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for the past week or so i've been sleeping in the smaller bedroom, but all this week i went back to my old bedroom. i find it easier to get up in the mornings in this bedroom, because it has a nice southern facing window that gets bright with sunlight in the mornings. in the other bedroom, it gets very little light, and although it's a nice place to sleep (small and cozy, especially during the winter), you're not quite sure if it's light or dark outside.

although i ran yesterday, i went again today, this time with alex. it was warm and humid, not good enough for sunbathing but well enough for a lot of timid lady runners and rollerbladers to be back out along the banks of the charles river. it's no bryant park in new york city though, from which john miller was reporting via wireless network about the "sights." on my next visit to NYC (i want to see that new frogs exhibit at the natural history museum) i'll be sure to pay a visit to bryant park. but back at the charles river, alex and i ran tandem, slow enough so i didn't cramp up like yesterday or feel so tired like i couldn't run anymore. maybe i go too fast when i run by myself. on the wooden dock between the boat house and the hatchshell we spotted a pair of black-crowned night-herons. by the time we made it back to downtown crossing, it had started to rain. while alex got some mexican chicken burrito, i bought a grape flavored slurpee. the girl at the eyeglasses store tried her hardest not to notice us in our wet t-shirts, walking back to the office. once we made it back, it started thunderstorming briefly, we were lucky to have missed the worse of the storm. for lunch, more leftover buffalo wings from sunday's barbecue. i got done with about half, the rest i'll save for tomorrow. coming home, i bumped into andrew's friend kwame at south station. we chatted briefly, then i left.

i walked over to dan's place in somerville where i was invited for the inaugural game day at his new apartment. i got there just when he came back with some of his coworkers with takeout food from red bones. besides dan and elias, there were two newbies i've never met, jay and bob. after we finished eating, dan busted out mystery of the abbey, this new game he was eager to have us try out.

sometimes i think i get invited to these things as fodder. i personally could care less about winning, i just like the interaction between players. i'm not much of a strategist either, and when i usually win it's through sheer luck. to apply some sort of strategy means you care about winning or losing, and i honestly don't care. a lot of these new games (imported from europe) feel like rehashed classics. mystery of the abbey for instance has elements of clue. i didn't think it'd be very interesting initially, but once we started playing, it was pretty fun, a game of deduction where you try to figure out who the missing monk is out of 24 different monks. who would've thought playing a game about monks would be interesting? my proudest achievement in that game was just going out on a limb and taking a chance by guessing who i thought the missing monk was. it wasn't correct, and i lost points, but it did help people out by narrowing down the choices.

next we played puerto rico, a game that bob had brought. this was his game and he told us how he plays it online as well. a game like puerto rico, you figured it'd be a party game, or perhaps something to do with parades. turns out it's this complicated trade economy management game. like kids would pick to play this over something like boggle or pictionary? if i rolled my eyes at mystery of the abbey, i did a double eye roll for puerto rico. it has elements of settlers, another game i've had some experience playing with, so i had a vague idea of the concept, but a lot of the rules had to be explained to me as i played along. things like building structures, allocating settlers, raising crops, and engaging in commerce were all elements of the game (fun, eh?). although it seemed like a lost cause initially, after a few rounds, i started to understand it a lot better, and could form enough game play logic to find it pretty interesting. bob was a good teacher, giving us tips throughout the game (as well as he should, since most of us didn't know the rules), sometimes at his own expense. the game was supposed to be short, but it didn't end until around midnight. i was the dark horse who came from behind to tie for first place with elias (nobody noticed that i was producing indigo like a madman, which gave me a lot of trading points), but he won the tie break because he had more money.

jay and bob left together while dan drove elias and i home. i watched as the red sox lost to the angels again, getting swept in a 2 games series, while the yankees pulled ahead to 2 games above the red sox in the standings.

avenue d - "do i look like a slut?"