iPhone

Thursday: A fitful sleep. Raining out. Up, and shower. Packing up the nano. Down basement for morning practices and drums. Ate some breakfast, but the milk was on edge. Fed Oscar. Drove out and picked up some sewing supplies. Noticed there's a skating rink over in that same shopping mall. To the galleria, and traded the nano and touch for an iPhone. In to work, and more on the dual updating problem with the add-on parameters. Stayed until about 9. Back home, and messing with the phone. Ate some dinner. Took out the garbage. Guitar. Now to complete the day.

6 Days of Christmas

Wednesday: Slept in. Unpacking. Breakfast of eggs and such. Fed Oscar (who seemed none the worse for my neglect over the last few days). Down basement and morning practices. Drums particularly good today. Headed off to work. Quiet day in the office, getting the remote variable control working correctly. Took a walk out and bought some CDs and a cup of coffee. Stayed until 11, listening to Led Zeppelin. A bit of shopping at the all-night grocery. Back home, and food. Down basement. Contemplating another use for the space under the stairs. Doing some research in the dairy archives. Now to complete the day.

Tuesday (Christmas): Up and cleaning up the apartment. Headed out to Grand Central Station around 10am. Not much open. Coffee at Starbucks. Caught the 10:07 to Norwalk. Mom picked us up, and back to her house. First course of soup and salad. Present giving. Nap. Over to K's for some more gifting. Back to mom's for dinner and dessert. Help mom change some light-bulbs. At 7:15 to Stamford. Ann headed to NYC and I headed to Boston. Chilly ride on the way back. Took the T to the office and picked up my car. Home around midnight.

Monday: Ann got up early, and headed to work. Cleaning up around the apartment. Did a load of laundry in the building's basement. Ate a breakfast myself. Ann came back early, reporting nothing was going on at the office. Played some music. Took the subway to her office. I got a tour, and we dropped off some stuff for later. Then to wait in line for midnight-mass. Met her friend Arliene. Lovely music. The three of us decided against taking communion. After the concert, back to the office with friends (Christine and mother Peg and friend Albert, Sister Rachael). Eggnog, cookies and presents. Back to the apartment and opening presents. Quite a late night.





Sunday: Ann went off to the gym. I slept in. Breakfast of eggs on top of leafy greens. Napping. Took a jaunt out to the Museum of Natural History, meeting Ann's brother John Clay, wife Anna and son Kim. Dinner at a bar near their hotel. The food was a bit salty. Ann and I walked back to the apartment. Chicken Run on the TV.






Saturday: Breakfast at the close-by diner. Wandering around shopping at Columbus Circle and the endless outdoor stalls in the park. Shopping for a flower vase in several stores. Bought some amazing bread and cheese, which served as dinner, along with the leftovers from the previous night.

Friday: Packing. Brief day at work. Fung Wah into NYC. Waited for Ann. Middle Eastern take-out back at the apt.

Mall

Thursday: My mom called and I answered the phone. Brief conversation. More sleep, much needed. Was afraid I was getting sick... but once I woke up I actually felt fine. Snow was falling, and I knew it had been since I went to bed. Luckily, not so much accumulation. Shoveling. Fed Oscar. Shower. Dropped a note in the mailbox of the neighbors, seeing if they could feed Oscar while I was away. Down basement and morning practices and drums. Quick egg breakfast. Headed out. Stopped at the video store and dropped off a couple DVDs. Drove to the mall. Picked up an iPod for my travels to and from NYC. Also bought a smaller suitcase. The saleslady was a nice Asian woman. I let her talk me into spending too much. Buyer's remorse.
In to work, and bug hunting. Found and fixed an interesting bug, caused by the addition of a bool argument to a function. The problem was, there was another function with almost the same prototype, with one fewer argument. There were a couple of places there were leaving off the bool (meaning to call the other one), and having a numeric value implicitly converted to a bool. Yucko. The bug list is looking quite tractable, meaning its time for another load-balancing. Stayed until around 9.
Back home, made a sauce out of some leftover vegetable/wine soup + a jar of spaghetti sauce + veggie "beef" + garlic + onions. Dinner. Cleaning up and made some ice-cream and cookie flambé. Down basement and making one last Christmas present. Now to complete the day.

