Spectacular.

The "A Bit Of Grass-Stain Does Not A Ruined Pair Of Jeans Make" tour is the best name for a tour ever.  Thank you, The Decemberists, for once again proving you are awesome.

Low Key Lyesmith

I recently got two new (to me) Decemberists albums: Her Majesty and The Hazards of Love.  I've been listening to the latter quite a bit the past few days, and it's quite lovely.  They have such a wonderful, beautiful sound.  Shara Worden, who makes an appearance on some of the songs, has this beautiful, rich, luxurious voice.  At first I thought, somehow, that Fiona Apple was singing on some of the tracks, as she has sort of a similar, smoky sound.  Gorgeous.  I'm currently getting into Her Majesty at the moment - I've only heard a few tracks.  It's clearly an album by a less experienced band; simpler and lighter.  So far so good, though.

Today Jason and I went to a Magic prerelease out at the Knights of Columbus hall in Charlestown.  We didn't actually register for any flights - we just got there wicked early and perused the cheap rares that one of the vendors was hocking.  That's all we really go to these things for, it seems: cards for casual.  Neither of us are tournament players - we just don't care.  I ended up picking up approximately 100 cards on the cheap.  Rockin'.

After that, we went back to his place, bummed around, watched a few movies, played cards, and had calzones delivered from Thyago's pizza in Belmont.  This, I think, is a suitably relaxing Saturday.  Now I just need to plan something for us to do at our Ars game tomorrow.  I seem to be in charge of providing something for that the next few weeks.  I think Loki will make an appearance.

Characters, characters, mulling, and (un)mulled wine.

There were several events of note today:

One, I went to Characters in Kendall Square for the first time.  Daniel, Erik, and Tim were in attendance.  It seems like a nice enough place - very after-work-drinks oriented, it seems.  They have free popcorn.  That I can get behind.  I was sorta feeling crappy because of a headache, so I didn't really have a drink or anything, but it was good to see Tim again.  We all stood around and shot ye olde shit for a while.  Good times.

After leaving Characters, not really feeling up to going to the gym, I headed over to Dado in Harvard Square instead.  I sent Julia a text to see if she wanted to join me after her trip to the gym - turns out she was on her way to Harvard Square anyway to see a store about some textbooks.  So we hung out, had green tea (Dragon Well!), a bit of a scone, and I had (prior to her arrival) a delicious sesame bagel sandwich with roasted red pepper hummus, swiss, greens, tomato, cucumber, and red onion.  Awesome.

When Dado closed at 8:00 PM, I walked her home rather than take the T, then walked myself up through the zig-zagging neighborhoods of West Cambridge back home.  By the time I got there, both my feet and hands were thoroughly cold.  What a freezing night!  My lovely Weather.com iPhone app tells me that it's currently... 12 degrees!  Holy crap!  Less than I expected!

Crazy.

As is evidenced by my last post, I've spent the rest of my evening mulling over some writing in one form or another.  I'm also mulling over some wine, which is, however, not mulled itself.  It's a bottle of 2006 Merlot from Ali, which she gifted me for Christmas.  Thanks, Ali!  It's delicious, and as one might expect, it's making me an excellently introspective, happy, slightly-more-articulate lush for the evening.

Woo!

Time Capsules

I have been writing about the same set of characters since I was approximately thirteen years old.  From the age when I first started reading fantasy novels and playing role playing games, I've been enthralled by the idea of detailed, deep imaginary worlds.

It is the case, unfortunately, that in recent years, I seem to have fallen off the literary wagon (if such scribblings could be considered literature), in that these people inhabiting my head have received little of my attention.

As has been noted here, I recently picked up a story that I started a number of years ago.  Perhaps 2004 or so, I can't be sure.  I don't have records of when I started it.  It might be as early as 2002, in some form or another.  Maybe I could find out when I started it if I dug through my old LiveJournal - that's a possibility.

But anyway, I picked this story up again.  It's approximately thirty to forty pages at the moment.  It currently involves, either through direct exposure in writing or implication of plot, around six or seven of these people.

Occasionally I re-read some other, unrelated snippet of story that I found on my hard drive and realize that it fits in this story somewhere.  I just did.

I was just reading through a several page description of some woman - when I started reading I didn't know who it was - sitting in a bar with her feet propped up on the table, writing out a list of pseudo-Latin sounding names: Bellarus, Pandema, Iuridicus, Rheis, Hoares.  She leaves the bar and wanders down the street to an acquaintance's, walks in past his servant, and finds him in his sitting room, entertaining some other woman.

That's all there is to it.  But until I got to the last two sentences describing the second woman, I didn't realize that they are two of the my central characters.  I didn't know who the first was until I found her in the company of the second.

Little things like that make me smile.  I wrote this years ago, and it somehow just fits, and makes me think. Why was she writing out names?  I know what one of those names means, but I hadn't considered the others in the context of my current story.  It's wonderful!  It's like I've written notes to myself, put them in a time capsule, and I'm only now piecing them all together into a coherent letter.

Muppets Scat Singing

I was listening to Neutral Milk Hotel on the way home from my lesson down in Brookline.  In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, in fact.  What an amazing album.  It was way ahead of its time, I think.  It'd fit right in if it had been recorded now, but it was over a decade ago (1998) that they put it together.  Crazy.

Anyway, I finally got some stuff working today at work, and it makes me very happy.  It's like this whole branding kit thing might actually come together.  It wasn't a matter of it being broken, but of just a long, long process of setting everything up so that it'd work.  Today I put the last major building blocks in, and it all just worked!  Glorious!  Now for all the miscellaneous finishing touches.  It got a cursory blessing from Mr. Marty earlier today - now if I can only get... probably... Misters Daniel and Doug to be okay with it, we should be in pretty good shape for now!

That was the vast majority of my day at work.

Following work, I came home and practiced for about an hour and a half before heading out to my lesson.  Sooner or later, I will be able to play this damn song from beginning to end!  Chords, melody, comping,  I don't care!  I want it all!  Mine!

So woohah.  I had a scone and half a sandwich for lunch today.  They were both delicious and wonderful. I really am a Scone Monster, I think.  Kinda like Cookie Monster, but more red and (hopefully) with less googly eyes.

Storytelling

I'm becoming increasingly interested in the idea of storytelling.  I think it's perhaps the most important facet of human society and culture.  The desire to tell and participate in stories is, fundamentally, in almost everything we do.  Why do we take vacations?  Why do we try to become rich and famous?  Why do we try to find mates and have children?  Why do we play games?  Why are we social?  Why do we have art?  What does all this amount to, in the end?  What is the legacy of our existence?

The only meaning we, as humans, are capable of producing beyond spiritual understanding and inner peace (i.e., in a secular sense) is caught up in our ability to amount to something.  A wasted life is one whose story is not worth telling.

So we try to succeed, prosper, be funny, entertain our friends and invent things.  We try to raise our children well so that they'll look back fondly on our guidance.  There aren't many of us who have a legacy in the collective memory of large portions of society itself, but we can at least create positive, lasting experiences in the minds of those we do know.

