ING Bank is a Dutch bank that started an intensive marketing campaign in D.C. for their internet savings account a few months ago.

It's nice to see a familiar name in the metro: I did a project for ING bank at my previous employer. In December they sponsored the commuters in the metro by paying for everybody's ticket in the morning.

Their product is called the Orange Savings Account -- the color of their logo here, probably not related to the fact that the Dutch national color is orange.

"The Smitsonian" is the name of the foundation that pays for the national museums in Washington D.C.

Spring really started now. The weather is starting to get really nice, Sunday was especially gorgeous and although it was a bit colder today, it's great weather and people are walking around in shorts and shirts with short sleeves.

I had my lunch break outside today, in a park near my work, enjoying the sun and I'm walking to work without a jacket these days.

Our apartment building in the sun, with cherry trees in front.

Cherries with a beautiful blue sky.

The blossoms are starting to fall of the cherry trees.

An event that attracts a lot of tourists in the spring is the blooming of the cherry blossom trees. In a period of about a week, all the cherry blossoms downtown are blooming, which makes for a beautiful Washington D.C. The area around the Jefferson memorial is especially popular.

Sasha and I went to see this event after work. Because of the day-light savings time it was light till late -- very nice.

Yesterday I was home extremely late from work, there's an important event for our customer this weekend.

Us, near the Jefferson memorial.

On my way to work.

When we were in Williamsburg two weeks ago, we spent the Saturday in the historical downtown area.

Williamsburg used to be the capitol of the state of Virginia when it was still ruled by the British. In the beginning of the 20th century the historical inner city was restored to its original state.

A very large area contains the old-style wooden houses, and there are many small museums and actors; very pretty. It reminded me a bit of the Zaanse Schans in Holland. I enjoyed walked around in the old town.

See also these pictures.

Saturday afternoon we took a bath in the bubble hot tub in the cottage, something that I though was very luxurious. In the evening we went out for dinner the four of us. We are all city dwellers, so we never realized that going out at 21.00 o'clock in the evening in a rural city like Williamsburg isn't that easy... most restaurants close so early! After a long search we found a nice place where the kitchen was open (also only till 22.00).

Sunday we stayed in the Plantation. Late breakfast, swimming, taking it easy. We went home around 21.00 o'clock, and this time it took only 2,5 hours.

On the road to my work the trees were blooming with pink blossom. Spring is coming!

This weekend the weather was rather depressing but now the sun is shining and the weather looks great. I had a cold this weekend, and it's not quite over yet, but I took the risk and walked to my work without a jacket this morning.

A closer look at one of the trees revealed a bird's nest, that I only saw when I stopped to take a picture of the tree. A nice reminder: stop to look around, and you see more.

When we left to the U.S., many friends and family members offered help in moving house, arranging things storing our belongings, which made leaving a lot less stressfull than it would have been without their help.

One of the thing I'm especially grateful for was the fact that all our plants from the Hooimarkt found a nice new home. They are now in many cities in Holland: Leeuwarden, Leiden, Amsterdam and Alkmaar, as well as in Middenmeer.

The other day I received this nice picture from Jerry and Marjolein, showing that the plants are doing fine.

These three plants all have their own story. The first one, on the left, is a cutting from a plant in Florijn. In 1997 I moved to my first apartment when I started my study in Amsterdam. The first time I came to see the house, this plant was in the livingroom of the apartment, left by the previous renters. It was without any water and in a pretty bad shape. I gave it some water, and came back two months later after our trip to China. The plant was still there, and still alive. The original plant is now in my old bedroom in Middenmeer, with my parents.

The plant in the middle is a cutting from a cactus that my grandmother Groen had in her apartment. It's remarkable because it can grow really fast and has beautiful flowers when it blooms.

The third plant is a cutting from the plant that my parents received when I was born, so in a since it's just as old as I am. Unfortunately, this plant is vulnerable to a disease that killed several other cuttings already.