many jobs

Wednesday: A fairly stock morning, putting off some chores until evening, but watering the plants anyway. Off to work the long way around. Dropped a couple of burned disks in the mail to MB's colleague. Figured out how to use the command-line interface to our bug tracking system, and shunted a bunch of bugs from an old release number, to a new one, en-masse. Still trying to reproduce a bug with our "render" feature. Did find that a couple of asserts were causing a massive system slow-down in long operations, so commented them out. Headed back home around 9.

An evening of many small jobs around the house: Took out the compost and managed to track shit back into the kitchen. Mopped that up, and hoping that it was Oscar-scat, deposited some of it off the bottom of my shoe, into the cat-box, hoping to prime-the-dump, so to speak. Put away laundry. Down basement and some small projects, then tidying and vacuuming. Back upstairs, and rapped presents while watching "Six Feet Under" and eating a microwaved vegetarian dinner. Put away dishes. Played guitar. Now to complete the day.

blacklight

Tuesday: Up, email, shower. Down basement, and drums. Laundry. Fed Oscar, who was looking a bit dusty, and ready to go right back outside despite the cold. Breakfast.

Stopped at the PO and mailed off a return (wrong battery for my laptop, they sent me) and a package to MB. In to work. A large amount of Christmas candy had materialized. Productive day, wrapping up my pre-set changes. Registered my complaint with Al and B about smashing all the languages together into one file. Took a break, walking out for some shopping and coffee. They were extra nice to me at the Starbucks, giving me free coffee and a free slice of cake. I got confused as I was leaving and picked up another customer's (bagged) cookie. The guy behind the counter called after me, and then the customer grabbed the bag back from me and playfully said "My Cookie!" The person next to me a the milk and sugar bar said "Trying to steal someone's cookie?" "Yes, I was so nervous, I almost made it!" "You should have walked faster..." Back to the office. Checked my stuff in. Shifted to looking at bugs. Left around midnight.

Back home, guitar. Putting the sheets back on the bed. Now down basement to complete the day.

4 days

Monday: Up around 10. Coffee cheese-toast and donuts. Talked to MM about funding a video project. Nap out the couch for a bit. Shower, down basement, and off to work. The streets were pretty messy today as all the snow and slush over the weekend had frozen. A school bus had skidded sideways on the side street that my office's parking garage is off of. I had to circle the block and drive through an ally. Mellow and short day in the office. Still trying to crack a nut with identifying pre-sets. Headed home around 9. Stopped at Whole Foods on the way. Some guitar. Down basement and watched "Six Feet Under" on the treadmill. Now to complete the day.

Sunday: Slept in as snow fell. Next door neighbor Bill had shoveled the sidewalk. I shoveled the driveway. Most activities, including a couple I had on the books, were canceled today. They didn't declare a snow emergency, so they couldn't really plow. In the late evening, took a slow-drive out to the video store. Watched "Rescue Dawn." Guitar. Cleaning in the basement, throwing out empty boxes that I no longer need. Consolidating the storage room.

Saturday: A relaxed day at home. A couple of long phone conversations with Ann. Late schedule continued. Missed the video store. Invented a new dish: pan fried pizza. Also, individual nachoettes made with the scoop style chips. Ah, the bachelor's life. Watched "Adam's Rib."

Friday: A late schedule + morning errands + needing to be home = I didn't make it
to work today. The snow emergency was lifted. I presented a class at my house with 7 participants.

Chicken & Biscuit (snow day)

Thursday: Woke to the sound of garbage being collected. The phone rang and I took it as a sign I should get out of bed. Just the video store thinking I needed to return something. Straight down basement and morning practices and drums. Packed up Shawn's cymbals. Fed Oscar. Out back and raking the leaves, in anticipation of the coming snow. Just as I completed, flakes began to fall. Shower. Was about to head out, but decided I'd be best served by having some breakfast. Kale, mushrooms and eggs.

