Tuesday afternoon Sasha left for Bulgaria. She's visiting her parents in the period between her job at the bank and before the study year starts.

Yesterday evening I went to the library in Durham. Getting there took me a while. Although I was on the right road I missed the library building and I couldn't turn around easily as it was a one way street. Anyway, I found it and registered as a new member. It's not as nice as the library in Arlington and quite a bit smaller, but a library is a library and I enjoyed browsing the books.

Last week I went to my company's headquarters in New Jersey. It was nice to meet my new colleagues in person and I had a lot of meetings and conversations in the 3 days I was in the office. An important part of my new job is to be a bridge between our development team in Raleigh and product management in New Jersey.

I flew to Newark on Wednesday morning. It was a different travel experience this time: I drove to the airport, dropped off the rental car, flew to Newark and there got another rental car. No taxi's or public transport involved. For the first time in my life I drove on the New Jersey turnpike. I had gotten some good instructions from my colleagues in Raleigh and I had a google map, so I arrived in the main office well on time.

I returned on Friday afternoon. Due to new pre-flight security checks Continental airlines advised to be at the airport 3 hours before departure time, which is 2 hours earlier than usual. However, the lines at the airport were very short and I had plenty of time. Getting from the airport to home was easy this time and I was home around 9.30 pm.

After the movers delivered our things on Monday (7/24) I slept one more night in the hotel in Cary , a place near Raleigh.

On Tuesday I worked till late. After work I did shopping for the first time in the Kroger supermarket near our house and came home around 9.00 pm. I spend the evening searching for the essential items such as pillows and bed covers, and a plate for breakfast.

The next day I made more progress and I assembled the bed by the light of one of the lamps that I had found in the boxes. On Friday Sasha arrived and we had our first weekend in Durham together. We bought a shower curtain and small items for in the house.

On Monday we were invited for dinner at Bonnie and Nunik's place where I met Sasha's colleagues for the first time. Bonnie and Nunik also live in the Belmost. During the week we had guests a few times, and spend our our time on unpacking boxes and assembling the rest of the furniture.

We used a large amount of packing material, and our fragile things all survived the journey from Arlington to Durham well.

Dinner at Bonnie and Nunik's place.

Assembling the PC. As a precaution I brought the hard disks of our PC in my hand luggage, instead of leaving them in PC.

Saturday evening we had a BBQ. Sasha invited her class mates, and there were almost 25 people enjoying burgers, hotdogs and good company.

During the day we did shopping with Beia, Emily and Christoph. We went to Cosco, where we bought the food and necessary atrributes. Cosco sells items in large quantities, so we were done quickly. Every time I realize how convenient it is to have a car... can't believe I've lived without one for so long.

In the late afternoon Beia and Madeline came to help preparing and made a (excellent) guacamole. There is a public barbecue place in our apartment complex between the swimming pool and the lake. Bonnie, Emily and Matt went to the BBQ place to reserve the one of them (it's first come, first serve) and around 6.30 pm we got started.

The party was very nice: great people, good weather and hamburgers, of course. We had music and a lot of different beers, even a local beer from Morrisville.

A group picture.

We wanted the movers to deliver our belongings on a weekend. I didn't want to take time off in my first week at work, and a delivery on Saturday or Sunday would be the easiest.

We spoke with quite a few moving companies, but most could not garantuee delivery on the weekend. However, a sales person at Nationwide Relocation Services said this would not be a problem. We spend a lot of time on the phone to make sure they could garantuee it, and they confirmed: "not a problem, it will be either Saturday or Sunday".

A long story short: when the movers came on Friday to pick up our things they told us that it would be impossible to deliver the next day or Sunday, and they wondered why the sales department had told us otherwise? When we called Nationwide, they said that the delivery would probably be Wednesday or Thursday.

On Monday I received a phone call around 1.00 pm from an unknown number: "hi -- we're your movers, and we're on the highway on our way from Virginia now". I asked them to give me a call 30 minutes before they arrived in Durham, so I could leave work and meet them. They didn't, so a few hours later they called me and asked me where I was: the truck had arrived and they wanted to unload it. Luckily, the apartment manager let them in, and I had to leave early, at 4 pm on my first working day.

