It had been raining all last week; it was cold and miserable. now, suddenly, it seems to be late summer. My office thermometer says that it is 86.7 degrees in here. other signs that it's summer: i'm riding my bike to work again, LAPRN (my neighborhood) is really noisy, and we hear the mr. softee song all day long, at work and at home.

My room mates and i may have found an apartment. Like most places, it has it's good and bad. first, the good: it's two short blocks from the subway stop, in a great neighborhood. the building was built in 1904, and they are preserving it's great character. otherwise, everything is brand new. But that's also where the problem begins. They're still building it. while we were trying to move May 1st (1 month early), this would mean moving July 1st at the earliest, and it could be August 1st. So we would have to get our landlord/new owner to let us stay longer than our lease. Also, the place has kind of a kooky layout for the living spaces. Since it isn't ready yet, we are holding the place for a few weeks while we decide.

Happy Easter! It's been a great weekend: A day off work, a new computer, the NY auto show, sunny days, and Easter sunday service...

I took off work for Good Friday. It was great to take a break. On saturday i went to the New York Auto Show with my friend Ryan. We had a great time just walking around looking at cars. There were a lot of new concept cars, and it's always good to see the new production vehicles, too. I was amazed at how much new stuff there was. Since we went last year, i expected to see a lot of the same stuff. that was the case with the displays themselves, but the cars weere pretty different. i didn't realize it, but we were there walking around for four hours straight.

We met Christina for lunch at a little tiny place in the Village. She had been at a cooking class that morning and was anxious to tell us all about it. so i was hearing about how to make wonderful pasta dishes, deciding whether to get brunch food or a hamburger, watching Matthew Broderick walk up to the counter, thinking about if i should splurge on that grape soda... wait, Mathhew Broderick is here? yeah, well, would you look at that. I felt a little bad that he has to get take out; if he was normal like us he could sit in this cute little place and have brunch. I guess it's one of those New York moments.

okay, i have to go. my roommates called; they bought so many groceries that they can't carry them all home by themselves. Columbia grads...

it's done. last night i assembled my new computer. and it rules.

there were only minor glitches in putting everything together. the first was getting the case open. i just could NOT slide the side off. it seemed to be caught right were the lock is. i though, "great, they shipped it to me locked with the keys inside." so i broke through the drive bays, reached way in, and snagged the keys. turns out, it wasn't locked. instead, the handle near the lock moved to release the catch, and then it swung open. no wonder it wouldn't slide.

so then i just followed the directions that came with the motherboard, and most everything went alright. i sort of bent a pin or two when i finally got the processor open, but it was so minor that they straightened right out and slid into place. whew! i had to connect a gazillion wires for the front case USB and firewire ports since they were all individual instead of just being bundled into one 'outlet.' and when the labels didn't exactly match the motherboard chart, i just took educated guesses... and they all work!

the scariest part was hitting the power switch. ryan came home just in time to help me install all the drives, so that sped things up. and since the case has a side window, he made sure to bundle some of the wires out of the way. he also moved my front case fan so that it brings the air past the hard discs. smart move, i think. but i had to hit the power button by myself. when i did, we had a good laugh. all four case fans came with multicolored LEDs; each one has a blue, red, and green light. pretty corny.

speaking of fans, i sure have an abundance of them. the case has four, and there is one for the CPU, the motherboard chipset, the power supply, and even the graphics card has one. what is that, seven? no, eight!

anyway, i just got all my data back from ryan's computer where i was storing it through all this. and now i'm getting ready to start installing software. that's not going to be as fun as building the computer was.

my computer bits and pieces came via fed ex yesterday. whoo-hoo! i just have to lug the case home, using my home-made, tape handle (note: the comma indicates that the handle is home-made, not the tape), and i should be set to build my super computer. well, super compared to my old one. i hope it works without too many glitches.

we had our last rehearsal for easter sunday last night. (that's a bad sentence, but i don't feel like fixing it.) we're singing five new specials on sunday. they're pretty cool. one of them is a medley of five really old songs. the mass choir is about a hundred people, but only this one little old lady knew any of the songs. so she gets to lead one of them! and we're stealing one of the songs from the brooklyn tabernacle choir. so sunday should be fun. strange, though; they don't do anything special for good friday. but i am! i'm taking off of work. i figure that i'll probably finally go see mel's "the passion of the Christ." and put together my computer!

stress sucks.

my room mate and i have been apartment shopping. we found a beautiful loft on williamsburg waterfront that was big, clean, had great amenities, and a great landlord, but we just couldn't configure rooms in it. not that we didn't try.

so we looked at some places on roosevelt island, which is in the east river between manhattan and queens. the place was really nice, with a south-facing balcony great manhattan views, but no neighborhood to speak of. well, not the cafe and shopping kind of neighborhood. it's more of a park and activities kind of place. so we'll see.

and our broker is tired of us not taking a place. of course, we haven't managed to get out of our lease (which ends the end of may). we just want to get out of this place, and before the summer rush.

and i still don't have a computer. but i'm about to buy the pieces for one... we'll have to see how that goes.