I listened to an interesting talk on TED the other day regarding the differences between Indian culture and Western culture.  What I'm currently talking about, this need to carve out some sort of legacy, is not to be confused with the Western preoccupation with what I'll call monoincarnation.  This belief structure (again, predominantly Western) is caught up in the belief that our time on Earth is brief, abutted on both ends by either, a) nothing, or b) eternity spent in some sort of spiritual condominium in the sky (or, alternately, deep underground with poor air conditioning).  During this time, we better do a lot of good, and we better do it fast so we can afford, spiritually, a really sweet condo with a killer view of the cloudscape.

I will not presume to claim intimate knowledge of beliefs with which I am not particularly familiar, but the above stands in stark contrast to a world view in which our time on Earth is one of many, and the process of attaining said rockin' pad involves managing one's finances over a series of lifetimes, accruing enlightenment and over the course of a myriad of mortal existences.  In this sort of model, there is certainly pressure to do good, but not necessarily to accomplish all of your good right here right now.  You have a thousand lifetimes, and what you don't do now can be done in your next reincarnation, so enjoy your time, be good, and we'll see you the next time around.

Neither of these two spiritual models are what I'm talking about.

Again, I'm talking about something more secular; the desire to leave society itself in a better, more enlightened state than you left it.  To create something in it worth remembering and perpetuating by those you leave behind.  This has nothing to do with my own salvation, but, rather, with increasing the knowledge and depth of the collective memory of those of us still chilling on the mortal plane.

So, all that said, I like stories.  I find myself, lately, very enthralled with the notion of finding ways to allow humans to tell stories to each other in new and interesting ways.

I think there is potential in crowd sourced, moderated content and ideas.  Evolution takes place through a series of mutations taking place in a controlled, otherwise stable environment.  Evolution, generally, tends towards advancement (at least I can't think of cases of evolution blatantly creating something less prepared to deal with the constraints under which it has been placed).  Sometimes genetic algorithms can produce answers to problems that are otherwise difficult to solve via traditional means.

Collaborative storytelling and world building led by a benevolent, despotic, principle author.  This happens with teams developing video games and movies already, though that is company-sourced content and ideas, rather than crowd-sourced.

I'd like to see it - either of the two - done with novels.

Vegetable stock photos were not used in the making of this ph(o|ilm)

So I went with Misters Daniel, Erik, Jason Mc and Jason K to "Living in a CG World" today at the Museum of Science.  We saw a presentation by Mr. Terrence Masson, a gentleman with an impressive resume in the world of computer graphics for film and games.  It was a good talk!  Lots of interesting tidbits.  Unfortunately, I think he had too many good things to say, and had to leave out a lot in order to stay within the time he had available.

Following the talk, we all walked to Charles MGH (except for Daniel, who biked) and took the T up to Harvard, where we had a lovely dinner at Le's.  Everyone attempted to get some variation on a theme of pho (noodle soup, for the uninitiated).  Unfortunately for me, they were out of vegetable stock.

I ended up with curry tofu.  Booyah!  Now I can use that label again.  It was, as always, delicious.

On the way over, Jason K and I were talking about storytelling as it relates to technology.

That, I think, will need to be in its own post.

Oh, yeah, and work was fine today.

Apple Pie and Cashew Butter

I don't know if this particular combination has been tried before, but it was delicious.  Apples and peanut butter are awesome - why not pie and buttered cashews?

I got up at a reasonable time today, was chugging along, feeling good, left the apartment... and somehow it was frickin' 9:00 AM already!

Grumble.  I still had time in the morning once I made it to work, at least.

In general, the day progressed well.  Good days on a Services project tend to be those in which customers have ended up agreeing more than they disagree.  Thus, today was a pretty good day.

After work I headed over to the ol' BSC, which I'm learning to hate.  The place is so busy after work, it's almost not worth going.  All the mats are always full, all the machines are in use.  As soon as the weather generally climbs above freezing, I'm am so gone.  I'll take a several mile run over that any day of the year that isn't effing freezing.

Speaking of which, tomorrow morning might be such a day, if I'm lucky.  That'd be really nice.

I'm not bumming around, sorta brain tired.  I saw a convincing (for the first viewing) "leaked" 30 second commercial for the as-of-yet-unannounced Apple tablet.  It was convincing until you realized a few things:

1.) Apple would never use such a crappy font.
2.) Apple would never release a device in which the screen appears to be off-center by half an inch.  This stands in stark contrast to Lenovo's ThinkPad T61p.
3.) All of the ports on the back of the tablet are perpendicular to the plane of the device.  i.e., if you placed it flat on a table, they'd all be pointing at the table top.  Uhh... miserable design, anyone?
4.) One of the aforementioned ports is an ethernet port.  Apple doesn't even put DVD drives in their smaller computers, to say nothing of ethernet.

Strikes me as a fake.  Is it tomorrow that we'll all find out?  Should be fun, whatever it is that they're announcing.

I think, now, I'm going to try to write a bit.  Either that or read.

Wondrous work, Crappy Class, Delicious Dining

The title sums up the day.  I got into work early today so that I could make sure that all the tasks, estimates, spreadsheets, and graphs for our current project were up to date and accurate.  It took a little while, but in the end, I got a clear picture of how far along we are, and it feels great.  I'm much more comfortable with the project knowing that all known tasks are accounted for on the board, the burn-down chart is accurate, and I'm prepared to update it all properly the next day.

Yay!

Following all that administration work, I got in quite a few great hours of working on "branding kits".  I'm starting to feel pretty good about them, and I expect to be able to finish them up sometime this week, hopefully before anyone needs them.  I have an e-mail I need to send to the customer - maybe I can get in early tomorrow and send that off.

For lunch was some excellent Tofu Yellow Curry from The Similans (Brown Sugar Cafe) near Cambridgeside Galleria.  I saved half of it and ate it at 6:00 PM or so.  That was an excellent idea - I felt like I had actually eaten an appropriate amount of lunch (as opposed to just being... full.).  Yarm.

I stayed at work until approximately 7:00 PM.  I didn't have a Jazz Theory class tonight, so I had nothing to do until 7:30 PM.  Thus, more awesome branding kit work.  At 7:00 I left work and took the Red Line into Park, then the Green Line (E) out to Symphony, as I do every Monday.  I arrived outside class at 7:32 PM, and had apparently walked right by our dear teacher, Rani, on my way into the building.  He was wearing a hat and ear warmers and I didn't even recognize him.

Class was difficult for me tonight - crappy because my brain wasn't working, not because of anything anyone else did.  I just couldn't wrap myself around hearing intervals properly.  By the end of it, I was starting to get back into a groove, and I'm grateful to Rani for going easy on me when he was going around the class.  I think he could tell I was frustrated tonight.  After class (which is an hour), I decided to walk to Prudential instead of taking the train from Symphony.  It was a beautiful night, so it seemed a lovely idea.

A few minutes away from the building, my housemate Eric gave me a call and asked if I wanted to go get something to eat at Christopher's in Porter.  I had had the second half of my lunch earlier in the evening (see paragraph re: Yellow Curry, above!), but agreed to go anyway.  I couldn't turn down good company and Christopher's; it's just not possible.

