arrange some things for about two hours. When I left I took some pictures of the "snow world" around our apartment building (see below).