Shad

Bloomington, Illinois…yes, that’s right, Bloomington. Very very flat… and boring. Very very boring. Did I mention flat?

Anyway, if you’re ever in Bloomington, Ill. (population 64,000) do one thing for me… AVOID THE CHINESE FOOD! Not that I was expecting too much, but often times a little bad chinese can be quite comforting. Not in this case. Oh well.

However, there’s a lovely little Italian hole in the wall downtown. I think it was called “Lucca”. Quite fun.

Tomorrow night, I fly home. Friday morning, I head to NY. Dave Brubeck, here I come.

Shad is in the house!

As of this moment, I am now officially moved into the house on Highland. I got back into town yesterday afternoon and spent the night getting everything ready for the move. Today I have been packing and moving like a mad man. I’m not exactly sure where sheets are but I’m pretty sure they’re around here somewhere. I still have significant amounts of junk still at the old place, but I’ll get around that that tomorrow… or when I get back from Indiana. Did I mention I have to now go to Indiana next week. I realize that my friends are going to think I’ve dropped off the planet. I was out of town for the last 9 days and now I’m gone for a couple more. And next weekend I’m going up to see Steve in New York City!! So all in all, basically 3 weeks in a row out of town. Suck.

Onto other news, it looks like I’m going to lose my tenants, so if any of you were thinking, “Hey, I want to live in the hippest house on Highland!”, well dream no longer!!! Gimme a shout and we’ll see what we can work out.

I have become completely and totally addicted to the Discovery Channel and TLC. If you get a chance to check out Walking with Cavemen do it. It’s pretty incredible. Also, I’ve also been pretty addicted to This Old House, Trading Spaces, While You Were Out and Monster Garage.

I am soooo glad I don’t have cable at home. What a time suck TV can be. There was one extremely valuable find though. Check this out. Behr paints has put together a very nice online color selector system. You can check out what colors would look like on the wall without actually having to paint. It’s all very cool.

This afternoon, I went into Cambridge for the afternoon. Wandered around a bit, got some used CDs, a new t-shirt & watched one of the best buskers I’ve seen in a while. Now I’m back in beautiful Waltham. Watching cavemen on the ol’ boob tube.

Couple of things:

• My friend Kath has asked that I encript all communication with her, so I have broken down and generated a PGP Key. Feel free to use it if you have some serious cloak and dagger stuff to tell me.
• What else can I say but WOW.

Travelling, for those of you that have not had the pleasure of doing it often, typically sucks. You spend large quantities of time sitting in an enclosed space trying to think of ways to entertain yourself that don’t involve moving. And there’s typically at least one person wearing too much of some fragrance, and a baby that has just decided that today is a really good day to cry alllll day long. But today was not entirely aweful. Yes, I did get stuck next to the smelly New Jersey bank currier that wouldn’t stop talking about his weightloss routine and how cheap his tickets were by making two layovers, but fortunately, those airline cups with itty-bitty bottoms helped me out for once. I accidentally spilled water all over my seat and had to move… I chose the seat next to the lovely young dread locked girl. We chatted for some time and may meet up this weekend in Boston.

Then, wonder of wonders, I got upgraded on my rental car to… get this… a Ford Mustang… a white Ford Mustang! Not the most masculine car I can think of, but interesting none the less.

Today was a pretty typical day in the life of your typical software consultant (from my vast base of knowledge on the topic). Fortunately, there weren’t any big problems and I was able to complete my tasks and get out around 3pm. I still have quite a bit to do before I sleep tonight, but first, I think I will try out the local eatery “Naked Fish“. The lovely lady at the front desk tells me it’s good…

Watch as he glides through airport security making it safely to his plane in the nick of time. Marvell at how he balances his laptop AND a small plastic airline cup on the tiniest of tray tables! Question WHY airline cups have really tiny bases AND really large mouths (making is impossible to NOT spill club soda with lime in your keyboard).

Find the answers to these… and other questions (like, how is he going to get that lime seed out from between the F12 and Scroll Lock keys) all this week!!!

What can I say… I shaved.

And with that, here’s some erotic origami.

What an incredible amount of work painting is! With the cleaning, taping and plastering, I thought we would never even get to the painting. Not to mention the fact that I had to decide on colors and go buy the paint. I’m really pretty fortunate to have gotten as far as we did! Serious thanks to Laura, Michelle & (especially) Katie for thier help! Included are before and after pix of the middle room. The front room only has its first coat (you can sort of see it in the second after pic). I will get more pics up once I get it all finished up. Should be pretty interesting.

Don’t expect to see changes anytime soon however, work is going to be kicking my ass for the next couple of weeks!