Headed in to work, slow going with the snow. The guys from Apple had responded fessing up to a bug. Made a system for a new sort of add-on notification. Worked around the Apple bug. Looked into fixing one last bug of my own... which turned into quite a tough nut to crack. Mom called and we talked briefly. Around 8, (still snowing heavily) B suggested those of us still in the office go out for dinner at a nice local place, so the six of us did. A lovely meal by a (gas) fire. Geek humor: "Would would you get if you bit-wise and a chicken with a biscuit?" Don't worry, it doesn't make any sense. Back to the shop, and some more work. I left around 10.

Very slow going back home. Someone zoomed past me, driving aggressively despite the snow. I honked my horn at them and gave them the finger. Once home, lots of shoveling. Cleaning up. Listening to some music. Now down basement to do some little jobs I've been putting off, and to complete the day.

Learn Hindi from Bollywood Movies

Wednesday: Up, and email. Shower. Fed Oscar. A quick breakfast. Down basement and morning practices. The cleaning people arrived just as I was wrapping up, so no drums.

Long way around to work. D came up to my car and bummed money off me. He said he had just broken up with his girlfriend, and I told him "me too." A fairly productive day, adding some details to the pre-set feature, and fixing little bugs. Came up with a workable scheme for a category of add-on that does not support a feature I need. Headed home a bit after 10.

Stopped and shopped. Saw an old colleague Mk Dch. Just said hello and "happy shopping." Back home, and some food (kale and tofu 'wings'). Composted some food past its prime. Guitar, feeling out of practice. Now down basement to complete the day. The Earth is dying.

Meanwhile, an enjoyable podcast.

Swing

Tuesday: Woke and turned on the radio. Falling back to sleep, dreams about "The Golden Compass" being beamed in from the NPR commentary. Up, email, shower. Down basement, and drums. Fed Oscar, and some quick cereal.

Stopped at the Post Office, and dropped some video materials back in the mail to B.A. In to work. Things in the UI arrangement universe were still causing me grief, so I decided to stop using the new sub-system created by Al, and just code it up myself. This turned out to be a very good decision, and allowed me much nicer control. Got most of that squared away, and began working on some other related features. A "taco salad" from the Mexicanish place on the first floor.
Stayed until 10:45.

Headed home the long way around. The temperature has gone up again. Dropped a DVD at the store, and picked up another. Back home, down basement and a little project. Vacuuming. Watched Lost on the treadmill. Email. Now to complete the day.

The Grind

Monday: Slept in a bit. Morning practices. Quick breakfast. Fed Oscar. Email. Doing some tidying. Icy rain had fallen over night.

Off to work. I could see a long line at the PO, so decided not to mail back the DVDs that arrived on the stoop over the weekend.

Not a very productive day. Spent most of it trying to figure out why a particular set of built-in add-ons were misbehaving in our program, but not in other programs. Finally realized it was their bug. Fixed a bug of mine also. Bought some iron supplements. And a burrito. Stayed until around 11. Back home the long way.

Watching lost on the treadmill in the basement. Now to complete the day.

Back to Boston. Electric Flowers

Sunday: Ann went to the gym. Morning practices. Got some breakfast going, throwing "Axis Bold as Love" on the turntable. She returned, and a relaxed meal, some hanging out, and then off to catch the bus. Arrived at the station at the perfect time. More listening to "Don't know much about history" on the ride back.

Took the T to Harvard Square, and got my car, which already held my guitar. Drove to South Boston for guitar circle. Worked on L.I.G. with Dev, David and Victor.

Back home, the house cold. Pizza. Watched an episode of Six Feet Under. Evening practices.

New York Phil

Saturday: Spent the morning with Ann. In the afternoon, wandered out. Brisk. Browsing in Barnes and Noble. To the restaurant, and waiting for my mom. Her train was delayed, and she had trouble getting a cab. She arrived about a half hour late, having thought she would get there a half hour early. A lovely dinner, then Dvorak, Beethoven and Smetana across the street.

