i got up at 7am in the morning to drive down to rhode island in the fog and rain for a meeting on a small 1-2 weeks programming gig i landed (the same company i did a day's worth of director tutorial for back in the beginning of august). the meeting was at 8am, and i was making good commuting time despite the bad weather, until i approached the city of providence and got stuck in bumper to bumper traffic for almost an hour on i-95. at the kickoff meeting i was introduced to the project, an online slideshow built in shockwave. it's on an aggressive schedule but the job looks simple enough, more a matter of production time than actual lingo scripting. it's nice to get my hands dirty in that stuff again after a 2 months hiatus, approaching 3, and it seems like the perfect project for me to slowly transition into the land of living employment and away from the undead unemployment world. carrying a box full of movie scripts and source cd's, i left their office and drove back to boston, the weather having cleared up by then.

living room	ibook
checkbook	ikea catalog

i returned to cambridge, where i moved some more stuff out of the basement, rescuing them from the seeping dampness. i was happy to hear that the gas stove had stopped making those worrisome cicking sounds. i ate the rest of my blueberry waffles, making sure not to burn them to a crisp with the defective toaster oven, and had several glasses of orange juice (i'm trying to empty the fridge of food, and tomorrow's trash day). i ate in the living room (my office), on the floor, a plate of soggy waffles (soggy on the inside, slightly burnt on the outside, bad toaster oven, bad!), my glass of orange juice on a coaster. i experimented with the router a little bit more, even called up at&t tech support but the person i got was no help, knew nothing about what i was talking about when i asked her to add my router's MAC address into their database. i wrote some checks to pay some bills and mailed those off along with my biweekly unemployment benefit postcard. i called the cable company to see what was the last day i could cancel my "free" premium channels before i had to pay (october 3rd).

i stripped some more paint, cleaning up the mess of dried paint curls on the sheet covered floor. i put out the trash and the recycling bin. i washed some dishes. i tried to patch a hole in the bathroom wall but the hole was too big to do an easy patch. in between these physically demanding activities, i'd rest on the unfolded black mattress/chair in the guest bedroom, drinking up the emptiness of the house, breathing in the polyurethane aroma, all the lights off except for the natural illumination of the traveling sun projecting rays of sunshine into the kitchen and master bedroom.

oh, i shaved for my meeting this morning (not my goatee though), in an attempt to look at least somewhat professional. i was slowly starting to grow a beard. after tomorrow i'll start it up again. unemployment demands a decent unemployment beard!