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at 7am this morning my alarm went off prematurely, and i couldn't remember what day it was, nor whether or not i had to go to work today. i laid in bed, utterly confused with forrowed brows, thinking hard, trying to fathom the answer to the question. "i think it's friday," i thought to myself, "i don't think i have the day off today," i thought some more, "i have to go to work," i finally figured out. internal dialogue resolved, i snoozed the radio alarm clock for another hour and went back to bed.

i didn't want to go to work today. i purposely walked slow, taking reluctant steps. is it the jovian gravitation pull or am i trying to avoid going to the office? my only saving grace was a new crop of mp3's i uploaded into my player yesterday after work before i left the office. when i finally got to the bottom of the steps leading to the workspace, those were the longest flight of stairs i have ever taken. i felt like i was voluntarily marching to my execution. today would be a bad day of debugging. friday. not for me. it's not friday for me because tomorrow i still have to come in to work. while much of the population will be enjoying the beginning of a long weekend, i will be in the office, working.

i dropped my coat and bag, plopped down in my seat, and waited for the computer to fire up, all that time feeling the disgruntleness inside of me just simmering.

thus began my day.

"say no to the office lunch," i told klea over aim. so at 12:30pm eliza hoover, klea, and myself went out foraging for food, a little xtsher reunion of sorts. destination: secret thai truck. i got the general gau's chicken, while klea and eliza both got the mango salad with chicken. we ate in the akamai courtyard, the spring time noon day sun so brightly reflected off of the metal table that i was afraid i'd be permanently blinded. i could feel my skin baking from the heat rays. my general gau was tasty but kind of hard to chew. klea and eliza's salad seemed really good, i'm going to get that next time. one of the topics of our discussion was transgender humans and sexual identity.

most of the day i spent patching up little bugs here and there when they popped up in the retested code. my biggest hurdle today was configuring the mac installers to the specifications we wanted. finally i had no choice but to e-mail tech support. to my surprise, a few hours later, they responded with an attached script demonstrating how i should go about fixing the problem. most of the day was also spent waiting for michael's portion of the code. finally, minutes before he left for the weekend, michael passed the code over to me, in working condition.

home financing news: i found out i don't need my 1999 tax returns after all, because cambridge is a targeted area of the MHFA. that saves me a trip down to government center. my real estate agent faxed me a copy of the 10% down payment check i made out at the time of the purchase/sales agreement. i forgot he sent it to me until amanda alerted me to the fact that there was a document downstairs that appeared to mine with some personal information on it (like condo cost).

late afternoon i went outside to sit on the metal railing lining the edge of the building, taking a break, listening to my mp3 player. there's no sun back there, just the shadow, and the occasional strong gust of cold wind that blows a sandstorm down the potmarked street. i just needed some private time. i thought about how great it'd be to have some sort of crisis counselor in the office. i just sort of felt all mixed up inside, like a mixture of depression and exhaustion, i really needed somebody to talk to. i felt like i just witnessed some horrible accident, and was still in shock over it. is it normal to feel this way? i can't even begin to articulate how crappy i felt. eliza jones popped out of the upstairs office, saw me outside, and we chatted for a little bit. she looked over my mp3 playlist and realized that i am a child of the 80's. is it wrong to love hall & oates' "method of modern love"? i must be guilty then! later, alex came by as well, and when he and i started talking about leg hairs and throwing around words like "chicks" and "foxes", that was eliza's cue to exist stage right.

people slowly started to filter out of the office as the day wore on, sunlight transitioning into darkness. everyone on my team left except for todd, and i told him to go home as well because there wasn't any reason for him to stay if he was just waiting for me to finish up. i think that was just hero talk. there's no need for both of us to stay late, i'm willing to burn up in the atmosphere for this project, let me be the sacrificial lamb on the altar of the deadline gods.

eventually it was just lisa and i left in the office. we had a nice chat about home ownership and jobs. alas, then lisa had to go, and i became the last person in the office. i finally burned off 6 gold master cd's for testing tomorrow morning and left work close to 10pm. i ended up making excellent progress, and i even finally solved the installer quirk. i left feeling pretty optimistic that tomorrow's going to be a low stress day and we'll actually get the cd's out earlier than previously anticipated. maybe my long weekend isn't that ruined after all. ah, who am i kidding? spending friday night in the office working? that's not the kind of good time men scribble inside of bathroom stalls.

thus concluded my 13 hour work day.