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after 3 hours of sleep, i drove an hour down to norwood for my meeting with client B, loaded with boxes of computer hardware in the back of the car. good news: one of two interactives was done. bad news: the second interactive still needed a lot of work - and we were going down to newark thursday morning to install the programs at the museum - so there wasn't a lot of time left for me to cram code within the next few days. but the feeling i got from the client was a positive vibe: they didn't like the fact that i was still missing one interactive, but i've consistently produced good programs, so it more a question of when rather than why. 2 hours later and with my first meeting of the day under my belt, i drove an hour back to boston.

after heading to my parents' place to drop off the car but realizing nobody was home, i went to the cafe, where i got some lunch (beef noodle soup). i could barely eat, too tired from the lack of sleep. i swapped the car for the motorcycle and went home briefly before heading out to my second meeting of the day with client P in cambridgeport. i haven't seen craig since the spring, but heading back to his office felt nostalgic, having done so many projects for him in the past. that meeting and the work that came out of it adds a third project to my month of september. fortunately it's pretty and i came clean with craig, so he knows about the juggling act i'm currently doing.

with that meeting over, i paid a visit to my garden, where i picked two yellow tomatoes. since the weather was so nice, i went to investigate a somerville community garden space that recently opened up a few blocks away from where i live, called the durell community garden. what i saw was amazing, easily the best community garden i've ever seen before. each plot was meticulously tended, and the place got plenty of sun that all the vegetables and plants were very healthy. the variety was also pretty noteworthy, almost like a garden of gourmet chefs, growing all sorts of heirloom produce and exotic herbs.

finally back at home, i decided to move the two guppy fish tanks from the guest bedroom out to the kitchen/dining area. while i was at it, i would also clean the two tanks.

first i scooped out the guppies and put them vases, one for the males, one for the females. i then removed everything from inside the tank: heater, filter, seashells (to make the water harder), and live plants. i scrubbed the algae off of everything with a scouring pad. i then scrubbed the algae from inside the tanks, before starting to drain the water. a 10 gallon aquarium full of water weighs about 100 lbs, too heavy for me to carry (not to mention the sloshing). while siphoning out the bottom tank into a bucket, i went to take some fish photos and forget about the bucket. by the time i heard some strange sounds in the bedroom, two gallons of water had already overflowed all over the floor. it was a real mess and i had to spend some time drying the floor, taking out a soaked rug.

with both tanks drained so nothing left but gravel and about 2 gallons worth of water, they were finally light enough to move. set up in their new location, i started refilling the tanks with water, making sure to add a few milligrams of a neutralizing solution to get rid of the chlorine and chloramine from the tapwater. fortunately the weather's still warm so the water wasn't very cold (compared to winter water temperature), so i was able to add the fish right away, first with the female guppies, followed by the males. i decided to keep them all in one tank. i originally separated them because i didn't want an unwanted pregnancies, since i couldn't bear the thought of guppy fries being eaten by their parents. since then i've become more nonchalant when it comes to underwater infanticide. having only one tank makes maintenance a lot easier too, but i'm still running the second tank for now, just empty.

what's a day without some code work? i did some work later in the evening, finally making a screen capture video of a snippet of the introduction for mike so he can do his compositing. i had a leftover hotdog for dinner and a can of corn. for some reason i thought it was tuesday night and went outside to throw away the trash, only to see no other trash cans out on the curbside.

the hits keep on coming: i have another meeting tomorrow morning with client N. and client L got in touch with my today as well via e-mail, inquiring about my schedule. i don't think i'll be available until october.