I'm trying to be assertive, I'm making plans

Crazy great progress at work today.  It's like I know what I'm doing.  I got the whole data model for our project up and running.  In all, I think it took two days to customize.  Now I can move onto something else!  Meanwhile, I'm still lunchlighting (kind of like moonlighting, but over some pizza) in the product group and as our de-facto webmaster.  I formatted some pages with HTML today (woohoo.), and nearly had to Photoshop some stuff.  

Lunch was a Safe and Sound from Veggie Planet.  I just wasn't feeling up to an Unsafe, and that's the way it is.  It's the first time I've had a Safe and Sound since the first time I went there with GM and his wife.  I did, however, return to having coffee in the morning today, and I celebrated by getting my usual Small Coffee And A Lemon Scone at Dado.  C (or is your name spelled with a K?) seemed happy to see me - she's such a sweet girl.  Always a pleasure.  Before lunch, I walked out of the office with LG and took a stroll around Harvard Square.  He went to the bank at Cambridge Savings, and I walked around the Garage trying to figure out what to have for lunch.  I eventually circled all the way around, went up Brattle until it hit Church, walked back by the office, and ended up at VP.  

I stayed somewhat late at the office again.  6:30 PM or so.  I got there at 9:00 AM, and took the very short lunch described above.  At the end, it was just DM and I left in the office.  This is all, I think, in lead up to me leaving at 4:30 or so tomorrow to catch our flight to D.C.  

As I write this, my LiveJournal account has expired.  Literally.  They sent me an e-mail saying as much.  I guess it's that time.  Somehow I find it hard to write there.  There are lots of reasons why that might be, but I won't speculate, because I really can't tell.  

It's funny, because normally I write so that others will read it.  I don't know of anyone I've told about this blog, yet here I am.  Maybe I'm changing some.  Maybe my priorities have changed.  Maybe I'm just hoping someone will find it, or maybe I intend to pass a link around once I'm sure I'm going to keep writing here.  

On my way home tonight, I stopped at Whole Paycheck for some ingredients.  Daddy needed an omelet, and boy did he get one.  Dinner was a three egg omelet with broccoli, red onion, mushrooms, feta cheese, a bit of garlic, and a generous dash of Tony.  Accented with some buttered baguette and a Corona (with slice of lime!), it was delicious.  Next time, I think, I'll use a white or yellow onion.  Red just isn't quite right.   

At some point this evening, I should consider packing a few days of things.  Honestly, I could probably do that tomorrow morning (or after work) and be fine.  

Caught a cab, ran up a tab at 7th and Flower

Today I woke up late, and just didn't feel like getting out of bed.  My alarm was set for 6:30 AM.  The appointed time rolled around, the alarm did its thing, and I did mine, pushing "Accept" and rolling over in bed.  I accepted, just not what it thought.  At 8:05 AM or so, I sat up, stretched, and started getting ready.  I made it in by 9:30 AM or so, which is impressive (in one way or another) since I live a five minute T ride from the office.  

I continued working on my new Services project.  Am I supposed to talk about what it is?  I can't remember.  A lack of specification helps me remain vaguely anonymous, I suppose.  I think it's going to be a good time.  I'll be working on a much smaller team, which I'm not exactly looking forward to, but it should be a nice quick project.  

For lunch, M, J and I ordered Chinese from Yenching, the former and I went and picked it up.  Apparently they know him really well there; they brought us tea while we were waiting for our food (we got there early).   I got Spicy Tofu, which didn't taste spicy to me.  It was made with silken tofu, which never seems to hold flavor as well as the non-silken, more curd-like variety.  It was good anyway, so I'm pleased.  This seems to happen to me often these days - things that places claim are "spicy" really aren't so to my palate.  It seems I'm becoming immune.

After lunch, I decided to go get my headphones from home.  R sent me a link to a SeeqPod playlist she made full of Christmas songs.  Awesome.  I had to listen.  At 1:28 PM I left the office, determined to see how quickly I could get back home, get what I needed, and get back to the office.  Around 1:45 PM I got home, walked in the front door of the building (someone left it open), and... realized I didn't have my keys.  I left them in my bag, on my desk, in the office.  Swearing, laughing, and calling myself an idiot, I got back on the T and got back to the office by 1:55 PM or so.  Determined, at this point, to get what I wanted, I stayed a moment to make sure I had no meetings, and then ran back out of the office with my keys and got on the T again.  I finally made it back to the office at 2:26 PM.  Apparently, on an average trip, it takes me 58 minutes to make a round trip, provided I leave my keys behind once.

