today, my father and sister helped me paint the final topcoat on the trims. i was in charge of the ceiling trims, i split up the window frames with my father, who also had doors and door frames, while my sister did the baseboards. before they arrived, i took a shower (coming to the epiphany that benjamin moore paints smell like finesse shampoo), changed my shaved nevus dressing, and had my usual cereal breakfast with expired milk (which hours later i had a bad reaction to). they came with a set of new brushes to replace the ratty sticks with hairs i've been using to paint the trims. sometime during all that painting, joel paid me a surprise visit to see the progress on the house. when both bedrooms had a coat of new paint on the trims, my father and i started to peel off the blue tapes. i was really afraid the tape would strip off some of the paint, and that actually happened in small places, but for the most part the tapes came off clean. the parts where it did take off the paint i'm just going to have to repaint, not too much, a few spots that need retouching. i found that if i scored the crease with something sharp before taking off the tape, it leaves a straighter edge versus a more jagged edge without the scoring. i'm still not sure what the best technique is, but it's pretty much impossible to get a perfect edge. i didn't leave cambridge until well past 6pm. for all practical purposes, the bedrooms are finished. i need to touch up some places, but it's time to move in, at least into the bedrooms. the bedroom floors are still covered, but tomorrow i'll reveal them in a private ceremony.

master bedroom, primed windows stripped (bare wood) 020922

window frame primed 021011

window frame final coat 021012

i went back to belmont to grab my cellphone. that's when i realized my phone was nowhere to be found, and i couldn't remember where it might be, having last seen it last night at the thor concert. i called my cellphone number in the hopes that 1) it might ring somewhere in the house, thereby helping me locate it, or 2) if i lost it and somebody found it, maybe they might answer the phone and tell me how to get it back. i called and immediately i was redirected to my voicemail, which meant 1) my phone has been destroyed somehow, or 2) somebody found my phone and has already switched it over to their own cellphone plan. i decided to call the coolidge corner theatre, not really thinking that i would have any luck, but just sort of to exhaust all my search options before eating the cost and buying a new cellphone. "hi, this might sound like a stupid question, but do you guys have a lost & found?" i asked. "yes we do," the woman on the phone answered. "oh, that's great. i was wondering if you found a cellphone last night at the thor concert," i said. "yeah, we did, a little red one," she answered. and that's how i found my lost cellphone.

i went over to dan's, where john miller, visiting from new york city this indigenous people day long weekend (even though he has to work on monday), was over playing john madden's football on the xbox*. they had created their own teams. john was especially proud of his quarterback with the enormous arms and large buttocks named "niceass." later john drove us (dan, cymara, and myself) to zaftigs in coolidge corner for dinner, where we met his cousin sean and his friend janet. i went over to the theatre and retrieved my cellphone beforehand. "what a cute little cellphone," one of the girls (the really pretty one i mentioned from a few weeks ago) said as she returned my phone. to be honest, i'm not a big fan of zaftigs, their breakfast stuff is okay but a bit pricey. but in coolidge corner, that seems to be the only place we ever go for food, and i wasn't about to break away from tradition. i had a meaty sandwich ($10), finishing up my pickle slice and all my fries before digging into the sandwich.

after dinner, sean and janet took the subway back home, while john gave me a ride back to allston (where i had my car parked), while driving dan and cymara into boston for some pool action. i drove home in the drizzle, spitting out sunflower seed shells out the window.

*it's not an xbox, it's a gamecube, so says dan. 021018