Amazingly, we arrived at Christopher's within about a minute of each other.  In the time that it took Eric to drive home and walk to Porter from the apartment, I had walked to Prudential from Symphony, gotten on the Green Line to Park, and taken the Red Line out to Porter,  Apparently he had a long drive; either that or the trains were fast.  Dunno!

We had a nice set of appetizers at Christopher's.  We ordered "assorted" nachos (I'm not sure what that meant), and a Mediterranean Plate with hummus, feta, katamala olives, cucumbers, tomatoes, pita bread, and tabouli.  I had an Imperial Porter.  We talked about the video game industry as it exists in Japan and the United States, as well as the evolution of various game genres in the two cultures.  For instance, have you ever heard of an RTS, shooter, or tactical combat game developed in Asia?  I haven't.  Apparently that half of the world just isn't into that sorta thing!

And now, here I am at home, writing to all you lovely p(eople || erson).

Read a bit, clean a bit, watch a bit.

I magically woke up this morning at 10:00 AM.  I took this opportunity to... sit and read Knife of Dreams until 2:00 PM.

I have officially had a mostly-lazy weekend.

After a call to say hello to my parents somewhere between 2:00 to 3:00 PM, I decided to clean up.  Picked things up, put them where they go, hung a photo of my brother, Dave, and myself on his wedding day, shifted some drawers around so I had a place for my winter accouterments (scarves, gloves, hats, etc.), and... was then fairly organized.

Yay me.

Around 5:00 PM I went over to Jason and Kat's for dinner and some movies.  We watched The Princess Bride to start - excellent as always.  We followed it up with some pasta and Jumper - which isn't nearly as good, but was at least entertaining.

And here I am.  I seem to be having a lot of days in which I do a few things for a very long time.

That is that.

Steadily downhill, like skiing, but not at all fun.

Today I woke up to a call from the landlord, asking me what belonged to our apartment in the basement.

I ended up spending my first hour or so talking to him, Joe, down in the basement.

Then I went to Dado.

I proceeded to spend some time there, writing about Teriam.  Around 4:00 PM-ish, Daniel happened to show up, and we had a lovely conversation about games and things.  Then I spent another few hours hanging out, writing.  Good times.

At some point Julia gave me a call, and invited me to go out for drinks for her friend Liz's birthday.  Seemed like a good idea, so I wandered over to Julia's place, and then we both walked over to Cambridge Common to meet up with the group.  On the way we stopped at Eric's apartment to fetch him.  Very cool guy.

The evening proceeded, and there was beer.

I'm left, at the end of the night, considering those glorious Bright Eyes lyrics, "And in the middle of drinks, maybe the fifth or the sixth, I'm completely alone at a table of friends.  I feel nothing for them.  I feel nothing.  Nothing."

That would be appropriate, if I could actually be so emotionless.  Unfortunately, I'm a much more emotional person.  Sometimes that just happens.  It was a good night anyway, though, thinking back.

So, well, I made a friend tonight.  That's about all I can say for the evening.  Sometimes life is just depressing, and it seems there's nothing I can do about it.

"HOOOLMES!" -Watson

Whew.

Feels like this was a really long day, despite the rational portion of my mind reminding me that all days are, generally, about the same length.

I started the day out by driving to our client's offices in the morning, where I proceeded to stay until 12:30 or so.  Then I had to drive back home, drop off my car, and hightail it back to work.  By the time I got back to the office, I think it was after 2:00 PM.  I then spent what felt like the rest of the day reporting on the things I'd learned.  As often seems to be the case at the beginning of a project, I have no idea where the hours went.

After work, I took the T ride back across Cambridge (to Harvard, at least) with Hillary, got off at Porter, and realized I probably wanted to get off at Harvard instead.  Calling Jason and Kat, we decided to go to the Border Cafe for dinner.  I proceeded to walk back to Harvard from Porter (at least I didn't go home first!).  On the way, I gave Ms. Julia a call to see if she'd like to join us; she wasn't able to, unfortunately.  Blast!  I'll just have to get all these people to meet each other another time!

The end of our enormous dinner (fajitas y margaritas for me!) saw us wandering out of the Border to head over to the Harvard Sq. movie theater to watch Sherlock Holmes, which was a delightfully entertaining movie.  Even if I couldn't follow a bit of the plot, and felt like I was going to explode through most of the movie (re: dinner.).  Regardless, a good experience.

And here I am, back at home.  Success.

If I'm smart, I'll go to bed now, as I can't stop yawning.  If I'm smart.

Please, let me be smart, I want to sleep!

A7 Altered

Today I learned how to play the melody from Tune Up, by Miles Davis.  This doesn't sound like much, but sadly it took me forever to sit down and actually get around to doing it.

Once I did, it took all of half an hour.

That's the stupid part about music.  I can work on a song for months - some aspects of it anyway - and not get around to the melody until... now?  Are you kidding?  And it only took a little bit of time!  Why hadn't I figured this out sooner?  Gah, how frustrating.

But, well, it is what it is.  I've resigned myself to the fact that, at this point, my progress will just be slow.  Take right now for instance; there are any number of things I could be doing with my time this instant.  Instead, I'm... recuperating.  I don't feel like I have the mental energy at the moment to accomplish anything beyond listening to some music, reading an article or two, and posting here.

Maybe a video game, but I don't have any of those.  At least, none that I'm willing to pick up right now.

So... whew, here I am.

Tomorrow I'm not going into the office until the afternoon, most likely.  Going to head over to our client's place in the morning instead to meet with the gentleman there who'll be doing the page integration on their side.  Should be a good meeting!

I can't believe tomorrow is already Friday.  It's odd how life just gets increasingly faster paced the older you get.  Every year I feel like time is slipping by faster and faster.  I don't even know where this week went - it's just gone.

Man, I'm sleepy.

Meetings and Meetings

I can't quite recall how most of today progressed. I'm pretty sure I spent most of it working on documentation.

At 3:00 PM we had a lovely company meeting in which our executive team told us everything we did in the past year. These things, in general, I knew. There was certainly other content (confidential, don't you know!), and in general it was a good time.

Post-work, we all went over to Cambridge Brewing Company, where we proceeded to hang out, talk, and have a great time (meeting = good, beer = great). Thanks, all, for a wonderful, social evening.

I'm now at home, where I spent a few minutes playing Mark's nylon string guitar, and even more minutes watching Batman and Superman episodes with Eric and Nikki.

A simple, good day.

Cards and coffee

I spent a good portion of today dealing with white board magnets and sticky, transparent labels.

I was printing out tasks for the project I'm working on so that we can keep track of our progress. I printed a total of 60 transparent labels for a bunch of different tasks and affixed them to magnets so we could shuffle them around a whiteboard. Woohah. Sadly, I do love this sort of work. Organization is fun!