Iron, Heading to NYC

Friday: Up around 8, paid bills in bed, shower, and a busy morning, morning practices, packing, putting away laundry. Gave Oscar an extra heap of food. Headed out.

At the Doctor's office, the nurse that had taken my blood didn't remember me. The Doctor had wanted to talk to me about the results of my blood test. Everything basically fine, but I'm on the verge of being anemic. Probably because I'm vegetarian. He hadn't thought to ask me about my diet. But anyway, this was a relief, since it's not common for the doctor to ask me to come back in, and the nurse hadn't said on the phone why.

Short day at work, fussing around with the layout code. Still think perhaps not the right tool for this job.

Fung Wa to NYC, listening to "Don't know much about history" on my laptop. Met Ann, and dinner at an Italian place. The waiter seemed to be giving us a bit of an up-sell.

Phone calls

Thursday: A couple of phone calls with no one on the other end. Tried to call the alarm company to set up an appointment to have the system worked on. Down basement. Breakfast of cereal and tea. Laundry. The dr's office called to say that he wanted to talk to me, so set up an appointment for tomorrow. In to work, and trying to make use of Al's new system. Finding it harder than it was worth. Stayed until 8. Feeling a bit beat, headed home. To the video store for a new disc of Six Feet Under. Back home and watched an episode on the treadmill. Evening practices. Early to bed tonight.

L.I.G.

Wednesday: Stock morning. Cold. Long way around. Worked on fixing the display of a window using Al's new layout subsystem. Dinner with F&M at Christopher's. Returned some art to M. Back home, watched an episode of Six Feet Under (had to go back to the store to swap disks). Worked on the guitar arrangement of L.I.G. completing around 2 AM. Down basement and evening practices.

Tires

Tuesday: Slept in after a late night. Somehow the radio got switched on, and I had dreams modified by George Bush's press conference. He was running around a soccer field, hugging people people in wheelchairs, while talking about "enriched uranium." Breakfast with Oscar. Shower. Down basement and morning practices. Loaded my snow-tires into the car. Placed a craigslist ad for MB's tires. Drove to the tire shop and had them swap the all-seasons for the snows. Got a coffee while this was going on. In to work, and investigating the puny API associated with the "proxy icon." Listened to the Democratic debate. Sold the tires, and scooted home to meet the guy and complete the transaction. Loaded my all-seasons back into the shed. Found and fixed a bug I'd introduced a week ago or so. Got some nachos at the Mexican place on the first floor. The guy in front of me in line ordered something like 9 burritos. MB called. We got a bad connection and it sounded like she was in a wind-tunnel. IMing with Ann. Stayed until almost 1am. Back home, and some toast. Watched part of a Six Feet Under episode, but the disc was scratched. Soon to complete the day.

Physical Exam

Woke at 8:40, just before the alarm. Quick shower. Down basement and morning practices. Put on water to boil and shoveled the front walk. Thanks to Bill for doing half of it for me. Speed-breakfast. Headed off to the doctor's.

Arrived right on time at 10:15. Waited. Finally saw the doctor. We had a rapid-fire conversation. He palpated me, felt my nuts, and then stuck his finger up my anus in an abrupt fashion. Well, at least I think it was his finger. After peeing into a cup and having blood drawn, I was free to go.

Found a parking spot near the PO in H Sq. and dropped another package in the mail to MB.

In at work, continued fixing a window that had been uglified by side-effect of the recent changes. Fixed a problem with floating-windows-as-modal-dialogs, and key events. Al said later he had already fixed this. Feeling quite sleepy, left a little after 8.

Back home, and took a wonderful half hour nap. Continued porting the OCBC website from GoLive to Dreamweaver. (Just bought Intel native versions of Dw and Photoshop). Put away laundry. Shoveled a bit more. Tried to acclimate Oscar to the litter box in the first floor bathroom, but just succeeded in freaking him out. A quiet night at home.

