"got out of work a little bit early today so i was able to go with julie down to walden pond in the late afternoon for a dip."

the company paid for my lunch, tom yum seafood noodle soup. the flavor was good, but it was a little hard to eat with just a pair of fork and spoon (it would've been better with some chopsticks). the weather was nice and i was itching to leave, and was glad when i got all my work done earlier than expected, so i could still have time to go out and enjoy some sunshine.

i went home, changed into my swimming trunks underneath my jeans, then took the bike to julie's place, my yellow swimming flippers sticking out of my bag. as is customary with every visit, i inspected her vegetables, which, as always, are lush and bountiful. things are going so well as a matter of fact, that she actually uses unwanted cherry tomatoes as ground cover/fertilizer for her plants. i was surprised to see that some of her jalapenos were actually red; i thought green was as far on the color wheel they'd get, so i had already picked mine off.

as we stood on the balcony overlooking the busy street of davis square, julie seemed reluctant to go through with our original plan of going out to walden pond, fearful of getting stuck in labor day weekend traffic. after some "come on, you know you want to" persuasion, she finally agreed to go through with our initial itinerary. the traffic wasn't all that bad heading out to walden, it was actually much worse going in the opposite direction for some reason, as we drove by bumper to bumper traffic jams.

admission into walden pond is just $5 for parking (compare that to the $15 for crane beach on a weekday). it wasn't as crowded since it was towards the end of the day (after 5pm) and people were starting to leave. i noticed there were a lot of immigrants here at walden pond, speaking eastern european languages. we walked by the beach, populated with people not fortunate enough to leave town (or perhaps maybe too smart), then along the edge of the pond until we came to a set of rocky steps that lead down to the shoreline. we waded through ankle deep water to someplace more secluded a few yards away. i wasted no time in stripping down to my shorts, putting on my flippers, and going into the water. julie made it out only halfway, standing in the pond just up to her waist, no matter how much water i squirted at her.

back on land, i got changed in the bathroom and had decided i'd just walk around topless in my jeans for the rest of the day, but my pants were kind of low and since i wasn't wearing anything underneath, it left too little to the imagination so i had to put my t-shirt back on. julie bought me a patriotic red-white-blue rocket popsicle from the ice cream van. after leaving walden pond, we went to go visit a farmer's market nearby to see what kind of special items they had to offer. they had some really nice-looking peppers and i wondered what they do with the vegetables they can't sell, do they grind them up and use it as fertilizer, or maybe they just make a lot of vegetarian dinners. julie got an apple and each each bought a bag of kettle-cooked popcorn. we out-raced the sunset behind us as we got back to somerville, listening on the radio about manny ramirez hitting a homer.

back at julie's place i gathered up my things. radha was watching the game in the living room and noticed my helmet. "i didn't know you ride a motorcycle." when i put on my headgear she said it was cute in that retro kind of way, which immediately made me take it off. i rode back to cambridge.

"dan paid me a visit in the evening when i got back home, and i watched the red sox go on to win another game, pulling further away from their wild card rivals, inching closer to the yankees (we're now 2.5 games behind the division leader)."

dan paid me a surprise visit, walking back home from the office, hoping to catch a glimpse of rob and i together as roommates. unfortunately rob was nowhere to be seen. after dan left, i cooked up some chinese dumplings for dinner and finished watching the red sox game.

"i went back to the office around midnight, to retrieve the battery charger for my ibook, as brian burned the midnight oil coding a difficult project on the start of a long weekend no less."

without the charger the whole weekend would've been asterisked because that'd mean i couldn't use my ibook at all. since i don't have keys to SRM, i was hoping maybe during the long weekend i might catch somebody online working from the office, as a long shot as that may be. so i was pretty excited when i saw that brian was online, and even more so when i learned that unfortunately he was working. bad for him, good for me. i quickly raced down to the office to get my charger, leaving a spicy korean ramen cup for brian to help him get through the night.