Trains, Braids, News, Notes in Flight, and a smidge of running

Argh.  I should remember to do this earlier.

I woke up at 6:30 AM this morning and biked over to Julia's.  We went for a 3.2 mile run around the river, down to Western Ave., and back to her place.  Not bad.  It felt pretty good, even if it was a tad cold outside.

Today, on my way into work, the train was delayed at Porter.  There was apparently a medical emergency at Charles (whoever you are, I hope you're okay).  I waited around for about ten minutes before the conductor came on over the intercom saying there'd be another fifteen minute wait.

To me, that means it's time to walk to Harvard Square.

So I did.

Got into Dado, sat for a few, started checking work e-mail, chatted with Karin for a bit, then figured it was safe enough to hit up the train and get to the office.

It was, indeed!

So I got to the office.

I spent most of the day working on this integration thingy about adding things to peoples shopping cart.  I got it working!  This is exciting to me.

I don't seem capable of writing a substantial paragraph tonight.  This is maybe because my hands are cold.

In other news: I'm getting a copy of Windows 7 for my Mac, for Bootcamp!  Yay!  Then I may be able to play Starcraft II.

After work, Erik, Victoria, and I walked down to the T.  Erik went towards Porter, Victoria and I went towards Park.  Good conversation.  I got to class five minutes late, but it was okay because Joel wasn't there either.  Theory went well, I think.  Ear Training went pretty well too.  I feel vaguely like I'm slowly getting trained.  I can hear the difference between minor, dominant, and major chords now, when I sing the chord tones.  It's pretty cool.

I came home and tried to play Braid.  It kept crashing.  I downloaded an update to it while trying to watch The Daily Show on Hulu.  The show kept pausing for buffering.  Very annoying.  I also tried to register for Noteflight, and they never sent me an e-mail.  Very sad.  Eventually, Braid downloaded and stopped crashing once I reinstalled it.  Hulu got its act together.  But Noteflight never e-mailed me.  Sad panda.

Just talked to Julia - we're pre-emptively canceling our run in the morning, given that it looks like it's going to be all rainy-crazy.  We'll pick up again on Wednesday.

And now, sleep.

A really straightforward day.

It sounds like we passed some health care reform tonight.

I can't say I'm upset by this.

I woke up today at 11:30 or so, got my stuff together, and rode my bike down to Harvard Square.  I sat in Dado from around 1:00 PM until about 4:00 PM, planning for tonight's Ars game.  I had a scone, some coffee, and eventually a delicious bagel/hummus/swiss/veggie sandwich.  Eventually, I rolled my way back home and then out to Sudbury for the evening.

Dave brought some scotch.  YEAH DAVE!

We had a pretty okay session, I think.  A bit slow, at times, but sometimes that happens.  It tends to happen more when the characters kinda go their separate ways and do separate things for a bit.  Wasn't really any way around it.

We left off with a slight cliff hanger - Jason's character just got visited by a dragon, in human form, dressed as a fine gentleman, named Iurdicialus (which roughly translates from some bastardized Latin as "Justice").  Good times.

And... I think that's all I've got.  Back to work and class tomorrow.  It'll probably be a looong day.

Oh, and I tried out my NPR iPhone app for the first time today.  It's wicked awesome to be able to just listen to whatever whenever you want.  Coolness.

Music in the park

Today I woke up at noon.

Julia and I were planning on heading down to JP for an Arternoon at Ian and Sarah's place at 2:00 PM.

So we did that.

By 1:00 or so, I found myself walking down Mass. Ave towards Harvard Square, guitar in tow.  I stopped at Simon's Cafe for a scone (Carberry's) and some coffee.  Julia and I met at the Church St. T entrance at around 1:30 or so.  We took the red line to Downtown Crossing, then Orange down to Green St.

Eventually, we ended up down by the Pond, sitting on a blanket, hanging out.  There was this couple playing mandolin/guitar there, and after a few moments of wondering whether I should interrupt the air with my own noises, decided to get my guitar out and enjoy myself regardless.  I went there to play, after all.

It was such a nice day.

