my neighbors from across the street are undergoing major basement renovations, the sort of work that involves heavy construction equipment. 2 weeks ago cylinders that looked that support columns arrived. on tuesday a conveyer belt was moving dirt out from underground. yesterday a large steel demolition dumpster showed up in the driveway. and today a grapple truck came by with a delivery of 20 bags of cement mix. so it looks like that lesbian couple who hates me aren't moving out after all.

in the afternoon i noticed a commotion at the end of the street involving fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances. the construction guys must've heard what happened because i saw them running down the road to check it out. curious, i left the house as well under the pretense of buying some tea from the supermarket.

there was a 3 car accident on beacon street. it looked like a car hit a truck and the truck went out of control and struck another car that was parked. nobody seemed to be hurt. the first car suffered a front corner bumper scrape, but the truck hit the parked car with enough force to "glue" the two vehicles together. a flat-bed tow truck had to be called to take the damaged cars away.

at star market i bought a promising box of bigelow cinnamon stick tea. in the parking lot i spotted a car with mexican license plates. lejos de casa!

one of the construction guy got into the skid loader and cleared some leftover snow piles from the road. what took all winter long to accumulate into a mountain (and slowly melting) he managed to demolish in a matter of minutes. with all the construction equipment parked outside, there was hardly any room for cars to get by (hence the excavation). i watched from my living room window, transfixed by the power of the machinery. the best part was when he telescoped the plow arms to drop the snow into the dumpster. i want to drive a skid loader of my own! i found out that the left and right wheels actually operate independently, so the loader can spin around in a circle. i wondered if i drive one instead of a car? unfortunately they're not designed to be fast with a maximum speed of 6.8 mph.

i was excited to try the cinnamon stick tea. could this be a potential substitute for the hard-to-find good earth tea? the advertised spicy cinnamon flavor was what sold me. verdict? it's one of the worst teas i've ever had! there's no cinnamon flavor, not even a trace. it tasted like cabbage tea to me, if you can imagine something that awful. i may try making my own cinnamon tea using cassia ("chinese cinnamon") bark.

a lull in my work schedule allowed me to do some personal jquery/XML work. but most of today was spent watching a backlog of downloaded movies. i started with kaboom (2010), a gregg araki film. i've been an araki fan since the doom generation (1995) and i've seen all his movies after that. he definitely has his own style and one of the few directors who make subversive cinema (i include john waters and david lynch in the same category). kaboom is about the misadventures of bicurious college student named smith (thomas dekker, the kid from the terminator series) which includes psychic premonitions, cult kidnapping, and possibly the end of the world. it reminded me of donnie darko - a film i actually dislike (but i liked kaboom). one thing i noticed was haley bennett performance as smith's BFF stella. she has a vintage rose mcgowan vibe, playing the role of indifferent tough girl. that inspired me to check out some of her other works, which lead me to my next movie, the hole (2009).

the hole is one of those rare family-friendly horror movies (not to be confused with a bunch of other films also called hole and its derivations). it's directed by joe dante, who's illustrious film pedigree includes gremlins (1984) and innerspace (1997). apparently the movie was never released in america, despite being shot in market-friendly 3D. that's too bad because the hole is definitely worth watching even with the family-friendly tag (anathema to many horror fans). 2 brooklyn brothers (dane and lucas) move with their single mom (teri polo) to the suburbs. the brothers discover a mysterious bottomless hole in the basement, which prompts pretty next-door-neighbor julie (played by haley bennett) to ask, "hmmm, is that what you do for fun in brooklyn? play with your hole?" from that point the movie could go in a bunch of different directions, but the film plays it straight. we quickly learn that the hole is entirely evil and supernatural, and scary stuff begins to happen, including a creepy dead girl that walks around in that creepy stutter-style and a frightening clown doll (there are no innocuous clowns in horror films). the movie is well-made and there are definitely some spooky moments, but the ending is sort of weak. watch it for haley bennett, whom i think is a star in the making. watch it also if you forgot how scary clowns can be.

feeling hungry, i ate dinner early, around 4:00. just my rice and bean leftover, sprinkled with some chinese chili sauce to bring a bit of flavor to the blandness. later in the evening i had a can of corn.

victor came home late, around 10:30. he had two free tickets to the MFA and asked if i was interested in checking it out this weekend. the last time i visited the fine art museum was over 4 years ago. i'm curious to see the new american wing.