Tonight I had dinner with Klaas, Petra and Ron. I met them online through AllesAmerika.com and it was great to finally meet them in real life.

Klaas, "Blips" on this website, lives in Minnesota but was in Durham for business so the four of us decided to meet up and we had a very nice evening. Ron and Petra moved from the Netherlands to North Carolina about two years ago.

When I arrived in the restaurant the waiter came and asked me if I'm "with a party of 3". I said yes and he said he had recognized my accent so he brought me to the right table.

It's been a while since I had spoken with Dutch people face-to-face and we had a lot of experiences and stories to share.

It was great to meet you all.

Time for some down time this weekend after a nice but busy week, with performance reviews and other things.

Yesterday morning I ran some errants in the morning, and went for a walk in Umstead Park afterwards. It wasn't as cold as last week and it was great to be outdoors.

I had lunch sitting on a rock overlooking the trail and a creek in the sun.

We saw Office Space, the movie, for the first time in years. Last time we saw it we were living in the Netherlands, when I was not so familiar with a typical U.S. office environment. It was even better this time, with so many famous quotes and scenes ("what is WRONG with you people?!").