Last night was the Superbowl, the final match in the American Football competion. The game was between the Pittsburg Steelers and the Seattle Seahawks. I was supporting the Steelers. The Seahawks team kicked the Redskins out of the play-offs, and a couple of my colleagues are fan of the Steelers as well.

I watched the game with Prakash, a colleague, at his place on a huge screen with a projector. We had an excellent time, drinking Budweiser and jenever (he brought a few bottles from Holland a few years ago). We enjoyed the game and the famous commercials. The game itself was not the best football game I've ever seen, but I heard that's quite common for Superbowl matches because the teams are very nervous. The Steelers won with 21-10.

I was home quite late, and packed my bag around midnight. The alarm went at 4.30 am, to be on time for my 7 am flight to Puerto Rico.

Yesterday we went our for dinner in Georgetown, to Bistro Francais. It's was the first time we were in this nice french restaurant, with a beautiful interior and good food.

We had a really good time and stayed till late in the restaurant. Afterwards we went for a late movie; we saw Match Point in the Georgetown Loewie theater.

Match Point is a story about an ex-tennis player who joins high-society in the UK by marrying a rich girl, and who falls in love with his brother-in-law's fiance. The film is directed by Woody Allen, and the main theme is Allen's long-held belief in the power of luck in determining people's destiny.

It's a good movie, a thriller, and although Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is not playing a very good role as the main character, the other actors are compensating for this (most notably Scarlett Johansson).

It's a quiet Saturday morning. Sasha just left for her French lessons; she has conversation classes on Tuesday and regular classes on Saturdays. My Spanish is only once a week, but in March there will be a conversational course on Saturday's also; something I will definitely sign up for.

At work everything's well. Next I'll go to Puero Rico, so we spent a lot of time preparing presentations and materials for there. Some of the presentations we needed color printed -- this is remarkably easy with Kinko's "remote printing".

I finished reading "A People's History of the United States", a book that -as I started realizing while reading the book- was written from an American socialist point of view. Now I'm half-way a great new book by Davic McCullough, 1776 -- an account of the military campaign of Washington against the British. I just read about the Battle on Dorchester Heights in Boston. This was an early victory of the Colonial Army, when they occupied this strategic point overlooking the harbor in one single night, forcing the British to leave the city.

Tonight I made fourth Spanish lesson.

We studied the names of the season and the weather today, and the grammar was about the "going to" construction with ir + a + verb. I really feel I'm learning new things quickly with this course, a nice feeling.

Sasha's French lessons finish a bit earler so she was waiting for me in the school where we have our classes and we walked back home together.

On my way to work I passed by a car with a nice license plate.

A real "Hokie", an alumni from Virginia Tech where I was a few months ago.

We went to Tyson's corner Saturday, the largest mall in North-Virginia. It's not really conveniently nearby -- it's a bus connection from West Falls Church, but it's a beautiful mall and it was worth the trip.

We spent a long time there; it had been a while since we had a chance to buy the clothes that we need, and the prices were lower than in Arlington.

Sunday during the day I worked on a set of presentations with my colleagues.

Tonight's evening TV was filled with the story of the TV appearance of James Frey on Oprah's show.

Last year Oprah had recommended his book on her Bookclub show. Then two weeks ago the Smoking Gun published a long article about the lies in the -supposingly- real memoirs of Mr. Frey.

In a Larry King talkshow Oprah initially defended the book, but today she made it clear that she felt very angry about the lies of the author.

It was a very public confrontation on Oprah's show, and I enjoyed watching those fragments on CNN a lot. I didn't read the book, but it just feels morally wrong that the guys made so much money with a autobiographic book that is based on lies.

It's busy this week, after a relatively quiet period with the holidays.

Tuesday evening I went to my third Spanish lesson. Sasha's French course is at the same time so went had a (very) quick dinner together in a sandwich place in the Rosslyn metro station. It's nice to go together to school.

The supermarket here sells a Droste, a Dutch cocoa brand.

Until 2004 the original Droste factory, in Haarlem, was still in use. Interestingly, the American packaging doesn't have the typical "mirror" effect that gives the name to the "Droste effect" in Dutch.

Sunday a week ago we saw March of the Penguins, a documentary about the Emporer Penguins of Antartica.

The documentary describes the life and breeding habits of this penguin that lives in one of the coldest places on earth. It's a very nice movie to watch, and you get a lot of sympathy for the penguins who endure the freezing cold, icy storms and every year walk many, many miles between the sea and their safe breeding place. I like the movie's theme: "In the harshest place on earth, love finds a way."

We saw the movie using Comcast's movie-on-demand. The camera work in the movie is outstanding -- beautiful landscapes and very vivid close-ups of the animals; it's as if you're right next to them. The team that filmed the penguins must have spent many months in the freezing colds to capture these great images.

The narrative was done by Morgan Freeman. I have been told that in the Dutch version it was Urbanus, a Belgium comic, I am not sure if that is a good combination with the sometimes sad content of the film.