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today i was bombarded with potential job leads if not outright offers.

there was an MMBUG announcement this morning from a company looking for experienced lingo developers to work on contract jobs. it seemed perfect for me, except the company is located in east longmeadow, MA, and i have never heard of that town before so it must be far away. when i got to the office, alex forwarded me that same piece of e-mail regarding that job. andrew wrote me about helping him with a potential side project of selling records online for money, the profit which we would share. rob house gave me a hot lead on a job opening at the berklee music school, jane would float my resume to the top of potential candidates for the position of IT web developer (it'd be a welcomed change of pace from years of lingo programming, and i'd get to hang out with musicians). when i got home, todd the project manager from my old job had a project for me, a version upgrade of that year long language program i worked on (it'd be easy since i wrote most of the original code, and the project would last a few months). even when i talked to paula, when she heard about the fact that i'd be losing my job soon, said she might have some potential collaborative interactive dvd work for the near future. and of course how could i forget my neighbor dennis, who called me asking if i'd be willing to do some paid yard work in north cambridge tomorrow afternoon, for a condo building currently occupied by attractive young women (this was later verified by bruce to be true). sadly, i had to refuse because tomorrow is jame's birthday lunch, but if it was any other day, i'd be weedwhacking toplessly in the hot july sun, living la dulce vita.

so it's weird. the week isn't even over yet, and already my future looks bright, at least job wise. is that what i want though? i was so looking forward to being unemployed for a while, enjoying the summer, go on a vacation, relax. if only these opportunities came in august or september, instead of just mere days of receiving the news that i'd soon lose my current job. and most of these jobs are programming jobs, is that what i really want to do? what about the idea of traveling the world and taking photographs for a living? of course there's two different worlds, one of wishful thinking and dreams, the other of the real world and practicality. thing is, i have bills to pay, debts to settle, scores to keep. when a good job lands in my lap, i can't turn it down because i don't know when the next good job will come. if only my current job luck can be transferred to my love life, that'd be something.

it's gotten to a point at work where you never know who's going to be there. an e-mail from the bosses explained that we only need to be in the office for a total of 40 hours for the next few weeks, and that's to do clean up work since we don't have any programming or design work anymore. so long as i finish what i need to get done (wipe my computer, backup the data, yadda yadda), i can do wahtever i with the other remaining hours, like not coming in to work, which is what kristine choose to do today. the rest of us dutifully showed up at the office, whether out of habit, or a sense of obligation, or a genuine desire to clean out our space. james was in the office when i arrived close to 11am (i was in no hurry to get to work on time, it's quite liberating actually), the two bosses out of the office at a meeting. i tried to impart as much unemployed wisdom to james as possible since i'm the one with all the layoff experiences. later, the bosses came back, and adam showed up for work in the afternoon.

alex and i went running today, the weather cloudy, the sky opening up to a light drizzle by the time we made it back to the office. i will miss these runs once i'm no longer working here. as much as they provide me with a form of exercise and an excuse to leave work, it also makes me feel like i'm a part of boston, that i'm out and about, breathing its air, running the edge of its great river, seeing other runners, feeling that sun or that rain or that snow on my face, to be out there experiencing boston, seeing the city, the buildings, the details, so much so that it becomes common, when it becomes my background and the city and i fuse together into one, i am but just one string in this great tapestry. and you thought i was just running all this time! we saw an immature red-tail hawk flying towards us in the trees, swooping effortlessly to some destination unknown. coming back i heard somebody shouting my name, and saw joe lunney from across the street.

since my days at this office are numbered, i figured i'd just indulge in its proximity to chinatown and eat from my favorite restaurants every day for lunch. today it was back to smelly tofu, i tried to savor each bite, to remember it for a future time when i can't do this anymore.

i left work a little bit after 4pm, my parents downstairs waiting for me in the car, driving into chinatown to do some grocery shopping. small as the boston chinatown may be (compared to new york or san francisco), it has served my family over the years, and we can still find a lot of the same asian foods we love so much from the old country, and as the chinese community becomes more affluent, the selections just get better and better. that super 88 in allston represents the ultimate in the evolution of chinese supermarkets. that being the case, my parents instead went to ming's market in the south end.

my parents came back to my place for dinner along with my sister. we carved up the large watermelon i had stashed in my fridge for dessert. there's still 3/4 of a watermelon left. my father spent some time in the backyard pruning the potted jasmine vines. i gave him a container of moonflowers to grow back in belmont. after they left, i finished watching the rest of the red sox athletics game. boston managed to win in extra innings after oakland made a valiant effort to come back and tie the game. this completes a 3 game sweep of the athletics so now boston is tied for first place in the wild card standings, and only 6 games behind the yankees to maybe make a run for the pennant. it's still early, we'll see how they handle the texas rangers this weekend. if they can pull off another sweep, and the yankees can help us out by losing 3 more games, it'll put smiles back on the faces of red sox fans.

i finished off the night by updating my resume and sending it off to jane. just two days after i found out about the company shutting its doors, i'm already on the job search. honestly, i didn't think it'd be happening until after the summer.