the weather has been quite spectacular the last few days. it looks like fall is really scratching on the door now. and even though i spend most of my days in meetings and thus in rooms that do not necessarily have leaves falling and squirrels trolling on tables, it still feels great to be in new york at the end of september. we won an award last night at the marriott in a tiny room packed with some people who were old friends and some who were new friends and with some who had been buried in back rooms since 1999. the winner of the entire show was actually not too bad. Enjoyed the show quite a bit. (can I now get a paper towel please?) hmm... spectacular weather... time for at least a walk.

happy yay-day... it is somehow sad that i had timed my arrival at the office in a way so i would not have to wait for too long until the meeting started. and it started pretty much on time. it was one of those standing performances where certain characters on stage discuss the situation in the field and groups of other characters are called in now and then and report on what part of the city was burning and what things were going well. okay, maybe it is not quite this way. a little bit yes though. a group of people making slight adjustments to some thoughts and another circle of people arriving every few minutes to read something and inspire new comments and ideas. big ideas too. and small ones. played animal crossing on the train going back to brooklyn. placed myself in the seat next to the window on the left hand side of the train, so i could look at the skyline of downtown manhattan when the train got above ground after carroll street. a woman sitting on the bench in front of me hid her strange moleskine-like diary and put on a strange smile as if i had just looked at some secret of hers and she liked it. it really did not care a pinch. i was just ready to go home, clean out my office a bit more, get some food in my belly and perhaps draw. i was not about to tell her that i did not care. i just played animal crossing. it was yay-day today, the day on which all the animals in my town (currently mostly squirrels and other mammals) come up with compliments for me. i then have to type in something that is supposed to flatter them too... in 16 characters or less. the animals then repeat the words i would come up with as if they were the greatest thing on earth, or the lamest, dependent on the personality that this particular animal has. does this sound insanely nerdy? it is. i called one of the squirrels "squirrellicious" and the gorilla "silverbacky"... lame. the train eventually moved above ground. a hungarian family with a toddler moved in on my corner. the child was very tired and just cried and cried. the family discussed the crying child in hungarian. i looked out the window and saw a very blurry version of manhattan and brooklyn and the dark sky. somebody had scribbled their name onto the glass with etching fluid and shoe shine. my stop was near, i somehow managed to convince the older lady to let me out of my window seat. as the train was pulling into the station i noticed a guy, maybe in his 30's, playing on a very beat up nintendo ds (it was a blue one.) I peeked at his screen and saw that he was trying to type something, some word, somehow under 16 characters, while in the top screen a little avatar was talking to some grayish whale like animal. i tapped the stranger on the shoulder. he took off his headphones and looked at me as if i had something he had just dropped. "happy yay-day," i said. i felt a tiny bit as if my father were there with me. my father who has the ability to start a conversation with any person, anywhere, may they understand his language or not. "happy yay-day"... the guy got it. he laughed. he thought it was very funny. i walked home smiling. bought a small pack of celery and carrots for a dollar. some of the celery was bad. ate a quarter of a watermelon. tomorrow will be a tougher day. more meetings. more people. more important. we will sit around a table. make decisions. present. i am tired now. yay... night

the good apple... it was on september 22nd 2003 when i finally placed the order for that new powerbook. i ordered one custom made, just because i wanted the faster drive and also more control over my memory configuration. the powerbook was one of the first of its kind, it was one of the first that had an alluminum enclosure, and also that firewire 800 connector. it was an exciting and big purchase. i bought it with an external display and also purchased apple care (a really, really good idea, as it was about to turn out.) the powerbook arrived with a dead pixel on its lcd and because it was one of the first of its kind, it also eventually developed strange white blotches on the screen, a rather annoying feature i could have had fixed, except that the powerbook was my primary computer, so i did not want to just give it away... for what i thought would be days. several months ago, the good old powerbook stopped closing. i had to press the button in the front of the computer to make the mechanism work. the screen had become a bit loose. then, about six weeks ago, on the way to california, the wireless card stopped working. i brought the mac into the apple store in santa monica and a genius there just figured out that something was wrong with most likely the motherboard. (he did not document taking my powerbook apart, which almost made me lose my warranty.) it was not until i got back to new york that i finally brought the powerbook into the genius bar in that new new and shiny 5th avenue apple store. that was on july 25th... hmm, some time ago. everybody was very friendly and nice to me at the genius bar. it took about a month for the computer to be repaired. the motherboard had to be replaced and the whole screen assembly too. for that the mac had to be sent away, parts had to be ordered. it took a while to do all this. well, the "repaired" mac unfortunately was not quite okay. the screen had indeed been replaced. and the motherboard was a new one, but now some windows would just leave behind pink ghosts on the screen. the powerbook had to go back into the shop. when i tried to pick it up yesterday a technician came out to tell me that there was a new problem. now the ghosts on screen were white. they only appeared after the computer had been left one for about 10 minutes. (so nice of him to take so much time and to care so much.) he ordered a new motherboard (the third one.) he also made my repair a top priority and even emailed me with the status of the repair in the middle of the night. today was the day on which i was supposed to finally get my mac back. it looked good and it worked nicely at first. the screen was as bright as they got on these three year old machines. no window ghosts. i checked the configuration, just to make sure everything had gone okay in the repair shop... half of my memory was now gone. i used to have 2gb of memory... now there was 1gb... i was expecting that maybe the memory had been lost somewhere in the process of repair, maybe left behind on some desk in the middle of the night. the technician (genius) took the powerbook behind the scenes one more time for maybe 30 minutes or so. he returned with some and some mixed news. the memory was there, inside of the machine... the new motherboard just did not want to recognize it. ... and so he gave me two options. we could try to track down a fourth motherboard for my sick powerbook... or... apple would replace my computer with a completely new mac book pro. wow. okay... because my original powerbook had been a custom configuration, i would be allowed to custom configure my replacement computer as well. i had 2gb of ram in the old machine? the new one should have that too. i had the faster drive in the old powerbook? my brand new mac book pro should have that too. courtesy of apple. amazing. who knew this could ever happen to me? i ended up upgrading my "new machine" to the faster processor. so my new mac book pro will cost me a few hundred dollars. i will also get that apple care again. my new computer will arrive in... hmm... several weeks. i am amazed. i asked the apple genius how often he has seen such a miracle of transformation happen. he knew of four occurences in the three years he has been working for apple. fantastic. i still can’t believe it. hmm... In any contest between power and patience, bet on patience.

we're out of the country for a few days. will return soon.

birds relaxing on the branches outside can barely keep their heads straight against the wind and the water coming down in waves. it is a rather cool saturday. and the windows are all closed now. vashti is whispering over the speakers. it took a while to get the bags with laundry back into the house and up the floors. the drawing i had made for that auction the other night is not quite as bad as i had seen it last morning. maybe it it just time to make another one and then we can talk. i should be packing for the trip on tuesday but even the coffee can not wake me up, not even at 1pm. oh the wind, the wind the very strong wind outside.