I stayed in the office until 6:45 PM or so, to make up for my mid-day errand.  I found out I have 13 vacation days left, which is absurd.  That means that, at the end of this week, I could leave the office and not return until 2008.  I get to carry over five of them until next year, which I'll do just so I don't leave my project completely in a lurch for the next three weeks (they'll only be in one for the two after next week).

At the gym today, they had reversed the mens and womens locker rooms.  Just for today.  "... What?" you say.  That's what I said at least.   Turns out that they were having problems with the sauna/showers in the womens' locker room, and it being that the vast majority of repair-persons are men, they deemed it prudent to make a switch for the day.  The women have nicer lockers, and an oddly shaped locker room (it's not rectangular, but sorta curved on one end).  Wacky.

Just open fire when you hit the shore

Today I was reassigned out of our Product group and back into Services. "Back into" is really an odd description of the move, as I was never really there to begin with. There's a possibility that I may stay in Product - I don't know, as both the head of the Product group and the head of the Services group are out of the office - and was only notified of this by the lead architect on the project, as he had something he needed me to do. Odd.

Lunch was a slice of pizza from Pinocchio's. Good, as always, though it was chilly enough outside that it was cold by the time I got it back to the office. I didn't really feel like eating much more than that. After work, we played a round of Ricochet Robots, which I just barely won. Having a brain that's good at spacial relationships doesn't do you much good when you're playing against a bunch of people who're built the same way, perhaps even more acutely.

Dinner? Why, the three C's, of course. Cheese, crackers, and carrots. What more do you need? I wasn't particularly hungry anyway. Ever since I was sick, I've been having big meals to make up for it. (I think there were several days where all I had was some liquid and a piece of bread.)

I listened to Tom Waits all morning just because it was that sort of day. Mellow, and sort of messed up. On the way home, I listened to most of an album of Explosions in the Sky. I couldn't figure out what was wrong for the longest time - then I realized that my footfalls weren't matching up with the music at all. I was wearing boots, and so every time I put my foot down it sounded like a bass drum in my ears. When I finally got the timing down the album improved dramatically as a snowy, cold soundtrack to the walk home.

Didn't know it was a devil town

We were planning on going to a showing of the first episode of Twin Peaks at the Brattle Theater tonight.  It was at 9:00 PM.  I was informed sometime in the afternoon that it was actually at 9:45 PM.  Everyone else decided to go anyway, I decided that was a tad too late for me on a night like this, when I expect to be in bed by 10:30 PM so I can hit the gym in the morning.  I ended up sticking around at work until 8:00 PM, working on some stuff that I couldn't do during company time because it's not high enough priority.  I needed to make consistent the portraits of our executive board that go on our website.  Right down, they're all from different photo shoots, so they have different lighting and different background colors.  I decided to fix the damn things and color correct them in Photoshop so that they'd all be identical.  Just the sort of work I love doing, for some reason.  It's more like fun than work, somehow.  

At 8:00 PM, J gave me a call and said that he, K, and his older sister just got to Harvard Square and were wandering around, looking for something to do to kill time.  They were going to go to the Starbucks on Church Street.  I told them to hit Dado instead.  The dude with his rasta-hat was there.  He undercharged me for a lemon scone: $1.18 instead of $2.25.  I even called him on it and said, "I thought those were more than that."  He replied, slowly, "... you don't want it?"  I let him ring it up and enjoyed it.  J ordered a hot chocolate.  It looked delicious.  

After a while, J's younger sister also showed up, and one of his older sister's friends.  We went to Charlie's Kitchen, because the latter was hungry.  I was apprehensive about the place, as I'd never been there before, and the only thing I'd ever heard about it was that The Hair Lady went there for breakfast sometime in the morning.  Usually during that time you want to get out of the place, as it apparently starts to smell.  I enunciated my apprehension, and J's older sister said, "What... because of all the hipsters?"  I was confused.  Needless to say, when we went inside I understood.  The place was full of pseudo-indie kids and people with dark glasses.  They were playing Radiohead's In Rainbows when we walked in, and the album looped twice.  The first song the juke-box played was The White Stripes' The Hardest Button To Button.  Tom Waits featured prominently in the track list thereafter.  J ordered waffle fries and I ate $1.00 worth.  J's older sister had brought a tupperware of vegetarian stir fry she made for their younger sister.  I tried some - it was great.  Sauce made with crushed red pepper, chunky peanut butter, and some other stuff I can't remember.  

