"I really smelled bad after I ran today"
- Amy Moy

The last two days were exhausting. I left home at around 3:30 on Friday and it took me five hours, because it was basically stop-and-go all the way from Dupont circle to Deleware. I met up with Garrett and his girlfriend Gudren, went out to eat real authentic Philly Cheesesteaks with them, and then headed out to Philly to pick up Southgate and his girlfriend Ariel. When Garrett had flew in earlier, the plane had left his luggage in Atlanta, so then afterward we headed out to the airport, and hung around the airport bar until gwalker´s luggage came in.

Saturday was pretty sad - a lot of Sapient people showed up to mproca´s funeral, and I´m sure his family appreciated the support... Afterwards, we all parted ways - we dropped gwalker back off at the airport, and I drove back down to DC. The trip this time was much smoother, but between Baltimore and DC, it started raining crazy-rain. I took a nap when I arrived home, and then Daiv Hollman picked me up, picked up Violetta, and we went back out towards Baltimore for Blagg´s b-day party...

Anyways, I slept something like 9 hours last night, so I´m feeling much better... still a little blah...

Matt Libby is in town for work. I drove out to Laurel tonight to hang out with him and Blagg. We talked about mproca a bit tonight... on the way home, I started really thinking about going out to the funeral tomorrow and Saturday, and I got this intense sinking feeling. I think up till now I haven´t really thought much about it (read: denial). I think it´ll be much different when I´m there. I think I´ll be bad... I´m actually dreading it quite a bit...
I was just watching Hong Kong news on the International Channel. Apparently there´s a cab driver out there who has SARS. They were asking everyone who took his cab to go into quarantine. How fucked up is that?

Sometimes it pays off to go though the trouble of wading through red tape. Last month was a particularly bad month for me and parking tickets. On a whim, I contested two of my tickets on pretty thin grounds, and lo and behold, I got $150 worth of parking tickets waived. Happy days abound!
The past few days, I´ve been like this:


In the "Nurse Stimpy" episode of Ren and Stimpy, and the end of the episode in which Ren is deathly sick the whole time, Ren finally gets better one morning, when the sun rises and creeps through the window, exposing Ren´s now-recovered face, and then he gets up, raises both fists, and yells, "I feel like a meeeeelion bucks!". (I tried to find a picture of this, but failed).

I had imagined that the day I recovered, that this is how it would happen... Well, I woke up this morning, a bit tired, sinuses still a bit out of wack... throat a bit sore, but still, on the whole much better. I took my temperature, and for the first time in four days, I´m not running a fever, so I´d say I´m 80% better, which is fine enough for me. Now, no more excuse not to be productive (find a job, study Chinese, practice, etc)
Cool...
I was just listening to NPR - the Diane Rehm show, and she mentioned that every friday she does her show live at the National Geographic building, which happens to be a 5 minute walk away. So I just called, and got a seat to her show tomorrow morning. I think I´m finally taking advantage of living in DC

Via
Which Piercing are you?
Two nights ago, my old career manager passed away...

It was really tragic in its own way - he had just gotten married, he was young, and it came all of a sudden...

Iīve found it difficult reacting to this, partially because Iīm really sick, and canīt think of much else other than being really sick.

This is the closest death that Iīve experienced since the younger brother of a close friend passed away when I was in middle school (with an exception of 9/11, which was a whole different emotional world). In some ways, Iīm kind of ignoring it, in semi-denial... It had been over a year since I last talked to him, so if i donīt talk to him for another year, nothing much is different, right? But no.

Thereīs also a bit of guilt... he was my career manager at Sapient, and I had a whole ton of gripes about Sapient, so I used to bitch and complain via him ... Anyone who knows me knows that I deal with things that bother me by doing exorbitant amounts of bitching and complaining... I feel bad about that now - mostly because in actuality, I actually really respected him, and took him as my role model during my time at Sapient. He was my first PM (project manager) on my first project at Sapient, and he was only a couple of years older than me. He had joined as an engineer, just like I had, and had quickly worked up his way to being a director.

He had this quirky obsession with Mont Blanc pens, and I used to always mention him whenever I saw a Mont Blanc pen. Itīs funny that the evening before I found out about his condition, I was talking about him. Iīll continue to pray for him, and for the comfort of his family...

Hereīs a memorial page my buddy, and his friend Garrett Walker created for him:
http://garrettwalker.com/marc/index.php

At FBR, we had this tradition of writing Haikuīs. Hereīs one I wrote when i found out about his condition:
Tonight I will pray.
What else can we do to stem
the passing of life?

And then one when I found out:
mproca, could you -
to let us know youīre okay -
smile down upon us?
Last night, I had another quartet rehearsal.
It´s something that Steve and I had been trying to put together for months, ever since he returned to DC. We finally got a hodgepodge of people together to read quartets, but two weeks ago, we decided to actually form a more cohesive group and to actually work on a specific piece and put together a distinct program. So we decided on Dvorak´s "American" Quartet, which is one of most kick-ass string quartets out there.

So... last night was our first rehearsal where we actually prepared individually beforehand. It turned out _really_ well, esp. for people who hadn´t practiced for years. It´s weird to be back in an environment that I used to devote hours and hours to. Last night was really promising, and hopefully we´ll be at a point of performing at the end of the summer...
So, I got a call yesterday from the department for whom I´m supposed to do a summer internship this summer. Apparently there´s been a hitch in the clearance process for me, without which I cannot start my internship. In my planning, the worst case scenario I imagined was starting work this _past_ monday, as opposed to the monday before, or the monday before that. What I´m being told now is that they won´t even know _when_ they´ll have a decision until this thursday. Which means, it´s highly unlikely that I´ll be able to even start next monday! It was suggested to me that I start finding alternate plans for the summer.

This sucks.

I´m going into school today (I´m feeling a lot better - still sick, but better), to see if I can still sign up for summer classes.