to my lazy afternoon i added a motorcycle ride down to my house to check the mail and do some measuring. my ceilings are 104 inches tall (thank god, i hate grazing my head on those low ceilings), the longest bare wall in my living room is 9 feet in length, and the width of my toilet if i should want to replace it is 17 inches. i also did a little bit of cleaning, sprayed the bathroom wall with disinfectant and wiped it down with paper towels, getting rid of some nasty cat hairs. it just gives me the willies. i think i'm going to be very anal retentive when it comes to keeping the house clean. i always knew i was a clean person trapped in a dirty boy's body!

i returned to belmont and called alex to ask if he wanted my help moving. 6pm i drove to malden (in my parents' explorer) for what i expected to be 2 hours of light moving, which turned out to be 4 hours of serious moving. it took 2 trips in 2 cars to move the rest of the stuff he had in his old apartment. the new tenants were actually already there ahead of schedule, the lease not yet expiring until tomorrow. they waited impatiently in the basement (they knew the people who lived in the basement apartment) for alex to move out so they could move in. alex had also cut the electricity to the apartment when he moved to his new place, so during our second move we had to work in the dark with a flashlight and some candles. helping someone move is hard enough, but when you can't see what you're doing, that adds a whole new dimension. the whole time i'm hungry because i didn't have dinner yet, and i'm dehydrating because i'm not drinking anything and i'm sweating from all that physical exertion. actually alex was going to come back for a 3rd trip to take some remaining items, but the woman who was moving in, who was watching us move, she went into the apartment and took out the remaining stuff, handing them to alex and me. i harbor no good feelings towards that woman. she's going to have fun cleaning that kitchen after it's gone through the alex wong special greasing treatment.

alex's new place is on the third floor of an apartment complex that only has stairs. i can already feel it, but i think i did some wrong to my back. going to the new apartment after the second trip, i made a quick detour to a local walgreen's to get something to drink. there was nothing in either apartments, the refrigerators were bare. i want ample beverages and snacks if anyone asks me to ever help them move! and even then i might not even do it! i found some stale peanuts on his apartment floor that i ate, along with some stale ferrero rocher chocolates.

after 10pm alex went out to dinner with another friend of his (don't bother asking me, i only just spent 4 hours helping you move) while i drove home hungry, tired, thirty.

so i'm at the fleet bank in harvard square, trying to cash in a check (the little bit of interest earned from the money that was sitting in the hammond real estate escrow account), when the atm machine informed me that it couldn't make the transaction and would also be keeping my debit card. what the? luckily, the bank office was opened (limited saturday hours), so i was able to speak to someone about it right away. "hi, the atm just ate my card, said it couldn't make the transaction," i told someone at the help desk. the guy i was talking to took my driver license and went back to retrieve my card. i waited patiently. he came out with the card. "your account was locked because there's been a report of a credit theft." he turned the computer monitor around so i could see my transactions for the past 20 days. apparently yesterday someone named joseph ye in florida tried to take out $3600 from my account. funny thing is, i don't have $3600 in my account! so i guess that sent a warning flag to the bank and they turned off my account. wow! i'm a perfect target for credit theft, i do so much online purchases, i'm actually surprised that it wasn't happened already. i've had the same credit card number for the past 6 years, used it so much that i've practically memorized the numbers, they have sentimental values. the bank gave me a temporary atm card, and i could expect to receive a new debit card in the mail by wednesday.

when i finally got to the designated waiting area, both laurie and sinali were already there. we took the subway to chinatown for dim sum. the last time i had dim sum with laurie was over a month ago, that day i visited the franklin park zoo. it wasn't very busy today, we went in and were seated right away, no need for a number. i paid my share of brunch with a stack of sacagawea dollars.

i left chinatown with laurie, back to harvard square. we had 40 minutes to kill so we sat outside au bon pain with our ice coffee, surrounded by a sea of other people out enjoying the weather. in the pit a street drummer performed a duet with a street bagpiper. later laurie went to work while i took the bus back to belmont.