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it's been almost 2 months since i last biked into boston. of course since that time we've experienced the snowpocalypse that buried the local landscape in several feet of snow. it wasn't the last time i was in boston; i was there just last weekend with my roommate, although i didn't get anything from haymarket at the time.

i left the house close to 1:00 with temperature in the mid 30's, a relatively warm day given the intermittent deep freeze we've experienced over the past few weeks. earlier i reworked the bungie cords on my milk crate to make sure it was secure. i felt cold and immediately regretted not wearing an additional layer, but after several minutes on the bike, i warmed up enough to begin opening my layers.

the ride into boston is exactly 3.7 miles. i felt sluggish, which could just be due to my overall poor shape, or maybe the slightly heavier 6 gallon milk crate was a contributing factor. the good thing about haymarket on friday is it isn't very crowded; the bad thing is i don't get the drastic price reductions that happen late saturday before closing. i made a first pass to see what was available and do some price comparisons. i called my mother asking her if she needed anything. second pass i began buying, including 2 bags of goat meat ($12) from puritan beef. goat meat price has gone up: it's now $3/lbs when it used to be $2.50/lbs. i also got some hot peppers ($2, unknown variety), avocados (3/$2), cucumbers (3/$1), seedless grapes (2 lbs/$3), romaine lettuce ($1), and strawberries ($2/2 boxes). a took a final third pass to grab a few photos before leaving.

i decided to return to cambridge via the charles river esplanade route, slightly farther but no car traffic to deal with. the trial was clear of snow, perhaps through natural thawing or possible artificial plowing. in fact, i didn't see much snow cover at all, with the exception of the melting charles river broken up into shards of floating ice.

maybe i knew it but forgot, but i found out later than the river route is much farther, 7.2 miles to be exact, nearly double the distance of my inbound trip.

after dropping off some stuff at the cafe, i finally headed home. not before i answered several phone calls from client N though. apparently they'd e-mailed me but since i hadn't been home i didn't see them. i thought everything was fine because the museum opened yesterday and i didn't receive any calls, but they didn't install my interactive until today and things were breaking. turns out my program was fine, just some confusion over the files. there was several uncomfortable minutes where i listened to background chatter voiced through a poorly-connected speaker phone, with no idea what was going on. but everything worked out in the end.

for dinner i had some dill-stuffed chinese dumplings with a heap of garlic sauce. afterwards i could feel the stench coming out of my pores.

victor came home close to midnight. "you'd been in the office all night?" i asked. he said he went out with some coworkers to a mexican restaurant in union square. "do you know roberto?" he asked. there aren't too many mexican astrophysicists living in the area, so of course i knew him. victor said his girlfriend was interested in visiting boston, and asked if it was okay if she stayed with us for 2-3 weeks pending her vacation schedule. i wasn't too cool with the idea but told him it was okay if she didn't mind squeezing into that tiny bedroom. it won't be too bad because they won't be here on the weekends, and victor said he'd try to take friday off so they can extend the weekends. but what about the weekdays? will i be stuck with the girlfriend at home all day?

for some reason google chrome has a hard time auto-updating on my computer. v9 is the latest version but i discovered i was still on v5. so yesterday i manually updated the application. some new things: when did chrome allow apps? i knew you could install extensions, but now there's an app store? i downloaded the free weather underground app, but this morning two new apps showed up that i didn't install: entanglement and poppit, both games. i was about to erase them (fearing malware) but was curious enough to try entanglement, which turned out to be a pretty fun game. has anyone else played it on their google chrome? my highest score so far is 172; the online high scores are in the 2000+ range so i still need a lot of practice (or they used cheat codes). also in v9: the ability to read pdf's within the browser, and updated CSS3 standards (now my postings have rounded corners throughout - unless you're on safari).