2002-02-05 - 11:34 p.m.

Setting up the HTML for this site is kinda like setting up a new apartment. You move in, inheriting an almost empty place littered with the cheezy remnants of the previous tenant. It takes a little effort, getting everything in, and you don't quite know where everything will go, but you have an idea.

Some people like to get it all done right away, or they hire an interior designer. I like to draw it out--do a little here, take a little break, drink some beers, and glance around to see how everything looks. I figure that I'll be seeing the same crap in the exact same places for awhile, with a small addition here or there to spruce things up, so why not take my time...

Finally, everything is pretty much in place, and not quite the way you want it.

You might tinker around here or there, but after crossing that two week threshold, any unfinished project will become a "work in progress," never to be completed. And if you do move things around, you'll never be able to get things exactly the way they were.

Its funny about moving, though, how the apartment arranging needle plunges from sixty to zero in one week.

I'd like to be a character in a Douglas Coupland novel. Maybe the above was my audition.

Hanging out with the Art Gurl tomorrow, I think, after work. Another new bar. I just used the calculator function on my computer. She's been in Boston a mere 0.0232558139534883720930232558139535% as long as I have been, but she knows more cool shit about the city. I think I have her on fuzzy Boston history and trivia, though.

Boston celebrated the homecoming of the Patriots today. I had already had my celebration--I just wanted to get to work.

The train ride in was an hour's worth of drunk kids. Who live in Allston. On the B line. And who didn't know the train stops. And that started a whole day of horrific wonderment, of how people can be living in or near one of the most beautiful and historic cities in the world and not know how to get around.

They just made crass jokes, complained that the train was too slow (irony alert--all the idiots going into the city were slowing it up to half its speed), and they were looking forward to "getting loud." They voraciously swore in front of little kids. It was noon.

The train eventually slowed into Park Street, declaring it the last stop (one stop early). I was glad to be getting of the train. At least I had been reading a good book, though.

Wall to wall to wall to wall people at Park. Bedlam. I couldn't get out of the station. People didn't know where they were going, and were swarming in, even though the city parade was heading the opposite way.

I tried the secret back exit, but new construction prevented my egress.

I wend down to the Red line in order to switch sides, and was somehow able to fight my way up the stairs. When I got out, the clock on the South Church told me that I was already 15 minutes late, even though I had left a half-hour early.

Once outside, it took me fifteen minutes, by the clock, to walk 40 feet.

Talking to my mom later, I learned that there were 1.5 million people crammed body to body in the (comparatively) tiny Downtown area.

It was kinda funny. I know all the shortcuts, but they were swarmed too. I kinda felt bad for the people who willingly and intimately crammed themselves into the wacky sidestreets, expecting to meet Tom Brady.

Pathetic.

Lunch with C. was pretty cool. Broke right now, and had enough for some McDonald's. For some reason, the Big Boss decided to get some pizzas. I learned about this just before lunchtime, so C. and I grabbed some slices and went out to watch the thinned-out stragglers and other debris.

It was a good walk.