Inspired by a surprise discovery in San Diego during our vacation we visited the North Carolina Museum of Art today.

The museum's collection is wide in scope, and it's a pretty large museum. We visited the European Collection, which includes a nice selection of Dutch and Flemish art from the 16th and 17th century. We couldn't find the painting of the Grote Markt in Haarlem by Berckheyde, but there were a couple of empty places on the walls so it may be on loan.

One of the highlights for me was a painting by Ruisdael, Wooded Landscape with Waterfall. There was also a smaller painting with a traditional Dutch winter landscape that I liked, with people skating on a frozen river.

We left work early today, with Tropical Storm Hanna approaching.

The storm is expected to become a weak hurricane tonight before it makes landfall between South and North Carolina. We won't have much problems here in Durham, but there'll be a lot of rain and obviously a lot of wind.

So far it's quiet. It started drizzling around 3.00 pm and raining around 7.00 pm, but no real storm yet.

Since we came back from California it's been politics around the clock.

I watched quite a bit of it: the Democratic convention last week, Mr. McCain's announcement for a running mate and the following review of that surprising choice in the weekend, and this week the Republican convention.

This election year has been incredible so far. So many surprises, so many debates, so much going on. For many years I've enjoyed following the US elections (in 2004 watching the debates online, and watching the election results with friends). It's great to be in the USA and to experience this amazing election cycle from close.

We spent a great day in the San Diego Zoo two weeks ago.

The Zoo is beautiful and very large. There's a huge variety of animals and plants; the grounds are lush and green. It was the first time we saw koala's in real live.

Elephant getting his or her nails done.

The Zoo is very large. On our way back we took a cable car from the Polar Bear's area back to the main entrance.