i received a phone call at 11am from my father asking if i needed a ride back to belmont to work on my project using my sister's pc. an hour later i was ready, my father coming out to pick me up, but not before we finished assembling the billy bookcase for my hallway. i debugged some code for an hour or so before i was all done. one of the things i miss about not living in belmont anymore was the big backyard, and i went outside in the freezing rain before it got dark just so i could take a brief nostalgic tour, be one with nature for a little bit, see what's new. most of the trees are empty, their leaves piling up on the lawn. the garden is nothing more than a skeleton graveyard of frost damaged vegetable plants, mostly tomatoes with their stalks whithered and black.

i went with my parents to the waltham home depot, originally to return an unused bathroom cabinet, but ended up buying a 4'x6' bokhara rug for $100 from the carpet tent out in the parking lot (it was a real bargain considering i sa similar sized handmade rugs for hundreds more, and there were even a few high priced ones in the thousand dollars range, these rug guys are only here for another week then they move out). i also got a long wooden plank to be painted red and later nailed into the coat closet in order to give support to the wall-mounted coat rack i bought from ikea. next was a visit to the costco next door. buy bulk is cheap but not if you can't find time to finish the larger portions, and especially if you get any sort of food that might spoil. that's the lesson i'm learning. i almost bought a new 27" phllips television for the living room but it wasn't on sale until the second week of december (some weird progressive discounting program), so i ended up not getting it.

back in cambridge i set out my rug on the living room floor and admired it. bokhara rugs are from uzbekistan (although this one was created in bulgaria), the one i got is made from very dense and soft wool knots, i love lying on top of it. it has a very interesting pattern, scales on both ends, repeating lattice work, a perimeter of flowers or sunbursts, then a pattern of bigger circular shapes in the center. they had one that was double in size (6'x8') for $150, but i don't know how well it'd sit in the living room. the color is predominantly red, but a kind darkish red. i'd much rather prefer a brighter red if it's going to cover a large space in the living room. a lot of smaller area rugs patched together makes or a more interesting composition and better options versus a single large rug. my father also helped me rearrange the position of the larger new red area rug in the dining area. last night i had it lengthwise in the direction of the kitchen but it looked very out of place. tonight it put it widthwise across the kitchen, and it looks a lot better, a more logical arrangement.

i went to star market across the street to pick up a few 40 oz. bottles of ibc root beer before walking to sam and alexis' new apartment on concord avenue in the freezing rain. when i arrived, i knew no one there other than sam and alexis, hanging out in the small kitchen because there was no one there. soon, a slew of former coworkers started arriving. starting with lisa, then scott, and the inseparable paula and jonathan. it was weird, we all sort of hung out in the kitchen, maybe because we didn't know anybody else at the party. shocker of the evening: discovered that scott is actually older than me, i always thought he was younger by a few years. the party kicked it up a notch when alexis went around with a tray of jello shots, then later crawled around the kitchen floor while prince' "when doves cry" played on the stereo. lisa was the first amongst our group who left. i was the second, but i didn't leave until after 2am, after finishing a whole 40 oz. bottle of root beer. i walked back home in the continuing miserable weather, the sidewalks a wet paste of crushed autumn leaves glistening in the cold rain. i pressed my umbrella into the wind and with freezing hands i finally got home, happy to be warm again. after changing out of my wet clothes, i rolled around on my new living room carpet.