Today Christoph, Hernan and I went to see Ocean's 13. It was a blast! My expectations were high as I really liked the first and second movie, and the third one was very entertaining.

We had dinner in the Cheesecake Factory afterwards. As always, the portions were huge -- I couldn't finish my burger.

Yesterday I went tubing on the Dan River, that was very nice. We spent about 3 hours on the river, slowly floating and chatting. We had a cooler for our drinks and lunch to that worked out great.

Ben sent me a link to a page with jokes about the Dutch that I found quite amusing.

"Don't make holes in the dikes. Such behaviour is commonly disapproved and in extreme cases it can get you stoned by wooden shoes. But feel free to put your finger in the dike if you feel the urge."

Last night I watched The Departed. A great movie!

The Departed is an brilliant police informant/mafia film with outstanding acting by Jack Nicholson, Matt Daemon and even Leonardo di Caprio.

The dialogs are great. Favorite quote: "You know past days, situations like this I'd kill everybody, everybody who works for me". Another one I liked: "I'm the guy who does his job. You must be the other guy". There's a remarkable amount of swearing throughout the movie.

Last Saturday Michael celebrated his birthday with a lot of 7's and he had a big party at his pool.

I arrived around 2.30 pm while listening to Live Earth on the radio and later Paul Simon on CD.

We played a couple of volleyball games and a hilarious relay race. It was a great afternoon.

Tonight I attended a Wine 101 class at A Southern Season in Chapel Hill. It was really enjoyable.

The wine buyer of A Southern Season, Jay Murrie, introduced the group of about 20 people to six different wines, three whites and three reds and explained some of the differences about the various grape types and wine regions. I don't know a great deal about wines and this was a very nice introduction.

Somewhat unusual post-Sideways, I don't really care for Pinot Noir too much (or perhaps I haven't found the right one yet). A very pleasant surprise was the 2006 Merkelbach Urziger Wurzgaten Riesling Spatlese, a German sweet wine. I didn't think I would like it at all: a sweet, white wine but it was quite good.

I took a cab to the store because I wasn't sure how much drinking would be involved. I'm happy I did -- those six glasses were well over my driving limit.

I saw a funny commercial the other day from E*Trade: "All you can do with 1 finger".

Watch it on Youtube.com.

The Dutch lady says something like "Dank ou mistah" -- presumably meaning "dank u mister".

Today I went to the Festival for the Eno River in Durham.

It's a 3-day music festival to raise money for conservation of the Eno River. I parked at the Durham stadium and a bus took me to the festival site. I walked around alone for a while and then met up with Mike.

There were a lot of different bands from the Carolinas and surrounding states. It was a very warm day, and it was great to sit in the shadow and listen to good music. I liked the performances by
Nina Violet and The Grandsons quite a lot.

The bus from the parking lot to the festival site.

The first band I saw, while enjoying my Sunday morning coffee.

Appalachian clogging. No Dutch clogs.

A combination of singing and story telling.

Eco-friendly sink for hand washing: Use Yer Foot.

A sand sculpture with the Eno's mascot, the squirrel.

A frozen banana dipped in chocolate. It was interesting but not very delicious.

A band from D.C.

Yesterday was the Fourth of July, Independence Day in the U.S.

I spent a very enjoyable afternoon at Michael's place where he had invited some friends. The weather was beautiful and the pool was great.

Around 5:30 pm Belen, Emily, Esteban and Christoph picked me up and we went to downtown Durham. At the American Tobacco District we enjoyed the sun and a live R&B concert. Later in evening we walked to the baseball stadium, which opened after the 7th inning of the game between U.S. and Japan (the U.S. won).

There was a children's choir singing the National Anthem, and a fireworks show closed the day.

The stage under Lucky Strike's tower.

The Durham Bulls ball park.

Sunday I tried a new, excellent running trail.

It turns out Duke University has a golf course fairly close to our home with a running trail around the golf terrain. Esteban and Belen had mentioned it last week -- thanks a lot!

It's a great 2.5 mile long nature trail with distance markers and a public water fountains. It's a little over a mile from our home so all together I ran about 5 miles on Sunday. This was a bit more than I should have done and it took me 2 days to recover.

I hope that I feel good enough to go for a shorter run in the morning. It's Fourth of July tomorrow so a day off, and before all the festivities start I hope to try out my new running shoes.

On my way home from Washington I saw an intriguing sign next to the highway: "Dutch Gap Conservation".

I took the exit and followed the signs. It turns out the Dutch Gap is a short cut in the James river that was created in the Civil War by General Dale.

He had been to the Netherlands and had a number of Dutch engineers in his army, which explains the name.

The Dutch Gap canal. The bridge is I-95, the highway I took from Washington D.C. to Richmond Virginia. The highway starts in Canada and goes all the way to Florida.