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MAR

19

2006

i was up late last night backing up my ibook data then erasing everything to install tiger; since my circa 2001 ibook doesn't even have a dvd-rom drive, i had to copy everything onto my g4 desktop machine and use an external firewire drive to boot from the system dvd. afterwards i had a hard time falling asleep, and didn't actually doze off until there was daylight coming in from the windows.

so to say the least, it was a struggle to wake up this morning to go down to davis square and watch the ras na heireann 5k irish race. i had already rationalized not going (too cold, too boring, etc.) but in the end decided to walk up to cedar street to catch the tail end of the race. the race started at 11am in davis square and i did the math in my head and arrive at the intersection of cedar and the bike path right when the runners were arriving. the whole point was an excuse for me to play with my canon, to get those action shots with a faster lens.

the temperature hovered around the freezing point which gave the runners a pretty good reason to keep on running. if you came down to see some hot bodies (which i know is one of my primary reasons) most of it was covered up in unflattering winter sports wear (however, the boston marathon is just a month away). since it's an irish race and the event is tied to st.patrick's day and drinking, a good number of people kept the green theme alive.

there was a lot more people that i thought - from the research i did online, i thought maybe a few dozen folks would be running, even though the event website said 2500 runners had registered. once the bulk of the athletes had gone by (leaving only slowpokes and people running with baby carriages behind) i made my way back down to elm street.

i went back to tacos lupita for lunch; the woman seemed surprised to see me, not sure if it's because she recognized me from yesterday, or just startled to see someone outside her usual patrons. i was reading a taped review of the place at the restaurant yesterday, and it mentioned something about a special mondongo soup that's only available on sundays, so i knew i had to try it. mondongo, from what i gathered, is a hearty traditional latin american soup, the primary ingredient being tripe. although most of the menu items are $4 or less, this soup was relatively expensive in comparison at $7. it arrived in a big bowl and i ate it with a glass of tamarind soda. i had a seat by a sunny window and pretended i was in some exotic south american country, waking up to a bowl of hot mondongo. there was definitely a lot of tripe and a piece of cow joint, all bones and skin and cartilage. other than that, it wasn't as hearty as i thought (there wasn't anything else in the soup), although it did come with two pieces of tortilla bread along with some hot sauce (the soup itself is already a little spicy). all and all, it wasn't bad.

the rest of the afternoon i spent at home, nursing the remainder of the day with a prison break marathon on FX, interrupted by an animal planet break to watch tanya streeter freediving with underwater animals. today also seemed like a perfect day for me to finally clean out my fish tank. ever since i started the thank 2.5 years ago, i have never cleaned the tank. it'd been doing pretty well considering the gross neglect, but the glass (actually plastic) was starting to get covered up with spots of algae, a green slime was starting to form on the surface of the water, and the gravel seemed a bit dark. i'd put out several pots of tap water many days ago, just to let the chlorine evaporate so it'd be safe to use in the tank. i first scooped out my last remaining cherry barb into a bowl, then pulled out the elodea plants which surprisingly had already taken root and put that with half the tank water into a large glass dish. i rinsed out the tank in the bathtub; the sentiment from the gravel washed out nearly black and i used a used toothtrush to scrub the algae off of the glass. once everything was nice and clean, i poured the treated water that'd been sitting around my kitchen (like a scene from signs) into the tank, replanted the elodea plant, and finally re-introduced the fish.

in the evening my parents came over for dinner. they made taiwanese yiou yue gen, which is a thick soup with squid nuggets. my father got his external drive back; the replacement plug finally arrived yesterday but i only saw it when i left the house this morning. i'm fast running out of space myself; either i have to start backing things up onto dvd's or i might have to get an external drive myself.

after my parents left, i watched law & order: ci but quickly fell asleep on the couch, waking up close to midnight.