today my sister got to visit the other ocean state job lot, the larger one in east medford. we got there from arlington center, taking route 60 on a nearly straight path through medford center to the wellington circle plaza shopping center. the route was dotted with history, from the romanesque building standing at the corner of the west medford commuter rail station, to the banks of late 18th century residential homes, to the numerous churches dotting the road including one of h.h. richardson's earlier architectural work before he developed his eponymous romanesque style. one of these days i want to come back on my own and explore the area more carefully.

we ended up spending another $100 at ocean state job lot. i got 3 more extra large tomato cages, a metal tin of berry-flavored hard candy from germany, and some boxer underwears. my mother scored some cheap velour yarn and a book on beaded crocheting.

by the time we got back to belmont, it was already 4:00. the sun was too low for me to take a photo survey of the backyard plant progress, so i spent what time i had weeding some dandelions from both the front and back yard. i'm very proud of the fact that our lawn is dandelion free, which comes from years of vigilant hand-weeding (no herbicide were used).

my mother was very excited to break the news to me that she and my father bought a tablet pc from the home shopping network (HSN) last night, this great deal for just $160, that can not only play movies off of a memory card, but also has GPS functionality. i thought it was too good to be true and turns out it was. it was an 8" zeki tablet, a (chinese) brand i'd never heard before. the only thing good about it is it seems to be able to play a lot of different video formats. otherwise, the resolution was too low (800x480 pixels), it doesn't have an actual GPS (it has something called g-sensor), nor bluetooth, and worst of all, the battery life is only 2.5 hours. i think they heard it had a battery life of 10 hours, but either the dealer got it wrong or maybe he meant it took 10 hours to charge. after i explained to my mother the specs, she said she'd return it once it arrived.

it's the final night of the game of thrones-mad men-vikings trifecta, since tonight's episode of vikings is the season finale. next week it will be down to just 2 shows. i still don't know how i feel about vikings. maybe it's the editing, but we spend way too much watching the actors emote (emo vikings). there doesn't seem to be too much story, and the past few episodes have been just long stretches of boring nothingness. hopefully season 2 (2014) will go back to more action. tonight's game of thrones sets up jaime lannister as a new fan favorite with his retelling of how he became a reluctant kingslayer. and on mad men, people deal with the assassination of MLK jr. some of the scenes reminded me of what was it like in boston more than a week ago during the search for the marathon bombers, with police everywhere and people sort of huddles together in fear because nobody knew what was happening.

i will try to wake up early tomorrow morning to go do some birdwatching. this seems like the final week to do it because my next week the trees will leaf out and it'll be too difficult to spot the birds.