Today it was a very cold day.

The Sunday paper mentioned that it might snow today, and when we woke up I was a bit disappointed that the world wasn't covered in a nice white layer. I like to walk to my work, which takes between 20 and 30 minutes, and is usually nicely refreshing. I was looking forward to the walk, but the moment I stepped outside our apartment I changed my mind. It was extremely cold! The temperature was somewhere around -12 degrees Celcius, but most of all there was a very strong, icecold wind.

Even the short walk from the metro station to Starbucks, and then to my work, made me very cold. Tomorrow I'll bring my gloves and a hat.

In the last weeks I took a few pictures of Washington and Rosslyn at night.

I'm still learning what the best camera-settings are for night shots. The small picture of the Capitol that you can see here looks okay, but the quality of the picture is not good enough for a large picture.

The Mall.

Street in Rosslyn, VA. Compare with this day light picture.

Side walk closed. Rosslyn, VA.

Yesterday we had the Christmas party of my work.

The party was held in the Mariott hotel in Rosslyn, Virginia and we were on the top floor of the hotel. There we had a great view over the Potomac river and the city.

It was a fun evening and it was very nice to talk with colleagues in a non-work atmosphere and meet their partners. After the official party we went to a bar at Court House, near where we live. Steve, a colleague, gave us a ride (thanks!) so we had time to quickly go home before going to the bar. We had a great evening and talked with many people.

Today we had an easy day. In the late afternoon I made a short visit to the Museum of American History.

We just came back from the Christmas party of Sasha's work.

The party was in downtown D.C., where Sasha works.

Saturday evening we went to see a movie, Closer. It's a new movie that's been nominated for five golden globes. And with reason!

We really loved it: an intriguing story, great performance and fascinating dialogue. Two scenes I particularly enjoyed were the erotic computer chat-scene, and the break-up fight between Anna and her husband (brilliant).

Clive Owen, who has a marvellous role as Larry in the movie, performed the role of Dan in the orignal play the movie is based on.

Around 18:30 o'clock I went to Starbucks, a coffee shop near my work, to get drinks for me and a colleague. I remembered that it's pretty cold outside, so at the last moment I grapped my coat.

When I returned to our building the doors were locked. I forgot to bring my electronic building pass, that can be used to open the door in the evening, but luckily somebody else was just leaving and held the door open for me. I entered the elevator and pressed the button for our floor. However, just when I was one floor below mine, the elevator stopped, without opening, and went down again. Turns out: to operate the elevators in the evening you also need this personalized building pass that will let the elevator stop only on your own floor. Very secure.

The end result was that I went home, and that I drank my hot chocolade but my colleague spent the evening without his coffee. Oh well, at least I had my coat, with the keys of the apartment and my money in it.

We have internet at home!

This afternoon somebody from Comcast came and installed the TV decoder as well as the internet modem. The connection seems to be very good. I am currently listening to one of my favourite internet radio stations, and I watched a part of the Dutch newsbroadcast. The connection is has a theoretical maximum of 3Mbit/s, but as this is a cable connection it depends a lot on the usage of the people in this area. So far it's been very good.

It's great to be online from home; it's the same feeling as I had when DSL was installed in Haarlem, two years ago.

A nice things about Sunday mornings is that we have a lot of time for breakfast.

Important things on our table are the coffee, French or Dutch imported cheese, juice and fresh bread. American food is usually very good, but one thing that is hard to find is nice, fresh bread. In regular supermarkets they just don't have it! There is one special supermarket, called Whole Foods, that does have the right (European) bread close to us, so that's where we did shopping yesterday evening. American cheese is usually pretty good (I like the cheddar cheese), and next to that there's a large variety of European cheese to choose from. Including, of course, Dutch "Kaas Unie" cheese.

Today we are arranging a lot of small practical matters. One of the things we did was ordering internet and cable tv.

We had been thinking a lot about what exactly we wanted for TV. When we bought it two weeks ago, we also took an antenna. However, the reception in our apartment is pretty bad, and we exchanged it last Friday for a stronger one. Still -- the image and sound quality is very bad, there is simply no good signal in our apartment. So an antenna wasn't really an option.

The thing is: we hardly watch any TV. Since we moved here we've seen the news once, and twice we've been watching some entertainment. Cable TV is quite expensive (compared to cable in Holland), and we were wondering if it's worth it. We decided to take it anyway, partly because getting cable TV would also give us a discount on cable internet, which we certainly want.

The last weeks Comcast, the cable provider, has been sending us a lot of promotional offers and letters, asking us to become subscriber. Yesterday's offer was the "Complete Holiday Package" -- a 50% discount for 3 months on both internet and TV, as well as a waiver for the installation fee. I just called and ordered it, and they'll come and install it tomorrow afternoon.

The extra antenna that we have looks a bit like a Startrek device:

Sunday afternoon we went to a museum, the National Gallery of Art. Most of the large musea in Washington DC are located close to each other, near the Capitol and the White House. It's a beautiful place, and the weather Sunday was very nice.

We visited an exhibition on Gerard ter Borch. Rosa told us about this temporary exhibition about the Dutch painter. Ter Borch made quite some famous paintings, such as Signing of the Peace of Munster, and he inspired many other great names, such as Vermeer.

Entrance of the museum.

We asked at least three times if it was really okay to take a picture with flash until we dared to do this. I guess they have a protective element in the glass to prevent damage to the picture because of flash lights.

The picture on the background is a painting by Gerrit Berckheyde of the Grote Kerk in Haarlem; I used it on my website about a year ago.