Prior to work, I wandered over to the Russell Apartment building up on Mass Ave. to vote. Unfortunately, my voting didn't seem to help. (And yes, you probably know how I voted now. That's okay.) I guess my parents will continue to spend thousands a month for health insurance because of "pre existing conditions" that have no bearing on their actual health. They're both perfectly healthy, but they can barely get insurance because of bullshit. Just wonderful.

Following work, I spent a little time at the gym and then went over to the Clear Conscience Cafe to meet Julia for coffee. And a bite of her peach coffee cake. Rockin'. We talked about the weekend and current life events. A pleasure m'dear, as always!

Upon arriving home, I bummed around for a bit. Eric and I spent some time chatting about The Road (which I haven't seen), post-apocalyptic futures, and how they scare the hell out of me. Sounds like a good movie. Oh, and our new Senator's modeling exploits came up as well.

A veritable <evoking of large quantities> of activities

Today, I have done many things. I started the day in New Haven, at my brother's house.

I woke up at 9:00 AM or so with two four year olds climbing all over me asking me to wake up.

So I woke up. After a bit of breakfast and a shower, we sat around for a bit and played Candy Land. Given that Nathan and Lucas were the ones flipping over all the cards (and deciding when to discretely set one aside when they found it inconvenient), by the time both of them got to the end, I had just made it to the Rainbow Trail that they crossed on their first move. Not the fairest game, but that's okay.

Following that, I had some coffee while my brother played Chutes and Ladders with them; similar to my game of Candy Land, he lost miserably. Following that, we played Sorry! This time, both my brother and I were playing, and we insisted on playing by the rules. All of the rules, which makes a good lesson in patience and fair play for little boys. Amazingly, after trailing the entire game, I ended up winning (BOOYAH!). Much better than my performance at Canasta last night.

After that, I gathered up my things and got ready to head back to Cambridge. As is often the case, the boys were too distracted by life to notice that I was leaving. Such is the way things go with four year olds! The drive back to Cambridge was rather uneventful, and quick. I listened to The Beatles (Abbey Road) and Radiohead (parts of Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief, as well as most of In Rainbows).

When I got home, I sat around for a bit and had a late lunch, then shuffled down to Harvard Square and sat in Dado to study for my Jazz Theory quiz. He called it a quiz, but I'd call it more like a full-on, four page test of most of what we did the entire semester. Maybe even a final exam, given that it took an hour and a half and was on our last day of class.

That said, I think it went fine. Basic music theory is easy when compared to calculus, or something like that. After Jazz Theory came Ear Training, in which we worked out the rhythms of Blue Room, a delightful little tune. Both classes were quite pleasant.

On my way home from NEC, I continued to read New Spring, the prequel to the Wheel Of Time (Robert Jordan). Ten minutes ago, I finished it. What a great book. Well worth a read if you've read the rest of the series (or even if you're only part way) - it is indeed a prequel, and doesn't give away anything in the later books. A few characters make interesting appearances, however, and I could see how what happens in this one might influence your opinion of them in the later books, if you happen to read New Spring first.

Very cool. It's going to be such a bummer when I run out of Wheel Of Time to read. I'm starting Knife of Dreams now, and after that, all I have left is the new one, and whatever Mr. Sanderson comes up with after that. God, I hope somebody wraps up this series. It's just way too epic to go unfinished.

Whew. So, all that said...

VOTE TOMORROW.

This seems like a pretty important little election thingy we're having here. I've received no less than three robo-calls and one random lady from Rhode Island imploring me to vote, not to mention what feels like countless e-mails. Crazy.

A whirlwind through New York, or, short lists.

Today I basically did two things.

1) Bummed around for 2 hours at my brother's house while everyone else was at church.

2) Was treated to a day trip down to lower Manhattan.

The first went pretty much how you might expect. The second was pretty awesome. We drove down to NYC from noon until 2:00 PM, and my brother and I went to The New Museum for an hour or two while Aleksandra and the boys went to a birthday party. Cool museum. Very lightly populated with work - there was an entire floor that contained:

1) A croissant floating in mid air with a small, red butterfly perched on it like the boy fishing from the moon.

2) A purple sculpture of a piano which looked as if it had been melted.

3) A tiny hole in one wall. If you stood in front of it and looked in, a tongue stuck out of the hole at you.

... And that was it.

Following our wanderings through the museum, we met up with Aleksandra and the boys and had dinner at a little restaurant owned by a nice lady. I had a little grilled vegetable sandwich (which was awesome), a little shiraz, and a little cookie or two. Perfect.

Then we drove home, and upon arrival the three of us spent the remainder of the evening playing canasta. Then I read a book for an hour or two, until now.

And now, if I'm smart, I'll go to sleep!

Shingles.

Today, I woke up at around 9:30 AM or so, puttered around for a few minutes, and then started gathering up a few days worth of stuff, and got myself ready to drive to Connecticut.

By 11:00 AM I was on the road, and made excellent time down to New Haven. When I got there (here, in fact), I arrived just in time to see my brother pulling into his drive way and my mom getting out of her car. I walked up to her and announced, "Need some help with your bags?" and her jaw dropped when she turned around. Apparently no one mentioned that I'd be coming today! I love surprising her.

My dad and brother were out back, putting shingles on the roof of the new studio. I changed into some workin' clothes and climbed up with them, and we spent from around 2:00 PM until 5:00PM (I think?) finishing up the roof. Awesome.

Oh! And today is my parents' anniversary. Thirty nine years; so we went to the ol' North Haven Panera Bread Company franchistablishment for dinner. Classy. That said, man I love that place. So delicious. The boys ran amok around and under the table and I ate lots of bread.

On the way home, we stopped briefly at some shop called Gourmet Heaven, where my brother picked up some red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting for dessert. It was, indeed, spectacular. Good on you, folks of Gourmet Heaven.

In the evening, after the boys went to sleep, my brother and I watched Dr. Strangelove. What a wacky, excellent movie. Good job, James Earl Jones. You make a great twenty-something bombardier.

And I think I have to leave it there.

Hey, hey, Media Temple.

This morning did not go at all how I planned, though, all in all, it didn't go badly.

As described last night, I forgot to bring my computer home with me, which made working from home particularly difficult. I think somewhere around 10:00 AM I decided that the morning would have to just turn into a personal half-a-day.

At 10:00 or so, I took a wander down Mass Ave. to the dentist and had a fine appointment. Following that, I continued down Mass Ave. to Harvard Square, where I took the opportunity to get a haircut at La Flamme. (Seriously, the place is called that.)

Greg is apparently in Jamaica again, so some lady who's name I didn't catch cut my hair instead. It's turned out a bit shorter than I would have preferred, but the only way that Greg and I arrived at the cut I prefer was through several years of trial and error. (Not too many errors, mind - he's pretty good!)

Luckily, hair grows, and it looks fine. Just... short.

After work, I went with Daniel, Erik, and Eric over to Craigie On Main for a drink. We all had Old Fashions. They were delicious. (Or at least mine was, I can't speak to anyone else's.)

