A bold new era began yesterday, as it was my first day telecommuting for my day job. It ended up being a lot more work than I'd anticipated. Tasks that normally take about five minutes at the office took over half an hour at home. But the key is the "at home" part, as I didn't have to put on pants until well after noon, I got to watch my DVRed Gilmore Girls and Scrubs, and I got to eat a big bowl of Cocoa Crispies for a late breakfast.
In the afternoon, Matt came over to begin construction on his "Dream Machine." He'd read something about this in Time Out New York and simply couldn't wait to build his own. Apparently, when constructed and used properly, it's supposed to make way hallucinate or something. And by "or something," I'm pretty sure that means "epileptic seizures." The basic design is a long cylinder with rows of squares cut out. Then the tube is placed on a record player set at 78 RPM and a light bulb is lowered inside. Then you sit in front of it with your eyes closed, and, according to Jed, "trip balls." Personally, i think that when you activate it, the patterns with filter the light in a certain way and all you'll see is the word "asshole" or something. I had originally intended to just let Matt work while I continued telecommuting and eating, but the proved to be so much math and tedious measuring that he couldn't do it all himself. I suggested waiting until Miss Charming Melodee got home, since this kind of thing seemed right up her alley and she'd probably finish it in 30 minutes, but we soldiered on for more than 2 hours. And it still isn't done.
Anyway, the point of doing this now is that Matt wanted to have it ready in time for the party at my apartment on Saturday. It's sort of a belated birthday party, since last weekend was Easter weekend. I don't usually like making a big hubbub about my birthday, and last week the people I was hanging out with didn't even know it was my birthday until late in the day, so throwing a party for my birthday seems a bit much. Which is why I'm trying to leave most of the details to Miss CM. And calling it more of a celebratory Spring party. Or a semi-annual party at our Fulton St. Apartment. We had a very large party in November for Miss CM's birthday, but this one will not be anywhere near the size, which is probably a good thing. That one featured too many annoying people, too many things broken or damaged, and too many people throwing up and hanging out with window (which was actually only one, but that's still too many). This will be just a notch above "a get together." So if I forgot to invite you and you know where I live, feel free to stop by.
The plan tonight after my guitar lesson is to see Matt perform his standup routine. I haven't seen Matt do standup in quite a long time, probably since college. I've seen his improv group, but this is a horse of a different color. Naturally it's located in one of the least convenient places for me to get to, on 24th st. between 1st and second ave. It's really a wasteland as far as transportation is concerned over there. I wonder where we're at as far as the long-rumored 2nd ave subway line.
Here's something semi-amusing. My brother galvin put this picture from Garrick's wedding up on his webpage and mentioned that it looked like we were in some sort of asian boy-band.
So naturally someone photoshopped it into this:
Crazy kids. Looks pretty convincing, though.
