this day started for me weird. the night before i had worked until close to 6am in the morning before going to bed to get a couple of hours of sleep. i was exhausted and decided to go home early (early relative to the times i've been going home recently). my plan was to go home, get some dinner, and then go straight to bed, where i would wake up at 2am in the morning to start coding again. so that's how my thursday morning started - waking up at 2am to code. close to 5am i decided to go to the office, get a head start on my eventual commute. i shower, get dressed, burn a cd of my latest code work, and then out the door to catch the dawn bus.
what i saw when i left the front door was breathtaking. in the sky was a conjunction of a crescent moon, the planet venus (below the moon), and the planet jupiter (above the moon to the right). seeing that really woke me up, lifted my spirits, and after taking some souvenir photos, i quickly walked to the bus stop. (i was very fortunate to see this conjunction because the next day i woke up at about the same time to go to work and the moon had already moved into a new position. besides, i only wake up this early a few times a year - 010817)
at work i got myself totally doped up on caffeine. because i usually don't drink coffee, i'm very sensitive to the effects of this commonplace stimulant. here's the breakdown of what i had:
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that's about 3.5 cups of coffee. i couldn't stop moving, i was so hyperactive. all this caffeine in my system would prove to be a slight problem later tonight.
after work a group of us went down to the local watering hole to say good bye to meghan, today being her last night. meghan, for me at least, seemed like such a staple of the company. 
she and i started around the same time, and when i first started working here, i didn't know everyone very well so it was still that awkward period of newbie adjustment. but i remember meghan, with her friendly personality, was one of the first few people that i started opening to. 
she was also my secret santa for our office christmas party, and i still have her woody woodpecker doll in my cubicle, and i think somewhere in my house i still have the custom tupperware container she gave me along with a batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies. it's sad to see her go. not really sad, more like bittersweet. i heard her post-srm plans, and she might be working in nyc, which seems pretty exciting. but without her here, we won't have anyone to kick our ass when we run! and we will have one less person to laugh at our stupid jokes!
anyway, we go to flat top johnny's in one kendall, and everyone's gathered around drinking (i had a cup of orange juice), and josh takes out the latest issue of maxim magazine (the one with meadow soprano on the cover), and it gets passed around and flipped through. nothing like a garish men's magazine to bring out the funny (and quite photoworthy) looks in people!
 amanda reading maxim |
 james makes a comment |
 amanda horror-stricken |
 horror-stricken detail |
after flat top johnny's, i went with amanda, mandy, and meghan for dinner at the coyote restaurant (mexican), also at one kendall (i'm pretty sure no single guy would refuse the invitation of 3 such lovely ladies!). 
i had a virgin margarita (not the kind i had at the office, this one was missing the crucial salt component), i thought it tasted like a tart slushy so i wasn't very impressed. i also had the steak tacos. although there were only 2, i had to really bear down in order to finish them - i just wasn't very hungry. i'm going to blame the caffeine that was in my system. evening highlights: the ladies making puke faces, the twin amandas calling out "snoopy" when meghan was on the phone with josh, and dredging up some sweet 80's music memories with the likes of bel biv devoe and bananarama, attracting some curious looks from other restaurant patrons when they would start singing these sweet songs.
when the evening drew to a close, we all bid our special good byes to meghan. i went home completely exhausted. when i did get back, i was just a few hours shy of pulling a complete 24 hours all-nighter, something that i can't remember ever doing although i've come close on many occasions. i quickly showered and went to bed at midnight. that's when the caffeine once again worked its magic, as i had a little bit of trouble sleeping, but i was way too exhausted and the power of sleep quickly subdued the power of caffeinated consciousness and i feel into a slumber that i knew would have to be interrupted quite soon, as i had set my alarm to wake me up at 5am so i can once again go back to the office and work.