Yesterday morning Sasha left for Bulgaria. She successfully completed her second semester with an exam on Sunday, her 6th this year.

I'm leaving for Bulgaria this Friday. My flight will be through Chicago and Germany. The weather here in North Carolina is excellent, but on the news this morning they mentioned snow in Chicago. If all goes well, I'll arrive in Sofia Saturday afternoon.

The weather has been amazing the last couple of days. Yesterday the temperature reached 75 degrees Fahrenheit (24 degrees Celcius) -- incredible for December.

I had lunch outside yesterday, and on Sunday I sat with my laptop on the balcony, next to the Christmas lights.

Yesterday evening we went to the mall for some final preparations: Sasha is leaving today to Bulgaria. We'll spend the holidays there this year; I'm leaving in a couple of days.

This morning I went to wrap gifts for the "Wrapping Hopes and Dreams" event organized for children in the Methodist Children's Home. I heard about it the Sunny 939 radio station. They play 100% Christmas music these weeks and I listen to them every day in the car.

The event was in the Millenium hotel, which is near us. I walked to there in the morning, and arrived around 9.30 am. There was a large pile of donated presents that needed to be wrapped, fresh coffee and a band playing Christmas music.

Things went smoothly, and because there was such a large group of people we were done wrapping all presents at 10.15 am, a lot earlier than expected.

The pile with wrapped presents.

I did some technical work on the website tonight. Next to the existing RSS feed for articles, I've created a RSS feed that displays the 10 most recent comments.

A few weeks ago I installed Internet Explorer 7, and it has good RSS support built-in.

For the technically inclined: the RSS feed for comments.

Tuesday evening we had the holiday party of my work.

The party was in a restaurant in Raleigh. It was a bit of an adventure to get there, but we made it on time for the happy hour. Later we had a dinner.

We had met some of my colleagues partners on my birthday but the group was larger this time and it was great to meet everybody. It's a very nice group of people.

Amazingly, Mrs. Verdonk (Immigration Minister of the Netherlands) managed to provoke yet another crisis in Dutch politics. Her questionable behavior in the case Ayaan Hirshi Ali brought down the ruling Cabinet a few months ago, and forced new elections in November. Today she ignored a vote of no confidence by parliament, a first in the constitutional history of the Netherlands.

Her party did -deservedly- rather bad at the recent elections and she is now a 'lame duck' minister, taking care of business while a new government is being formed. This can take a few months, as in the Netherlands governments are created by forming a coalition of two or three political parties.

The newly elected parliament asked Mrs. Verdonk's to postpone the extradition of a group of 26,000 asylum seekers to allow the new cabinet to decide on them. She refused, even after two formal requests by parliament and as a result the parliament issued a vote of no-confidence. In normal situations that would be sufficient to force a minister to resign.

However, her political party the VVD announced that it would retract support for the entire government if she was forced to leave. This would have left a strange void, as the cabinet strictly speaking already had resigned. As NRC, a Dutch newspaper put it: "it's frightening that the situation is more tough than the politicians are who dealing with it".

Mr. Balkenende, who has been leading a series of disastrous cabinets, was apparently in favor of Mrs. Verdonk resigning but at the end she stayed on as member of the Cabinet. She did have to give up her position as Immigration Minister, and the deportations will be temporarily halted.

The unrest in the VVD party, the Dutch free-market conservatives, must be considerable. It's interesting that the support Mrs. Verdonk received today from the party's number 1 came after she tried to unsettle him from his position a few weeks ago when she had received more votes than he did in the general elections.

All in all, this affair leaves a bitter taste for many people, not in the least of course by the asylum seekers, some of which have been in legal procedures for over 10 years. It will not make it any easier to form a new government either.

This weekend I baked bread again, and it worked out well.

I changed the recipe a bit: less sugar, slightly more salt and less butter. The recipe still calls for 2 tablespoons of margarine, which is a bit too much so next time I'll try to reduce that again.

Per your request, here is the recipe (it makes 2 loafs).

First, create a flour mixture. Combine the following ingredients.

• 2 cups of flour
• 2 table spoons of sugar
• 3 teaspoons of salt
• 2 envelopes Fleischmann RapidRise Yeast

Notice the use of RapidRise Yeast -- this type of yeast should not be dissolved in water, unlike traditional yeast. Then, warm the following:

• 1,5 cups of water
• 0,5 cup of milk
• 2 tablespoons of margarine

Stir the heated liquid into flour mixture. The liquid should be warm, but not hot -- certainly not boiling. Mix it through the flour mixture for 2 minutes. Continuously add 3 to 4 more cups of flour until you get nice soft dough. The dough should be slightly sticky, but not too sticky. Knead for about 10 minutes. Cover, let rest for 10 minutes.

Then, divide the dough in two and place in greased loaf pans. Cover the loaf pans with a cloth and let the loafs rise in warm place for 45 to 60 minutes. Brush the loafs with egg yoke for a nice crispy crust, and bake for 25 to 30 minutes at 400°F. Don't forget to cool the loafs on a wire rack so the bottom doesn't get to soggy (the first time I baked the bread I didn't have a rack -- chopsticks make a fine improvised rack).

A second optical illusion:

• Relax and concentrate on the 4 small dots in the middle of the picture for about 30 to 40 seconds
• Then, take a look at wall near you (any smooth, single coloured surface)
• Start blinking your eyes a few times and wait...
• What do you see?

An optical illusion (through w8in.com):

• Relax and concentrate on the 4 small dots in the middle of the picture for about 30 to 40 seconds
• Then, take a look at wall near you (any smooth, single coloured surface)
• Start blinking your eyes a few times and wait...
• What do you see?