Yesterday was my 29th birthday, and we celebrated it with an great party in our apartment.

In the morning we celebrated the traditional way, with presents, postcards, e-mails and lots of nice phone calls. The rest of the day we prepared for the party. We did most of the shopping on Friday evening (2,5 hours in the supermarket) so we only had to get some last minute things like fresh bread.

The first guests arrived just after 7.00 pm, and within an hour the house was full with people -- wonderful! We had food, drinks and a cake with 29 candles that I managed to blow out at once.

It was great to have so many people over. It's been years since we threw a big party at home and this was the first such a party we've done in the States. Hosting a party is so much fun! It reminded me of the cool parties we used to have in Florijn, and later in Haarlem. A special thanks to the folks who helped in the kitchen and offered to help during the evening.

For many people it was the first time in our house, and I think everybody had a very good time. It was nice that the different groups of people in my life met each other. In the course of the evening we had almost 40 people at the party.

After midnight the dancing started ('Beautiful Girls' was a particular favorite). Around 2.00 am we broke things up.

The livingroom.

The table with food and drinks.

The kitchen was, as always, a popular place to hang out. Here are Christoph, Mark, Matt, myself and Dave.

The view from the living room into the guest room.

Birthday cake.

Belen cutting the cake. Dennis, Rebecca, myself and Dave in the background.

Andrej, Michiru, Chris and Angelo.

Ron, Petra, Larry and Dave in conversation.

Mike, Hernan, Sasha and Vladi.

Brian and Sasha.

The Jaycees on a picture: Kevin, Christina, Christine, Charles, myself, Rob and Kathi.

The Duke team.

Hernan is learning the xoro from Vladi.

Guus, Sasha, Aum and Michiru.

The last hour or two there was serious dancing going on.

The morning after a great party. We have a lot of cheese and ham left over so we had a warm oven sandwich for breakfast. We spent the morning peacefully, chatting about the party. Cleaning up was easy as we used plastic cups. For the rest there's the dishwasher. So much better than some of the parties in Florijn where we would spent a good hour doing dishes by hand the next morning.

This morning I received my first birthday present!

I got two "Danish", which is a little joke about my heritage ("Bring out the windmill!").

We had the Danish with everybody right after our team meeting. Thanks guys!

The Dutch TV news showed a 'robot pharmacy' the other day.

It's machine that fully automatically takes the wholesale supplies, stores them in an archive and on-demand prepares medications for patients.

The pharmacy robot is designed and manufactured by the company Gerben works for, and he has played an important part in the technical implementation. When I was in Holland he showed me video footage of the robot -- it's cool to see how fast and smoothly it operates.

See the TV coverage online (in Dutch).

J. sent me a link to a website of Hema, a Dutch department store:

http://producten.hema.nl

This weekend we hang an image with an artistic view of Amsterdam in the 16th century in the living room, opposite the map of Haarlem.

There is some interesting lens distortion in this picture. I tried to adjust it with barrel correction but not all lines on the picture are vertical and horizontal (and yes, our apartment has straight walls and yes, the map is level also).

Some of my co-workers brought in candy yesterday. In one of the cubicles there was a candy bowl in Halloween style, even including a fake human hand. I thought that was nicely decorated, and I went to take some sweets from the bowl.

The moment I took a candy, the hand grabbed me and a voice said "Happy Halloween!". It scared me so much!

It turns out there's a light sensor and a small engine in the hand. Most of my colleagues already knew this and everybody thought it was quite amusing.

A scary bowl.

A wig.

Yesterday we went to help out the Durham Jaycees with their Halloween Haunted House.

A Haunted House is a maze with different scary rooms, through which customers walk (with guides). There are many special effects, lots of different lights and sounds and of course, the actors. I was a 'scary clown' for the evening, and that was a lot of fun.

This is an annual fund raiser for the Durham Jaycees (the Raleigh Jaycees have one as well). The House was set up in a hallway in the Durham Bulls Stadium.

It wasn't very busy since it was raining and a weekday night, but there were guests coming and going and it was an entertaining evening. There is something very satisfying about being allowed to scare people and say "booh".

The Durham Jaycees Haunted House.

It was a large maze, with a lot of scary rooms.

Guess who this is?

In a new residential building on Erwin Road three new restaurants will open, including Chipotle and T.G.I. Fridays.

This is nice since there aren't a lot of restaurants in walking distance from our house. There's Nosh, which I really like, but some more variety, even from chain restaurants, is always good.

Saturday morning I went to the North Carolina State Fair. I took a smarter route than last year so parking was no issue this time.

The fair is a lot of fun, many different things to see and so many different people. I spent an hour or two walking around. I liked the agricultural exhibitions: weirdly shaped pumpkins, wonderful roses etc. Food is important at the fair, and I tried banana pudding and had a hushpuppie in a corn mill.

The best part I found by accident: there was a very nice music & dance show in a big tent near the water rides at the Midway. There was blue grass and regional music, and a number of traditional youth dance groups.

Lots of pictures below.

The Midway.

Drying tobacco leaves. Tobacco used to be, and still is, a very important crop for North Carolina.

Products from North Carolina.

There was a contest for roses.

Old farming equipment.

A children's ride with real animals.

Free fall!

Carved pumpkins with the Duke, NC State and the Tarheels sport team logo's.

The Raleigh Jaycees' Turkey Shoot, where I volunteered last Tuesday.

Turkey legs. I had one of them for dinner on Tuesday.

The food on the fair is something special. You can get the strangest things deep-fried. I didn't really feel like trying deep fried Snickers, Coca Cola or pickles.

The ice cream made by NC State is supposed to be very delicious, but the line was way too long. I tried banana pudding (from the restaurant at the Raleigh Farmer's Market). A colleague from Tennessee is crazy about this and it's indeed delicious.

A donkey.

Live music.

See also the pictures from the State Fair in 2006.

Thursday evening I had a great conversation over good beer in Tyler's Taproom, in the American Tobacco District. I got the advise to check out "Sam's Quickshop", a few minutes driving from our house on Erwin Road.

I've seen the store many times -- it's right on the way to Whole Foods and downtown Durham -- but I could never be bothered to go in. Although I had read about a 'nice beer selection' on-line I figured that the author meant they had both Budweiser and Miller. The store looks like a typical gas station store with cold beer, cigarettes and car things, and I never paid it real attention.

How wrong could I have been!

If you see the store from the road, it looks like your typical gas station store...

...but inside they have shelf after shelf of great imported beer. And to my great delight they even have two kind of Grimbergen beers! They had no Grimbergen Triple in stock, but they'll call on Monday to see if they can order it. I really hope the importer carries Triple as well. I told them if they do, I'll need 4 six-packs... some Grimbergen Triple would be awesome for my birthday party in 3 weeks.