Following that, I hopped on the T with Eric and got off at Harvard Sq., where I swung by Dado for some Bi-Bim-Bap and (*gasp!*) a glass of wine. They actually had a pretty nice cab there. So I spent a little time, relaxed, read New Spring, and sipped some wine. Pretty good, all told. Following Dado, I walked back up Mass Ave. to Porter and then home. (In all my wanderings all over Cambridge today, I never actually took the T between Harvard and Porter. Huh.)

Once home, I had some apple pie. (Thanks Jason and Kat!) I then proceeded to read up on Media Temple (http://www.mediatemple.net) as a host, and decided to go for it. I haven't had a site in so long, it'll be fun to actually put some junk up again. Maybe I'll go back to making PHP games, but this time with Flash/Flex front ends. Good times!

At this point, I think I'm going to spend my remaining evening with a good book. A good ending to a nice, productive, enjoyable Friday.

Logistical Error: Abort, Retry, Fail?

I'm currently writing from my old MacBook Pro, which I gave to my brother last year. My computer is sitting at the office.

This, unfortunately, makes me a dumbass.

See, this morning I left home with a guitar and my bag, laptop in the latter, went to work, and then went to a guitar lesson afterwards. Because, post lesson, I imagined I'd get home pretty late (like, oh, midnight... which is what happened), I decided to just leave my computer at work. I knew this computer was at home, so I knew I'd be able to write this post, but I completely forgot that I was planning on working from home tomorrow morning. Yeah, like, from the home office. With my work machine. Which I left at, well, work.

Argh.

So I'm going to see what I can do without it, which strikes me as more of a thought experiment/planning session than work.

The reason for all this is that I have a dentist appointment at 10:30 tomorrow, and it's much closer to home than it is to work. Ah, well, I'll figure something out.

After the guitar lesson, I wandered back to Kendall (still not putting two and two together about the laptop) and went to The Friendly Toast with Julia, Paul, and an entire host of their excellent friends. I had blueberry pancakes, which I only finished about 2/3 of. I now feel stuffed. We also got an order of the Orleans fries, because they're incredible.

All of this pretty much brings me up to where I am now, sitting here at 12:50, on the verge of going to sleep. And indeed, I think it's time.

Collapsey.

Grr, argh.

Today consisted of estimation, gym, High Fidelity, and failure.

Mr. Erik and I spent most of our day estimating tasks for the aforementioned New Project. This is, somehow, exhausting work. You wouldn't think it, just from watching. Two guys sitting in an alcove saying, "Oh! And we have to do blah, blah, blah." Then wondering, "How long will that take?" Then writing, "4 hours," into a spreadsheet.

Somehow that sounds straightforward, and it is, but by the end of today I was wiped.

Outside of that, the gym went by fairly quickly because I wanted to get home and practice.

Ahh, the best laid plans.

I got home, and the universe conspired to defeat me when I walked in to find Matt watching High Fidelity. This is one of those movies that I've seen once, really liked, and never had occasion to see again. Between the day's various forms of tiredness (read: estimation and exercise), I sat down on the couch to have dinner and ended up staying through the whole movie, which ended promptly at 10:00 PM.

Wandering over to my office, I endeavored to find my sheet music for Tune Up (Miles Davis). "Well, crap, it's not in this stack of papers."

"Oh, junk, it's not over here either."

"Maybe it's in... no, it's not there either."

"Shit."

I have no idea where it is. I feel like a moron. It's just... gone. I kinda know the melody, more or less, and the Internet is useless for finding a legitimate site to get music off of. I tried Note Flight - unfortunately no one has written it up.

So... I'm stuck. Grr. This is one of those frustrating days, rather than one of the fulfilling ones.

Simple Exercises

Today I woke up at 7:00 AM.

HAH.

Take that, life.

This is notable, if only for the reason that lately I've been unable to reliably make myself wake up prior to 7:30 to 8:00 AM. This is, most definitely, annoying as hell, as it has a tendency to throw my whole day off. There's something about my bed, I think. It's just too wonderfully comfortable. Flannel sheets, lots of blankets, a nearby heater and an otherwise cold room in the winter make it a very attractive place to stay in the morning. This is in contrast to the summer, when the room is hot and uncomfortable and I can't wait to get up and get moving.

The plan is, hopefully, to do the same exact thing in approximately 7 hours and 25 minutes.

The key, I found, is to set my alarm to 6:55 and then snooze for 5 minutes. Then, it's like waking up an hour later, because the first number is different, you see. It's all very scientific.

And that, as they say, is how I manage to wake up.

Work sped by, and I was able to create a backwards dependency checker (What projects use this piece of code?) by adding a new feature to ItDepends. It now allows you to import an entire directory of link reports and then see on a new fourth tab which link reports contain dependencies on the selected package or class. Lately at work there's been a question of what projects are using what code, and we don't have a very good way of determining that short of an Eclipse search or a grep. Seems like it'll be moderately useful.

My new project should be starting up in force tomorrow. I went so far as to create a branch for it today (woohoo!). I think it'll be fun! Nothing crazy, but a lot to get done. Hopefully we can learn some stuff along the way.

After work, Jules and I hit up the ol' BSC for an hour or so, then took a joint trip to the grocery store. I got pineapple. And cottage cheese. And the greatest cereal of all time, Cracklin' Oat Bran. I know someone else who has an insatiable appetite for COB, if I get around to creating a "fiction" blog at some point in the near future, I'll introduce you to her.

Eeeexcellent.

After getting home, I mostly sat around and played iPhone Scrabble all night. Sometimes I make poor life decisions. Other times, I play Scrabble.

Prohibitively palpable passion publicly pauses progress positively. Pfft.

Today I started out grumpy and late. Not the best way to start a day. Work went well, for the most part, despite that fact. I'm sort of in limbo waiting for my next project to get underway - or at least, to get to the point where I can do something for it. Until then, I'm just trying to finish up some things that need doing.

We had a review of the semester in Jazz Theory today, and I seem to have caught most everything. We're going to be having a quiz next week - I should study a few things, I think, just to make sure I have them down. Otherwise, it's been a very informative semester. Dave warns me not to get too bogged down in theory, as adult students have a tendency to box themselves in with "rules." I don't think I'm really in danger of that. It sounds odd to say, but I don't generally care about rules, facts, and artificial constraints. I deal with what makes sense in my head, and if that means throwing a flat nine in somewhere when I think it sounds good, so be it. Biology and chemistry always annoyed the hell out of me because a very significant portion of the effort that goes into learning them is spent on rote memorization of terms, compounds, names of parts of biological structures, and all that. I am not necessarily bad at such things, but I dislike doing it, have little patience for it.

So when Rani speaks of passion being the most important part of learning music, I get concerned. I know for a fact, from trying to learn this stuff for the past few years, that great deal of rote memorization is required, as well as a lot of diligent, careful, time consuming practice, practice, practice.

As stated, these things have never been my strengths.

So I wonder, really, how far I can go without being able to apply myself to that degree. I'm not sure if the difficulty of learning is go to get exponentially harder, or if I'll just sorta proceed linearly (but slowly), or if my passion, as he says, will just increase with exposure, or what. It's kinda concerning. I would like to progress quickly and be awesome, but time and energy are often prohibitively scarce.