When I came home there was a huge truck parked in the street at our apartment. The movers, a sub contractor to Nation Wide unloaded the truck in a few hours and brought everything up the stairs. They were on their way to Georgia with the rest of the load.

There was some significant inconvenience when the movers wanted to have the remaining balance paid in cash -- no checks or credit cards. This would be hard because all banks were already closed. I c called Nation Wide if they couldn't help me by performing a credit card transaction instead but they said there was nothing they could do. A couple of phone calls later I managed to get the money, and I decided never to do business with Nationwide Relocation Services ever again.

The actual move itself was executed well. We did have a little bit of damage, and 1 broken lamp, but over-all our stuff was in good shape and nothing was missing. I'm glad I didn't have to carry everything up the stairs to our new house.

On the same day that I got my drivers license the movers came to pick up our furniture. So on Friday night we slept in a virtually empty apartment. Everything that remained in the house we would have to take with us by plane. Our only piece of furniture was a large inflatable mattress.

On Sunday I flew to North Carolina, where I would stay for a few days in a hotel until our furniture arrived and I could move to our own house. The traveling didn't go as planned -- I had booked a ticket for a flight at noon, but that got cancelled and American rebooked me for a flight at 4 pm. Because of bad weather this flight was delayed and I finally arrived at RDU around 7 pm.

I picked up my rental car, a white Dodge Stratus, and immediately got lost in the area around the airport. My original plan was to check into the hotel, and then drive to work to see how to get there in the morning, but it somehow it took me over 2 hours to get to the hotel (it should have been no more than 30 minutes). I drove on many, many roads in Cary, and even when I finally found the right street, it took me a long time to locate the hotel, it because it wasn't very visible from the road and it was dark already. I quickly learned how to drive on a 4 lane highway after sunset.

I was staying in a Red Roof Inn in Cary, very close to where I work now. When I arrived there it was close to 10.00 pm and I didn't even have dinner yet, so I drove to downtown Cary and picked got some Chinese for take out. I also visited Kinko's to read my e-mail and print the Google map directions from my hotel to work. Driving from the Red Roof Inn to my work turned out to be really easy, and the next morning I arrived safe and on time at my new job.

On Friday July 21st the moving company came to pick up our furniture and belongings.

There were 3 guys and a large truck, and it took about 4 hours to move everything. They wrapped all the furniture in blankets and bubble wrap.

The last time we moved, from DC to Arlington, we hardly had any furniture and just a couple of suitcases and boxes, so it was much easier. After two years living in Arlington, we have collected a lot of stuff so it took a couple of hours to load everything in the truck.

After the mover's left, this is all we had.

Friday evening I picked up Sasha from the airport. After my initial adventures last weekend I found the airport at once -- a week of practice in reading maps and remembering directions paid off.

It's been a very busy week with a new job during the day, and assembling furniture and unpacking in the evenings. It's really nice to have a easy weekend together now.

Yesterday evening we went out for dinner in Chapel Hill, at the Top of the Hill restaurant. It's a place on top of a 3 story building, and we had a nice view over the main road. We were looking at the different cars to see which ones we liked.

Sad news: my grand aunt Rineke, my mother's aunt, passed away last Friday.

Last Saturday I used my newly acquired driver's license and I rented a car.

When I made the reservation I asked for a compact -- a small model. At the rental office they said: "oh, we're out of the small cars, in fact this one here is the last available one we have".

So, one day after I got my license I drove a Jeep Grand Charokee Laredo. With its 3.7-liter V6 engine and 4x4 wheel drive, it was quite different than the car I did my driving lessons in.

I first drove around the block a few times, to get used to the controls and to the size of the car, and then I went to Court House to pick up Sasha.

We spent the whole afternoon on the road, and saw a lot of the D.C. area. We went to the Great Falls, we saw the Pentagon and Alexandria and had lunch somewhere in Fairfax.

I used the car to return my keys and laptop to my previous employer's office, and returned it Sunday morning.

Driving through Washington D.C. It will be a while before I get that chance again.

Yesterday I had my first day of my new job, and I liked it. I'll enjoy working here a lot.

Unexpectedly, the movers showed up yesterday afternoon too. Long story short: our belongings are safely in our new apartment, and we don't have to deal with this moving company anymore. Later more.