i heard the delightful sounds of my roommate leaving for NYC this morning. i warned him about the traffic and told him to leave early, like catching the 6am fungwah out of south station, because it'd probably take at least 5 hours to get down to manhattan. he thought 6am was too early and decided the bus leaving 4 hours later at 10am was better for his schedule. turns out he should've listened to my advice, because his friend from new york called me sometime after 4pm asking if my roommate had left boston yet (i'm assuming he was still stuck in traffic). nevertheless, my problem was how to spend this roommate-free weekend. unfortunately before i could formulate a game plan, my mother called and told he i should spent the night in belmont so my father wouldn't have to come and pick me up sunday during the storm for our dinner party. i agreed it was the more sensible solution and packed up my stuff.

my father came at 3:30. we went to market basket first to pick up some last minute grocery items. i figured the place would be crowded, this being the last weekend before thursday's christmas, but the place was relatively empty (as empty as it can be anyway), with plenty of parking spaces. even though the snow had temporarily stopped, the temperature was still cold enough that none of it was melting, which became this messy mixture of mud and snow coating the surface of many roads. it made for a slippery ride but there weren't very many cars out on the road anyway, and those that were out there were all driving slow.

after dinner it was time to clean the house, at least the dining/living room area. sometimes i think the best thing about a dinner party isn't necessarily the food but rather the forced incentive to tidy up an otherwise cluttered living area. if not, the place would continue to get messier and messier. we cleared the dining table and expanded it to fit the 11 people eating tomorrow night. i stayed up for a little bit longer after my parents went to bed. hailey was curled up asleep on the living room sofa. when i finally retired (armed with my computer, planning on doing some late night movie watching to coax myself to bed), hailey tagged along.