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i went into boston this morning to do some photo work for sara. everything was going fine until i arrived at park station around 10:00 and heard the announcement that all trains were temporarily disabled due to signaling problems. by then i was already onboard a stationary train. lucky for us all the air conditioning still worked on this heat wave hot day (90+ degrees). by 10:20 i finally had enough and left the station, deciding instead to walk it down to copley square, just 3 T stations away. it was a quicker walk than i expected, cutting across boston common and down boylston street, arriving in just 15 minutes. sara works for a publicity company and they were doing something involving the pink panther. they had an employee put on a pink panther costume and wanted me to get some photos with a cake.

what was supposed to be just 30 minutes of work turned out to be 4 hours. the client wanted revisions after revisions while we waited for them to give us the final sign off. we even replaced the original guy in the panther suit with a young woman of similar height. sara was apologizing profusely and said i'd be reimbursed for the extra time, but i really didn't mind, it was actually fun to be in boston working on a project like this. and really, what else would i be doing on a thursday? (besides possibly going to the beach, but it's not even summer yet). the office space also reminded me of some of the places i worked at before, bunch of people huddled together in a confine space, almost like in a submarine, except with more women. since this was a publicity company, they also had a lot of promotional swag, and sara gave me a bag of free t-shirts, hats, dvd's, and books.

in the afternoon sara ordered some upper crust pizza for everyone and after the client signed off on the photos, we ate the cake. by then joel had shown up as well. haven't seen him in a while (more than a year?), and since that time, he and sara bought a condo, get engaged, and own a bulldog. i managed to get a ride back home to cambridge from joel.

i went to market basket to pick up a few items before dropping them off at the cafe. i then went to belmont, where nobody had yet let hailey out into the backyard so she could go to the bathroom. while she went back to sleep (it was too hot for her to play outside), i watched my backlog of freddy's nightmare reruns on the DVR before my parents and sister came home. i also heard on the news that the MBTA delay this morning was more extensive that just the green line, that it was a system wide power failure that disrupted service on all trains. i had some noodles for dinner before going back to cambridge.

it wasn't enough that i saw joel today, but then i had my second screen house sighting of the day: roy black! every once in a while i'll see him around the neighborhood (he lives nearby, not sure exactly though), like spotting a rare animal. it was unmistakeable roy, that leisurely shuffle, that trucker hat, that circa 1980's heavy metal mane of hair. he was walking to the gulf gas station, probably to buy some cigarettes.

finally tonight, i pulled the trigger on buying a new wide angle lens. i went with adorama thinking i was getting a better deal compared to B&H but soon afterwards i realized the canon rebate was just an instant rebate and the price already reflected the discount, so i wasn't saving any money. i'm getting this nagging feeling that canon somehow increased the prices on all its lenses just as soon as they started to have these instant rebates. instead of worrying about it too much, i figured the sooner i have the lens in my hands, the sooner i can start shooting. i also bought a thin 77mm circular polarizing filter.