last night i couldn't fall asleep so i ended up watching an episode of the a-team on tv, the one where hannibal and b.a. baracus purposely get thrown in some redneck jail (after driving cross-country from california to florida in 36 hours) to save some kid's older brother who's wrongly imprisoned and made to compete in an underground penal fight club to the death. hannibal and faceman (yeah, did i mention faceman was in jail as well?) end up escaping out of the penitentary walls by floating on blowdryer-inflated trash bags tied to chairs (i am not making this up, it really happened).

because i ended up with so little sleep, i couldn't wake up this morning and walk down to the cambridge city hall annex to renew my visitor's parking permit. instead i did the next best thing, printed out a form online, filled it out, and mailed it along with a check for $8. i also paid some bills ($300 worth of cable/internet and utilities - the modern essentials) and filled out a rebate form for a recent purchase. having not heard back from buydig.com, i checked my account and saw that they'd cancelled my order like i asked them to but didn't bother to tell me. james contacted me about getting some lunch today, but i figured i'd be busy and couldn't go. i changed my mind soon afterwards though; stuck at home all this week busy with work, i needed to get out of the house.

so i got to chinatown around noon and met up with james for some korean box lunch special at the apollo grill. little did we know, since november apollo is only opened for dinners now, so we ended up going to our usual standby, the noodle alcove. perhaps due to some recent good press, but the alcove was pretty busy today. i went with my beef (with generous scoops of the hot sauce), james had the chicken.

when i got back home, i did some work for three different clients, breaking up my remaining hours before nightfall. when i went to the living room to close the blinds, i noticed one of my two remaining cherry barbs was behaving a little weird, hovering near the top of the tank, not swimming away when i tapped on the glass. i could see that it was still alive, but it didn't look very healthy (its scales seem to be bristling). figuring it'd die soon, i got it out of the tank and into a small vase filled with dechlorinated water. it immediately started to swim around a bit; seeing that it wasn't so dead after all, i put it back into the tank, periodically coming by to check up on it. not sure what's happening, maybe it's just old (2+ years now), but it's probably going to die by tomorrow morning. with that i will only have one cherry barb left.

my parents came by for some dinner, we cooked some rice and ordered some takeout from zoe's (my second zoe's dinner this week) - a lamb dish and a chicken dish. my mother heard about my mouse problem and brought some plastic bins for my shelves. now there's absolutely no way any rodents can get access to my food! so hopefully they'll relocate soon. i consulted with my father about getting another lens with my camera purchase; canon currently has a special deal that ends next week which allows for multiple rebates, so it's a good time to invest in some lenses. we both decided it'd be good to have a telephoto (and with some modification, i can also use it as a long-range macro lens). after they left, i re-ordered the canon 350d with the EF-S 18-55 kit lens (this time from B&H, $30 more expensive, but at least they had it in stock), along with the EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 ISU zoom telephoto lens. i can't say how much the lens cost, but it's just a few hundred dollars shy of the camera, and the camera wasn't that cheap - pretty much a single mortgage payment. i never thought i'd be the kind of guy carrying around a long telephoto lens - i've always laughed at those sort of photo geeks - because we all know, it's not how long your lens is, it's really how you use it. (i should receive everything by next week.)

finally, tonight marks the return of the second half of the second season of battlestar galactica. captain commander adama versus admiral cain, oh it's on! the show's so good, every week i get scared because i'm afraid it can't live up to the last episode, but each episode just gets better and better, i can't stand it!