i uprooted my spiderplant tonight. under the advice of ben and laurie, i'm going to keep my plant in water instead of dirt. i found a tomato sauce jar, filled it up and placed the uprooted plant inside, adding a few drops of plant food. hopefully this new aquatic environment will offer my sick plant a second chance at life. if i can help it, no plant's going to die on my watch!

i spent the day reading youth in revolt. it's only been a day, and i'm already on page 263. that book would make a great television series. made for cable only though, no way would broadcast networks be able to pull it off, with it's wall-to-wall teenage sex angst and one crazy ill-advised mishap after another. reading the book is like getting many seasons-worth of great episodes in the life of nick twisp. i see it like a malcolm in the middle but with more edge, more raunch, more truth.

reading is like watching a hand-cranked movie or television show. the more you crank the more you see, but it can be tiring and it definitely takes a long time. i don't know if you can say reading a book is better than watching a live action adaptation. i think you can definitely show more in the amount of time it takes to read about it. yet at the same time because books have more content, you can write more details that movies might have to gloss over because of the limited attention span of movie patrons. anyway, the whole day, any chance i got, i'd steal some time to read a few more pages.

is it a crime to not separate the colors when i do a wash? because that's what i did today. so what if my whites get all splotchy from my colored? i'm sick and tired of this segregationist laundry policy, from now on, it's going to be a more progressive integrated program! the enlightened american experiment melting pot wash system!

for lunch i ate the chicken i cooked from yesterday, drinking a fruit elixir, and watching some biography on john gotti. something about mafia treachery seemed to go hand in hand with the visceral consumption of a chicken. there's something perfectly right about slicing away at a bird carcass while listening to stories about dismembering fellow mobsters. i got as far as two legs, two wings, and most of the breast before saving the rest of the torso for tomorrow.

by nightfall i heard knocking on my front door while i was reading in the guest bedroom. i ignored it at first, but it continued. who would be knocking anyway, don't they know there's a manual doorbell? from the venetian blind slits in the living room window i saw a shadowy figure lurking outside, and decided to ignore it. sometimes i like unexpected guests, but there are other times when i find them annoying, especially if i'm busy, like reading my book! i don't mind the company, but people have to call first, give me a heads up that they're coming. otherwise don't be surprised to see the lights all on but apparently nobody home, because i'm probably hiding. that's one of the great functions of a house, the ability to hide my antisocial self. anyway, turns out it was alex wong, who was just in the neighborhood (actually, central square, but apprently he was going to the porter exchange but changed his mind because he wanted to save money for his impending layoff and because the japanese waitress working tonight at his favorite eatery doesn't like him apparently). being not a regular at my house, alex saw the doorbell on the door, hence the uncharacteristic knocking. i let him in, we sat around a little bit, and then we both left, he back to malden, i across the street to star market to pick up some groceries. never been bunch of a weekend nights grocery shopper, because i always figured it to be the busiest time of the week, but it didn't look like the case tonight, star market was pretty empty, one of the produce guys was even rearranging the potato shelf because there wasn't that many people around. i got a ball of onion and a box of celery.

i came back home and started making dinner. tonight i would make amends for the lackluster spaghetti sauce performance i made yesterday. i would keep on doing it until i got it right, i think that's an admirable quality, if i do say so myself. i microwave defrosted the remaining half of ground beef i had in the freezer, while heating up an oiled pot. i chopped up half an onion and a stick of celery, while mincing some garlic with my miniature cheese grater (to be honest, it didn't work that well, grates just fine, i just couldn't get the shredded garlic off of the grater). i threw in all the ingredients, then added the meat, then after a while, the tomato sauce with a pinch of salt and 10 revolutions on the pepper grinder. in another pot i cooked the pasta, simultaneously stirring each pot with both hands. this is the part of cooking where i call it "juggling" or "plate spinning," when you have multiple things going at once. fortunately for me it was only two simple things, but it can get crazy when there are more things cooking. i cook in silence too, the only sound those of cooking. my kitchen got warm enough that the back door window fogged up again. right when i finished, i heard my doorbell ringing again. who could it be now?

i opened the door and to my surprise it was cambridgeport laurie (as if i know any other lauries) and her beau ben. like alex, they were in the area, coming back from the porter exchange where they just picked up their japanese noodle dinner. laurie had called a few days ago about visiting, but i was out at the time and didn't get her message. her last visit was back at the start of october, where i had the basic wall colors done other than the bathroom and the kitchen, but i still had all the trims left to paint. the floors were also covered up (to protect them from the paint), and i hadn't moved in quite yet (that didn't happen until october 20th, "123 days"). i'd given so many tours already, i think the novelty of the new is slowly wearing off, and i'm starting to miss certain things that i'd used to point out on my house tours. i mean, they totally didn't hear about the crown molding, or the stories about the vietnamese floor guys, or the history of how my street came to be, or browse my ironic book collection, or look inside my bachelor refrigerator. i did do the disco (recessed) light trick with the dimmers in the kitchen though, that seems to be a staple of my tour. i also didn't offer them any beverages, and i'm usually such a good host, laurie had to ask (gasp!) for a glass of water, and the glass i gave her had (gasp!) water stains! she said she didn't care but i know she's never coming back here ever again. next time, world famous fruit elixirs in spotless dishwashered glasses! i showed laurie her sickly spider plant (i was afraid she'd be angry that i've almost killed it, but told me i could have another one if this one died), she was adamant that maybe it was because of the poorly drained soil, and said i should probably change it in order to see marked improvements in my spider plant's health. we chatted for a bit, including a lengthy discussion on economics and how it affects charitable donations and nonprofit organizations, before they had to leave.

i ate my pasta in the living room (saving half for tomorrow, i'm not a pig, contrary to popular belief), watching the boston celtics beat the cleveland cavaliers. paul pierce got tossed from the game, i think he'll probably get a one day suspension for shoving ilgauskas in the back for a forearm. the pasta was an improvement over last night's, but still it lacked a certain kick. i think maybe it's the tomato sauce, a little bit on the sour side. i read a little bit more (guess which book?), mucked around with os x 10.1 (trying to set up a php/mysql blog local to my machine), and watched some television (nothing particularly noteworthy), casually thinking about maybe dabbling in my freelance programming gig but never actually getting to it.