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by the afternoon i was finished with coding for the day (uploaded the 2nd project for the client) and quickly switched to cooking. a whole sweet pumpkin was waiting for me to cut it in half and make some pies with it. even after 15 minutes simmering in the microwave, parts of the pumpkin still wasn't cooked, and i had a hard time scooping out the flesh, managing to both burn my fingers and to cut my hand. i take great pleasure in treating minor skin wounds with superglue. on a bad day, my hands are covered with dried spots where i've sealed small cuts. after turning the pumpkin flesh into pulp, i mixed it with some evaporated milk, ground cinammon, ginger, all spice, nutmeg, sugar, and eggs, then into a pair of premade pie crusts, baking in the oven at 345 degrees for an hour and a half. i don't even like pumpkin pie so i'm not sure why i'm making them, other than for sport and what seems like the natural thing to do during autumn. i received word from the client, both the project manager and the company boss, which assumed i'll be working friday and/or this weekend (to get the last project finished), despite the fact that nobody's going to be in the office until monday morning. that left me in an unkind mood, which can only be alleviated by buying something online. dell computer was having a sale on desktop machines, and since i needed to upgrade my 800mhz AMD PC, i ended up spending $300 for a 2.5Ghz celeron. it even comes with a 16" monitor which i don't need at all, but there wasn't any option to not include it in the package. the machine won't arrive until 2 weeks later.

the weather today was cold. for the first time this season the daytime temperature dropped into the freezing range and the water puddle across the street from my house is now a small ice pond. in the evening julie came over for some ribs dinner. she brought some salad as well as ingredients for baking pumpkin bread at my place. we also roasted some fresh pumpkin seeds (i didn't realize you're supposed to eat the shells as well). we watched american's next top model (ANTM) while gnawing at our ribs; there's something primal about watching pretty girls getting all catty while we're chewing on the flesh of dead animals. the sole lesbian kim got booted off tonight, which came as a complete shock, because all signs pointed to bre, who had a meltdown after tyra banks confronted her about stealing and destroying other people's property. it's so not fair, kim was the only remaining model worthy of being ANTM, there's no justice apparently. if i had to pick though, i'd pick jayla to win now even though she's a bigger bitch than bre. i hate that i'm watching a reality show (usually i snub my nose at these programs), but there really isn't anything else that's good on wednesday nights (other than the back-to-back reruns of SVU on USA).