this morning i had waffles with claudio before we left cambridge to rendezvous with happy. there must be something wrong with my hand-me-down black and decker toaster oven because the first batch came out burnt while the next ones were still a little raw. a this rate it's only a matter of time before i set my house on fire. just kidding upstairs neighbor! before he left, claudio called manny at work to apologize for being out cold last night. we got into the car and drove next town to somerville where happy was sleeping over her friend nancy's place. the apartment was very interesting, something like 4 bedrooms at least, i'm guessing 2000 square feet of space featuring an upstairs and downstairs. i went around touching everything with my fingers, soaking in the details. after a few last minute photos, happy and claudio drove back to new york city, while i returned to belmont.

at the house i met rudy, this dog my sister was taking care of for the weekend. i took rudy out for a walk, which brought back memories of when i use to walk my dog mozart before he passed away two years ago. rudy's a real hyperactive dog, literally pulling me along as he ran zigzag down the street. he pooped on a neighbor's lawn but because i didn't have a plastic bag, i couldn't do anything about it and quickly looked around to make sure nobody saw what happened. rudy also missed his master, jumping at the windows of parked cars whenever he had the chance, looking inside to see if his owner was there.

in the backyard, the morning glories are out. i was at home early enough that they still haven't wilted yet (they're called morning glories, not afternoon glories, for a reason). these are wild morning glories, results of last year's crop of morning glories that apparently produced enough viable seeds and dropped them into the ground, where they survived the new england winter to sprout a new generation of flowers.

i went to meet julie in somerville at 1pm, first making a quick stop at the watertown target to buy a canister of tennis balls ($2). we were meeting to play tennis, neither one of us having played in a very long time, neither one of us very skilled at it. arriving at her apartment, julie presented me with my housewarming gift, which consisted of a dorling kindersley (dk) pocket-sized insects book, a piece of amber candy with real insects inside, and a card decorated with images of butterflies. it would appear that julie has got me figured out in terms of which gifts i like, one of them being anything insects related. leaving her apartment we ran into a mini-crisis when we realized there was only one tennis racket (a little miscommunication, i didn't bring mine because i thought she had a spare). so our original plan of playing at the tufts tennis court had to be changed to the belmont tennis court near my parents' house, so i could go home and grab my tennis racket.

it was a perfect day to be outdoors. early in the day the weather seemed really cold, but when we stepped onto the empty tennis court, the clouds cleared up revealing blue sky and a warm sun. we played without keeping score, the simple act of maintaining a volley was difficult enough as it was let alone getting a serious game that required scoring. i am the worse player, either hitting the ball way too hard that it escapes the chain-linked fence, or not hitting it hard enough so that it crashes the net. i also did a lot of running around, retrieving the ball, crawling through a hole in the fence to find all the ones i shot out. my weakness with an inferior forehand that sliced at the oncoming ball instead of actually making contact with the head of the racket. after about an hour we sat down, exhausted from all the running around, never really putting together a good series of volleys.

with 30 more minutes to kill before we had to leave, we crossed grove street park to do some swinging on the swingset. back when i was a kid, grove street park had a set of really long adult swings. sure they were dangerous, but the kind of air you could get on that thing was amazing, it was the poor kid's amusement park ride. well, those swings are no longer there, replaced by the shorter kids swings that i can easily swing to horizontal and then drop back down dangerously, shaking the chains, being a bad influence to all the little kids watching the big kids abuse the swings.

after driving julie to south station so she could catch her train to rhode island, i cruised down storrow drive back to belmont, beating the postwork friday rush hour. not much went on after that, i took a little nap before dinner.

while downloading today's daily catch of photos, i accidently erased them all before i had finished copying them over. using norton or disk warrior was no use since the compact flash memories are dos formatted. i went online trying to find a solution to this problem, even going onto my sister's pc with my reader and memory card to see if i could retrieve the trashed photos. finally i came photorescue, a little application for both PC's and macs (os 10 only though), that can easily search through a memory card and get back any accidently deleted images. i tried the demo version, which (whew!) was able to make a catalog of the photos, and then i shelled out the $29 so i could get the real version (sent to me via e-mail) that allowed me to actually save out those photos.

during the night adam smith aimed me about the apple's release of system 10.2 tonight, and how there was a promotional party at the apple store. he decided to check it out, i went with him. we didn't know if the galleria mall was still opened, but we managed to get in, and was surprised to find a mob of people inside, all apparently mac users, waiting to either buy the new system upgrade or cash into the 10% one-night-only store discount. in a twist of mad coincidence, manny and daisy were there as well, having been in line for nearly an hour when adam and i got there. apparently daisy was doing some research for her brother, that's why they were there. adam and i went to the end of the line, so long that it was already snaking back onto itself. adam and i ended up waiting nearly a hour as well before someone came out and told us that the store was closed and everyone had to go home. there still must've been maybe 100+ people in line when they made that announcement, and there was the jostling of disgruntled mac users. i heard phrases like, "but steve job promised everyone who waited in line would be able to visit the store," or, "but i waited in line for an hour!" there was some sort of drawing for an imac, forms were passed back through the remaining crowd, i filled out a card and adam and i went to the entrance to throw our names into the drawing. that was when whoever was in charge of the store decided to let the rest of us in, and there was a mad rush of people slowly filling the store. after looking around for a few minutes and seeing how long the cashier lines were, we decided to leave, not even acquiring any freebies like the jaguar print mousepads most of the earlier arrivals received.

coming back to watertown/belmont on memorial drive, we ran into a limo with two gay guys dancing to "ymca" from the open moon roof, waving glasses of champagne in their hands, fists pumping in the air. we got close enougn that i even managed to take a flash photo, but it wasn't very good. at least some people are having a good time tonight!