weekend recap. no plans on friday turned into happy hour drinks until about 11 at 12 inch bar. saturday was spectacular weather wise, so i went skating along the west side highway. jeff and i went to see gsx at the continental later. much better show than at trash bar. for starters, they went on before 1am. today consisted of football and cleaning the fridge. both the jets and steelers lost, but the fridge is looking pretty good.

who knew there was an international pickle day.

no brainers. haven't we all been here before...

dentist. today i went to the dentist for a cleaning. i had some reservations because i've only seen 2 dentists in my adult life; dr. caske in pittsburgh, and some guy in ca for the couple years i was out there. caske is great, and the other dentist even complimented his work. the place here in ny was like a frickin assembly line. and the doctor seemed younger than me. anyway, the cleaning was done with some sort of ultrasonic tool. i'm not sure if it was the poor cleaning technique, or the tool, but i've never had a cleaning that hurt like that. but, i do say my teeth feel mighty clean...probably b/c he took off a layer of enamel in addition to the plaque. the only cool thing was the xray machine was hooked up to a computer. a sensor was placed in my mouth instead of film, and the results are (obviously) instant.

no, no cavities.

holiday over. tomorrow it's back to work. but, i thoroughly enjoyed my vacation. i got back to ny yesterday and was able to spend some free time here in the city. in fact, i went to queens for the first time. i met a. when she got off of work and went to 'the beergarden' for a drink and a sausage.

today i did some rollerblading. i've felt in much need of physical activity. i went up the west side highway bicycle path--started at houston and went up to around 60 or 65th street. there was a little court with benches looking out over the river, so i sat and read for a while there.

when i lived in california, i was in walking distance of keplers, an independent book store in menlo park. now it seems they have closed their doors. but, there has been much public support to have them reopen. it's nice to see enough support for the independent book store institution.

on holiday. my long awaited vacation has arrived. this weekend i have successfully accomplished doing very little and relaxing. my activities consisted of eating a lot of mom's cooking, sleeping, reading (finished my book and need to find another tomorrow), drinking, and playing golf. the weather was perfect, and being at the cottage was just the right pace.

so the fishing weekend turned out to be more of a golfing weekend. dad and i played 9 holes all three days up there. the first two days i played pretty well having not picked up a club in probably 2 or 3 years. today we both played like crap. granted, none of the courses are exceptionally challenging, but at my level, in order to enjoy the nice weather and not get too fustrated, theyre just right.

the rest of the week i'll be spending back in pittsburgh catching up with some old friends and probably more sleeping, eating and reading. that suits me just fine.

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.

teacher friends. not to make you nervous or anything. but watch out for students like this one.

total i worked 25.5 hours yesterday. i suppose i'll have to put some down for today. this outdoes my previous record of 22 consecutive hours of work.

i've been at work since 3am this morning. yep, thats 18.5 hrs. and counting.

working weekend. so i worked from home today, and not long at that. this weekend is our launch. i have to be at the data center tomorrow around 1pm and again sunday morning at about 5am. let's hope things go smoothly.