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i am so tired. it's not really jet lag, i'm just tired, no stamina, can't stay up late, having a hard time fighting the powerful force of sleepiness. i just want to lie down and go to bed.

my parents are packing for their trip to southern china. their flight is tomorrow morning, my sister is driving them to the airport i think.

i came back to boston monday afternoon 4pm amidst tight airport security. i had a fun time explaining to the custom officer that i had just come back from amsterdam. he gave me a suspicious look but let me go through anyway without inspecting my luggages. it was a crazy day. in less than 24 hours i'd been in three different cities in three different countries -- istanbul, turkey, amsterdam, netherlands, and boston, united states.

i went to work yesterday. what a shock! in the span of two weeks, i'd been relocated upstairs (along with the rest of the development team), one of the programmers had quit, and one of the production ladies gave her two weeks notice.

let me just say for the record that i am not happy with my new location. i think it totally sucks that they just decided to move me without asking how i felt about it first. am i disgruntled? absolutely. so i went from the possibility of moving to somewhere else downstairs to a complete relocation to upstairs. upstairs, where it's empty and isolated. upstairs, where i have virtually nobody to talk to. everything fun about coming to work has suddenly been taken away.

yesterday i also had lunch at max's with mark hickey, who came all the way from his freelance gig in central square. just like old times! we had a max's restaurant down when we worked at broad street. the menu's the same, the only difference is the max's at one kendall doesn't feature the one and only max in clown pants. for that, you have to go down to the restaurant in the financial district.

then today another production person gave her two weeks notice. in the span of a few weeks, we've lost 3 good people. what does this do to overall company moral?

the postcard i wrote in turkey to my coworkers here at the office finally arrived today. mailed from fethiye (southern turkey), it took over two weeks to arrive. still, happy it finally came!

after work a bunch of coworkers went to the rattlesnake bar on boylston street to say good bye to the three people who either have quit or are leaving. these gatherings have become an all too common occurence recently. it'll be interesting to see what the future holds.

regardless, about my vacation, i had an interesting time! i'm relieved to be finally home. i'm still going to need a few more days to adjust. unfortunately, i've been thrown into a nasty tangle of a fast approaching project deadline, and from now until the end of october i'll be working late and on weekends as well. time to rest my weary traveling bones? honey, that's not going to happen until november. it's going to be a painful time for me.

until i can steal some free time for myself, i have nothing to show for my vacation other than a few photos. i took a total of 3882 photos, 150 (as of tonight) of which can be viewed in my turkey 2001 photopoint album. 3882 is actually a disappointing number, because i was so sure i'd break 4000, a personal record. these photos haven't been sorted yet and no captions have been written, so view at your own risk. later on during the week i'll get them more organized, maybe add a few more photos.