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my father had already painted some parts of the front of the house by the time i showed up in belmont around 10a, using just the brush. he left around noontime to pick up some food and buy another can of tinted primer.

as for me, i was back to sanding, cleaning up the two bedroom windows on the western wall, smoothing out some rough shingles (areas previously in front of active wasp nests), and touching up the uneven fascia. it reminded me how difficult sanding is. all the cons i mentioned yesterday (noisy, sweaty, dirty), plus working at heights, and the strain of operating the orbital sander. although it's not heavy initially, holding it for a while on an outstretched arm can become very tiring. and the rotating mechanism inside the sander is like trying to hold something that just wants to twist out of my hand.

by the time my father returned home around 1:30p with food, i was covered in paint dust. i went to go wash up in the bathroom and i had dust all over my face, inside my eyes. it was not pretty. my father brought back some burger king, and i wolfed down a whopper paired with a mango shake.

soon we were back outside. i'd just finished sanding, and would now start priming again with the white. i did the 2 bedroom windows and primed the fascia (7 ladder hops). my father did all he could do with the brush and transferred to a roller. he discovered the roller works better painting horizontal than vertically. it's amazing how much faster painting with a roller versus a brush. just by himself, he'd nearly finished painting the whole house, but by the time he got to the western wall, he'd finished the gallon of new paint he'd bought today and could only do a corner. it was late enough that he didn't bother opening up another can of paint. i'd set up my sports cam to do a time lapse record of the progress but it will have to wait until tomorrow.

and just like that, the house that was the eyesore of the neighborhood (since last summer so it's been more than a year) finally starts looking presentable again.

i found out what those tiny sunflowers growing by the western side of the house are: jerusalem artichokes. i wonder if they were planted by my father at some point (or maybe it was me and i'd forgotten) because they were everywhere at the belmont victory garden. they problem with these plants are they're essentially a perennial weed, regrowing from underground tubers. i'll need to dig them up tomorrow (by the end of the day i'd already chopped them down). which also reminds me: i've yet had time to sow any of my green manure seeds and the first week of october is already over. i need to get started on that before the weather gets too cold for anything to grow, not even green manure.

we finally finished by around 5:30p. while my father was rolling until he ran out of paint, i was busy cleaning the paint brushes. my mother made fried rice for dinner. i thought it was me but i kept smelling paint. ended up it was coming from a nearby open window.

i returned to cambridge around 7:30p. ana wasn't home and i didn't know where she went. she did cook lunch because i could still smell it. she came back around 12:30a.

i had a small package from hong kong in the mail. it confused me at first because i didn't know who it was from. then i remembered it must be the rubber key caps i ordered from ebay. here's the thing though: the cardboard envelope was empty, a gash on one edge, they must've fallen out in transit. not a big deal, they cost me just $2, but i wrote back to the seller, told him what happened, said i'd be willing to reorder from him provided he uses a sturdier envelope. i'm hoping he'll throw in a few extra caps to make up for the inconvenience.