It's my birthday!

I just got some cakes ("vlaaien") for my collegue's here at Chess, we'll have coffee and cake soon. I allowed myself a small birthday present: a wonderful cup of espresso.

I received a lot of e-mails and cards already, which gives a nice feeling. Tonight there'll be a party, I'm looking forward to that.

Mieke and I celebrated our birthdays together in Middenmeer. She had a birthday last Friday and my birthday is tomorrow.

I had a great day! There were a lot of guests and some very nice presents. One of the things I liked a lot was a shower-radio, a present from Ettie and Gerben. Radio in the shower... that's feels rich.

Yesterday evening we did indeed play Steden & Ridders. Ettie, Mieke and I all won a game.

Tomorrow will be my real birthday; I've invited a few people to celebrate in the evening.

Today I experimented a bit with the video-recording of my new camera. It's really nice to make small motion pictures. The resulting files are
unfortunately too big to put online.

I had dinner with Daniel yesterday, which was nice. In the morning I did a lot of small things and I went into the city for a while. Monday I'll celebrate my birthday, so I did some shopping.

I'll leave to my parents in a while. I'm looking forward to the train journey: The Economist has a special issue on America that I'll read in the train.

I try not to go there too often, but it's a difficult temptation: the coffee-to-go shop in Haarlem. I like the coffee here at Chess a lot, but the fresh espresso in Coffee To Go is extremely delicious. Today I bought a customer card that gives me a 10% discount.

The people working in the shop are often involved in coffee- and espresso making contests; on their website there's a short manual on making espresso's.

Today Mieke has a birthday! As always there will be nice festivities at her school with the children.

Congratulations mam! We'll celebrate our birthdays this weekend together, perhaps we can even play a game Steden & Ridders...

Tonight and yesterday night were rather relaxing compared with the last few days. Yesterday I had dinner at home for the first time in a week. I liked it very much to see a lot of people and I had a really good time, but some time for myself is nice too.

I started reading a new book, "Don't Know Much About History": very good.

I just received my confirmation as member of the IEEE and the IEEE Computer Society. The IEEE is an international engineering association, with an emphasis of computer science and engineering. It's useful to be a member, and it comes with a interesting magazine.

I had dinner in Leiden, with Rob and Kirsten in their new house.

They live in a very peaceful neighborhood in Leiden, and they are (also) looking out to a real Dutch windmill from their window. I had real fun with the cats; there was a little black one of only a few weeks old.

In the last few days I have been visiting three friends' new houses, in three different cities.

Tonight I visited Ankie and Joost in Schiedam. They have a cosy place really close to the train station, I hadn't seen it before.

They showed me the movies that they had made for their university, made in Premiere, Maya and similar tools. Quite interesting!