Illustrator.

Tonight Jason taught me how to use Illustrator.  This, really, I think is the most important, wonderful thing that's happened to me this year.  And it's only February.  I don't think anything in the next ten months will be able to top this.

I'm currently converting my crappy bitmap maps over to be wonderful, infinite resolution vectors.

Oh, it's on.

In other news, I was finally able to make it over to NEC to pay for this year's classes.  That, and get a new sticker on my ID.  Fiiiinally.  I feel like a real student again, with a right to be there!  Woo!  I took a few hours out of the middle of my day (1:30 PM to 3:30 PM) and got a few things done.  First, I took the Red and Green lines over to Copley to The Only TDBank Branch In Boston to deposit some checks.  Then, I attempted to get back on the T to head out to Symphony, only to realize I was trying to get on the T going the wrong direction (Inbound).  I'm so used to getting on the T on the Library side that I didn't even think about it.  After crossing the street twice, I made my way out to Symphony to pay for my classes and lessons, as mentioned.  The gentleman at the office was friendly about it (even though I'm like 6 months late).  Thanks, dude!  You're excellent.

The #1 bus got me from Symphony back to Harvard Sq., where I picked up some Veggie Planet (Vegan Peanut Curry) for a late, late lunch.  It was delicious, though a bit cold by the time I got it back to the office.  The rest of the day proceeded without too many incidents, though I've decided I hate Flex stylesheets.  Either that or I hate the component I was trying to apply a style to, because I couldn't get it to take no matter what I did.  I even employed our super special style-applying class/magic wand, and it didn't work.  Geeze.

Ultimately, dinner was salad (from the salad bar at Shaws!) and a bit of sour dough, swiss, and classic, classic hummus.  Delicious.

I've spent the last hour and a half drawing shapes in Illustrator.  This is so, so cool.  I'm super excited.  My hand hurts from mousing so much.  They'll be wonderful!  Wonderful!  Oh, yes.

Oh, lets see.  I was at work until around 7:30 or so.  Once I left, I took the T over to Harvard Sq. and sat in Dado for 30 minutes drinking some Dragon Well, listening to Kind of Blue.  It was pleasant.  After my half hour (around 8:30 PM), I walked home up Mass. Ave., stopping at Gourmet Express for some cereal, trail mix, and bread.  (Watch out, now.)  It wasn't a bad walk.  Upon arriving home, I gave my parents a call.  Sounds like Dad's job is going well - he seems to be enjoying it.  He's working at Thomson Reuters - they're apparently writing software for looking up patents and stuff.  I only got some of the details.  It sounds like a good group, though, in some old factory buildings in New Haven.  He says he likes the commute and the people are nice.

The annual Ocean Grove trip is starting to be scheduled.  I can't believe it's already time to think about that again - it's only February!  Looks like we're all likely to descend on OG in mid July.  ... Now that I think about it, I can't wait.  I love going there with everybody - it's always so pleasant.  Sitting on the beach, boarding in the waves, running along the water, eating ice cream, relaxing in the cool, pleasant evenings.  It's such an idyllic place.  It'll be spectacular.

Currently listening to Massive Attack.  Naun tells me they have a new album.  Perhaps I should do something about that.

A long fuzzy day

"Fuzzy" seems the most accurate way to describe the state of my brain today.

I was fuzzy on details, fuzzy on my ability to walk, fuzzy on what words to use, fuzzy on what I was doing at any given time, and fuzzy on what I needed to do to fix any of the above varieties of fuzziness.

But at least I had curry tofu for lunch, and people were nice.  Thanks for the scone, Mark!

I cancelled my guitar lesson today because of said fuzz.  Instead I went home and dealt with Media Temple for a while.  Ninety percent of this time consisted of meandering around an installation of Drupal, getting to know it.  The other ten percent consisted of trying to clean said install off my server once I decided I wanted to move it.  Bastages.  Ah, well, I'll fix it later.

I should really go to sleep.  My throat doesn't even really hurt that much at the moment, though I don't appreciate all the sniffing.

Grr, sniffing.

Is this making any sense?  I tried to write a bit today, didn't get too far.  I need to spend some time on character backstory so I can understand where these people are coming from.  Without that, it's pretty difficult to write about where they're going.

