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those two large fountain-dispensed doctor peppers i drank yesterday must've been caffeinated because i couldn't fall asleep last night. my mind would slipped in and out of weird stream of consciousness lucid dreaming. the sun was already coming out and i was still tossing and turning, until i finally did fall asleep for a few hours before waking up to ride down to norwood. i had to make special preparations because a serious rainstorm was about to strike the boston area. i've been monitoring the weather since yesterday and the forecast was for heavy rain in the late afternoon. nevertheless, i still wore my waterproof windbreaker and brought along a trash bag to put some of the electronic hardware i was bringing. the route was pretty straightforward, down the VFW parkway to the providence highway into norwood. the sky was a swirl of grey clouds but nothing fell. the meeting went well and i left the client a bit after noon.

although the ride down to the client was uneventful, the ride back home was challenging to say the least. as soon as i walked out into the parking lot i felt a few rain drops. within the first 10 minutes of the ride it started to rain a little bit, big heavy drops that felt like rubberband snaps on my face, unpleasant but tolerable. it was like that for a while, until i arrived in jamaica plain. the sky became dark. and within a few minutes, the heaven's opened up. it felt like buckets after buckets of water being thrown into my face as i rode down jamaicaway. it was like flashdance on motorcycle. enough water went up my nose that i felt like i was drowning. i could barely see through my glasses, and the roads became rivers as the sudden rain flooded the streets. my clothes were instantly soaked as i felt them sticking to my body. i thought about pulling over because it seemed too dangerous but i wasn't sure how long the storm would last and whether or not this was just the start of something worse. it was just a completely unsafe situation, and i think there was a pretty good chance of me getting hurt or killed. by the time i made it to fenway, the torrential downpour had slowed to just a mild rain shower again.

i was so relieved when i finally got back home that i called my parents, even though they had no idea what i'd gone through. it actually took a while to get into the house because i was so saturated; i began stripping at the door and leaving some of my wet clothes outside. if i had to do it again, i'd probably stop off at some donut shop, get some hot chocolate and wait out the storm.

i threw my wet clothes into the washing machine. i heated up a leftover whopper for lunch (removed the patty and cooked it on the foreman grille). i spent the next hour and half finishing resident evil 4. that jetski escape at the end of the game, i must've done it 30 times before i finally broke through.

a knock on my door revealed a delivery man with a package. elias had told me to expect something in the mail within the next few days. i kind of figured it'd be a thank you gift for helping him take some wedding photography, even though i told him i didn't want anything for them. i would've been happy with a book or something, but the UPS guy handed me a large box - a 22" samsung widescreen LCD monitor! i didn't have time to set it up but i thanked elias online, told him it was way too generous a gift for my free service.

i left for hopefully my last orthopedic appointment at mass general. there was actually a lot of people today for some reason, and i ended up waiting an hour and a half before a nurse took me to one of the examination rooms. even then i still waited a while before the doctor actually saw me. i started stealing things from the office out of spite: a pair of purple disposable gloves, some foam shoe inserts, and a few other miscellaneous supplies. since the x-ray department had already closed, he told me to come back another time to take one last set of x-rays. so basically i wasted 2 hours of my day getting down to MGH just so they could tell me to come back again. is there nothing you can't do, modern medicine? what they're going to tell me i already know: that my foot has pretty much healed after 3 months. i asked if i could go running, the doctor said yes, but to take it easy. so at least i have the go-ahead to get back into running shape again.

i finally got a chance to set up the new monitor. it's a thing of beauty, just what i wanted. i hooked it up to my macbook pro for that secondary 1680x1050 pixel screen real estate. when i tried it with my frankenstein G4 with the ATI radeon 7500 card, it could only display a maximum resolution of 1280x1024. i could maybe get a new used video card but at this point it probably makes more sense to spend a little more and invest in a new desktop machine. i'm definitely leaning towards a hackintosh, since apple currently doesn't sell an affordable expandable intermediate desktop mac.

i had some ramen for dinner while watching the season premiere of fringe. i'd already seen the preair of the show that'd been circulating on the internet for a while. it's an interesting cast and anna torv has a very compelling face, but i don't know if the show will survive the season.

another late night working (finished at 3am). not for client B though, but for client N, one of 6 interactives i need to finish by mid-october - so something like an interactive per week. fortunately they'll nowhere as difficult as the 2 interactives for client B, and client N pays much better as well.