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i spent most of the day cleaning at the house, a little bit of sanding, a lot of patching, vacuuming the floors, and wiping the countertops with this clorox spray with bleach.
that stuff works miracles. i just spray it on and wipe it off and like magic, brand new white countertops. the whole time i was repeating the phrase "the cleaning power of bleach" over and over in my head. i didn't turn on the air conditioner because i didn't want to be trapped inside the house with all the fumes and dust. today was day 7-8 of the boston heatwave. i had two fans cranked on high which helped, but in the late afternoon it got warm enough inside that i didn't feel like working anymore. in saturday's mail i got a postcard from eliza. i immediately stuck it onto the fridge, my very first fridge postcard.

i hooked up the upgraded linksys router with the latest version firmware i updated last night using my sister's pc to run the exe file (the updater application is pc only). it seemed to be working fine thus far, tomorrow will be the real test. in case you don't know, i've been having a lot of problems getting my linksys router to work with my at&t broadbant cablemodem and my mac setup. i think my ip number is dynamic after all because i saw a different number being assigned to my location.

elsewhere, i had a different computer problem: my webhost sharpwebinnovations suspended my account because i haven't paid my bill in over 60 days. it's not that i haven't paid, it's that they can't seem to access my bank account directly (which was something that they did when i first joined with them over a year ago, but i never remember giving them permission to do so), ever since my credit card number changed because somebody stole the previous number. the really weird thing is they never bothered to e-mail me about the delinquent bill and now that they've canceled my web services as well as my mail server, there's no way they can contact me about the news. and they decided to shut down my website on a weekend, when their billing office is closed and i can't do anything about paying my overdue bill in order for my access to be reinstated. i e-mailed (from a working backup e-mail account) their tech support a few times and finally got an answer, which turned out to be confusing and not make any sense, so i wrote back, but they didn't bother responding. i've been meaning to switch my webhost anyway, this might be the perfect time to do so. sharpwebinnovations charges $15/month for only 100mb, which is expensive as far as webhosting goes. alex wong found this place called icdsoft that charges $60/year (that comes out to $5/month) for 333mb worth of storage (that's a weird number). the only thing is i don't know anyone else who've used them before so i don't know how good they are, and also they're an international webhosting company, their server bank located all the way on the other side of the world in hong kong while their tech support team is based in europe. it's not the first time i've done web business with international companies: the company i'm using to register my domain name is based in england.

at 6pm i headed into boston to meet paula and jonathan at the qingping gallery teahouse (231 shawmut avenue) in the south end. i got out at backbay station but ended up going in the wrong direction towards backbay itself instead of the south end. when i hit trinity church and the john hancock tower i knew i was definitely going in the wrong direction, so i took out my map to get my bearing straight. i've only been to the south end a couple of times. this time around, i could imagine myself living there, it wouldn't be such a bad place to live, sort of reminded me of the north end but just more spacious. i finally got to qingping 15 minutes late. the three of us found a table in the backroom, close to the fan and the air conditioning. i had the chrysanthemum bubble tea with green tea ice cream, paula had the same, and jonathan had a double dose of green tea and green tea ice cream as well. our waitress was a 10 year old girl who came out to take our order. aren't there child labor laws? she was pretty gutsy, i remember when i was 10 years old i was terrified of adults, and had a hard time talking to them. when our order arrived, i told paula the tapioca balls in her tea were actually tadpole eggs. out front, there was some sort of modern performance art combination of live music mixed with live painting. the atmosphere inside is very cozy, very suitable for hanging out, some parts of it resembling a chinese opium den. paula revealed that she and jonathan were actually married at this teahouse. i wish it was closer to where i live and not at the other side of the world in the south end, but the prices on some of the teas ($16/cup of yellow tea?!) would probably keep my unemployed ass at home anyway.

afterwards we went to le gamin (550 tremont street) for some french crepe. jonathan had the nutella crepe (super sweet!), paula just a salad, while i had the spicy sausage crepe (i'm a sucker for anything that says spicy, i almost see it as a personal challenge, the word "spicy" is a triple dog dare calling me to try it and prove myself). from all the home renovation stuff i've been doing, i immediately pick up on things that normal people wouldn't notice right away, like how they painted the ceiling a dark brick color. i guess it's to make the place seem cozier because you feel the ceiling is lower even though it really isn't. it's a nice effect though it's not something i'd want to try in my own house. i wish i could have my normal vision back and not this crazy home improvement vision!

when the evening drew to a close we parted ways and i took the train back to harvard square. i saw people coming back from the free smokey robinson concert at the hatchshell, a concert that i would've gone if i wasn't going to the teahouse. i am on such a smokey robinson kick right now, my favorite song of the moment is "i second that emotion." i had some time to kill before my belmont bus arrived, so i went to urban outfitters. they had some shower curtains i remember seeing a long time ago that i really loved and wanted to get for my own place. after realizing the price ($32/curtain, and i needed two because of the way my bathtub is designed), i think i'm probably going to just go with clear cheapy target shower curtains. in harvard square i also saw a living statue, a man dressed up as an angel.