when the weather gets this warm and nice, i feel obligated to go outside, if nothing else, at least to say i didn't spend the whole day stuck indoors. so in the afternoon i took a break and decided to go down to the charles river by boston. not expecting to see any unusual birds, i saw one anyway, a solitary loon in nonbreeding winter plumage, most likely migrating north. earlier this year i saw a loon at nahant. the word "loon" itself is filled with all sorts of connotation in my own personal life: it was the project name for the last thing i worked on for client S, back in 2002 when i was a full-time employee before i got laid off. from there i went down newbury street and went as far as copley square before coming back.

i got some more groceries in chinatown before returning home. riding around town in my t-shirt, the skin on my arms and face felt tight, one of the signs of a light sunburn. i did some more work for client S. i don't sense any urgency on their part, no significant bug reports, nor any e-mail requests for status updates on my part. this is either a good sign that we're practically finished or a bad sign that they're expecting me to work on things i'm not aware of. i guess i'll find out friday when we deliver the beta.

in the evening my neighbor renee had her 64th birthday party. i was probably the youngest person there, along with franz and jen. jen showed me the ipod nano shuffle she received in the mail from some mysterious man in waltham whom she doesn't know and there wasn't even a note (secret admirer? or stalker?). i met renee's friends, aging cambridge hippies like her as well. she requested that we all sing the beatle's "when i'm 64" several times throughout the evening.