6:00 was the time my upstairs neighbors began their morning racket, sending me out of bed unable to sleep. about the same time a mile away in somerville, a woman had slashed 3 police officers with a knife and was subsequently shot to death.

i spent the rest of my early morning reading a magazine in the living room. at 7:30 there was another round of upstairs clamoring. when my roommate woke up she was surprised to see me already up and about.

i was in standby mode the rest of the day. since my code delivery last night, i hadn't heard back from client S with any sort of addition edits or bugs, so i took the lack of feedback to be a positive development. as a programmer-for-hire, i'm always the last person to know when a project has been signed off. maybe clients don't want to give me the okay signal only to later find out something else went wrong.

as a treat, i got some chinese takeout for lunch from zoe's. i ordered the general tso's chicken, an entirely american creation not found in authentic chinese cuisine but one of my takeout favorites. i devoured my meal why watching the rest of the midday news.

doppler radar was showing me a large swath of rain clouds approaching the boston area beginning in the afternoon. i was going to get some groceries but didn't want to risk getting soaked, so i stayed home instead. i watched all episodes of MTV's the hard times of RJ berger, up to number 7. surprisingly, it's my new favorite show, kind of like a cross between american pie, glee, and superbad, your typical coming-of-age sex comedy.

since my normal sleep was cut short by about 4 hours, i drifted off into a nap. the soft fall of a drizzle doused the landscape. i figured i'd be more comfortable sleeping in my own bed instead of the couch, but the moment i decided to relocate, i couldn't fall back asleep. i can only nap when it's spontaneous, not forced. something in my brain kicks in at that point and makes me realize i could be doing something else instead of sleeping.

that something else turned out to be taking photos of the bikers getting caught in the rain as they were coming home. is it wrong? but where else can i capture drama so up close and personal?

after i got back, i change out of my wet clothes and took a shower before my roommate returned home. while she was eating some ramen for dinner, we talked about american movies. she knows a lot about stateside cinema (even did some subtitle translation work in her spare time) but only the chinese names of the movies and actors. we played an improvised game where we i tried to guess the film from the foreign name and her synopsis.

we just so happened to be talking about lord of the rings when it came on TNT. she seemed to be trying to match me in staying up late, but before i could tell i was going to bed, she saw the time and realized it was late (like, 2:00 late).