We stayed at the pond until 4:30 or so, I think.  It was really nice to sit there, with other people around doing something musical, and actually feel like I was vaguely holding my own.  For almost the first time, I think, I kinda felt like I had a right to be there playing music.  That is a wonderful feeling.  I'm by no means great, and my repertoire is still pretty small, but I do actually have some ability.  Whew.

After that, Julia and I took the T back to Harvard Square, and walked back to our respective apartments.

I then proceeded to take a 45 minute nap.

Eric and I bummed around in the living room for a while before deciding to go to Christopher's around 11:00 PM.  In the meantime, I started downloading Starcraft II.

That download has finished.  We'll see how well this runs in a VM.  Gulp.

Here goes!

Mad Mirrodin Mir Men. Mir man! Mir MAN!

Today, I woke up wicked late (See post regarding Thursday).  This was annoying, though somewhat amusing.

Thank goodness for jobs where no one cares if you occasionally show up at noon without a terribly good reason beyond, "Umm... I'm hung over?"  Ahh, the modern workplace.  It's a pretty cool thing - being granted the flexibility to occasionally act like an irresponsible adult just makes me all the more determined to be responsible the rest of the time.

Anyway, so I woke up wicked late.  After getting my act together, I walked down to Harvard Sq. from Porter (because it was gorgeous out!), grabbed some coffee, and then got lunch for Daniel, Hillary, and myself at Veggie Planet.  Marty missed out because he didn't read my e-mail.  He just saw the title, "In by noon" and left it at that, apparently.

So work went pretty well.  I got a few things done, including updating a wiki page with a list of all of our customers/widgets.  After work, I stopped over in H^2 again, grabbed a scone, some taro bubble tea (very girly looking, but that's okay), and an apple, and then walked back home up Mass Ave.  Twenty minutes later saw me at home, helping my neighbor Elizabeth pull some outdoor patio furniture out of the basement.  And a few minutes after that saw me driving out of the city towards Sudbury for a night of Magic.  MAGIC!

Route 20 was flooded over where it crossed route 27.  Crazy.  I guess we really did have a ton of rain.  Magic went well.  I cleaned up, all told.  Both in games and in the cards I got out of our sealed deck.  We bought two boxes of Mirrodin and split them up.  Great stuff.

I also brought my guitar with me for in-between-game jams.  While playing, Gwen sent me a text asking if I wanted to hang out with her and Eric.  She said they were listening to Neutral Milk Hotel and watching Mad Men.  I mentally arranged to check out of Sudbury at a reasonable hour.

After leaving Sudbury, I got back to the city around 11:00 PM.  I sent Eric and Gwen some text messages to see what they were up to.  They were at her place, watching Mad Men.  So I hopped on my bike and headed over to Inman.  It was a beautiful ride.  We sat and watched more Mad Men, and then, following that, The Breakfast Club.  I don't think I've ever seen that.  So full of teen angst!  Crazy.

After all that, I rode home.  And here I am.

Unexpected late nights

This is a post for Thursday.

I didn't bring home my laptop on Thursday, and thus, couldn't write anything.  At least, it would have been incredibly awkward to do anything substantial on an iPhone.  Granted, it's currently 4:23 AM, so I may not be able to do anything substantial anyway.

Anyway.

I woke up at an average time on Thursday, and gathered up my guitar and computer and shipped myself off to work.  I had a lesson scheduled at 6:00 PM out in Brookline, so I wasn't able to go home prior to heading out.

After the lesson, I took the D train up to Kenmore and walked down to Landsdowne St. for Jessi and Julia's joint birthday party thing.  I met a lot of cool people, and got to stand and watch a live karaoke band enjoy themselves despite the generally average singers.

Eventually, Julia, Alex, and Eric decided to go to some 80s night thing in Allston.  Given that I had my guitar with me, I decided to stay at the spot.  We ended up staying there until closing, whenever that was.  At the end, it was Jessi, her friend Holly, Holly's boyfriend Alex, and, I'm terribly sorry to admit,  one other friend of Jessi's whose name I've been unable to retain.

Anyway, at the end of the night, we somehow got it in our head that we wanted IHOP.

I don't think I ever really bothered to look at or care about the time at this point in the night.  So, after a bit of investigation, we discovered that the IHOP in Harvard Sq. is open until 4:00 AM.  We took that as a sign, and hopped a cab across the river to H^2.  I had some eggs and pancakes.  They were wonderful.

