i had a pair of george foreman sausages for breakfast then i went about running errands. i finally got paid yesterday for my 5 weeks worth of gratis painting a few weeks back. i was eager to cash that check along with the last few of my unemployment checks. i went down to porter square to do that, throwing a stack of paid bills into a mailbox. i got a call from my mortgage lender, who told me that i was approved (for refinancing), but they still needed a few more documents, mainly the pages of my property insurance policy. one of the terms of their mortgage is that the entire building (my unit and my neighbor's as well) must be insured for a total of half a million dollars. i dug out all the paperwork, still not quite sure about the numbers, but i took the motorcycle to my parents' cafe and faxed all the documents to the mortgage company. i never got a call back, so i'm assuming everything went well. i went to the cambridge public library next, where i signed up for a library card. there was no real need for me to do that since i already have a library card from belmont and all of massachusetts uses the same library system (which means i could use my belmont library card in cambridge), but i'd heard that i could get into the harvard comparative zoology museum for free with a cambridge library card, so i was eager to get mine. riding back home, i stopped off at the museum to make sure the library card would work. turns out i got my museums mixed up, the zoology museum is never free (although i can get free passes from the library), it's the harvard art museums that are free with a cambridge library card. drats!

when i got home i thought about going out for a run, but decided against it. instead, i took a shower and then surfed the web topless in the backyard for about an hour, working on the tan. the potted jasmine plant seems to be losing a lot more leaves than usual (could it be climate shock? moving it from the darkish kitchen corner to the warm and sunny backyard deck?), but on the bright side, i noticed a single jasmine flower bud about to open up. the hydrangea this year seems to be not as abundant. maybe it had something to do with the very long cold season, or maybe it was just lacking nutrients. i gave the hydrangea some water from the nearby hose, some of the flowers starting to show some blue color. a few lily plants were about to blossom, soon there will be new colors in the backyard.

hydrangea

lily buds

syrphid fly

dan helped me iron out the final bugs for the new and improved image opening code he gave me. he was the only person who wrote me about the problem (i.e. how on the pc the large size photos don't display correctly in the popup window), and apparently it bothered him enough that he even provided me with a fix. later, rob house showed up around 5pm, bringing with him the burner and some cd's i let him borrow from monday. he asked me some more mac questions, expressed his continuing disdain for OS X, then left when andrew came home from work. for dinner, andrew made some pasta with the remaining hot italian sausages. my job was to locate the ingredients and clean up the utensils after we finished using them. we ate in the living room while watching andrew's favorite show, that 70's show, occasionally flipping to the red sox game. maura stopped by for a little bit then left. i got a call from my neighbor doug about helping him with some clean-up work on his renovating condo tomorrow morning at 9am.

betty boo - where are you baby