that rainstorm didn't show up until almost 4:00. i spent the day cooped up at home for no reason. not that i didn't have anything to do: 
i was busy retroactively producing weblog content for the past 2 days. it doesn't seem right that i should spend a day devoting so much time to another day that's already passed. it's not just the daily synopsis, which is easy to write; it's also the time spent looking for the right photos and then the research that goes on to identify that plant or bug or whatever. alas, that's what i like to do. i like going out into the field, collecting the "data", then coming home and looking up what i found. it's my secret desire to be a field scientist i suppose.
i chatted with alex today from china. he managed to borrow a laptop and was instant messaging from his beijing hotel room. i asked him to send me some travel photos but i never did get them. he was going to post some on flickr but apparently it's on the chinese banned websites list. he'd already been to tianjin and was going to xian next.
when it finally did rain, i felt relieved, like the validation i've been waiting for. my upstairs neighbor was home, stomping up and down the stairs. i know it's a weird thing to say, but i don't like it when he's home. i don't see him, but i do hear him since my condo is below his and these 100+ year old walls are not sound proof. it's not so bad that i can hear conversations, but definitely footsteps (this might not happen in an asian family, since its customary to take off our shoes inside the house). and whenever somebody uses the toilet on the second floor, i can hear my pipes rattling. fortunately summertime is when he's at home the least, since he spends most weekends at his vacation home on martha vineyard.
for lunch i had some more leftover spaghetti with meat sauce. it was so filling that i didn't even feel like having dinner, but i ate some more noodles, this time mixed with some of that dan dan sauce. all this carbohydrate is making me farty.