Tomorrow, October 10, the Federation of the Netherlands Antilles will cease to exist.

The islands of Sint Maarten and Curaçao, following the political path of Aruba in 1986, will become constituent states within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Bonaire, Saba, and Sint Eustatius, will become special municipalities of the Netherlands.

Curaçao and St Maarten will become fully self-governing, except in matters of defense, foreign policy, and judicial and financial affairs, which will remain the responsibility of the Dutch government. There will be specific exceptions for the islands, such as the phasing in of the U.S. Dollar as the official currency come January 2011 instead of the euro, and the islands can take a different standpoint on issues like abortion, euthanasia and gay marriage.

Dutch Prince Willem-Alexander and his wife, Princess Máxima, are on Curaçao to attend the ceremonies around the transition.

The weather is wonderful this weekend; it's sunny and 82 degrees today.

After I went for a haircut I read my French book in the Eno River Park. My hair is short again, I enjoyed having it longer for about a year but it's been enough.

The book that I'm reading is L'Étranger by Albert Camus. It's the right level of difficulty but I can only read a few pages at the time because it's still tiring to read in French.

We're going for a walk soon.

We had a good and productive weekend. Yesterday we went for a walk near Falls Lake, a little north of Durham. We had never been there before and it was beautiful, but we stopped early because of a sign that warned that we were now entering a hunting area. "Reflecting clothes are recommended." Hunting season has recently started. Until October 1st hunting was limited to the use of bow-and-arrow, now other weapons may be used as well.

We left and walked the safe and enjoyable Al Buehler trail instead.

Today I visited the International Festival in Raleigh to take pictures for the other website. In the afternoon we went for a walk together, the Al Buehler trail again. We also reorganized the 2nd bedroom/office and finally put away the luggage and boxes from New Jersey and Washington, DC. Now we have a usable office again.

It's one thing to have poisonous plants and snakes...

...quite another to walk in a gameland public hunting area in hunting season.