i love commuting to work! there i was, a hot shower, some clean clothes, standing on the subway platform at porter station, on my way to squid country safari for my first day of off-site freelance work. all those old feelings came back, i felt like a productive member of society again, and for a brief moment, i could pretend that my life was back to normal, a life where i work the 9 to 5 to make enough money to pay my mortgage and the bills and groceries and fund my extracurricular activities. a drunk man with strong body odor was staggering through the number of people waiting for the train to come. he made it a personal crusade to invade the personal space of as many people as possible. i was just worried that he might be crazy and decide to push me into the tracks, so i made sure i never stood with my back to him.

i love the t!

when the train finally arrived, this staggering drunk of course had to sit right next to me. his body odor was so strong, the young man sitting on my other side used the collar of his shirt as a gas mask, pulling it up over his nose to cover up the smell. his body odor was so strong that it actually made the hairs on my arms stand up.

i love the t!

when i finally got to SCS by south station, it was more of the familiar: the familiar squid space, the familiar squid faces (alex, katrinka, adam, kristine), and of course, the familiar director lingo work. i don't want to brag, but i've done lingo long enough (5 years as a matter of fact, at two different companies, with some freelance work thrown in there to boot) that it's pretty much automatic, and building museum kiosks is one of my favorite things, because you don't have to worry about working with the right color palette or reducing the file size for the web. everything is big, everything is flashy, and everything is okay, allowing for boundless coding and graphic creativity. it's like a breath of fresh air. thus far, all the lingo work i've gotten this past year have been fixing other people's mistakes, debugging their code, trying to be the hero. it's hard work, because, let's face it, sometimes code just can't be saved, and it's a lot of hair-pulling work. not so the work i'm doing at SCS, the material is so fun, the work so imaginative, i'm literally smiling when i'm working, i'm literally humming, like it's not even work, like i'm being paid to come in and play code. it's just a great feeling, that's all.

tom and i i got a chance to catch up briefly. he is in fact officially working at SCS, just recently hired back in july. he's always had a very straightforward outlook on life, it's nice to hear his take on the economy and our work situation.

during lunch, alex and kristine went out running. add that to the nostalgia list, running during lunch hour. i went out to chinatown to get some foodage, the whole spectrum of asian cuisine awaiting my discovery. leaving the office, i bumped into debra may, my old project manager from newmarket network, now public interactive, which shares the same office building as SCS. add that to the nostalgia list, meeting people from my old jobs. we chatted briefly, she remembered i have a house, we both laughed knowingly on the pains of keeping a mortgage. in chinatown, i got a vietnamese sandwich ($2) and a container of milk tea with grass jelly ($2.75). i plan on having bubble ice tea every single day that i'm working at the SCS office. the proximity to chinatown is a perk that should be taken fully advantage of. i will be eating well for the next few days.

i had my ibook with me and wanted to see if i could connect on their network. they didn't have wireless (the only company to have it was upstairs, public interactive, but password protected of course), so i had to use physical ethernet cables, which didn't work in my slightly damaged ethernet port. fortunately, i was able to check my e-mails via web access and install a copy of aim on my machine.

katrinka's calico cat would occasionally walk on my desk, rubbing herself against the monitor, gently stepping over the keyboard. every now and then she'd paw one of the intercoms, turning on the speaker phone. some people have said i'm not a cat lover, but i really love all animals. for a brief moment i could see myself owning a cat. not one of those finicky cats that hide when people come over, but rather a friendly cat that comes out to play. basically the more dog-like the cat, the better i'll love it. there's something soothing about having a pet. katrinka said it's only because her cat has to go to the vet that's why she's in the office today, but i kind of like having a cat at work.

i made plans with julie to have dinner at my place followed by boy meets boy and queer eye, a night of gay television. i talked with amy briefly about the condition of her caterpillars, now chrysalises as well. i messaged mandy, back from new york city via the chinatown bus (we were probably in fact only a few hundred yards from each other at one point and didn't even know it). paula told me she got a ladder already. john messaged me with an os x question but never did get around to asking it. i called john rogaris, former high school classmate now my mortgage attorney, about scheduling a time to meet tomorrow to close on my refinance. he told me he'd call me back later tonight with figures and how big a check i have to write at the time of closing. while using the bathroom, i totally scared the crap out of a gay asian boy (he was wearing a tight shirt) when i suddenly opened the door with him about to enter. i saw him holding his hands to his chest, terrified. it's fortunate he didn't come into the bathroom a few seconds earlier, i was flexing my muscles in the mirror, checking out my hamptons weekend tan. i am totally black now. the pc i'm using has built-in touch screen capability, but unfortunately i have a habit of tapping the monitor whenever i'm thinking, so i ended up clicking and dragging a lot of things around on the computer.

i left at 6pm. adam was still working because he got to the office late, and alex and katrinka were busy discussing the functionality of some project. i had asked kristine and alex if i could join them for a run tomorrow, wednesday being my traditional day of running anyway. they do a long run, 4-5 miles, from chinatown around the charles river and back. i'm excited to go, and i'm actually feeling a bit competitive as well, gives me a chance to gauge their performances, these two office runners. i never really thought about it, but i've been running for a while, from the hottest summer days to the coldest winter days. i probably enjoy running during the winter more than i do during the summer, and i think it's this masochistic ability to endure elemental suffering that sets me apart from other runners. i'm definitely not fast, but i can hold my own. i'll try not to show off tomorrow, but chances are they'll leave me behind eating their dust as i get sidelined from a cramp.

i got home close to 7pm, invited mandy to come over for dinner and television as well (plus spending the night in the guest bedroom, since my roommate mike lee is still AWOL), then went across the street to get some groceries. tonight's dish was my nth preparation of thai red curry, which surprisingly julie has never had. julie arrived first, followed by mandy. i showed the chrysalises to julie, who thought they looked like little jewels. later mandy saw them, and was surprised how small they were. the ladies watched as i cooked in the kitchen, each on her own barstool. my attorney called at one point to let me know the numbers: the end of the month is a bad time to close since i have to pay a lot more of the previous mortgage (which means a high closing cost), but i won't have to make another payment until november, which is good. i finished just in time for boy meets boy at 9pm, followed by queer eye. it's weird watching queer eye with the ladies, they were gushing over the transformed straight guy, saying how cute he looked now.

julie left after the daily show. i made mandy some herbal tea to soothe her stomach (she always gets a stomach ache when she eats here, but she blames it on her coffee diet, which she's thinking about quitting, again) before she went to bed in a guest bedroom that now has a new green ikea rug and a computer desk, taking with her the latest issue of details magazine for some bedtime reading. i threw out the trash, washed the dishes, and am now going to bed.

i am swamped with work,
there really isn't enough
hours to weblog write!