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i woke up early to get my mother some robitussin DM for her cough then headed straight to belmont, where i passed by people getting ready for the annual cambridge 5 mile city run starting and finishing at the fresh pond golf course. i actually ran into the tail end of the event last year so that's how i knew about it. after dropping off my things i left to go check out the race which began at 10:30. it's close enough to my parents' place that i could've walked it, but i decided to take the bike in case i wanted to follow the runners.

the route actually makes two circles around fresh pond: once around the outside (huron avenue, grove street, concord avenue, fresh pond parkway), then once around the inside on the paved path circling the reservoir. after taking a few photos of the crowd of runners assembling at the starting line (getting instructions from an organizer with a megaphone), i returned to the summit of a hill with the sun shining off from the side and waited for the race to begin.

i heard the gun and minutes later saw the runners coming around the bend with a police escort and a video truck leading the way. although it's a mixed field, naturally the men would jostle for position so they'd lead the swarm of runners. for me this was like photo practice for the big boston marathon happening in a few weeks.

after most of the runners had passed by, the walkers followed behind them, those participating in the less arduous 3 mile city walk. i got on my bike and went in the opposite direction up huron avenue towards fresh pond parkway, so i could intercept the runners when they came back around for the final mile of the run. i had a great position, with no other spectators or photographers in sight, the only obstructions were the occasional jogger or dogwalker or stroller parent.

after the bulk of the runners had passed by (race results), i got back onto my bike and returned to belmont, navigating through the congestion of finished runners. i heard a megaphone announcement saying that there'd be an award ceremony at 11:30 but a lot of people were already leaving (there can only be so many winners).

when i gave my mother the cough syrup, she actually didn't want it because i bought generic rite aid brand tussin instead of the name brand. it's not even regular DM, but DM max, which should be even more effective! alas, i'll have to go exchange it tomorrow morning.

my mother and sister actually went to fresh pond in the afternoon to walk the dog. my aunt lili dropped by to give me a 32gb PNY usb flash drive she bought as a thank you present for giving her the complete mp3 discography of japanese folk guitarist duo depapepe. she also gave me a timex watch she found from one of her many ski trips. in the late afternoon i watched a great game between the miami heat and the boston celtics. i was expecting boston to be blown out but the exact opposite happened as the celtics trounced the heat, at one time leading by as much as 29 points, riding rondo's elevated point guarding skills.

yesterday's clean install of windows 7 didn't quite work: i must've forgotten to format the drive because it just installed a new version of windows 7 on top of the old one, taking up even more disk space. so today i made sure to format the drive first. since the laptop is a dell, i was able to go to their support webpage and using an activex plugin, determine which model i have and show me the required drivers (video, touchpad, ethernet, wifi, dvd-r drive). restoring browser bookmarks and e-mails was another issue; i thought it'd be a simple dropping-and-replacing of the old profile and setting directories, but because windows merges instead of replaces when one copies files, it didn't use the files. only when i did a thoroughly replace did it finally work.

it'd been raining in the early evening; i saw it on the doppler and already put a bag over my bike seat so it wouldn't get wet. after dinner i decided to make a mad dash home during a small window in the clouds. it was still drizzling a tiny bit, but i made it back to cambridge relatively dry.

my roommate told me he tightened the crank arm back onto his bike, and once more, it started to come lose after a few minutes. i told him to try the bike shop on somerville avenue, see if they can fix it for him. his seat post also has a tendency to sink. for a $110 bike, it sure has a lot of problems. i feel all sorts of guilty because out on the porch is a near brand new free road bike that's just missing a pair of tubes to operate. i wonder if he's even seen it.

i asked my roommate if he needed to use the bathroom since i was going to take a shower; he mustn't have heard me correctly and said he already showered today. that shower no.7, although this being a new month, it's no.1 for april.

i watched most of the season 2 premiere of the killing; i was amongst those who watched season 1 in the beginning before it became saturated with red herrings. i probably only watched it tonight because it was right before mad men; i'm willing to give the show another chance. afterwards came mad men: so that's how they decided to hide january jones' real-life pregnancy! by making her fatter! chubby betty is kind of distracting, i'm curious if they're going to keep her plump throughout the season.