with no major package arriving today i was more relaxed but that still didn't mean i could just sleep in late because i had some more coding work to do. coding plus more online shopping that is: i bought some cd cases, a flash pen drive, and a 1gb SD memory. around noontime my sister came by to take me to the somerville target where i returned my unused bag of moldy licorice and bought a new ventilation filter for my heating furnace. having not eaten anything the whole day and seeing the burger king across the street, my sister and i went to get some takeout. our mother called asking if we could pick up some grocery items at market basket before coming home. on my doorstep was my overstock.com order, a bunch of books.

watching an episode of dexter sitting in front of my computer, i finally had lunch. whopper never tasted so good! and i never noticed it before, but now burger king makes their chicken tender strips into the shape of a burger king's crown. fancy! after i finished eating i went down into the basement and replaced the filter. i then returned to work, and finally fixed that one remaining bug.

that's when jack's friend alisa called me, asking if i wanted to go see a recital at the nearby longy music school (15 minute walk) where her roommate giovanna was playing the piano. i said sure and met everyone down at the school by 7pm. the show was really about the celloist, but giovanna accompanied him on several pieces. i admire them for their virtuosity but the cello playing seemed like noise to me, although you couldn't tell from the 2 dozen friends of the celloist sitting in the audience applauding as if they were listening to the world's greatest cello music. plus, the piano and cello didn't mesh very well and it sounded like two different competing songs dueling for supremacy. alisa sat next to giovanna at the grand piano and turned the pages for her. the finale was most entertaining, as a flurry of fingers tapped the keys to a crescendo. after it was all over, one of the boys gave me a ride back to my place, while the rest of the gang disappeared to go celebrate.

although we were unsuccessful yesterday, my father and i finally managed to get video ichat working (the problem was you can't have any other internet hoarding processes running in the background, since video ichat is very bandwidth intensive). after i chatted with him, i had a video chat with john. the connection was much more stable (it disconnected a few times when i was chatting with my father) and included puppetry.

it's trash day again and tonight i threw away the rest of my old magazines (heavy boxes occupy the sidewalk, ready for the recycle truck tomorrow morning). i guess i used to be a collector and my poison was magazines. for some reason it felt wrong to just throw them away until it got to the point where i had boxes of old magazines (made worse by the fact that i was a prolific subscriber): newsweek, tv guide, entertainment weekly, just to name a few. maybe if i lived in a big mansion and had ample storage room could i afford to not throw anything away, but living in cambridge, where space is a scarce commodity, i was faced with two choices, either continue collecting or start throwing some stuff to make more room. now one of these days i have to go into my parents' basement and throw out boxes of my old magazines there as well.