after being distracted for much of the week (with weather, a leaking faucet, and my own lack of work motivation) today was a strictly business sort of day while i tried to catch up on my coding (all due tomorrow of course, that's how i roll). i finally finished downloading starcrash (1979), an italian knockoff of star wars, starring caroline munro (former bond girl), christopher plummer, and david hasselhoff. it's a vhs rip so the quality isn't very good but i hear the actual dvd is pretty much the same condition. it's such a great movie, i couldn't help but to watch 30 minutes of it, saving the rest for the weekend.

my mother called me in the afternoon with a proposition: she found another potential summer foreign exchange student from taiwan, but this time it's a brother and a sister (both high school age). she suggested that they could live at my place while i could move back home with my parents. that sounds like a lose-lose situation and i couldn't believe she thought i would think it'd be a good idea. the kids are only here for a month (starting in mid-july). this does afford me an opportunity to go traveling during that time though (since i will essentially be homeless if i do agree to do this) and i'm not scheduled to be working during the summer anyway. it's not like i need the extra income, but the money will definitely make my travel planning a little bit easier. the hard part now is to decide where i'm going to go. i was thinking about this today, how southeast asia feels like home to me now, and there are still so many places i want to see, but since i've already been there, i sort of want to go someplace new. a few ideas: nepal (i *heart* maoist rebels), indonesia (banda aceh is really pretty that time of the year), western china (visiting the desert during the summer? lovely), and south america (it'd be great to practice my spanish).

in the evening i went to a lecture at the harvard natural history museum, "deciphering landscape," about the creative act of seeing and photography's role in revealing new insight of our natural (and man-made) world. unfortunately the talk was very boring, 10 minutes of noise for every single photo slide and the speaker read from her notes, taking unnatural pauses between words, lulling me almost to sleep. she was going on and on about landscape photography, quoting from famous artists, extrapolating the symbolism and the subtle nuances of seeing - you think it was a cure for cancer instead of just pretty photos. there was a reception afterwards for guests and members of HMNH - i am neither but wouldn't have gone anyway, i just wanted to get out of there fast.

walking back i bumped into paul, one of my upstairs neighbors. we chatted and i've decided to lift my fatwah against my neighbors. i don't know if he noticed but i was using secret coded language to convey to him that he and steven will no longer be suffering my psychic wrath and once more there will be peace at our condo. as a courtesy gesture i showed paul where on our roof top i saw a sparrow flying into a hole to build a nest. "better than squirrels," he said. i forgive you and your noisy ways i thought to myself.

for dinner, i baked a small game hen i've been marinating with lemons, rosemary, and olive oil for the past few days. it was a difficult dinner to eat, made worse by the red sox loss over the indians (i feel a losing streak coming on - either that or it's avian flu). by the time i was finished there was a messy looking chicken carcass left on my plate. next time: boneless.