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progThursday was boring enough to make me seriously consider driving home after dinner. Nothing open, no friends nearby, no Internet access. Maybe worst was being stuck in a house with Ricky, who was amidst an off day, having consumed who knows how many cups of coffee and then raving all day long about the Army and the Masons and "Red China" and so on, pausing every so often to mumblingly dissect a word or phrase. I stuck around, though, because I promised my parents I'd see to making sure Arcus could help them set up their ancient and obscure Mac for Internet access, and they wouldn't be open until the next day. (Arcus lacked the video adapter that allows a 6100-series PowerMac to use a monitor. It otherwise has a big rectangular video-out port that fits no device I have ever seen.) Ended up playing a lot of Fallout 2 and reading half of Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, which M had earlier put onto my book queue. It's a fun read, and I look forward to getting into the rest of series.
Friday and Saturday were all right. Hung out at the mostly-deserted Arcus offices and got some ICCB work done. Things are moving along pretty well there; another day or two of work and the program should be ready for Dara to start using/testing. That's pretty neat. I'm feeling anxious about getting this project on its own legs, as my five-month anniversary approaches. I also got to have lunch and fine conversation about business n stuff with Jim, which was nice. On hearing me whinge about my ever-pokey at-work development cycle, Jim recommended that I read Tom DeMarco's Deadline, a novel about software project management, which he found both entertaining and insightful. I think I'll try hunting down a copy next time I'm in Harvard Square.
(Sidebar: I haven't been in the mood to finish Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders trilogy, even though Carla has offered to lend me the final book. Or maybe because of that: she's declared that she just couldn't finish it, but I haven't let her tell me why, at least until I decide that I won't read it. At any rate, after reading the first two books, I can see how it turned at least a couple of friends off to Hobb's writing (hi Mary). Seriously, every single chapter could end with this paragraph:
And then things went horribly wrong.
The downward spiral that every character in the book is on (except for maybe the pirates) really is removed from the rich contours of Fitz's life. Well... we'll see.)
Jim also gave me a new Arcus key, which was very nice, and will make me happier about future Waterville visits.
On Friday night I drove to Orrington to visit with Andy and JJoy at the latter's family home, whereupon I played Fightball with someone who wasn't Denis and therefore gave me enough breathing room to discover: hey, the game is actually pretty fun, and I'm not automatically terrible at it. Also played a Rio Grande card game called The Gnumies, which I bought last year but never played since I managed to lose the instructions almost immediately. As luck would have it, I found them again right before the holiday, and so we discovered that it's a fast and reasonably fun bidding game.
Drove through a snowstorm on the way back. Learned that nobody plows that section of I-95 after 1 a.m. Drove very slowly when I could no longer see the lane-divider lines through the accumulation, and had to trust the faint lines left by earlier traffic in order to know the road's course. Yike. But, it was all OK in the end.
N has agreed to the table/desk swap. We might do it today. I cleaned up the card table and it now smells like fake oranges and is ready for transfer. Actually, I'll ask him about it as soon as I'm done writing this.
M observed that since at least two of the three of us now spend much of our time in our respective bedroom/studies, we might be able to painlessly sacrifice one of the two common rooms and bring in another housemate. I haven't asked if she has anyone in mind; maybe she doesn't. I can't think of any obvious circle-N candidates, anyway. Something to kick around later, I suppose.