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despite the weather being even better today than yesterday, i didn't go out naturing. must've been all ticked out from yesterday; besides, there wasn't much to see. i did take the bike out to the nearest hess gas station to fill up the tank, before visiting the community garden. i figured the place would be pretty crowded on such a nice day, but there was nobody there. i took the time to clean up my plot a little bit, throw away all the dried plant stems from last season. i also took some photos of the mulberry tree near my garden, before the city chops it down.

i consider today the first official day of spring because i went down to the basement and finally turned off the furnace for the season. i see the weather forecast for next week as temperatures all around 60 degrees. even though it dips back into the 40's at nights, my house will warm up enough during the day to keep me comfortable.

feeling sort of guilty that i didn't better take advantage of the nice weather, i did the next best thing by going out for a run. i'd like to think the last time i went running was back in october, but i'm afraid it's even longer than that. so basically for half the year i've been on running hiatus, letting my body fall to pieces. even when i was running during the summer, i was still never at my peak running fitness. but now that i have some new shoes, no excuses, right? straight out the door i was full of energy but 2 blocks into my jog and i had to slow down to a walk again. it was basically an intermittent series of running mixed with walking. out of the game for so long, i wasn't realistically expecting to go the whole 3 mile circuit non-stop. something was happening at the kennedy diplomacy school, as numerous state troopers blocked off the nearby quad area and i think i saw some limos. maybe an important foreign dignitary was visiting. out by the football field, two military helicopters were parked with their rotors still spinning, army guys standing at attention nearby. when i finally finished my run i was reminded how much i hate it yet i continue to do it (maybe because it's my only form of exercise). 1 down, a million more to go.

alex came over in the evening to show me the used canon 40D he ended up buying anyway, despite my efforts to try and talk him out of it. he also traded all his fixed lenses for this one big 28-70mm f2.8 nikon AF-S lens. it's pretty imposing and makes his camera 2-3x as heavy. he left the 40D for me to play with. other than having some more features, and a bigger and heavier build, i really can't see the advantage of the 40D over my 350D. image wise, they both look the same in my non-scientific photo comparison. the white balance on the 40D is a bit wonky, but it could just be because i'm used to the auto white balance on my 350D; besides, there's a million different options to tweak the WB on the 40D. the 40D has a bigger CCD chip (10 megapixels compared to my 8), and a larger LCD screen (3" versus 1.8"). the 40D also has a bigger viewfinder, which makes it easier to do manual focusing. plus it features live preview and a self cleaning imaging sensor. all these are improvements over my 350D, but the new canon 450D (the next generation of the 350-400D line coming out in june) has all the features of the 40D but $300 less (the 450D is actually 12 megapixels). i personally prefer the new 450D because of its smaller size and cheaper price. the only thing the 40D has that i'd want is the faster burst mode, shooting at 6.5 frames per second (the 350D can only do 3.5 fps).

for lunch as well as dinner i ate my orange chicken leftovers. it was pretty gross, and i ended up just picking at the meat and throwing the rest of it away. i watched BSG, with each episode getting progressively worse (as in boring). tonight, cally gets thrown out the airlock, leaving chief petty officer tyrol a single father of their cylon-human hybrid son. can the show even be salvaged at this point?