After Charlie's, we left to go back to the Brattle Theater at 9:30 PM or so.  I took my leave of everyone at the door, though I don't think they realized I was going, and everyone but J and K had already gone inside by the time I waved.  I walked back to the T in the center of the Square, and the uber-modern turnstiles refused to read my Charlie Card the first two times.  When I got on the train, the doors behind me opened and closed roughly six times over the next couple minutes before the train finally pulled away.  

Brush the snow from your hair

Tonight I went out for a walk in the snow.  I took the T to Harvard Sq. and walked around with all the other dark coated, scarved people.  Cambridge has put up all its Christmas lights (it did the Tuesday before Thanksgiving), and so everything was lit up like a holiday.  On my way in, it was snowing enough that I was thoroughly dusted by the time I stomped my boots in The Garage.  I tried to go to Veggie Planet - they were having some private function for Club Passim, and were only accepting orders for take out.  Eating outside wasn't really on the menu, so I tromped across the Square and sat down in Le's with its 95% Asian crowd.  The waitress made me feel out of place, and it was glorious.  I ordered summer rolls, Pho Chay, and tea and loved every bite and sip, though afterwards I felt rather full.  As I sat there, I re-read some of the lines I've written in my notebook.  The good ones are still good, the bad ones are still bad.  It's nice to see that hasn't changed; too often everything melds back towards mediocrity when aged.  After dinner I walked around the Square a few times, trying to decide if I really wanted coffee.  If I could have found someplace to buy some, I may have had something to keep my hands toasty on the walk home.  Peets was closed.  Dado was closed.  Dado on Mass Ave. closes at 6:00 PM every night, apparently.  The Starbucks on Church I habitually ignore.  I walked home back down Massachusetts Avenue feeling the cold on my face, and there was practically no one out.  A car would pass occasionally, driving five to ten miles per hour slower than usual, though whatever snow had fallen on the roads had already been turned to liquid.  

Earlier today I sang along to Bright Eyes, The Decemberists, Feist, Radiohead, Silversun Pickups, Spoon, The Strokes, and Voxtrot while I did laundry and cleaned my apartment.  The place looks better.  It's funny how when you move into a space, some things take up residence in inconvenient places.  I took the opportunity to move my CDs across the apartment and to organize the mess that is the cable modem/router and their various cords.  Both make more sense now.  As usual, my electric guitar continues to migrate around the apartment.  

This morning I shaved my beard, such as it was.  Side burns and soul patch have stayed.  To me, I look about ten years younger.  So continues the ever-changing facial hair/hair styles of The Joy Boys.  

Toxic and timeless

You write prose once and then it's done.

You write a song and you can sing it over and over forever; each time it's different and new.

Why doesn't everyone just sing?

Why do I know how to write sentences, but I don't know how to compose verse?

I think I quite grandly screwed up when I was learning my particular skill set.

My brother went to school and became an artist. I went to school and learned to be an architect of bits. When we were young, we both liked computers, we both liked to draw. As he became a teenager, the drawing won out; for me, well, you can guess. Could it have gone the other way? I think it could. It has a lot to do with our upbringing.

It's late, and I can't articulate the differences between my brother and me. I spend a lot of time thinking about it, though. Sometimes I wish I were more like him; I wonder if he ever thinks that about me.

Together we're formidable. With our father, we're unstoppable. With our mother, we're solid as a mountain.

I suppose that makes me lucky.

But we're all planning to meet

I looked at the government's 'travel' website today and learned what it would take to get a US passport.

Really, it's not so bad. I could do it tomorrow.

I see the next year or so going like this:

1. May 15 - Talk to my boss about my career path with respect to our company. More specifically, what I'm going to be doing there in the future, and how much I'm going to be paid to do it. Shortly I won't be able to afford to maintain my current standard of living on my present salary because...

2. September 1 - Move into an apartment of my own in Cambridge. I've decided I need to live by myself; it's just something I need to do at this point. I've been reliant on having other people around for so long, the next step is honestly to learn to rely on myself more.

3. Sometime in 2008: Well... I'm still figuring that out, but I'm starting to believe that the best thing for me to do at this point in my life would be to try out some new places. And I don't mean Cambridge vs. Brighton.

We'll see.