i couldn't do it. i thought i could, but then my friend gary called to say he was coming over so i had put on some pants. i was going to go the entire day just in my boxers, and i even advertised this fact to several people online. i figured it'd be just the kind of decadent thing unemployed people would be doing at home, especially on a day such as today, a blend of morning snow turning into freezing rain in the afternoon. but as soon as he called, i slipped into a pair of khaki shorts and spent the rest of the day wearing them.

oh yeah, scallion pancakes and a smoothie for lunch, thank you very much.

so gary came over in the evening and spent the next 3 hours bitching about the downturns in his life. i basically sat there and nodded every once in a while, murmuring agreement with the things he said. i felt like i was his personal psychiatrist, and that he could dump whatever problems he was having on me, and i'd somehow make it better by the simple fact that i sat there and listened. he left feeling guilty because he could sense i was overloading on his gripes.

dinner, dumplings with a raspberry orange smoothie. the smoothie took a while to make, the frozen raspberries clogging up the blender. i had to poke at it repeatedly with a chopstick in order to loosen the ingredients. the final result tasted just like raspberries and oranges, with little bits of raspberry seeds getting stuck in my teeth.