my new favorite song is brandy's "sittin' up in my room." i must confess, i'm a mess for you. i just love the lyrics and the way the song is sung and structured. i rediscovered this song and fell in love with it this past saturday when laurie gave me a ride from chinatown back to harvard square. when she told me it was a brandy song i was kind of leary, but when i heard it, everything just clicked. my previous favorite song was the jam's "town called malice." that song, though still good, has been listened to death so it's no longer a favorite.
amanda's new address
amanda's new address is rawson road, and i just so happen to have another friend named amanda as well, and guess what her name is? amanda rawson. believe it...or not. what are the odds? this is seriously going to confuse the hell out of me.
lunchtime open house
for lunch amanda came with me to go see a potential apartment to buy, a few blocks away from the office, a mere 10-12 minute walk in the direction of cambridge street. this is the third consecutive open house viewing i've gone to within the past three days. i brought along my digital camera of course and took a lot of photos. the funniest thing was when we noticed the floors were sloping, the real estate agent said it's because the house has character. it's a nice place, completely refurnished, new wooden floors, new kitchen unit, new bathroom fixtures, even has a washer/dryer machine (eventually, they haven't installed it yet), and the apartment gets a lot of light. what i didn't like about it though was the location, and the asking price, a wee bit expensive (albeit reasonable, considering how much money went into fixing up the place). we'll see. i still really want to live in the central square area, in cambridgeport.
my lunch, ripe for jokes
for lunch amanda and i were down in the one kendall area because she had to get some keys made. i ordered a sweet sausage (not kidding, it's actually called sweet sausage) for lunch and i ate it at an outdoor umbrella'ed table while we waited for the keys to be finished. i didn't realize it, but amanda was actually holding back strong urges to crack some off-color sausage jokes. eventually she couldn't resist and out came the weiner comedy.
office without mandy
"i miss mandy," christine told me today. same here. the office just doesn't feel the same without her. fortunately, there are still some other people at work that i can talk to, but they have to be even more interesting now, in order to make up for the slack mandy's departure has caused. my secret wish is the company will hire a new designer. not really to replace mandy (irreplaceable of course), but to sort of fill that void (hmm, that sounds like a replacement!). regardless of who it might be though, i'm going to call this future employee mandy, just because i'm so use to saying that name.
second alpha finally goes out
zero fanfare. so it's out. my ability to feel excitement about the project left a few weeks ago. it'll return eventually, but for now, the feeling is one of numbness. i am relieved, but this project has come back so many times, i really don't believe it's actually happening. i require pinching. i am definitely taking it easy this week though, what's left of it, i think i deserve it.
taking amanda to the gym
originally i was to take amanda to the gym, but in the end, she sort of took me to the gym. how so? how was to know that she took courses in college on aerobic training and other sporty things like that? i got amanda into fitcorp through my membership, with allows me a limited number of guest passes. it was also to make up for breaking my promise to her yesterday of running during lunch (we took mandy out for lunch instead). before she could start though, they made her fill out a little form that basically had a bunch of questions like "are you experiencing any chest pains?" or "do you take heart medication?" since she didn't have a padlock, amanda gave me her purse and cd player for safe keeping when we split up to our gender-specific locker rooms. i felt a little weird carrying a purse while walking down the corridor of the men's locker room. luckily, no one really noticed (guy with purse? old news).
when i left the locker room, amanda was already waiting outside, wearing her orange srm 5th year anniversary t-shirt. i'm sure glad i didn't decide to wear the same thing! instead, i opted for my watermelon colored plaid shorts and a rather tight grey t-shirt. i gave her a quick tour of the gym first (it wasn't very long ago that john miller gave me the exact same tour!). after that, we grabbed our courtesy towel, a magazine (she picked glamour, i chose outdoor life), and climbed onto neighboring treadmill machines for 30 minutes worth of cardiovascular exercise. it was definitely weird, because for the first time ever, through the aide of modern technology, amanda and i could run at different paces yet still remain side-by-side. the sureality of the situation did not escape me. even though we had magazines, when you're running it's hard to read (it's also kind of unnatural, because normally when you run, you can't read anyway), so after the first few minutes, the magazines sort of sat on the side of the treadmill display while we watched close-captioned news on the television monitors.
after 30 minutes (for me, 3 miles equivalent, which means i'm a 10 minute miler) and legs that felt like they were still running, we stumbled into the nautilus half of the gym. amanda immediately hopped onto the hip adductor machines, or what john likes to call "rude machines." i opted for the more traditional upperbody workout, wailing on my pectorals, deltoids, and biceps. occasionally amanda would make some sort of comment, usually about how i didn't do a certain machine correctly. i told her i'd consult my men's health homoerotic exercise handbook before believing anything she told me. after a few more inappropriately used machine workouts, amanda suggested we hit the free weights, since, as she put it, "they give you a better workout."
it was my first time using free weights at this gym. i did some bicep curls and deltoid lifts. we stood side-by-side again, this time in front of the mirror. amanda made some comment about my tight shirt, i silently mouthed an obscene response in the mirror's reflection for her to read. i also tried a tricep exercise with a bar with amanda spotting me, but i didn't really like that exercise very much. we also got some mats and did some curls and bicycle crunches. i haven't done a single abdominal exercise all this month, so my stomach muscles were keen to let me know their appreciation by causing me some pain.
when it was all over, we went back to our respective locker rooms to shower and change. i once again relished in the opportunity of exposing myself in front of strange men. i left the locker room and waited for amanda. i had a slight scare because i suddenly couldn't find my watch, but on my way home on the t, i managed to locate it in one of the pockets of my gym shorts (which i had checked 3 times but didn't find anything).
i buy an ibook
you know, it's half something i need, but it's also half leisure item, definitely. i figured, it's going to be probably the last few times i can still spend a little money, before i buy an apartment and settle down. i already have a powerbook (3400), but it's large, it's heavy, it's old. the ibook 2001 edition is everything the powerbook 3400 isn't. the ibook is small, it's light, it's new. i also really like the potential for wireless networking through the addition ($400 addition mind you) of the airport dock and wireless network card. the idea of surfing in my backyard, or in the bathroom, or maybe just in bed is quite appealing. i also want to investigate the ability to access the web with the ibook via the modem attached to a cellphone. i want to be able to send people photos of where i am when i go on vacation (not for this current vacation to turkey however, i'm thinking more of a continental united states vacation). i bought the ibook through maczone, ordered it online. it's being shipped airborne express 1 day, i want to get it for this weekend. it's the basic model, no frills, no dvd, no cdrw, just the machine without any perks. i'm going to primarily use it as a photo storage device (a really expensive photo storage device, i agree) right now, but later i can use it for other stuff. it was almost a year ago (november 2000) that i bought a new mac, the 400mhz g4 desktop machine i'm currently using. i also purchased some additional memory for the ibook, a 256mb dimm from datamem.com, my memory seller of choice.
women beach volleyball
is it wrong to like it? metaphorically, the idea of these amazons smashing balls is rather unsettling, but this sport has all the ingredients of a hit: the beach, buff women in skimpy outfits, and pretty straight-forward rules.