I was up early and decided I needed to shift my ass and take a walk through the zoo. When I map it out, it comes to about 3 miles through and back which may not sound like a long way, but to an out-of-shape nerd like myself, it’s enough to get my heart rate up and work up a little sweat — especially in this humidity. I definitely prefer this walk in the cooler months.

Not too many animals were out, probably because it was early and felt a bit hot. I noticed other zoo walkers and we kept crossing paths, but a noise made us all divert and end up in the same spot. The white-cheeked gibbons were very active and making a heck of a noise. It was so constant and high-pitched that it sounded like a car alarm or a siren, pretty fascinating. The other animals I saw were out on the move, usually towards water: ostrich, wallabies, prairie dogs. On the new Asia Trail I spotted the clouded leopards, Asian small-clawed otters and giant pandas. With the pandas, the crowd is infinitely more fun to watch though the beasts had the right idea. One was snoozing away and the other was sat down and stuffing its face and mugging for the gaping tourists. On the way back out I finally got to see an orangutan using the O-Line. Then it walked over to the edge of its enclosure and stared at me. Of course I’ve been in a bar when groups of gays make their rounds, staring at the patrons, so I guess I know how it feels to have people walking past and talking about it to themselves all the time.

Got nothing planned for the rest of the day, I’m not even really feeling shopping though the siren song of the mini mega mall down the road is tempting. I wish they’d moved an Old Navy over there tho, I could use some cheap polos and tees. But I need to clean around the apartment since I’ve moved some things around and there’s a bit of tech and wires all in the middle of the floor. Looks to be a lovely day, though I wouldn’t mind that thunderstorm rolling through later on. Lately it seems to take the humidity away with it, at least for a few hours.

TGI–freakin–F as they say. I wonder if our brains have evolved to the point where even a short week no longer feels like a short week. Either that or I’ve just been on the move too much between tidying up, visiting family, family issues and other stuff.

My cousin’s visit has been quite pleasant, actually. I didn’t really think I’d warm to having a house guest, but it has been nice. Mostly because she wasn’t here for a visit, but to find a place to live, so I only had to prep the couch and we did go out to dinner last night but beyond that I haven’t seen much of her & she flies out home tonight.

I’ll be meeting a friend for dinner tonight at Asia Nine. It worked out well for a team lunch the other day and it’s time for a little more sushi. After the night out, I shall rest and rest well. I feel worn out this week!

I’m sure it’s from cleaning the place up and all, but lately my place no longer bears anything more than a passing resemblance to this. I can see my floors, there’s room to walk around, I’m almost at the point where I can use that chair again. I was going through a lot of old food magazines and ripping out recipes that I want to scan into MacGourmet. A virtual cookbook may not be as much “fun” as a regular notebook, but I already have plenty of cookbooks and these days when I’m looking for good recipes, I’m hitting the internet at work long before I get home to flip through the books.

Speaking of flipping, this site has been my “cat toy” this morning: ColorFlip.com. It’s just a cute little flash app, but the page flipping action is addictive!

3,739,934 views so far, and I admit that quite a few of those were mine. I already love Weezer, but this video was truly inspired. Metaviral is the only word that really fits, I’m impressed that they were able to get the actual YouTube stars to appear and not use looky-likeys, especially Miss South Carolina. Kelly’s behind the scenes extra is great too. It’s not yet to the level of OK Go (to whom a nod was conspicuously missing) but it’s well on its way.

My place is as clean as it’s going to get for the visit. I’m pretty impressed with myself in that the section of the living around and in front of the couch doesn’t even look like it belongs in my apartment anymore. Unfortunately for the coffee table, I just slid everything into a paper bag which I’ll sort through later on, but that method has been working fairly well for me. I’ve done the same thing with old bills and paystubs and it’s easier to go through the bag at once, filing and shredding as I go.

I bought a copy of MacGourmet, which will help me get rid of the stacks of food magazines and newspaper clippings. It’s quite cool the way you can add new recipes right from a few sites’ webpages and others can easily be dragged in from the clipboard. I’ve tried the paper recipe notebook before and it never really worked out. With the new macbook, it’s much easier to cart it to the kitchen with me and read the info right off the screen. Though more of my items are still simple dishes, so it mostly helps me put a shopping list together and with its large print “chef view”, I can follow it from across the room.

