i've had an interesting past 10 days. i went camping at the acadia national park up in maine, went to the beach of gloucester, traveled east to cape cod and provincetown for a few days, then spent the weekend down in the hamptons of long island. at this point all i want to do is to stay home and recuperate. i've had too much sun already, wasn't like i didn't get enough 3 months wandering southeast asia, but then i come back and get even more. the way i've been tanning, i think it's permanent at this point, don't think my skin will ever go back to being pale. despite the whirlwind of activities, this morning i rode out to norwood for more freelance programming work. i even surprised myself; is this the same person sitting on the edge of a mountain cliff, or the same person walking the shores of a nude gay beach, or even the same person who's floating on a blow-up sex doll in a pool? i welcomed the serenity of work, a vacation from my vacation almost. and it doesn't hurt to be paid for doing something, sometimes i forget i have bills.

once again i thought i wouldn't be at the office for the whole day, but the more i coded, the more work i seem to have. the "office" i'm in is not even a real office, more like a conference room that i've taken over during my contract work. it's kind of sparse, and i can't even get into my e-mail account, some sort of firewall. i wonder if people are talking already, who's that guy who's always in there? does he even work here? today's problem had something to do with quicktime movies encoded with the sorenson codec losing their audio after a few toggle from normal to full-screen mode. i figured out a more stable solution using mpeg's and a 3rd party xtra but had to come up with a way to encrypt the movies as well since the new format doesn't support media key protection. i'm tell you all this because i know you love to hear about my job.

suffice to say, there's still some work left, so tomorrow morning i'm going back to norwood again. as long as it isn't raining, i don't mind the commute. it's good practice, takes me out to parts of boston i normally wouldn't visit, and anytime i get to bike i won't hesitate to do so. today's weather was warm and dry, a little bit too dry, as the roads became dusty and i arrived at the office with bits of sand in my mouth.

i was so happy to come home. i took a hot shower and just relaxed. that's a great feeling, that guilt-free pleasure of having nothing to do after a honest day's worth of work, like i've earned the right to just chill out. i had some korean kimchee ramen for dinner and some green tea ice cream kristine left here from last week for dessert. red sox failed me again but battlestar galactica did not disappoint.