I guess I continue to do what I can. Learning slowly is better than not learning anything at all... I've been there, and it's boring.

Two faces (two faces!). Two faces, are all that you have.

I keep having these days filled with like... two activities.

This morning I woke up at 9:00 AM or so, got myself all ready, and headed down to Boston to have dim sum with Daniel and some of his friends at Empire Garden (I believe that's the name?). An excellent time was, I hope, had by all. :) It's always more difficult on other people than it is on me, I think, when we go somewhere that there's not a lot of vegetarian food. I've learned, over many years, to expect that the possibility exists that there won't be anything on the menu I can eat. That's cool. I always go places for the company, and if the food's good too, all the better. :) (And for the record, the food was good, and there were things I could eat, we just had to find them!).

But anyway, that's why I'll go to steak houses and BBQ joints with people when they decide that's where they'd like to go. I don't somehow magically expect to find a delicious vegetarian meal. I go cause I like to hang out with good people. So huzzah! Happy birthday, Mr. Daniel!

Following dim sum, I headed home and... I can't really remember if I ultimately got much done or not. I think I did. Maybe I read a book for a while, and then tried to organize some things and failed. I don't remember! But it was a lovely couple of hours, anyway.

Around 5:00 PM, I headed over to Jason's place for our regularly scheduled Sunday Ars Magica game. We took a few weeks off over the holidays, and it took us all a little while to figure out what we were supposed to be doing again. We're currently helping to fulfill Ragnarok somewhere up in the Norse lands. The year is 1256. Europe has been plunged into three years of winter, but we're currently in the fourth year, and nothing's happening. There doesn't seem to be a rainbow bridge, the Jötunn aren't spilling out of Niflheim, Loki is nowhere to be found (he should be in Hel), etc. Big mystery!

... the fun part is that I get to run finishing it. ;D Now I just need to piece it all together into our existing story. Luckily, I generally work better given such a framework than when I have to come up with something from scratch.

Another night, another entry not in the day it was supposed to be for. Oh well!

How did I wake up so late? Oooh yeah, I went to bed really late.

You didn't think I'd forget, did you?

Really? Well I did.

Just got home from Jason and Kat's, brushed my teefs, and found my way into bed. We had a dinner-and-a-movie night which involved grocery trips to both Russo's and Stop & Shop for ingredients. The end result was a crazy stir fry of epic proportions, including portabella mushrooms, water chestnuts, baby corn, red pepper, carrots, celery, tofu, broccoli, sugar snap peas, basil, a concoction of multiple sauces, and long grain rice. I'm probably forgetting something else that was in there.

All said, it was delicious, complimented by a Sam Winter beer of some sort.

While Kat and I were making dinner, Jason ran out again to Best Buy (industrious guy that he is) and got a DVD of District 9, which we proceeded to watch once the food was made. Pretty good movie - it'd be interesting to see how it would have been different if it took place somewhere in the United States, rather than Johannesburg. Maybe it wouldn't be all that different, I don't know. Apartheid and racism are strange, unfortunate things.

The rest of today, prior to our dinner extravaganza, involved sorting papers. Literally. That was the rest of the day.

I woke up at 11:30 AM to a confirmation phone call from my dentist. I believe she said I have a check-up at 10:30 AM on the 15th. I might have to call back and re-confirm. After stumbling around for a little while, I showered, cleaned myself up, and started to think I might head out and go somewhere, just to get outside. Instead, I slowly ate trail mix all day and attempted to organize the vast quantities of paper than inevitably build up in my office and bedroom. I made it through organizing it all into groups (bank statements here, receipts to be shredded there, instruction manuals over that way, etc.), and managed to shred all the things that required shredding. Beyond that, many of the papers are still in piles, though at least they're organized now.

That carried me from about 12:30 PM until 5:00 PM when I tried to leave to head over to Jason and Kat's. I spent approximately 10-15 minutes scouring the apartment for my house keys, and eventually found them in my coat pocket. I need to find some consistent place to put these things; at the moment they just end up anywhere and everywhere.

... In fact, I think they may be in the coat pocket again. I don't even know. Rather than check, I think I'm going to read a bit and go to sleep. A short, yet fun Saturday.

Friday the way Friday was meant to be

Today was an excellent example of what a Friday should be.

I spent a good part of the morning quizzing people in the office about what widgets we have deployed and where so I could compile a list, which is, all told, fun work. Around noon, we had a lovely (if sad) goodbye lunch at PF Chang's for Vinod, who's leaving the company. I had some tasty, crispy, silken tofu dish with broccoli. I didn't know it could be both crispy and silken. Awesome.

Following lunch, I spent a bit more time with my lists, and some talking to Mr. Daniel about some interesting widget performance stuff. Upon getting home around 7-something, I had a lovely little dinner of cheese, crackers, hummus, and a Red Stripe. I happened upon a link to a TED talk on CNN.com, and proceeded to spend a few hours learning about how mythological differences between Western and Indian cultures often make it difficult for the two groups to work together, how Herbie Hancock is a complete musical badass, how China and India are projected to surpass the United States and the United Kingdom in standard of living by the year 2048, and a number of other interesting topics. TED. What a great idea for an organization.

Good stuff.

After I forced myself to close the browser and stop learning interesting things from smart people, I spent the rest of the night editing and expanding upon the story I mentioned finding the other day. I can't say with any certainty that it's really, particularly good or anything, but it's a pleasure to try shaping it.

I generally like to write fiction for one of two reasons, which don't necessarily overlap at times:

1. Spontaneously arriving at wondrous little turns of phrase without realizing it.
2. The opportunity to think about all the backstory surrounding the stuff that actually gets written down. World building is, in a way, more interesting than the stories that may fall out of it.

At the moment, I'm more concerned with the latter.

Oops. Just spent 45 minutes forgetting to post this. Uhh! Onward!

Hello Worf, eat any good books lately? Delicious.

Whew.

Today was mostly full of semi-expected things jumping out at me.

First was a trip to one of our new clients' offices, which I didn't really know about until yesterday. The second was a last minute guitar lesson which I didn't know about until about 5:00 PM.

Together, they make me want to just... sit now.

Dinner today involved an apple, some cheese, crackers and hummus, and...

Get ready for it.

No, really, get ready.

Here we go!

... A cashew butter and Reese's Pieces sandwich on lovely, soft sourdough bread.

BOOYAH.

I've never had something so tasty in sandwich form.

Turns out, Gourmet Market down in Porter is currently selling big containers of Reese's Pieces for $2.99. It's awesome. It's like... tons of them. It made me want to cry for joy. (Well, kinda.)

Not so bad.

In my guitar lesson tonight, I learned how to do a lovely 2-5-1 progression on the top strings, with all sorts of tasty chord extensions thrown in. Thrilling! This is one of those nights I imagine, someday, I might actually be decent at this stuff if I get enough of these little gestures under my belt.

I can't believe it's already Thursday. I have no idea where this week went. I'm not entirely sure what I need to get done tomorrow at work, though I imagine one of my readers out there can help me figure that out. ;)

For now, I think I might try to edit yonder story that I mentioned last night. It could use some work...