After that, we all said our goodbyes, and I walked home from Harvard (given that it was 4:00 in the morning).  I got to sleep at around 5:00 AM.  Similar to tonight, in fact!

Completely Beautiful

Today was, I think, the first completely beautiful day of the year.

I rolled out of bed a tad late and wandered over to work without a real jacket.  It was glorious.  I finally remembered to bring my pho from the other night with me to work, which proved to be... interesting... to try to heat up at the office.

The morning consisted of mostly independent work, trying to work through how I'm supposed to do stuff for my current integration project.  I made some headway.  I also had a few random meetings during the day.  Around 2:30 or so, Erik and I decided to take a walk out in the sunshine over and around Cambridgeside, just to get out.  It was great.  We took a look through Borders for a moment of relaxation.  After coming back to the office (and resisting the urge to get a cookie), I continued on my way, spending most of the rest of the day in one big meeting.  I eventually left a little after 5:00 PM to get back for a run.

Unfortunately, Julia had a project to do for her classes, and we canceled the run.  Ah, well.  I gladly used the time to practice a bit more.

Oh!

And when I got home, I ripped all the winterizing plastic stuff out of the windows and opened them all up. It was great, even though the first thing I heard afterward was some child crying across the street.  I don't mind, though.  The fresh air and breeze was really welcome.

I spent quite a while practicing, and then eventually stopped around 9:30 or so, I think, and decided to check on my finances instead.

I believe Matt has been placing my mail in the wrong box in our little inbox - I found all sorts of mail today... not in my thingy at all.  I'm glad I bothered to look before someone just threw it all out or something.  It had a new debit card, my 3-day pass for PAX, the Cambridge census, some junk mail, and my Commemorative Presidential White House Print for 2010.  Joy of joys - I didn't ask for a cheaply printed stylization of the White House, thanks.  I wish they'd stop wasting my money on crap I don't need or want.  It's basically an excuse for the Democratic National Committee to hit me up for money, as far as I can tell.  Whoop-di-doo.

Aaaanyway, maybe I'll head to sleep and read for a bit.  I kinda feel like I have a headache.  Overall, a good day.

Sunnnnnny.

I didn't sleep very well last night.  Or, at least, I didn't sleep until 1:30 AM or so.  I think my crazy weekend finally caught up with me.  Unfortunately, as a result, I wasn't really in much shape for a run at 6:00 AM this morning.  It's weird calling someone at 6:00 AM and having them not be mad at you - but I gave Julia a call and we agreed to just leave it for the day.  It was dark.  We both didn't sleep spectacularly. A good day to go back to bed.

So I went back to bed and set my alarm for 8:00 AM.

And got up at 8:00 AM, feeling much better as a result.

At work, I finished up this documentation I'd been trying to complete, and started on The Next Big Thing.  I'm currently at the point where I know where to look to start, but don't know where to actually start.  It's a weird time, when you're just getting into something at the very beginning, and have scarcely a clue where to begin.  You hope that it'll start making sense as you go along.  You dread that it won't for whatever reason.

Around 2:30 or so, I took a little break, went out on the office roof deck, and called Mom.  Yay, Mom!  It was lovely to talk to her, standing in the sunshine.  We talked about Ocean Grove, and when I'll be coming home next (Easter?), and the race I ran on Sunday, and condos.  And I can't remember what else.  Eventually I went back inside, feeling fairly refreshed.

I stayed at work until 7:15 for a code review with Mahk.  (Yes, that's how I'll spell your name - ha hah!)  Got home around 8:00-ish, and set out for Justin and Ali's for LOST.

Got there around 8:45 PM or so, after having to backtrack because the po po's had blocked off route 60 (or whatever it is) where I'd normally take the over-land route through Belmont.  Proceeded to watch LOST and code for Dave Z.  Less ambitious projects are good.  

I picked up my jacket!  I'd left it at Justin and Ali's last week.  Oh, sweet, sweet jacket.  How I missed you.

Once I got home around 11:00 PM or so, I played guitar for a bit (West Coast Bluuuues), and then... sat down to write this.  And that's about it.

Whew.  Seriously glad today was a beautiful day.