Tom

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Garbagemen must see the weirdest shit.

I just went to the back alley to drop off the trash, and there were over a dozen full-size bed pillows, each with a message on a printed sticker. The messages were strange:

• Are you ok? I don't want to hurt you.


• Maybe foreign girls are not so great.


• Was that good for you?


• Ooh, I can see a snowman and a bunny in the ceiling popcorn.


• I love you, but I think you're hurting my back.


• Why won't they shut the fuck up?


• Thank God this day is over.

What could they be? I'm thinking art project...

All week I've been wanting to update my résumé and write a good basic cover letter. And I keep on putting it off...for no reason at all. I keep finding other things to do. Games, tagging my Flickr images... I just spent an hour looking at lolcats at icanhascheezburger.com.

I can't keep ADD'ing my way through life.

I was just in JBK's (my department's director) office showing him the details of a presentation I edited for the Board of Directors.  When I was done, I turned around the conversation and started talking about my future with the company.  Told him I was bored, that it's been three years, and that no matter how much I want to stay with this company (which is excrutiatingly true...), I have to think about my career first.

He took a sticky note, wrote "TK - Future" on it, and put it on his notebook.  He said to give him a few days.  We'll see what happens.

Ordinarily I'd be really nervous having a conversation like that, but I was unusually calm.  I think maybe it was because I was playing with a ball of foil... I've always had an easier time talking to people when I'm fiddling with something.  Weird.

I currently owe my journal:

• A description of Perugia, Florence, and Venice
  
• A 2008 New Year's Resolution (along with a review of how last year's went)
  
• A review of the music I listened to in 2007

but I can no longer let that stop me from posting new entries.

On my lunch break today, I was walking back to the office after buying strawberries from the fruit guy, a little kid (10-ish years old) dropped his change in front of me.  He picked up most of it, but left a big shiny quarter on the ground in front of me, and he kept walking.  I wanted to pick it up and give it to him, but that would have been weird.  And I didn't want it falling into anyone else's hands.  So I decided to kick it to him, knowing full well that I would probably eff it up and kick it into the sewer or something.  But I didn't.  It went right to his feet, and he picked it up as if nothing had happened.  It's ridiculous, I know...but it was just one of those moments...where things could have gone wrong, but instead everything just worked.

It's starting to smell like summer again...the strawberries were delicious, even though I forgot to wash them.  It's a happy day.  And there's this Discovery Channel commercial that I keep watching that makes me feel so good about the world we live in.  It almost made me cry yesterday...

Happy Earth Day, by the way.

The world is ending around me.

No, actually the Red Sox just won the World Series.  And there are helicopters, people shouting, police sirens, etc. outside my window.  At 2 a.m.

Would be out there myself, but I'm exhausted from Abby's wedding festivities in Savannah.  Just got back about 3 hours ago.  So very very tired.  I'll expand later on the whole weekend, but right now I have to sleep.  Here's a sneak preview:  I caught the bouquet...Complete accident, but I caught it.  Enough said.

Man, Stars was freaking fantastic tonight.

Concert was at Berklee Performance Center, which is where Gus and I saw Pink Martini.  Personally, I love the venue because (a) I always seem to get a fantastic seat with a great view, and (b) because the music is a little quieter than in normal clubs, which lets me enjoy the little nuances that make me love the music.  Also, it's really close to my apartment right now, which doesn't hurt.

Opening act is probably not worth mentioning.  I felt bad because she seemed a little nervous, and you knew her heart was in her music.  It just wasn't that great.  One of those "artist"-types who's not really great at the piano and not really great at vocals and not really great at writing lyrics (at one point Gus wrote in his phone for me to see: "Repeating a lyric twenty times in a row does not make it profound"...lol)  I mean, I saw potential, and I think if she worked on it with a band (she was solo on keyboard/guitar) for a while, she could come up with a great sound.  But tonight just sounded like a talent show.

So then Stars opened up and it was nuts.  I mean, I think their music is powerful enough in their recordings, and when they play live, they're just totally into it, and the sound is so good it gives you chills.  And I'd forgotten how theatrical they are - Torquil and Amy just have such a wild chemistry.  It's so much fun to watch them dance around and have fun.

Torquil looked good - Gus compared him to Bruce Willis, which I sort of agree - but I have to admit...for a while, Amy looked a bit haggardly.  She looked like she had just woken up after a particularly regrettable night with someone with whom she hadn't planned on spending the night...you know the look.  But as the night progressed, I started to understand the look better, and it wasn't so bad.

Some of the more theatrical parts included Torquil leaving the stage (while still singing a song) and re-emerging with LED lights all over his sportcoat.  It was really cool, and during the Michael Jackson-ish parts of "Genova Heights", all the lights went out and he just struck poses... don't know any way else to put it...very fun to watch!  Another part I enjoyed, and I forget the song, was a particularly cool lighting display where they shone a bright light toward the audience during a quiet part of the song (so we couldn't really see anything), and kept changing the color on the beat.  When the chorus came in (which was one of the signature Stars "out of nowhere" choruses), the lights were back on them.  Not particularly interesting if you didn't see it, but I mention it here so that I'll always remember.