Umm.  I'm not really sure anything else happened.

Oh!  I went to the grocery store and picked up a few things.  Go me!  If I can remember to do that once a week or so, I might actually have things to eat in the house.  Regardless, I still ate cheese, crackers, and hummus for dinner.  Sigh.

Ah well.  Wow, sleep time.

Holy shit, I forgot Wednesday!

Holy crap!  I forgot to write on Wednesday!  God damn!  That's the first day all year.  I guess I have an excuse - I'm sick.  Did I not mention that Wednesday?  I guess not!  Gah!  That's fine, I'll backdate this.  But just for posterity, this was written at 12:04 AM on Friday, right after the previous post for Thursday.

Wednesday was a mess.  I stayed home from work and worked about a half day - the other half of it I slept, trying not to feel so messed up.  We expected it to snow all day long, and it never really did.  We got a dusting.  I ordered some vegetables (pho and curry) from Le's in the evening cause there was no way I was going to walk to the store, and silly me ran out of food.  I barely remember what I did in the evening.  It must not have been terribly interesting.  I think it involved watching the Daily Show.  I also watched the "Vice Guide to North Korea," which was incredible.  What a scary, freaky place.

I don't think I really accomplished much else on Wednesday.  It was a weird, backwards day, which is probably why I completely forgot to write.  I got back into bed at 10:00 PM or so and read Knife of Dreams until about 11:30 PM, then went to sleep.  It never even crossed my mind that I should write down how useless I was for the day!

There, how's that?  Oh, and I drank an entire liter of orange juice, I think.  Booyah.

Shiny teefs

Today was another whirlwind.

Honestly, I'm not even sure what I did today at work.  A million meetings.  Some planning.  A lot of talking (coordinating) with people.  At least I had Indian for lunch (brought from home, procured from India Castle yesterday night).

I left work at 4:50 or so, as I needed to get across Cambridge to the dentist to have a filling from when I was a kid redone.  Guess it's held up pretty well, but was starting to get old.  So now I have a new, non-metal, more-or-less invisible filling.  Basically looks like normal tooth.  Cool beans.  Yay, modern dental technology!  The receptionist at the office was cute - I was the only one there (she was, in fact, startled when I walked in), and we had a lovely little chat, brief as it was.  And she had great glasses.

I walked myself back to Harvard Square after my appointment, which was all of half an hour, to get a gift for Justin's birthday.  It being that there's a distinct possibility that he might read this at some point, if he happens to come across it, I won't mention what that was.  Unfortunately, when it came time to head over to Justin and Ali's apartment for birthday parting and LOST, I completely forgot the gift on my dresser.  Argh!  I'll just have to give it to him next week... which means I'll probably be heading back for LOST next week.  Hrm.

Oh, and I opened my new microphone today.  It's all shiny and a'sparkly.  It arrived at work yesterday, and I was in such a rush that I just left it on my desk in its Amazon box.  It amazes me the amount of technical knowledge that emerges when people in that office see musical equipment.  I opened it, and the next thing I know Mark and Mark are waxing knowledgeably on all sorts of mics and things.  I know nothing!  Nothing!  I almost felt silly.

Justin and Ali's was fun.  We had snacks and cake with strawberries and whipped cream (home made).  It was spectacular.  Ria and I had fun taking pictures of pictures of pictures, etc.  Another busy, successful day.

The rest of the world's like a little bitty spot

Listening to fuckin' Loretta Lynn.

Thank goodness.

Today has been long.  It started pretty well, I think.  I woke up promptly at 7:00 AM.  I spent some time before noon preparing some slides for a "brown bag" talk I was giving today.  I think it went well - it's difficult to tell what people think.  There weren't too many confused faces at the end, so I'll take that as a sign that I at least did a reasonable job of explaining.  I hope.  After the talk, it seemed like everything proceeded to fall apart for the rest of the day.

I don't know what the deal was, but everybody seemed bitchy today.  People were trading barbs in e-mail, which never happens.  Maybe bitchy isn't the right word, but they were at least pissed off.  I don't know - I can just hope I don't have anything to do with it.

