a night on the town: is it a blue moon again already?

recently, i've been waking up in the morning with back pain and no idea why. the only reasonable thing i can think of is that the mattress might theoretically be starting to sag (it is a three year old futon mattress), but it doesn't really look or feel any different; certainly not enough to justify such a drastic bifurcation (the change came quite suddenly about a week and a half ago). so yeah, puzzling. kinda hope it stops soon.

friday afternoon, we tried to organize what yannick has been calling an "el cheapo" yoga session with our little group, but the only people who ended up coming were karen and i. we had a good practice, and i even started to feel my hips open up a little bit with my increased frequency of practicing (i think i got four sessions in last week), which was encouraging. afterwards, we picked up a couple of pizzas, brought them back to my apartment, and had a nice little dinner with maurice. later, karen and i joined alex and his friend magnus (visiting from spain) for a drink, and eventually even krister showed up. a 'progressive party' of three establishments later, i was dragging myself into bed at about 4am. it was fun, but i'm really glad it only happens very rarely. i must be getting old.

saturday was hence cut short, for obvious reasons including the fact that i didn't get up until nearly 10:30, and was pretty much a lazy lounge around my room day. though i did make a trek out to obi (the 'home depot' sort of store here) with three goals in mind, and failed miserably at all three of them. i wanted:

1. baking soda in a package bigger than an artificial sugar packet (you know, like a real arm and hammer box). of course they had no idea what i was talking about, and suggested that i go back to the grocery store and buy the sugar packets. coming up with a half cup of the stuff for treating a slow drain using sugar packet sized servings sounds utterly ridiculous.

2. a protective plastic briefcase-like box filled with puzzle foam for making a carrying case for the wii. i'm dead certain that the boxes nikolaus keeps the alices in and various other similar things that we have here around the lab all came from obi, but again, the sales people i talked to all claimed they had never seen or sold such a thing.

3. a small lamp, so i can read in bed without needing the overhead light on. they had a bunch of cheap-ass (and cheaper looking) plastic desk lamps that were not terribly inspiring. so i looked with the real light fixtures, and found a set of really ridiculously gaudy hanging glass globes. the set as a whole was quite terrifying, but i kinda liked the smallest one which was leveled off on the bottom to sit on the ground, thinking i would put it on my bedside stand thingy. it was a bit on the spendy side (~$30), but it was made of real glass and had a nice wispy swirly kind of pattern blown into it, and looked kinda nice and different, so i flagged down a flunkie and asked them if i could buy one. ten minutes later, he comes back and tells me that they hadn't been delivered on schedule, and wouldn't be for at least two more weeks.

and so, i went back home empty handed.