i shared the subway with a sea of kindergarten kids, each wearing a name tag with their first name and an emergency telephone number to call in case they got lost. they were all talking and moving around, like a flock of chirping birds. i felt sorry for their teachers who had their hands full keeping everyone together and well behaved. at the office, work work work. we're in pretty good shape, no problems meeting the deadline. i had the rest of my mushroom chicken stew for lunch. after katrinka left for a business trip down in lousiana, alex and i went out running. it was actually warmer than we thought (60 degrees, late afternoon sunshine), a lot of people were out on the banks of the charles river enjoying the nice weather. topic du jour: the brutalization of iraqi war prisoners at the hands of american contract interrogators. my solution to fixing the problem: find every america that was in those photos and hand them over to the iraqis, let the people of that supposedly free nation deal with them. it's a small price to pay to maintain the peace.
after work i went to brooke's to get some more cough drops. brooke's is the cvs alternative, for those who don't want to contribute to the cvs hegemony of local pharmacy/convenience stores. you can find things at brooke's that you might not be able to find elsewhere, like vicks mentholated cough drops and regular flavored fisherman's friends. i finally got in touch with john about our plans for tomorrow night. 
sitting on my front steps, taking the phone call, a friend of my upstairs neighbor steve came by, a bottle of wine in his hands. he had asshole written all over him though, i kept on looking at him but he completely ignored me, maybe he didn't realize that i live right downstairs. 
he seemed more than just a casual friend, he had the keys to the house and was about to let himself in when steve came down. i watched the red sox game on television (red sox ended up winning, we're now on a 2 game win streak), alternating between that and the season finale of friends, which i wanted to see, but after just a few minutes i changed the channel, suddenly remembering why i haven't watched in the show in such a long time. i cooked up some dumplings for dinner, with a small tin of sardines and nuggets of raw garlic, a rather smelly meal. i brought in my plants, then did a load a laundry before taking a shower and going to bed.