Today version 1.4 of JavaConfig has been released!

The new version is a major milestone. Not because of a lot of functionality -- the amount of changes is relatively small-- but because this is the first release that was created by someone else than me. Rolf Heller, an ex-colleague from Chess, took over the burden and cleaned up and streamlined the release process. Great work, thanks a lot!

So for those of you who have been working with a 1.4-SNAPSHOT so far: go ahead and download the new version. The Ibiblio release should be there in a few days too, for the Maven users.

Visit the JavaConfig homepage.

We slept in Saturday morning, but didn't wake up very late.

It was such a great feeling to be in a new town, full with historical places to go visit, and in a holiday park with all kind of nice things to do. A real vacation! I feel really privileged to have this kind of opportunities.

Around 11.00 o'clock we went to the front-desk to ask about the new cottage they wanted to assign to us, and they told us that the other cottage would be available after 16.00 so we choose to go out to the city immediately.

So, Friday night around 21:00 o'clock after a long trip we arrived in the Powhatan Plantation, our holiday park.

Powhatan Plantation is located just outside Williamsburg, Virginia, and it's a park mainly for time-sharing owners: people who buy a share in the company that manages the cottages and in exchange are allowed to stay a certain period of time in the park each year. A friend of Rosa has such a share, and she let us stay in the park -- thanks a lot!

We had a terribly nice weekend, but we're very sure that we'll never agree to such a time-sharing deal. There's hardly any flexibility, as you'll have to reserve your place in the park many months in advance. What's worse, the service in the park was pretty bad. Not that that interfered with our enjoying of the weekend, we had a great laugh about it, but I suppose it would feel different if you visit the park more often and for longer periods. Anyway: for us it was a perfect weekend, and the invitation came pretty much as a surprise; Thursday morning Rosa asked us to join.

The first item causing confusion between us and the people at the check-in counter was on when we were supposed to check in, Friday or Saturday. It was thanks to the determination of the ladies in my group and a printed e-mail that everything turned out well. When we went to the cottage that was assigned to us it turned out to be double-booked: we arrived exactly at the same time as another car in front of the cottage, and the lady told us they were assigned the same apartment number. Because they had small kids we went back to the office, where it took another half hour for the reception to figure out where to put us next. Beautiful park, nice cottages, but the people at the service desk are not the friendliest.

After the check-in we were offered a free breakfast in the restaurant, "...that will only take 60 minutes...". It took me a while to realize that they were inviting us for a marketing-talk over breakfast, to try to sell us a share in the park. We politely declined the offer.

Finally, around 23:00 o'clock we entered our cottage which was nice because even though we were in a good mood, two hours 'fighting' the check-in desk was becoming rather tiring after a long trip. The apartment was very nice! We were on the second floor, with two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a large livingroom. Our bedroom even had a steam-shower.

We had dinner together and drank a beer, and after trying the steam shower went to bed.

Rosa and Sasha, just after we entered the cottage.

Friday I left work at 16:00 o'clock, a nice early start of the weekend. Rosa, Mila and Sasha picked me up by car near my office, and we were ready for the journey down south. Our destination was Williamsburg, a bit east of Richmond, the capitol of Virginia.

To go to Williamsburg, you'll have to take the I95, an interstate highway, and we were told that it would be pretty crowded on the way. Although it wasn't a three-day weekend, it was Easter and many people were leaving D.C. early with large traffic jams as a result.

The nice thing was that because we were with four people in a car, we took the "H.O.V.". This is a dedicated lane for cars with more than two people in it. We didn't realize that immediately, and got stuck in traffic for half an hour, but then we were able to switch to the dedicated lane and that was very pleasant: seeing all cars standing still, and we're passing them quickly.

It still was a long drive because the HOV was only 40 miles long or so. We took a break half-way and we arrived in Williamsburg around 21:00 o'clock: five hours by car.

Here you can see what the difference is between the HOV lane and the regular traffic, going southwards from D.C. on the I95.