MB departs... Catching up

Nov 30th - Dec 2nd. Ann visits. Saturday night we go ice-skating on the frog pond, then dinner at the Elephant Walk on Beacon St in Boston. We sit next to a fellow that I knew several years ago from a seminar series, but I don't say hello. Sunday, Ann departs on the Fung Wah. A donut on the roof-parking-lot of the bus terminal. Not able to connect with Frank. Back home, and soon time to go to Guitar Circle. Victor, myself, Dev (who had to arrive late due to other commitments), Alex and Chris. A possibly useful analogy came to me when talking about how one becomes better able to juggle all the various attributes of playing: When a chef begins learning to cook, he follows recipes. After some time he knows what the dish is supposed to taste like, and acquires a familiarity with how each ingredient contributes to the end result. At this point, he doesn't need the recipe any more, and can respond to the varying nature and quality of the ingredients. In the same way, at first we need to concern ourselves with counting, with our technique, with the pulse, with the music, with the fingering, with the expression, with maintaining contact with the group, and so on. Once we know the music, as a whole, we don't have to spend too much time thinking about these details on a conscious level, and can concentrate on responding to the needs of the moment. We can begin with the wholeness and work backward. The more each member of the team knows the wholeness, the more fully it may be realized.

Nov 29: After doing some code-cleaning and commenting, checked in my add-on management project. Picked up Shawn at 7:40. To Arlington and picked up cymbals. To my place, and a recording session with the new studio. It went pretty smoothly after I realized that the mix control on the Echoplex was turned mostly to wet. Dropped Shawn home. Went out for a late-night shopping run. Saw a family have to abandon a whole shopping cart full of food that they had selected, because no funds were forthcoming from the ATM. Back home, and made three pumpkin pies with the pumpkin I had baked last week. I really only had enough filling for two and a half, so the last one became half banana.

Nov 27-28: In the evenings, I completed re-wired my home studio. This involved hoisting the mixer module up into the air on a winch. Luckily, I discovered that going in through the front by loosening modules, was much easier than trying to go in through the back. This made the job I'd been dreading go rather quickly. Still, on Wednesday night, I was up until dawn.



Nov 24th - 25th. Feeling under the weather. Sun going down early. Sleeping. Some tidying around the house. Began re-wiring my home studio. Guitar circle on Sunday, with the first "all hands on deck" meeting since the course. Almost every single one of us in the circle has had some major life shift since then. I had prepared some of the piece I'm arranging for presentation, but we didn't find time for it. We sent MB wishes, imagining her in the air hurtling west.

Nov 23rd: A guy tries to con me by saying his car has been towed. My mom arrives and we have lunch. She compliments my new furniture. Opening presents. Good conversation about yoga. She forgot her directions, so I recreate them for her, and she heads out. Casting about for entertainment. Feeling a head-cold coming on.



Nov 22nd: Thanksgiving. MB wraps up her packing. A final breakfast, and she heads out for a swing through RI visiting friends, and then to fly to Seattle on Sunday. Cleaning up. Casting about for entertainment. Gutted the pumpkin that had been sitting on the front steps. Baked the seeds and flesh.

Nov 20th: Breakfast as the 7-11. Then flying back to Boston. Straight to work.



Nov 15th - 19th. My trip with Ann to Ohio. A cat shows up on the course. The camp runs out of water. A walk through the labyrinth. Playing the little travel guitar I had brought. Coming to have a vivid example of how my maps of another's emotional state can be completely wrong, and lead to misunderstanding. Flying back to NYC. Over the weekend of the 17th-18th MB spent time in CT with my mom.



Nov 14th: A moving van arrived early morning, and spirited away most of MB's stuff. There was more stuff than she had anticipated, and so there were extra charges. I completed my packing. The house-cleaners arrived. Off to work for a brief day, then few to NYC to meet Ann. We walked around Queens, and had a nice dinner in a Middle-Eastern hole-in-the-wall.