Today is Sasha's birthday.

Happy birthday!

Tomorrow it will be 75 degrees, according to the weather forecast (24 in Celsius). Pretty amazing for February.

My little nephew Jasper is doing well; Ettie told me he has gotten his second tooth.

Thursday I took the afternoon off and we drove to Washington. Sasha gave a presentation there on Friday, and I worked from the hotel.

We were lucky with the traffic. On Wednesday there had been a big snowstorm and thousands of people were stranded for hours on the highways. On Thursday things were fine, and since many people were working from home there was little traffic. In the evening we had dinner in a place that Obama and Medvedev once visited.

Friday evening I went to Mackey's Pub, a few blocks from our hotel, where some 40 Dutch people met for drinks. I met a lot of different people and had a great evening. There were several Americans who were learning Dutch, and took the opportunity to practice. The organizers even arranged for bitterballen, made by a company in Atlanta.

We drove back on Saturday, and made a beautiful detour through southern Virginia in the afternoon.

Things are back in their normal rhythm. This was my first full week at work since before Christmas, and it was good to be back in full working mode. We completed a minor release this week, with new translations of the product in several languages. It's cool to see your software in Chinese.

Tomorrow I may clean up the Christmas tree, I think it is about time. The tree is indestructible, it has hardly lost any needles.

Denver really is a pretty city, with a great downtown area. Sasha is at her conference during the day, so I'm exploring the city by myself, but we also spent time together in between things.

This afternoon I met Anna Chase and Dennis for coffee, which was fun. I've been reading Dennis' blog for years, and it was nice to meet in real life.

There is snow predicted both here and in North Carolina, that may make our flight home quite interesting. We'll see.

And oh, for lunch I got us two sandwiches from Dubbel Dutch (again). Very healthy, a broodje gezond. Dubbel Dutch is a nice store; I enjoyed meeting Eef, the owner.

This morning I drove to Colorado Springs, about an hour south of Denver. I visited a Dutch bakery there.

The speed limit here is 75 miles per hour.

We're staying on the 19th floor of the Crowne Plaza hotel, which has a great view. On the right in the picture you can see the mountains that surround the city.

It's a little colder here than in North Carolina, but not much. The snow you see is the first of the season, according to the guy at the rental company.

There is a two hour time difference with the East Coast.

Yesterday night we celebrated the New Year with a dinner party at friends.

Great company, good food and champagne made for a terrific evening.

We called with Bulgaria and the Netherlands when the new year arrived; especially in Leeuwarden there was a lot of fireworks in the background.

During the day we had prepared oliebollen and they were well received.

For the first time in years we celebrated Christmas at home. It was great to cook budni vecher, a tradition we started in Haarlem many years ago. It's a Bulgarian Christmas Eve dinner, made without any animals products like meat, milk or butter.

The main dishes we had were stuffed grape and cabbage leaves, various beans and a home made bread. The latter with a coin for luck, which fell to Sasha. Dessert was baklava from a Turkish store in Chapel Hill.

It was delicious and a lot of fun to prepare together.

Yesterday was an easy and relaxing day. This morning we woke up to a snowy world, around 4 to 5 inches of snow.

Making the surmichki.

Cooking them.

Budni vecher table.

Yours truly.

Baklava.