on this st.patrick's day, i got picked up by laurie in harvard square and together we drove to her friend jess' apartment where she was waiting with her girlfriend kathy. i just want to add that i was the only person wearing green today (my dark green corduroy pants), and i would've worn more but i thought it'd look too silly, too incredible hulk. anyway, back to the story! we then went down to chinatown for none other than dim sum (surprise surprise). by the time we got there it was already close to noon, peak dim sum hour, and we had about a 30 minute wait before we could get seated. we got an upstairs table which was kind of awkward because that head waiter who i'd pissed off two weeks ago worked upstairs. i sort of ate with one hand shielding my face so i wouldn't be seen by him. we held nothing back, ordering whatever struck our fancy. it was laurie's turn today to find a small crab in one of her clams. the final damage was close to $60 worth of dim sum for a party of four. i've never had so much dim sum! luckily, i had a filled china pearl discount card so we were able to get a $10 discount.

afterwards, we visited two souvenir shops in chinatown so jess could find these decorative chinese paper she saw at a friend's house. turns out what she was talking about was the ceremonial ancestoral worship money paper chinese people buy to burn so their relatives in the afterlife can have money to spend. into was in the second store (the one right next to the sex shop) that jess found what she was looking for, and it was in the same store that i saw a most inappropriate tag for a touch activated lamp: "touch me! your touch is the switch." i'll say!

the four of us found ourselves back in laurie's car soon afterwards. after paying for the parking, she spiraled downwards out of the garage, sped along storrow drive, and dumped me back in harvard square. i made a quick stop into wordsworth to see if they had some books my mother wanted (no luck) then i went underground to wait for the 74 bus. while waiting i realized i didn't have my pen. i gave it to laurie so she could put up her hair while she ate and never got it back. so i couldn't write anything down in my commuting journal, which left me with only my mp3 player and a packet of gum as my sole sources of entertainment while i passed the time. maybe it's the engineer in me, but i noticed that the brick work of the bus track was seriously buckling from all the years of stress. it's going to need some repairs!

the bus came, i climbed aboard along with a bunch of other sunday commuters. a pretty girl sat a few seats up front, you could sense the nervous shuffling onboard the bus. she had a single stemmed flower, which she placed on the seat next to hers. a couple of stops out of the station, this man got on, and out of all the empty seats still available on the bus, guess where does he want to sit? right next to the girl of course! he goes to her and points to her flower, as if saying, "excuse me, can you move your blossom so i can sit next to you?" the audacity! but guess what? she totally moves it for him! and then he puts an arm around her and kisses her. a brief second of shock. i wasn't the only person who saw this interaction. either he must be the smoothest player on the face of the earth or...they know each other! which was the case, apparently they were a couple. seeing them so happy together made me kind of jealous which in turned made me grounchy which in turn made me knit my brow the whole ride back. once i got off the bus though and began my slow walk back to my house along the fresh pond golf course, my spirits returned.

as soon as i got home i threw off all my clothes (smelled of dim sum, gross) and changed into my running outfit. despite the fact that i still had all that dim sum inside of me, i went out in the 42 degrees temperature and ran my 3 miles. an asterisked 3 miles though, less than a mile to my house i started to cramp up badly and had to slow to a walk. when i started running again, minutes later i had another cramp and i ended up walking the rest of the way home. nevertheless, i made it back in under 30 minutes, which meant at the very least i was going faster than 10 minutes a mile. running by belmont center i saw a large sign that said, "belmont welcomes our olympic heroes, mitt & ann!" figure skaters? i didn't realize we had local athletes competing in the winter olympics. only when i got home and watched the evening news did i realize what that was in reference to: mitt romney, possible republican massachusetts gubernatorial candidate, and his wife.

i showered then spent the final hours of daylight lying in bed lazily watching the re-animator dvd with audio commentary. i fell asleep when it got dark and woke up for dinner, where my parents had a guest over, a certain mister zhen from kunming china, from yunnan province. i think he might be a teacher of some sort, has a son my age who's a crimestopper* back in china. a pretty interesting fellow, well traveled, full of stories. his father was actually a graduated from the first whampoa military academy established by chiang kai-shek (1924), and i learned for the first time that my own maternal grandfather was also a graduated of that military school, 12th class (i knew he was a pilot in WWII, but i didn't realize he was from such a prestigious school).

leg pains report: the muscles of my inner left inner thigh hurts, as well as my left calf. i'm hoping it'll clear up tomorrow. i tried doing some stretches but they didn't seem to help. not sure how i hurt it. maybe it's not a good idea to run in shorts when the weather's so cold. it's like running a car when the engine hasn't been properly heated up first.

mitt romney: because of him, belmont is getting some primo publicity now, since belmont is romney's hometown. as much as i like the prestige that it finally brings to this small town i call home, i don't much care for the candidate himself, if romney does decide to seek a candidacy as massachusetts' next governor. not that i'm a jane swift fan either. nor of cellucci. i still remember cellucci running a nasty negative campaign against democratic gubernatorial candidate scott harshbarger. let's just see if romney's going to be a liberal republican or will he bow to the forces of conservative special interests within his party and go conservative. pro-choice, pro-gay, that's all i really care about. if he's those things, maybe he'll have my vote. if not, i don't care if he is from belmont, i'm voting democratic regardless of who's the candidate (i hope it's robert reich, only because i've seen him at my parents' coffee shop a bunch of times!).

* that's my new word for "police officer" or "cop." i think it's the most correct term to describe just exacting what they do. people who...stop...crimes!