i began this veterans day by sleeping in late. i was surprised to find my roommate gone when i got up, figuring he'd have the day off today from work. if memorial day honors the war dead, and veterans day honors former soldiers, is there a day to pay tribute to those in the armed forces currently serving out their tour of duty? just wondering. i spent the day in nothingness, taking a shower, making some lunch, catching up on movies. when moving my busted monitor down into the basement i saw a mushroom growing in the backyard. at first i thought it was a puffball but it had a stalk and reminded me of a burnt marshmallow ball. i wasn't tempted to eat it, despite my less than stellar record of eating suspicious fungi.

in the evening i went to the cafe to have dinner with my family along with suhan and his mother, who will be returning to los angeles (then taiwan) tomorrow. we had a lamb roast which my sister sprinkled with dried rosemary when i have all this fresh rosemary growing at my place.

back at home i bumped into zhu lei, who told me he did go to work today after all. he confessed that he saw the comet last night and asked me about bicycling laws (i basically told him there wasn't any rules, that you can pretty much do whatever you want on a bicycle). he asked me advice on how to cook a fish and brought out a frozen slab of fish flesh. while i was trying to make sense out of it all, he called his delaware girlfriend for similar advice (she wasn't much help either). in the end i told him to defrost the fish in the microwave (normally i defrost my fish the old-fashion way, by leaving it in the sink for a few hours). 10 minutes later (perhaps a bit too long) what we had was a fish that still had to be scaled and gutted. zhu lei didn't seem to want to get his hands dirty and was picking at the fish with a knife, trying to clean it up. once the fish got to semi-presentable state, i had him wrap it up in aluminum foil and steam it sichuan style in the toaster oven. it came out pretty well, which surprised me, considering what a messy piece of fish it was.

i seem to be nursing a cold all of a sudden, spent the whole day with a runny nose. drinking plenty of water to replenish my fluids had the unintentional side effect of making go to the bathroom every 20 minutes. later i started getting more symptoms: coughing, sneezing, as well as body aches. hopefully it's one of those quick-acting viruses because i hear the weather will finally start warming up tomorrow and i really like to work in some running this week.

much later in the evening i discovered i had missed jesse's birthday party (which was happening tonight) when she e-mailed me asking where i was. i'm sorry jesse! but in retrospect, maybe it was for the best, keep my germs to myself.