So I am a cyborg now. Today, I got a phone call from D, who is now living with some Korean-Hawaiian girl not four blocks from my house, and so we were reunited to multiple games of chess, schleps in the park, checking out his digs and his music (R. Crumb and his band), and all that great catching-up shit, as he's again a bachelor after leaving his wife and all that, it's good to catch up, and strange to think I used to see this guy everyday last year, every school day, at least, with all that Chinatown stuff now well behind us, and so much lost from last year, something I think of as a little as I do college, as these days I tend not to think back very much at all, more to the near future, which is now no longer the case, as the near future involves going back to school--no, the point is, this was a well-overdue reunion and turned an otherwise drab day of physical fitness and muttering with Thai about his date tomorrow into something much more vital, involving the legitimate consumption of leg of lamb and frantic frying up of edamame, etc. And at some point I became a cyborg. A Christmas cyborg. This is all very exciting, even though we have a full-house under this roof, of three separate Christmases. Also now enjoying Box Office Poison, and planning to rereading most of Lone Wolf and Cub. Sadly, however, little progress on my homework...