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i had a sense of profound emptiness when i opened my eyes this morning. it was the start of a brand new chapter in this ongoing story that is my life, and the role of a much beloved major character would now need recasting. it made me sad though, but for the first time in ages i could see things with an honesty and clarity that hadn't been there before. i've been secretly rehearsing for this eventuality, hoping the day would never come, but now that its here, the practice has paid off. it goes without saying that i will be auditioning new talent to fill that particular part hopefully soon. the show, as we know, must go on.

the good thing about working from home is being able to watch the red sox playoff game starting at 4pm. up to that point, i was working on my pojects, visited the cafe to grab some yeast, and went to the belmont public library to get a new england aquarium discount pass. returning home i went to market basket to pick up some ingredients for tonight's dinner, before returning just in time to catch the start of the game. my former SRM coworker sam called me out of the blue, said something about his father being late but would get here in time so he could crash at my place. "sam, i have no idea what you're talking about." turns out he called the wrong tony, but i did find out he's getting married next week to long-time girlfriend alexis. anyway, all that baseball excitement quickly turned sour when the white sox scored 5 runs in the very first inning. optimistic for one of those glorious red sox comebacks, it soon became a non-issue when the white sox tacked on some insurance runs, pushing the final score to 14-2. as a fan of the hometown team, it seems inconceivable that they wouldn't win, so my brain almost suffered a meltdown. it's still only one game (an a blowout, though embarassing, is easier to stomach than losing a close game), we'll see what happens tomorrow.

in between innings i had time to make some homemade root beer and ginger ale. the ingredients are just sugar, water, root beer extract, and some yeast. i've never played with yeast before, didn't realize they came in these bacterial looking granules. it was very chemisry 101 as i poured the ingredients into a 2 liter soda bottle through a funnel. the water i cooked a little bit over the stove to boil off the chlorine from the tap. the water was too hot (i was afraid it'd kill off the yeast) and i waited for it to cool off (to around 95 degrees), measuring the temperature occasionally with a body thermometer. the ginger ale used the same technique, except instead of root beer extract i used raw ginger that i patiently grated into a slushy pulp. later in the evening i could see bubbles inside the bottles; the carbonation means its working, the yeast is feeding off of the sugar.

once julie arrived i made reuben sandwiches. this was my second time making reubens, so it seemed a lot easier. reubens just seem like a more advanced form of a grilled cheese sandwich, in my opinion. everyone also got a pickle slice; i was surprised that jawei didn't eat his pickle, even though normally he's very good about cleaning everything off of his plate (so i ate it instead). we watched the yankees angels game, and were horrified to see the yankees pull ahead and eventually win the game. as if that wasn't enough horror, i think there must've been something bad in the sandwich because both julie and i got a case of the runs, periodically disappearing into the bathroom. jawei seemed fine though. julie suspect it was the sauerkraut, or perhaps some bad corn beef (all the ingredients were freshly bought today though).