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listen. can you hear that? that's the sound of me breathing. i am sitting perfectly still in my room in front of my mac waiting for inspiration to strike me so i may begin writing what kind of day i've had today. essentially two things happened. that's how i can judge a day, by the number of events that occur on that particular 24 hours stretch of time. in this way, my days can be ranked. days with lots of things happening are good, days with few things happening are bad. so how does a two event day rank on the day-o-meter? sad but true, but that actually ranks pretty good for a thursday.

ladies and gentlemen, inspiration has arrived. are you ready? here we go.

my venus flytrap won't eat
i came to work this morning hoping to see how much of the fly my venus flytrap had digested overnight. i noticed that the jaw was opened. did it digest the fly already? that was quick! the dead fly was untouched though. it didn't eat it! i tried to think of why it wouldn't want a perfectly good, freshly caught fly. maybe it was a toxic fly? maybe i didn't give the plant enough light? maybe not enough water? maybe the fly was just too big? perhaps it only eats live insects? the answer to my question of course would be found on the information superhighway, a little something i like to call the in-ter-net.

there is an abundance of carnivorous plants info on the internet, and the king (or queen) of all carnivorous plants has got to be the venus flytrap. pay attention, this is what i learned, perhaps one day this knowledge could save your life or that of a loved one! my venus flytrap didn't eat because yes indeed it requires live insects! what happens is that the plant has a mechanism where it can figure out whether it's captures an actual living insect or whether it was just a raindrop or a piece of falling debris. the first time you trigger the plant, it closes its jaws but not all the way, just enough to cage whatever's inside. how it determines whether it's an insect or not are through little hairs inside the jaws. the more they get touched, the tighter the jaw will grip, until eventually it's completely sealed the insect inside. that's when the real fun begins as the natural order of pedator versus prey gets all topsy turvy when plant eats insect! so after learning this little fact, i look a paperclip, poked around inside the jaws, and got the trap to close back up again. i poked around a little bit more and i could see the jaws starting to tighten and seal in the dead fly. okay, now we're cooking!

the trap that eliza triggered on tuesday finally opened back up to a full gape. i also learned today that the traps will only work 4-6 times before they won't close anymore. the traps don't die, they just become inactive (they will still photosynthesize). more traps will grow out eventually, replacing the old ones. and another interesting fun fact about venus flytrap: the name was actually coined by a botanist who thought the business end of the plant bore some resemblance to female private parts, hence the venus prefix. those naughty botanists!

intermission
i went with the office lunch today, salami with provolone cheese and plenty of onions. going with the office lunch means having my lunchtime outdoors fun privileges revoked. so i didn't go outside all day long until after work. the weather wasn't anything to write home about anyway, temperature in the more seasonable 50's range.

when worlds collide run
as a general rule, i don't like mixing my friends together. my high school friends never meet my college friends who in turn never meet my office friends. i do this because i don't like it when friends that you know from different worlds get together, and they have nothing in common but you, so it gets kind of awkward. i suppose i'm sort of selfish with my friendships. who knows, maybe they'll totally hit it off. that's how people meet people, that whole "friend of a friend" business. i just personally think that a friend of a friend doesn't necessarily make him or her a friend of yours.

so i was already going to go run with eliza jones when julie asked me if i wanted to go running today. i told her, "no, i'm already going running with eliza," and julie very brazenly said something to the effect of, "oh, you can't run with the both of us?" and i thought about it, and it didn't make any sense why we couldn't all run together. i figured at the very least besides having me in common, both eliza and julie seem to enjoy running, and both are cat people as well. compatible? yes! so i changed my mind and told julie she should totally come running with us.

at 6pm we all meet at the designated starting point besides the charles river. originally when i came downstairs i was certain eliza couldn't go, because i saw the look on her face when she walked by me, the look that says she might've been secretly crying in the bathroom. so i got changed and started to get prepared to go running (keys in my secret pocket, a piece of dentyne ice gum in my mouth) when i was pleasantly shocked to see eliza come out of the bathroom all dressed up for running as well.

when julie finally showed up (she was late because she was buying a harness for her cat), we started running. eliza was up ahead, i was behind her, and julie was behind me. the line started to stretch out longer the further we went. eliza seemed to be on a mission, blazing smoke trails along the perimeter of the charles river. julie, cramping up from her consumption of cheap candy, started to fall behind. i was sort of stuck in the middle, sometimes running with julie, sometimes racing upfront to meet up with eliza. we didn't stop for eliza's usual stretchings, and ran the entire path, all the way to the end of the longfellow bridge. i felt very good today, an effortless run. i would've loved to have gone on for a few more miles, i wasn't winded or tired at all. eliza and i waited for julie at the end of the longfellow, but she never showed up. eliza grew concerned, but i rationalized and figured julie might've taken a different route back to the lechmere t stop. so eliza and i headed back to the office, where i quickly called julie to see what happened. turns out she did take a different way, going back to our original departure point (which wasn't where eliza and i were waiting for her).

eliza shared her plate of sliced oranges and talked to me about changing her cellphone plan to at&t, the carrier i've been using. in all the excitement i dropped an orange, but never one to waste food, i went into the kitchen to wash it off before eating the rest. they were very tangy oranges, i like fruits that are all sweet.

two things i never thought i'd do
i did two things on the bus coming home tonight that i never thought i'd do. first, i helped a woman carrying her stroller onto the bus. those who frequent this site know that i absolutely abhor the presence of strollers on the bus. they're such a nuisance because they block the aisle and they take forever to bring into the bus and take forever to take back out. "it's heavy," the woman said to me. i always thought strollers are these light contraptions, but she must've been hiding rocks or lead weights in her stroller because that thing was heavy, 40-60 lbs. heavy, and it can't be all her baby. because her stroller was conveniently blocking the aisle, i had no choice but to move to the front of the bus, where i sat in the senior citizens seat, the second thing i never thought i'd do. i hate perfectly healthy people who sit in those seats and don't get up when a senior citizen gets onboard the bus. in tonytopia, that would be a crime punishable by firing squad. i sat in the front nervously, waiting to give up my seat at a moment's notice at the first sign of an elderly person coming on the bus. fortunately, i made it all the way to my bus stop without having to give up my seat.

and finally...
i brought some work home today. my night's just starting. i've probably got two good hours left before my brain gets fried and i don't sleep before then, i won't have the energy tomorrow to do any work, a delivery day no less.

it's midnight.