so the whole day became a drawn out countdown to when they'd leave (around 3:00 for the 6:30 departure). i haven't been alone in my own house for about a week now, not since they returned from new york city last wednesday. under normal circumstances, with just a single roommate, i know at the very least i have most of the day to have the house all to myself while the roommate is off at work. i haven't experienced that in about a month, other than the 5 days they were in NYC. if only the girlfriend wasn't a homebody! believe me, i've tried on many occasions to get her to go out, but this seems like a working vacation for her, and she spent most of her time hovering over her laptop at the dining table, so much so that it's become her makeshift office that she just leaves her computer there. "hey, the weather's really nice today," i'd tell her, or, "do you need to buy more presents for friends and family in spain?" but she never took the bait. they also never went out at nights, which conflicted with the fact that i never go out in the evenings either. in this month long siege, i'd say they went out to dinner twice, and once when i wasn't here.
i began working on project P for client N. it's nice to go back to programming in director lingo. i've done a few flash actionscript projects, but flash to me still seems very alien, and there's much i still need to learn. that's not the case with director however. lingo feels like home and each project gets easier as i've amassed a large archive of past codes to reuse and retool. i'm still hoping to achieve that holy grail of programming, the flawless program/application that has zero bugs. maybe this will be the one. since i made the switch to OS X 10.6, i've also upgraded to director 11.5 (my old version of director, MX 2004, doesn't work under the new OS). nothing too special, still feels like old director, i haven't had time to look under the hood and see what's new yet. new isn't necessary good and my biggest fear is it'll bug out and i won't know what's causing it, some new error introduced into this latest version.
the weather forecast was for intermittent burst of rain throughout the day. not much actual rain fell, but the sky teased the earth unceasingly with periodic darkening of the landscape. my thoughts were of the rain barrel, wondering how much rain they'd collect this time, even though some of them are already close to full capacity. so far we've been using the rain barrels to wash our dirty hands before going inside the house. we also use 2 gallon watering can to water the plants. it's sort of a slow process; for instance, a single 4x8' raised bed requires 2-3 trips to completely water. the water comes out in a gentle shower which is great for seedlings, but once the plants get bigger, i'd be tempted to water with the actual garden hose just because it's quicker and more forceful. we actually got a second watering can (from target) to make the work go a bit faster.
one way to make the barrels more useful is by raising them higher in the air to increase the water pressure. not just a few inches, but few feet (i was thinking 4 feet would be ideal, which would give approximately 4 psi). that way i can connect a hose to the spigot and water directly from the barrels. but that's also more dangerous, since a full barrel weighs about 500 lbs. and requires building a sturdy structure to support such a heavy load (no stacked cinder blocks for that one). another idea is to use soaker hoses and water the raised beds that way (not to be confused with drip irrigation using emitters, which is more professional and costly). we have a 50 ft long black soaker hose we don't use anymore which would be perfect. my only fear is once again an issue of pressure, that there won't be enough to properly push the water out of the hose (given a water height of about 5ft off the ground, the pressure from the spigot is 2 psi or less; soakers ideally require 10/12 psi).
when 3:00 rolled around my heart was beating fast from the excitement. the bags and suitcases rolled out and gise said her good bye. she came in for what i thought was a hug but turned out to be one of those european double cheek kiss. she and victor left for the airport. i watched them disappear down the street.
i knew i had at least 2 hours before victor came back home. in that time i used the bathroom (uninterrupted reading session), took a shower, and made a turkey-egg sandwich for lunch.
i received some new button batteries in the mail (long story, the ebay seller sent me the wrong ones, then resent the right ones); they're for an old casio fx-115D scientific calculator of sentimental value, the one i used throughout high school and college. despite also being solar powered (besides battery powered), there was nothing in the display, so the problem could've been LCD related. even with the new battery it still didn't work, until i tried flipping it over. success! i just wish that this calculator could do english-metric conversions, which is what i use the most on my computer calculator.
ever since i turned off the heat more than a week ago, i've been afraid that we'd get a stretch of really cold days that'd make me regret shutting down the furnace for the season. but so far so good, indoor temperature has hovered around 68-70°F, much hotter than even if i had the heat turned on. so i made the right decision.
victor came home around 7:00, his sweatshirt slightly soaked from leaving the house without an umbrella. he immediately fired up his computer and worked until almost 1:00 non-stop. when i was in the kitchen heating up some french bread pizza for dinner i commented that he was working pretty hard. apparently he has a presentation on monday he has to prepare for, the same presentation he'll give at the end of the month in toledo when he goes back home to spain.