was anyone up last night at 2:40 who lives in the cambridge area and get comcast cable? the strangest thing happened, so weird i wonder if i hallucinate the whole thing. first, half of my channels were frozen. not frozen like disconnected, but frozen like there'd be a still frame on the screen. it stayed like that for a while and i missed the first half of futurama (i've seen all the episodes anyway, wasn't a big lost). but while i was channel surfing, i switched to A&E, where there was a frozen still frame of a sopranos episode. that was so weird, except overlaid on top of it was a drawing of a penis. it was only on the screen for a few seconds before it disappeared. i couldn't believe my eyes and switched to some other channels to see if they had it to (they didn't) and when i returned to A&E the mysterious drawing had disappeared. a few minutes later all the frozen channels were back to normal. i've been searching google all day for "penis drawing television hack" but i'm not finding any news about it. was i dreaming or did it really happen?

my regularly scheduled morning was less eventful. since i'm currently on project hiatus, it's still disconcerting waking up and not finding any e-mails from clients. i spent the first hour surfing the web for news and celebrity gossip, then made myself a salmon cream cheese bagel for lunch. my mother called me and told me she and my father visited best buy this morning to check out the canon A570 IS. my father really liked it (because it can take 640x480 30fps 1 hour videos) but my mother wasn't 100% sold on the size (it's bigger than what she wanted). i suggested the next level up, a camera that also has image stabilizing but in an ultra compact size: the canon SD800 IS. unfortunately its smaller size adds another $100 to the price tag, but i collected some info online and went to the cafe to give another presentation (later in the day i ordered online the camera for my mother).

returning home i stopped by the garden to do some watering. it's the nth consecutive day where the overcasted sky looked like it'd rain but ended up staying dry. at least today was warmer (and slightly more humid).

julie came over in the evening with a rack of ribs we cooked up in the oven. we were ready for some red sox baseball action but the game in chicago was delayed (then cancelled) due to rain. instead we watched the little league games on ESPN/ESPN2, georgia versus arizona and chinese taipei versus japan. julie left by 9pm, leaving me to my thursday night of television: burn notice on USA and mad men on AMC. shame on you if you're not watching these two great shows!

later in the evening i started to deteriorate. as much as i want to deny the existence of my hayfever, it's very much real. maybe it wasn't such a good idea to take a large sniff of what i thought to be ragweed growing in the garden. besides the sneezing, i also finished another box of kleenex. my nose was running like a faucet and at one point i jumped into the shower, hoping some hot steam might clear up my sinuses. that didn't work at all, so at 1am in the morning i jumped on my motorcycle and visited the 24 hr. cvs in porter square to get some allergy drugs.

weird the kind of people you meet late at night at the convenience store. they were mostly young, and all seemed to be up to no good. many of them were buying cigarettes, and a tattooed hipster ahead of me in line was getting some brylcreem for his pompadour. i wanted to get some claritin-D and went with the generic CVS brand that was on sale ($10/15 tablets). anything with pseudoephedrine actually lives behind the counter so all i had was a redemption coupon. there was a woman ahead of us all buying a dozen bathroom towels of assorted colors. at one point she ran back into the aisle to get more. what could she be doing with so many towels? maybe it's to clean up a particularly messy murder. it took forever to ring her up and naturally there was only one register opened. the guy behind the counter kept on calling for help on the PA but i guess everybody else was on their break. i stood in line patiently, trying my best to keep my head straight so my nose wouldn't start running again. the impatient girl in front of me ("where are we?" she said incredulously to no one in particular, rolling her eyes) kept on going to the back of the line to hang out with her boyfriend (who couldn't wait and was already drinking his unpaid soda and eating his chips) before jumping back in front of me again ("no saves, honey"). finally another cashier came to the counter and rung up my sale. i traded my coupon for a box of allergy pills and he scanned my driver's license before handing over my receipt and change.

back at home it got me thinking: how much meth could i make with a box of claritin-D? thanks to the internet, i learned i can probably make a few grams of meth at least. pseudoephedrine is also used to cure priapism, which is good to know if i ever have one of those erections that lasts for more than 4 hours.

after taking a hit of generic brand claritin-D, my nose was still runny but i suddenly lost my ability to sneeze. i think at least it'll get me through the night though.