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I had a hella birthday, and am now off to Vieques for a week. I’m frantically tying up loose ends, mailing last-minute Christmas thank-you notes, and handing off projects at work. Whew! I can’t wait to go start working on the big stack of Ian Fleming books I got out of the library for beach reading!

I rolled out of bed this morning, brushed my teeth, pulled on gym shorts and walked to the Spring street New York Sports club to meet my trainer Jason Bravo. The block of Broadway in front of the club was blocked off, though, and there were three or four fire trucks surounding an open manhole cover. All the NYSC trainers were out in front — Jason told me that a manhole cover had blown off, and that the building was “filled with carbon dioxide!” He pointed to the open cover — clouds of acrid, plasticky-smelling steam were coming out. A firefighter was playing a stream of water all around the hole. Intermittently, flashes of blue-white light shone from underground, and sizzling and popping noises could be heard coming from under the street. Hurrah! Aging infrastructure snow day for me and my workout!!

There was a big snowstorm in New York this weekend. Here’s a picture of Saint Mark’s place at about 9PM on Saturday. It’s a pretty winter scene, but just out of the frame are ten kids from the Bronx watching their friend get his tongue pierced at a sidewalk stand.

“Bring it on!” I said to Steve, the tracksuited manager of Beach Bum Tanning on 23rd street. This was my second visit, on a mission to lay down a primer for my trip to Puerto Rico. Steve responded by putting me in the “medium strength” machine for 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes in the clamshell bed listening to Christina Aguilera resulted in a painful sunburn on my ass; I’ll take Steve and his machines more seriously from now on.

I’m back from Christmas with a whole lot of cool swag, including a super-bright little LED flashlight that is perfect for drawing on the glow-in-the-dark wall behind my Murphy Bed. Also, my mom gave me the Lego Mindstorms set, and Kate got me the Vision Command set, so I want to start working on trying to build a web-controllable camera!

I also contracted the hiking bug badly, ever since getting the TOPO! maps. I joined BOTH the Appalachian Mountain Club and the Adirondack Mountain Club. Jeez, I wonder which side I’ll have to take at the weekly rumble behind the gym?

My group at [My employer] had an outing to the Screening room yesterday; we voted on a movie to see (it ended up being Tron), and had drinks afterwards. I had my PalmPix camera, so I took some pictures. The resulting photographic record kind of looks like one of the old silent movies about The Dangers of Drink and Low Company. You can see it here, if you are interested in the cautionary tale.

A handheld device for those that have an OmniSky and a PalmPix:

I am now the proud owner of a handheld, battery operated, double barreled theatrical flash paper cannon. Using this handy-dandy device, I can make balls of fire shoot from my fingertips up to 20 feet! I haven’t actually done it yet, as I need to

1. Dry out the flash cotton, carefully, away from heat sources. It’s shipped wet, for safety.
   
2. Find twenty contiguous feet in New York City that I can shoot fireballs through without setting something on fire, getting punched, or getting arrested. That’ll probably take a while.
   

[My employer] Gets Hit with the Christmas Stick

The [My employer] lobby looks as if a galaxy composed entirely of Christmas garland has gone supernova. You can see the piles of artificial greenery, the opened boxes of decorations, and three ‘elves’ hard at work. It’s a big mystery who sent them — is it [My employer]’ Boston office? Is it the building’s management company? Is it a big mistake? The sheer amount of decoration is overwhelming. I expect that the next time I go to the bathroom that the elevator doors will be flocked with artificial snow, and there’ll be an electric Santaland Express train carrying programmers around and around the conference table.

I’ve been taking pictures on my PalmPix all weekend, and will post some in the afternoon. Meanwhile, I went to REI and spent the gift certificate that my Mom gave me for Christmas LAST Christmas. I got a Tilley hat, and some other stuff including TOPO!‘s CD-ROM topo map kits for the Catskills, Poconos, Adirondacks, and NYC region. These maps are freakin’ awesome! I already found Deerfoot Lodge, the camp I used to go to when I was a kid. I used the map coordinates to find an aerial photo of it at TerraServer!

Whitaker Lake, by the way, is the only one in North America that has a secret "limestone ocean tunnel" that allows the deadly Prehistoric Freshwater Shark to swim in its waters. I have that on good authority. Plus, the lake is effectively bottomless; noone has ever been able to measure the bottom. Oh, and there’s an old, abandoned institute for the criminally insane right over the hill. My counselors insisted; funny how I can’t find it on Terraserver anywhere.

My team at [My employer] chipped in and bought me a Palm Pix digital camera for Christmas, and I am really surprised and touched. Thanks, guys! I feel like the sergeant in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life. Wait till they see what I got THEM for the holidays! The camera will come in handy.