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i am in my bedroom, in the dark, on my bed, writing this weblog entry before i go to sleep. my new replacement battery arrived today and i'm putting it to good use, surfing wirelessly from all areas of my house. it can hold almost 4 hours of charge, a vast improvement over the zero hour of charge on my old battery. the color doesn't quite match my ibook though; the white is a bit off. i don't really mind though, i'm just happy i'm no longer tethered to the power cable anymore.

this afternoon i went down to the SRM office in alewife to chat with todd and faun about the project. i noticed their receptionist had changed, but the old faces were still there, lisa, brice, brian, along with a half dozen new faces i haven't seen before since they relocated to this new office space. i was worried my brain wouldn't be working shifting gears from one project to the next, but all the gears were still spinning, and i managed to sound coherent. returning home, i used the hidden path that cut across the marshy part of alewife. if you can block out the sounds of car traffic on nearby route 2, you could almost imagine you were out in the woods somewhere. not a bad place to work, a little hidden natural oasis within the urban sprawl.

not having had any breakfast or lunch yet, i was determined to get some mcdonald's once i returned to porter square. due to all the recent construction, i wasn't quite sure when to cross the street and ended up running into oncoming traffic as cars came to a screech. i quickly made it across to the next island. a hispanic man started talking to me, i couldn't quite understand what he was saying since it was in spanish, but the gist of it seemed to be he was warning me about the proper way to cross the street. i grabbed his arm and smiled, trying to reassure him that i am a professional street crosser, and said "muy peligroso" to confirm i understood his meaning.

lisa c. had mentioned this to me before but it must've slipped my mind: the porter square mcdonald's is no more, replaced by qdoba, that mexican fast food chain. does porter square need anymore mexican restaurants? first there's the rivalry between anna's tacqueria and boca grande (i'm a boca man myself, from my days of working at kendall square), and a few blocks east there's tacos lupita (13 elm street, although technically el salvadoran). too hungry to try other options, i decided to get something from qdoba. the young woman behind the counter seemed to be in a good mood, laughing about something. i got a spicy ground steak burrito, which turned out to be pretty good, but my low tolerance for beans and rice meant i probably won't be eating another burrito until next year.

i punched at the new SRM project a little bit, before the sky became dark enough that i didn't want to work anymore. julie came by in the evening and made bowtie pasta with broccoli along with chicken cutlets sprinkled with a lemon parsley sauce. tonight was a special night: the finale of america's next top model and the season 2 premiere of project: runway. fresh-face nicole ending up winning! from my sources i was so sure it was going to be nik, so nicole taking the glory came as a complete surprise. there was no way bre was going to win it. models don't steal other models' red bulls; maybe if there's an america's next top midget contest, she might have a chance. an hour later, on bravo, began project: runway. the big news is that daniel franco, the cocky designer who was dumped in the first round from last season, is now back again, with a lot less cock; actually too little, he now seems on the verge of a nervous breakdown each round. i actually wanted the judges to vote him off again during the 1 round scoring phase, because it'd be just so mean, but later i decided that would be too terrible a thing to do. i really liked the dress chloe made during the 2nd round, the teal dress with the hybrid black backing that folds around to form pockets, very 60's go-go retrocool. one more thing: in all the commercials heidi klum appears to be a sveldt supermodel, but on the show she's all fat. i know she's pregnant with a baby seal, but why the advertising subterfuge?