Oh, and the stage had bouquets of flowers everywhere, and they kept chucking them at the audience.  It was cute.

During the very beginning of the show, some usher caught me taking pictures and told me to put the camera away, which annoyed me a little (I had only had the chance to take two pictures of the opening act, and one of Torquil).  I was on the end of a row, and I was using my 350mm zoom lens, so I'm not surprised he caught me so early.  I guess it was good though, because I enjoyed the concert a lot more.  But then during the encore, I switched places with Gus and went crazy.  I trusted my instincts with regard to the camera settings (ISO, exposure, etc.), and I turned out some really decent photos...very proud of myself!

All in all, a fantastic evening...one I shall not soon forget (oh...especially because NPR was recording the concert - Maybe I'll be able to get my hands on that...)  And as is customary with all the Stars concerts I've been to (3 I think so far), I'm a million times more in love with the newest CD than I was before.  I'll be listening to it for days/weeks/years to come.

That's the license plate number of the taxi that almost killed me.

That's right...I was in my first official bike accident a few hours ago (6:50 to be exact...I only know because some good Samaritan took the liberty of writing down everything on a piece of paper and telling me to put it in my pocket).

Sure, I've slammed into old ladies, been smooshed between two vans, and been vomitted on while riding my bike (yes, they're all true, and they've all happened in the past year and a half), but today was a different story.

I'm riding down Newbury St. and I admit I'm riding pretty fast...somewhere between 10-15 mph.  Not a lot, but on Newbury my lane's only about a meter wide.  So there's a lot of traffic...most of the cars aren't moving.  So I'm riding merrily down my lane, passing everyone.  Then the passenger in a taxi swings her door open.  I don't know if it hit me on the side, or if I just slammed right into it, but I do know that there was no escaping it... my bike continues about 10 feet forward into traffic.  I fly off the bike in a Superman-position and get slammed head-first into the bumper of a parked car.

I didn't black out or anything, but I was really confused for a few minutes. People crowded around me on the street and called police/tried to help me up/gave me a bottle of water. It was actually pretty cool that so many people were willing to help...it surprised me.

About 10 minutes later, Gus comes running (I had called him to come over; I was only a block or so away from our apartment). I was feeling a lot better...but there was an ambulance on the way, and the people around me were so concerned for me...and kept telling me not to move. So I just sat and waited. The ambulance gets there and this really cute medic guy with short blond hair and a firefighter-build starts asking me questions and feeling my back and chest for fractures or something. And I felt kind of weird when he started asking me what month and year it was.  But they said that if I felt ok, that I shouldn't feel bad for not going to the hospital.  The cute medic told me that if I started getting headaches and stuff, that I should just call 911 and they'd be back for me...so sweet!  ::gushes::

A few minutes later, a police guy came and I filed a report with him.  I was sort of annoyed when I explained the whole accident to him, and he kept on insisting that it was my fault.  I argued a little with him, and finally realized that he thought the passenger was getting IN to the car, rather than opening the door to get OUT.  I think I was most annoyed at the fact that it seems like the police are quick to blame the bikers.  I guess I'm more pissed off that I'm the one that follows all the rules:  I go the right direction in one-way streets, I never ride on the sidewalk, I stop at all the stop lights, and even stop signs.  But that doesn't matter, because the bikers here (and everywhere, I suppose) have built a really bad reputation.

So anyway, I'm feeling ok now, except for my arms - the right one is all scraped up and hurts badly, and the left one is really really swollen.  My head feels alright (I had been wearing a helmet, of course), but who knows how this could have affected my neck/spine.

Should I go to work tomorrow?  We'll see...

My signed copy of the new Stars CD In Our Bedroom After The War showed up in the mail today.  I had completely forgotten that I had pre-ordered it.  And I usually don't pre-order, but I'll never pass up an opportunity to get an autographed anything.

So I'm thoroughly loving this CD.  My Favourite Book is my new favourite song.  The whole CD is just great.

And it's perfect for my mood lately.

Man, today SUCKS

I get in, I've got like 7 billion complaints to deal with, but all the systems are down.

And one of our funds just went through a merger, so everyone's got questions on that.

I can't wait to leave this industry.


In other news, my weekend was bland. On Saturday, Gus and I shopped around Copley, and then met up with Irina and Brett for dinner at Chili's and gelato at this new place on Mass Ave. called BonBon. Mmmm... gelato brings me back (which reminds me, by the way, that I have yet to report on Perugia, Florence, and Venice... I'll get there eventually). Sunday was spent sitting out by the Charles with an iPod full of Dave Matthews, and then playing tennis with Elizabeth. Then I came home for a Heroes marathon with Gus. We've been scrambling to watch all the episodes from last season so I'm not all lost and confused when the new season starts (which, incidentally, happens tonight at 9). We're up to the season finale, so tonight we'll be watching the finale and then the new season premiere. Screw cliffhangers...


Gotta get back to work. Can't believe that I wrote this entire entry without being interrupted even once...