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.