visitors. someone from Doug Andrus Distributing came to visit aphoristic subplot. it always makes me wonder what sort of random people from all over the world stumble upon my i-universe.

a colleague at work is in india working with our offshore group for a couple months. he started a blog to document the experience.

aesthetics of the ugly. i've been thinking recently about the aesthetics of the ugly. of things generally not accepted as pleasing. for me there is something fundamentally significant about these images. they are moving, touching, in their own way. on the train back from philly today, i thought about the strip of land between the tracks and whatever it borders, whether that be a road, buildings, or a waterway. this is piece of land is always dirty, littered, overrun with weeds, etc. although not generally pleasing to look at, it represents many important things.

first, neglect. no one is concerned about this land. it has not real use or function other than it must exsist. eliminating it is almost impossible, and making it conform to the generally accepted aesthetic isn't 'cost effective'. this makes me think of our national health care system (or lack there of). our marginalized communities aren't worth the cost of helping, even if we can't get rid of them. but this isn't meant to turn into a political debate, just to show how aesthetics can be a metaphor for 'real' problems.

second, balance. as a. clearly observed, it is a reminder that with beauty there is also ungliness. and to me, in a world increasingly plastic, it is a reminder of the true nature of things. we have abstracted our lives away from the land and the elements, but we cannot escape them. what grows will also decay; what thrives will eventually rot.

nothing like working from 3am to 6pm on a sunday.

kickball. today i played in my first kickball game in probably 15 years. it was so much fun too. e's brother's wife (and her friend) organized it, complete with t-shirts and all. we took over the court at thompson sq park around noon; the first pitch was around 12.30, and we played 9 innings. my team won. of course. 13-8 ish.

afterwards we all went to zum schneider for a half liter of Scheider Weisse. this cold beverage was welcomed in the 90 degree heat. and meant it went straight to our collective head. then i came home for a 2 hour nap.

now that all the fun is done, i have to work at around 3am. we have a second minor release for work. yay. which reminds me, ryan has rejoined working amerika.

deja vu. i've experienced it twice today.

baptism weekend. so my duties as godfather were pretty minimal during the ceremony, but everything went well. carson didn't cry or fuss until the end of mass, but by then i think we were all hot and ready to go. besides the baptism itself, i did a lot of eating, sleeping, and visiting with family. all things i should probably do more of on a regular basis.

and in order to test my patience, the flight back was a bit of a challenge. three flights were delayed to ny. having been well rested i was able to simply enjoy the time reading and making a couple phone calls. and 6 hours later i boarded my flight home.

godfather. i'm off to va for the weekend. my nephew is getting baptised and i'm going to be the godfather. i'm looking forward to seeing all the family.

and thanks to josh, i've fixed the formatting problem. cheers, pal.

painting. i finally got around to painting my room this weekend. i'm pretty happy with it. its much better than the entryway evan and i tried to do. which looks horrible. and will probably stay that way.