This is why I'm still awake. ;D

Wow. I found the introduction of some longer story (currently stands at around 20 pages) that I started writing a number of years back, and to my delight, a good bit of it still holds up! I think it could use some help here and there, but it's actually kinda exciting.

I might try to do something with that!

I think I need some water.

It's funny how some days you get a lot done on one thing, some days you're scattered in a million places, and some days you have a few big, chunky things that you work on and (hopefully) complete.

Today was, all told, one of those last ones. I spent some time finishing up some existing work, had a few meetings about a new project, and generally... well, spent big chunky amounts of time on several things.

Not so bad.

I'm having a spectacular time making up blogs around here for every imaginable sort of writing I might like to do. I haven't even used half of them yet, but it makes me happy just to know they're there. Some day I may actually get around to writing stories again. At the moment, it doesn't seem like I'm able to pull together the mental energy to do it. Maybe I need to go back and re-read some old stuff to get in the spirit of things again.

Where is all that? I'm sure I have it around here somewhere...

I'm not sure how to balance that with making music. It's hard to have two time consuming hobbies, one of which demands practice, the other of which simply demands time.

There's a part of me that thinks that I would be okay if I just stopped taking music classes and lessons. I just can't decide if that part is correct. It would be pleasant to be able to spend more of my time working on programming and writing (two things at which, as I've said before, I'm already pretty good), but I don't know that I really want to just stop what I'm currently doing, either.

Unfortunately, I think the next semester is starting at the Conservatory, and I kinda need to figure that out right now.

I think that's my final thought tonight.

Resolutioners Delight

A more or less effective work day. Finishing the day with a big check-in that you feel good about is a pretty nice way to leave the office.

After work, Julia and I converged on Central Sq. to hit up the BSC there. We hung out, doing our thing, from around 6:30 PM or so until 8:00-ish. The place was pretty packed, though she reminded me about the New Year's Resolutioners who are, undoubtably, crowding the place. Hopefully in the next few months the place will calm down. Or, well, rather, I'll wish that the people crowding it find alternate means of exercise somewhere else. Wishing that they just stop going is, certainly, selfish.

After the gym, we took the T to Harvard and wandered over to her place, where we had a lovely greens, spinach, peanut, tomato, goat cheese, balsamic vinegar salad with some stone ground crackers. And a Red Stripe, cause she and Paul still seem to have oodles of it from New Year's. We half-paid-attention to some show called... Better Off Ted, was it? I don't remember. Then a bit of Scrubs. After that, we had a lovely time analyzing and making fun of the poor guy on Deal Or No Deal, which I don't think I've ever watched an entire episode of before. By the time I looked at the hour, it was 10:00 PM, I went "ack!" and decided I should probably get home.

Now, I think I'm going to sit in bed and read. A simple, good day.

What a jazzy outfit!

I did a total of three useful things today.

Number one!

I mostly-sorted out the project I've been working on at the office. There's a few bugs, but things seem mostly good. With any luck, it can be wrapped up and I can move onto other things very soon. If anything, I think I'm going to need to take some time to do a few other high(er) priority things. (There is always, apparently, something.)

Number two!

I went to Jazz Theory, chilled, learned a bit about the blues, and went home. After two weeks (or so) away from class, it was sorta difficult to get myself back into the correct headspace. There are two classes left, to my understanding: next week's will be a review, and the week following that will be the dreaded quiz (Dun, dun, DUHH!). Not terribly worried or anything; everything makes sense.

Music is a strange thing. I often think that there must be a better way to represent a lot of this stuff. Half steps, whole steps, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, sharps and flats, the circle of fifths/fourths, the staff... it's all very organically grown over the past millennium or so, dreamed up by a bunch of people that occasionally appreciated math when they were feeling geeky, but were otherwise, by no means, logical or methodical about creating a consistent, easily understood system of notation and representation. I can't say that I know what would be better, but geeze, it shouldn't be a matter of rote memorization to remember sharps and flats in a key signature. You can walk the circle and sorta see how it all comes about, but notation is such an archaic system. It relies very heavily on being able to instantly identify a bunch of arbitrary relationships and symbols. Can't we get some physicists or software developers in here to refactor this whole thing into something legible? Crazy.

And number three!

I picked up The Scheduler again and realized it's better off than I realized. The app has a few large functional areas that haven't quite been fleshed out yet, namely saving/loading data and a complete satisfaction system (I love having a class called "SatisfactionAuthority.as"). Otherwise, the technical hurdles in the UI have mostly all been overcome. It's getting close to being a matter of just banging it out. I can't tell f I'm going to be able to finish before Dave needs it this semester, but it's getting cooler all the time. It is, all told, a fairly large hunk of code.

Euphoric revelations sometimes hold water

Today, Eric, Jason and I went to see Avatar. Jason and I for our second viewing, Eric for his first. The red line wasn't running from Harvard to Davis, unfortunately, so I had to take a shuttle bus from Porter to Davis to grab Eric, take the shuttle bus back from Davis to Harvard to get on the train, and we finally made it to the theater (Boston Common) half way through the preview for Despicable Me. (Which is fine, cause I've seen it what feels like a million times now.)

After the movie, Jason peeled off and went home, Eric and I went to Park St. station, and went our separate ways. Hopefully, by the time I write this, he's back home in New York. After the movie I went to Harvard Sq. and tried to find a place to sit and read.

Dado was completely full of people, so I regretfully left. Crema Cafe was also packed, so I wandered out, still having never purchased anything there. Following that, I tried Algiers and found it to be only about half full, and delightful. I had some falafel, fries, and a small-ish salad for a late lunch, and then a cappuccino. That place is nice - it has a quiet, cozy atmosphere. I haven't been upstairs yet, but I imagine it's not half bad either.

After I left Algiers, I decided to walk home from Harvard Square, rather than take the shuttle bus to Porter. It was a beautiful night, and while I started to take a quick way home up Concord St., I instead decided to take Mass Ave. and Walden St. home, just to extend the walk a bit.

On the way home I thought about what I'd like to do with life. I think I was somewhat euphoric after the cappuccino, which strikes me as an interesting reaction. Something about caffeine after 4:00 PM.

I thought about what we can do, as humans, to create an impact on the race. I thought about collective memory, oral history, and the telling of stories. I thought about the Wheel Of Time novels, and the world Robert Jordan created in their pages. I thought about James Cameron and Avatar, and how he created a world and a people that we as modern people would feel good and proper to be a part of. I thought about the appreciability of a good story, and how it can leave an impression on us when we hear it. How stories can teach us morals, can change the way we think, can give us an appreciation for the world around us, can bring us together, can shed light on things we would rather, but shouldn't, forget.

I thought about how I spend a great deal of time these days learning things about music, which is both familiar and very foreign to me. I used to spend a good chunk of my spare time writing, which, in a sense, I am trying to return to with this log. I thought about how my love for , and skill (such as it is) in writing are a part of my life that I've neglected for quite some time, despite the fact that, at times, I have been very good at it.