I left work around 5:30 PM and headed over to class.  Got there a few minutes late, unfortunately, but he hadn't really started anyway.  Class, as opposed to work, seemed to go pretty well all the way through.  Theory was good, and I was able to hear properly in Ear Training, for the most part.

I got home around 9:30 PM and immediately ordered some Indian from India Castle.

It got here about 15 minutes ago, somehow.  The delivery guy actually called me to apologize and say that he was a few minutes away in Harvard Square.  Ultimately, I don't mind.  Shit happens; I'm sure he wasn't thrilled to be late either.  It doesn't do anyone any good for me to get all pissy about it.

Ahh, High On A Mountain Top.  Yay!

That's a better place than most to stop.

How much is a 2000 Dodge Stratus with 42k miles worth?

Today began at 10:30 AM when my alarm went off.

By 11:00 AM, I was outdoors, bedecked in winter running attire, awaiting the arrival of Ms. Julia for our non-regularly scheduled Sunday morning run.  We made it down to the river (via Mass. Ave.), crossed the foot bridge, and came back on JFK.  It was, all told, a pretty short run.  I felt sorta crappy, given my very late and inebriated night approximately 7-8 hours before.  Sorry for that, Jules!  I'll do better next time.

After our run, which ended with us walking up Mass. Ave. again, we stopped into Simon's Cafe (I think that's what it's called?) on the way to Porter and procured some coffee and some blueberry scones.  The coffee was, primarily, a french roast.  Except that they ran out half way through one of the cups - one of us had half house, half french, though we couldn't say which.  It might have been me.  Regardless, both scone and coffee were tasty.  We walked back up the street and hung around in my living room for a bit, sconin' it up, and she left around 12:30 or so.

Following that, I sat myself down to try to get a few things done, and mostly accomplished nothing at all.  I did manage to plan a bit for our Ars game tonight, which was good.  Otherwise, I was feeling really groggy and sleepy, so by around 2:00 PM or so I crawled back into bed (hoodie and all) and went back to sleep until around 4:00 PM.  YEAH for mid-Sunday naps!

From 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM I bummed around for a bit, before heading over to Jason's place to pick him up. We had a lovely little drive out to Sudbury in my creaking car, and a good night of gaming.  I got to play Jason's "Bicycle" Magic deck - killed two players simultaneously.  It's named "Bicycle" because it's a cycling deck, and it kills two people at once, thus the "bi".  Not bad.  It's a one trick pony, though, so we put it away after it's one win.

Now, I'm going to look up the value of my car on a blue book, because in the back of my mind I'm thinking about selling it, and then I'm going to go to sleep.

Oh, yeah, and I hear that Super Bowl stuff happened tonight.  Good on you, Saints!

I don't remember the name of the song

Today was excellent.  Disclaimer: I am very drunk.

First, I started out by waking up at 11:00 AM.  That's how a day starts good.

Then, by 1:00 PM, I was hanging out in Dado with my roommate Matt.  We chilled for a while, and eventually he went home, I switched to the "bar" and sat around and wrote for a few hours.  Awesome.  At 5:15 or so I returned home and plotted with Mr. Eric F. how the night should go.  It was his birthday!  He was planning to head to Atwood's Bar with some friends.  I wandered over to his place at 6:20 or so, we hung out, drank a beer, and then his friend Matt picked us up and we went to Atwood's.  Good food - I had a veggie burger and fries.

The evening started with this spectacular olde time band, then proceeded with a blues sorta  band.  Both were great.  I find myself staring at guitarists' and bassists' fingers while they're playing, trying to get a feel for what they're doing.  I'm feeling very meta when I listen to live music, lately.  I'm always trying to figure out what's going on.

After Atwood's, we went to the Phoenix Landing in Central.  It was a great time.  Matt (not my roommate - Eric's friend) and Gwen both had ID cards for MTV, and we skipped the line.  Matt is a total badass - awesome.  I was glad to buy him a beer, even if it was a Bud light.

We stayed at the Landing until around 1:45 dancing.  It was a great night  - wonderful people.  Eric has a great crew.

I have all sorts of reflections on social interactions in club/bar/music venue scenes.  They'll probably be lost in the ether.  Regardless, I had a really, really great time tonight.  Thanks, Eric, for inviting me out.