sunday. last day of the weekend. for more than a year, every day was a weekend, a day would have no purpose, i could do anything i wanted, or do nothing at all. now weekends are just free days wedged between blocks of weekdays, the pattern of the weeks, repeating over and over, interspersed with a holiday here and there. my life is different now, more purposeful i suppose, for better or worse.

i woke up late, my sleep imperturbed by any sunday morning phone calls. i got out of bed at noon and made my classic weekend lunch, two hot dogs and a smoothie. i watched a documentary on HBO, "terror in moscow", about those chechnyan rebels holding people hostage in a moscow theatre. i took a shower, then left my house by 3:30pm to go down to jamaica plains, where eliza had invited some people over for some kind of lantern festival out on jamaica pond.

after getting some money from the atm, i took the subway into boston. i bumped into my roommate mike at downtown crossing by pure coincidence. he was going to new york to visit his girlfriend who was down there interviewing. i told him i was going away for vacation in two weeks. "vacation? but you freelance!" i realized he didn't know i already found a new job, but for some reason i didn't bother to tell him.

eliza's friend erin let me into the house when i rang the doorbell. upstairs, eliza, her friend bob, and her roommate anna were in the kitchen. minutes later shauna and alexa showed up, followed by julie and jim, then jeanne, bing, and miranda. i was introduced as eliza's former coworker, and occasionally the fact that i have a weblog would be mentioned, which i embarassingly admitted was true (i shun the spotlight, the less people know about what i do, the more i can write bad things about them). while everyone crowded into the kitchen, i was in the living room browsing through eliza's knitting book, narrowly missed smashing a vase with my elbow while trying to retrieve said book from the mantlepiece. with the team assembled, we walked down to jamaica pond, where it was mobbed with parents and kids brandishing lanterns made from 2 liter soda bottles with colored tissue paper cutouts glued to the side to make them look attractive. this wasn't the floating lantern festival i thought it was, it was more a jamaica plain community pride thing and perhaps a halloween thing as well as many of the lanterns had a scary theme and a lot of children dressed up in costumes. some of the people in our group bought lamps for $5-10 ("donations" they were called), and then we walked around the pond, which with all the traffic, took about an hour. the weather was nice, although it seemed a bit drizzly when we walked to the pond, by the time we got there it stopped raining, but it was still kind of windy, and lanterns would be blown out and a search for anyone with a lighter or matches would ensue. it was strange to see how this was touted to be a family event, if anything, it'd seem unsafe for children, the darkness mixed with the water plus the addition of the fire component, but i guess they do things a little bit differently in JP.

after we made it around the pond, i got a ride from garette and eliza, while everybody else walked back to the apartment for the pot luck dinner, which i wasn't participating in (there was enough people anyway, i'm pretty sure i won't be missed). the brief travel conversation revolved around garette's love of bitter beer, the fact that he went to spooky world drunk while in college, and how i sometimes call the marlins the red sox. i got dropped off at the nearest orange line stop, where i quickly raced back to cambridge to have dinner with my parents and sister at my place.