Music is new and unfamiliar, and I can't say with certainty that I am particularly good at it. I would love to qualify that with "yet," but having no concept of my capacity for improvement, will dispense with the qualifier. Perhaps I'm studying the wrong thing?

Maybe I've hit upon something that I'm uniquely qualified to do in life, given my history, passions, and skill set. It seems like a good idea. I want to help people tell stories.

I need to let that sink in a bit, and see how it holds up.

Upon arriving home, I spent a bit of time paying some bills and cleaning here and there. Eric suggested we watch There Will Be Blood, which we eventually did around 7:00 or 8:00 PM. It was an intense, spectacular movie. Definitely worth watching.

And here I am.

Tomorrow I head back to work, and also, I think, class. Yes, indeed, Jazz Theory.

It's been a strange couple of weeks. One would think being "lazy" would be relaxing, but that's not really the case. Lazy tends to equate to neglect, which is, in general, not a good feeling. I think I'm ready to be done with laziness for now.

Chickens, truckers, and journals, oh my!

For the last fifteen minutes, I've been mentally singing, "She's got a chicken to ri-ide! She's got a chicken to ri-igh-iiide!" and, in falsetto, "My baby don-key! My baby don-key!"

It has, boys and girls, been that sorta day.

We will start at 12:30 PM, because this is the point at which I woke up.

Following my slow, methodical reaffirmation of consciousness, I proceeded to sit on the couch and read Crossroads of Twilight (again, nothing to do with Twilight the teen phenomenon) until 5:30 PM. Lazy Saturday, this is how you began. Around 6-ish, I called Jason and Eric to inquire when they expected to be back from their ski trip (which I declined to go on at the last minute). They said they'd be back in about an hour, so we all planned to go to dinner around 8:00 PM. In the intervening hours, I took a shower, got myself presentable, and wandered out to de-snow my car and drive over to Arlington where we were going to eat.

We ended up at an Argentinian restaurant called "Tango," or "Tanga", or some such. Regardless, it didn't seem to have any Argentinians in it, and the wait staff was very, very North American. And by North American I mean Bostonian White (Mental note: suggest "Bostonian White" as a Crayola color). Dinner was fine, we had Jason, Kat, Eric, Mike, Ria, Jess, and myself. There was a pitcher of sangria. It was pretty good. There was a crepe, which I ate, which struck me as more of an Italian enchilada, baked, and absolutely smothered in cheese. Over all, the food was good, but the company (as usual) better.

After dinner, I returned to my car and drove myself over to Mike and Ria's, where the hosts, Eric, and I played a game of Galaxy Trucker. Good on me for getting it as a Secret Santa gift for Mike (not so secret now, is it!), cause it's a lot of fun! I think I'd say that even if my beginner's luck hadn't kicked in and given me a spectacular third and final round.

Prior to heading out to dinner and at some point after my stint of reading, I downloaded a LiveJournal client and then, using said client, downloaded a log of my entire LiveJournal post history. My first entry was sometime in March of 2003, and the last was January of 2009, though I hadn't seriously posted in it since 2006/2007 or so. The log is approximately 1.5 megs of XML formatted text. I read through a few at the beginning, and a few painful ones in the middle, before filing it away in my Documents folder. I'm glad to have it. It documents a particular portion of my life which is, often, difficult to think about. It's easier, perhaps, to keep all that knowledge and time tucked away in an XML file.

It would, somehow, feel good to connect that log to this blog somehow. I think. It would help me feel like less of two separate people, and connect the life that I lived during that time with the one I live now. I'm not sure if I have anything to learn from it, or what.

I've said many times that in November of 2005 or so, I essentially ceased to exist and became a new person. I've avoided butterfly and phoenix references (and, actually, hadn't even thought of such a metaphor for it until now), but in my mind there is this very definite six month period where I went from being one person to being something completely different. In a sense I reinvented myself, though that implies a certain amount of intention to do so. Rather, I was reinvented. Reset, maybe. I went from having one group of friends, one set of relationships, one set of family, one job, one set of possessions, one personality, one way of dressing, one financial outlook, one living arrangement, and one future, to having my life change, almost utterly, in every single one of those areas, all at once. If it's possible for stress to knock years off your life, I imagine that happened somewhere in there. It was at that point, I think, when my LiveJournal died. I couldn't write in something connected to all that. Maybe, in the last couple years, I couldn't bring myself to really write anything at all as a result. I think, perhaps, that I've spent the last four years recovering, though there were certainly substantial milestones of recovery that I reached quite early in that process. I don't know, and it's probably not worth speculating on. I am where, and what, and who I am, at this point, regardless of how long it took me to get here, or how long I go on changing as a result.

I have never been comfortable defining my existence by any of that, so I won't, and haven't. Someday, though, I may get myself to the point where I'm one continuous person again, rather than a 23 year old and a 4 year old (generally speaking). Acknowledging LiveJournal and everything there, downloading it onto this computer, and bringing that history into my life, however, somehow feels like a good step in that direction, even if it's merely copying some 1's and 0's from a server somewhere to this machine, where, as I type, they just finished being backed up (along with everything else) via Time Machine.

Not bad for a lazy Saturday.

She's got a chicken to ride

Today was particularly social.

After last night's lovely evening over at the Wagner residence, I woke up at around 8:30 AM so that I could get out to Sudbury for brunch with the subset of the usual crew that was able to drag themselves to Stephen Anthony's by 10:30 AM or so. This included Jason, Daved, Dave FR, his sister, and Jamie, Graham, and Tracy and Joe. Not a bad crew.

I feasted on blueberry pancakes, an egg (over easy), coffee, and orange juice. The usual. Post-brunch, we descended on Dave FR's house for an afternoon of board gaming. We played Ticket To Ride and some detective game (I won the first - woohoo!), and then I proceeded to sit around and play Dave's sister's guitar for a while during what appeared to be a rousing game of Manhattan.

We all left Dave's around 5:30 or so, and I went back to Cambridge to pick up Eric at Mike and Ria's. Eric and I drove back to my place, I parked the car, and we took the T from Porter to Harvard and had dinner at Le's. Curry tofu and fresh summer rolls. Stuffed with veggies. I had a "33", which is apparently a Vietnamese beer. Delicious. We decided, prior to leaving my place, that we wanted to go watch Avatar at Boston Common. Eric hadn't seen it, and I'd be glad to see it again. There was a showing every hour or so for the remainder of the night, so we just winged it and decided to show up when we showed up.

Bad idea.

Apparently, after all this time, Avatar is still selling out shows. The 8:15 PM show was completely sold out, and we decided that 9:15 PM was going to be a bit too late, given that it's like a three hour movie. Following that, we walked from Loew's Boston Common down to Boylston, checked out the Starbucks near the Arlington T stop, and then got back on the Green/Red line and went home.

A few hours later, after returning Eric into Ria's custody, here I am. I think I need to learn some more songs that we can all sing along to. Currently, my repertoire is just sorta... limited. It would make these sit-around-and-play sessions much more fun.