I’m glad it cooled off today, my condo board hasn’t decided that it’s hot enough to turn on the building’s air conditioning, so I’m relying on moving air through the windows. Yesterday’s mid to high 80s did not feel good, but waking up to 60s this morning was a welcome change. We had some sprinkling of rain, but I hope all that will be gone before tonight’s concert. I’m playing a bit of shell game with meeting my cousin and getting her settled, then meeting my ride for Ben Folds, but I’m sure it will all turn out all right. The weekend can’t come too soon. It’s a short week, but it sure doesn’t feel like one!

Heck of a weekend… for other people, I’m sure. Mine was spent cleaning the heck up out of my place. My cousin accepted a job in DC at a veterinary hospital and is coming up this week on a “find housing” trip. I am very glad that she didn’t ask for my help in finding a place since I have no connections, but she did ask for crash space. This is something, barring emergencies, I’m not good at providing. My place isn’t large, and since our storage area’s been off-limits to residents for nearly the past year, all of my stuff is in my place. With the lights off, for most people my place is a deathtrap.

They just allowed us to move stuff back into storage a few weeks ago, but they made the new rule that we can’t store anything in cardboard boxes. Well guess what everything I had was in? So a quick trip to Target and recommendations from Michael netted me a few Rubbermaid tubs and I managed to clear out some of the stuff, even overcoming my pack-rat tendencies and throwing some stuff out. Even so, there are some things I want to keep that I don’t necessarily have space for, so they’re just going to be “things in storage” until I have a larger place. Some fun during my trips downstairs to take more stuff out, was seeing a resident who’d been dumpster diving carting some of my stuff back upstairs. I’m glad since I did put some items in the unofficial “please take” spot of our trash area out back, it’s good to see some things being reused by someone… just not me.

I also did my usual “6 loads of built up laundry” chore. I always promise I won’t let it get to that point since it only takes 60 mins total to wash and dry, but still when I get in from work, laundry is the last thing on my mind. And while I could have used every machine available to do these, I knew that if I had 6 loads of clean laundry upstairs all at once, they’d never get folded right away, not when I have MarioKart calling my name. So I used 2 machines and 1 dryer (which can handle 2-3 loads of wash) and kept rotating out. On one of my trips down there, I saw that clearly I didn’t understand the concept of “the building shares a laundry room” because a woman was not only using every single available machine, she was also about to take out my wet clothes and those of someone else. I said, cheerfully but loudly, “I’m here, those are mine!” and she responded with a heavily accented, “Oh is yours?” Now I appreciate the stupid gringo routine as much as anyone, but don’t use it on me when 1: you’ve seen me doing laundry that day and 2: I’ve seen you speaking perfect English around the building before.

So my place is firming up. I still have some cleaning to do, and I need to get a key copy made and juggle her visit with a concert tomorrow night and another friend in town, so it’ll be a busy week. My inner introvert may well be curled up in the corner and crying by the weekend, but I’ll drown it with a few gin & tonics and all will be right with the world.

This is why socialized nerds and geeks have an off-switch. I don’t follow many printed comic strips regularly, only seeing the ones in Express, but today’s Pooch Cafe made me LOL, if you will, on the train. Not that I recall The Avengers fighting Godzilla, but it’s the kind of reference I’d pull out. One that is completely appropriate to the situation, but one that is also completely lost on the present audience.

Last night was a fun evening, the gang met up and were treated to quite the spread by Paul. The food star of the evening was his wings which were absolutely amazing, but he also made a custom cocktail and had plenty of nibbles. The plan was to watch “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” but the tone of the evening was rather fun and high-spirited that we watched “Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in All the World” instead. Since I don’t watch much of anything that appears on LOGO, I’d never seen any episode beyond the first one. They’re very cute and funny, but they still rely on that whole “we’re not being offensive, we’re being so offensive that it’s not offensive!” reason for really pushing it.

I have no plans for the weekend. Part of my brain still doesn’t recognize that it is a holiday weekend. Without the constant reinforcement of people asking me what I’m doing, I might well have gotten up on Monday morning and tried to come into work. Hopefully the weather will hold up so I can take some fresh air breaks in between cleaning house. They reopened the storage area, but made a new rule that we can’t store anything in cardboard boxes. I’m hoping that doesn’t refer to the storage of cardboard boxes because I’m not trying to buy a bunch when I next move. A quick trip or two to Target should get me some proper sized tubs to throw my junk in.

I know the city will be packed due to Black Gay Pride, but I don’t know if DC is being seen as a popular destination this year what with the crazy weather we’ve been having. I might be better off staying close to home and avoiding popular parts of town the weekend or finding some last minute plans to get out of here altogether. In any case, the office is empty, the day should be slow and I’m counting the minutes ’til I can scurry along home.