Yeah, coding got boring after about two minutes. So I clicked on some portishead and surfed for a while. Well, more like an hour or two. That means my busy busy monday consisted of getting a haircut, getting screwed on the metro for reasons unknown, giving my old monitor to an ex-coworker, scarfing down the remains of a calzone (I'll fill you in shortly) while watching the first ten god-awful minutes of 'IJ & The Temple of Doom', hitting the gym, then coming home and messing with the css for a bit before giving up. Internet Explorer just stinks. I'm thinking of telling people they should just get firefox or suffer the wrath of a poorly coded site. It's not my fault IE gets the box model wrong.

The lack of posts this weekend, chiaotzu notwithstanding, was mainly caused by the bright blue, nice and warm weather we had. Here's the reader's digest version of events I failed to cover due to the lack of a computer, the presence of blue skies, and general shenanigans. I had planned to, like last week, somehow manage to spend almost no money. The only spanner in the works was the realization that Sigourney was coming into town and we'd have to hang out. Still, one night only, right? How bad could it be?

Thursday I make plans to meet her in Dupont, along with Jodie and her sig o. After retreiving my brand new monitor, I get a call from Meat who wants to meet up at the same location as Sigourney, so I schedule him in. Nothing makes me feel better than to work in as many people as possible: it manages to satisfy my inability to tell people 'no' while simultaneously gratifying the 'edward must be social' voice screaming in the back of my head. They feel good, I feel good. So I meet up with Meat at DG, trade stories of work and life, then get Sigourney to drop on by and provide her $.02 for Meat's pleasure. Next we roll across the street to snag some dinner at Raku. As usual, the service is sub-par. I really should give them a bad review sometime. At least the sushi was good. Post fish, we moved to U St. and finished things out at Local 16. Even though I only got to see Sigourney for a short while, I had a great time and it reminded me how cool she was...hopefully at some point I'll get the chance to visit the west coast and pay a visit. (Yes, Helena, I know, you're first on the list!)

Friday I got my machine and blew the entire evening starting to set it up.

Saturday I planned more low key computer fun, but the fantastic weather forced me outside for the duration. It wasn't as warm as sunday, but the sky was a perfect shade of blue. I had almost forgotten the difference that makes in my easily altered personality: just one hour of sun and I felt like I could take on the world. Instead, I prevaricated about doing yard work, read a book Helena gave me awhile back, and caught as many rays as possible. In the afternoon, I rolled over to return a sleeping back Loaf conveniently provided to me for my infamous trip to the land of 'Kum and Go' stations. While at her workplace, I idiotically decided to purchase some new tiki torch replacements. At the last party, one torch decided to combust into a wall of flame, leaving me with only two pseudo-workeable models. Both were looking pretty ragged after my morning inspection, so rather than risk burning the house down again, I figured I'd upgrade. At 75% off...I got quite a steal. I spent about the same amount on one copper torchiere for my parental units, only this time I scored three, with larger reservoirs. While there, I managed to confirm Meat's story from Thursday night. Yeah, I said confirm. There were no differences of fact, merely omitted details from both sides. Thinking that Nicole was going to call me, I dallied for a bit, unaware that the temps were dropping. (Nicole was actually supposed to call me on Sunday; whoops!) I ended up catching some dinner, then falling into the trap of enjoying myself on a Saturday night, culiminating with, as is par for the course on evenings involving Loafs presence, almost getting into a fight at a pizza place near woodley park. (I was an innocent bystander but the hungry pizza preppies looked toasty enough to mix it up with anyone, especially if one was trying as I was, to hustle them out of the establishment before things got out of hand.) Post pizza, I manage to walk outside and miss the link by mere seconds. Normally I'd just wait but the temps had dropped below freezing and I was without a jacket.

Late as it was, I still probably could've gone back inside the pizza establishment, but by this point I was halfway across the bridge, so I hailed a cab, offered him my last $7, and climbed in. Little did I know that the cab driver was only to happy to pick me up, so long as he could cruise the strip looking for women to drive. Weird. We ended up picking up a couple of guys who insisted that they needed to go to their office on 11th and L. We kept cruising and finally picked up a woman (since I was conning the guy, tip-wise, I couldn't really complain, and the cab was warm...) and promptly pulled a 180 to driver her home. As soon as she departed, the driver and the guy in the shotgun seat began to berate me and the other officeworker for failing to convert with the strange woman. Keep in mind, we're talking four average looking guys and an average looking woman. Not exactly inspiring stuff.

It was definitely past winning time, and I just wanted to end things as quickly as possible. I got back to the house, jumped out and caught a bit of a movie before crashing.

Sunday was even nicer, with a thin layer of clouds but warmer temps. Perfect for yardwork, so I read some more. Eventually Nicole called and we both decided going to a movie (our original plan) was an idiotic idea on such a gorgeous day. So we had a late lunch at Woodley Park, mere yards from the previous evening's anti-climatic coda. I saw a few people I knew, and Nicole mentioned the possibility of a trip to the Bahamas. I really need to ask her about that...grr. I just realized she'll be in Pennslyvania tomorrow. Oh, well. Hopefully she'll still have her 'berry running. Sunday evening I came back and plowed through some yardwork left over from the weeks after Isabel. Yeah, Isabel. Things in the city just don't decay at the rate I'm used to. You can pile up trees/clippings and they just sit there without any change for months. I realized I need to do a great deal more work, but the plants are still dormant, so hopefully next weekend I can knock a bunch of them out. I will, however, have to snag some more rocks, which means hitting up a friend for a car. I'll worry about that tomorrow. Er...today.

So my plan to