another day without painting, spent the bulk of my morning stripping the globs of sealants from around each window pane with a little piece of razor blade. three electricians were in the house setting up some stringed track lighting. after my blue collar job i came home to do some white collar work, a bit of bug fixing to make. i am so far over the total hours of what i originally signed up to that any work i do now is for free, i don't think i'm getting paid for it, and i do it out of some sense of wanting closure more than anything else, to once and for all get it done and never have to worry about it ever again. nothing is worse than a project that won't quite finished itself, that lingers and haunts my days and nights. i don't like to have work debts.

i finished off the programming before i made lunch, an omelette. three eggs, slices of ham, cheese, red pepper, and basil. i still think i have a lot to learn before i make a perfect omelette. the cheese didn't quite melt, but it was a tasty affair.

my father dropped by to bring over a used office chair that he was hoping i'd like. kind of reminds me of the office chair i had back in belmont a long time ago, a brown chair with fabric seat and armrests. i sat in that chair so much, it pretty much fell apart. later, he drove me to pc for everyone down by the galleria mall. i thought it was a retail store, but it's actually more like a factory where they assemble cheap computers to sell. i bought two video cable, to be used on my the qvs monitor dataswitch i bought a few days ago.

once i got home, i tried out the cables on the dataswitch. it worked, but there's ghosting on the monitor, the price i pay for buying a cheap switch. i'll have to upgrade to a better shielded dataswitch.

remember how i said that project was haunting me? well, it came back, one more bug to fix, i was all ready to go out running and enjoy the nice weather, but i spent an hour trying to figure out the bug, which in the end i had to write an e-mail asking for a more detailed explanation of the bug.

i finally was able to go out for a run around 4pm. temperature today was in the 80's, i didn't have to worry about staying warm, but all i cared about was keeping cool when i ran. i felt pretty fast today, which explained the few times where i had to slow to a walk, just running out of energy. the last time i went running was 8 days ago, so naturally i haven't built up any stamina yet. if i can keep up my schedule for a few weeks, i'll be to able run continuously without any stops. the walk back was as fragrant as last time, lilacs are still in bloom, and now wisterias join their ranks as well. it was a very pleasant day, there were time when i walked with my eyes closed, smelling the spring flowers, feeling the warmth of the sun.

i took my second shower of the day when i got home, then got dressed and went out to run some errands. deposit some checks at the ATM (including my federal tax return), pick up my high blood pressure drug from CVS, get some duplicate basement keys made at ace hardware store, and buy some more canned guarana from that brazilian supermercado.

i called renata to see what she was up to, left a message on her answering machine, while the whole time my phone was beeping from an incoming call. turns out it was renata calling me at the exact same time i was calling her, and she asked if i had made any dinner plans, which i didn't. she came by (all dressed up in a fancy flowing purple/black outfit suitable for the office or a party) and we went to boca grande. she had the colorado chicken burrito grande (eating half, saving the rest for lunch tomorrow) and i had the colorado chicken dinner plate.

renata went home right after dinner, something about feeling sleepy and not wanting to fall asleep at my place again and finding a photo of herself on the web the next day. a little bit later joel came by to watch the season finale of 24. although all the loose ends were tied, the ending wasn't as great as some of the regular season episodes. the whispered promise of hot blonde sister-on-sister catfight never manifested itself at any time. jack bauer unable to extricate himself from a stuck seatbelt at the start of the show was somewhat unbelieveable. and as joel pointed out, the fact that snipers riding a helicopter could take out the bad guy without him hearing the approaching copter was kind of strange. the finale - the president getting poisoned from a tainted handshake (the "stink palm") - i wonder how that's going to play out next season though. how many 24 hour period of continuous crisis can there be anyway? and the same guy (agent jack bauer) in them every time? i guess they did it for die hard, they can surely do it for 24.