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today i was working very hard but if you asked me what i did i couldn't tell you. most of the 500+ minutes i was at work i spent frowning in front of the computer screen. thank god the fda recently approved the use of botox in treating facial wrinkles. speaking of which, i got the office lunch again, hoping i could just do my 8 hours of penance and leave work at a respectable 5pm. i ended up giving the company a bonus hour of work as i set fire to some cd's. for whatever reason, birds kept on flying into the upstairs office. it added a touch of levity to an otherwise ultra serious work floor. everyone moved upstairs today, seemed like the only ones who were left downstairs were the people working on my project (all six of them). for my good deed of the day, i went downstairs and threw a dozen role of toilet paper into a trash bag, since our supply upstairs was nearly depleted. please, i don't want any thanks, but maybe you can think of me fondly the next time you're in the bathroom enjoying one of the many magazines in our ever expanding reading rack.

when i'm writing this weblog sometimes i think about two movies, harriet the spy (1996) and pecker (1998). in harriet the spy, harriet is a precocious little girl who has a secret spy journal she writes in but one day the notebook ends up in the wrong hands. her life is temporarily ruined, but she eventually wins back her friends. in pecker, a young man's photographs of his friends and families become famous. unfortunately, his fame negatively affects everything around him, and he's no longer able to take the same photos he took before. so that's what i felt like today.

the highlight of my day was the trip home. while waiting for the bus at harvard square my cellphone began to vibrate. i saw it was a call from julie but unfortunately i couldn't answer it, i didn't want to be that guy you always see commuting and talking to his cellphone at the same time. i hate that guy. that would never be me, so long as butolism is an effective treatment against deep brow furrows. after the bus ride though (the driver missed my stop, i couldn't ask him "next stop please" because the aisle was blocked by a few people), i quickly called julie back. i became that guy who walks and talks on the cellphone at the same time. i use to hate that guy, but not anymore. funny how becoming a cellphone user myself makes me less of a cellphone hate monger. julie on the other end of the line revealed that she was that girl who rides the bus and talks on the cellphone at the same time. oh julie!

i walked home underneath the canopy of flowering spring trees. if nothing else, at least the season makes me happy.

final note: last weekend when i was hanging out at the mt.auburn cemetery, i picked up a free pamphlet called "explaining cremation: answers to the questions most often asked." questions like "what is cremation?" (it's the age-old process by which human remains are reduced to bone fragments by heat and evaporation) or "what does cremation cost?" ($250). but what about the most important question? the question that everybody asks when they hear cremation. "does it hurt?"