it was actually raining today, a slow and steady rain not much seen in these here parts for a while now. during a brief morning lull, i went across the street to star market to get some drain cleaner. there was a slow-acting foam cleaner and a quicker 7-minute industrial strength cleaner. i went with the quicker one, and poured it all down the drain when i returned home, making sure now to get any on myself, heeding the label warning that it can burn flesh. it came out in a slightly viscous liquid that poured out from two compartments into one. there was no unpleasant smell to it.
the drain cleaner instruction said to wait 7-minutes (15-minutes for a slow draining drain), but i waited almost a whole hour. instruction said to flush with hot water, but fearing that the faucet hot water wasn't hot enough, i boiled a kettle of water to pour down the drain instead. and that was it, problem solved, drain draining back to normal. i still feel there's some obstruction in the pipe (my money is on a detached drain plug) but drains normally get plugged every once in a while, so if everything is working again, no reason to try get to the bottom of the problem.
kiki finally woke up after 1pm. we chatted in the living room, comparing the difference between living in mexico and spain. while kiki was preparing lunch, my father came by to pick me up (because it was raining); a fawcett oil company repair person was coming to my parents' house around 2-4pm to clean the heating oil tank so someone needed to be home. before i left, i told kiki if he wasn't doing anything tomorrow (during the daytime), i could take him on a tour of boston. he seemed to like the idea, and particularly wanted to visit chinatown. we decided to exchange contact information in case there was an emergency in the house. i was expecting him to give me his whatsapp number but he instead asked if i had chinese wechat and we exchanged wechat numbers instead (he has wechat because of his china business dealings).
my father stopped by the cafe first to pick up my mother as well, before he found out that 3pm appointment he had a visiting caregiver for my grand uncle had been cancelled, so my father could go home after all.
it was a balmy rain event, with temperature in the 80's and high humidity. it was uncomfortable enough that my mother turned on the air conditioner. when it gets humid like this the house begins to stink of dog, which got me to doing some vacuuming to clean up all the dog dander. it smelled worse at first (the vacuum kicking up more dog smell from the carpets) but once i was finished, the house didn't smell as bad anymore.
even though the fawcett oil repair person was supposed to come between 2-4pm, he actually came early at 1:30pm (without calling) and left a note in the mailbox. i called fawcett to reschedule, and they managed to resend the guy back to the house. when he arrived, he only did a very quick inspection, even though my father was expecting a tune-up. "call the company to schedule a tune-up," was the repairman's response. so i called up fawcett again, and the woman told me it was supposed to be a tune-up appointment, and she called the repairman, who came back a third time. if this is the way they do customer service, i'm kind of leary of using them as a heating oil company (even though we used them last winter and their prices are pretty good).
 |
 |
 |
after dinner i got a ride back to cambridge. the rain had stopped but it was still humid outside, enough so that exiting from the air conditioned car made my glasses fog up. my father and i first went to market basket to pick up a few things. we were maybe expecting an uncrowded store but it was the exact opposite, as night time (maybe particularly monday night) is a busy shopping time for people coming back from work. it was insanely crowded, like weekend crowded. afterwards i got dropped off near my house and walked the short distance home.
cristina and kiki didn't come home until around 10pm. she asked if they could borrow another bicycle because they were planning on attending a lecture in longwoods tomorrow. the bicycle i had in mind (the ross) had some stuck links in the chain that needed to be loosened up. they said it was okay, that they would take public transportation instead, but later i went down to the basement to see if i could fix the links. turns out they're stuck in more places that i expected, and i couldn't loosen any of them, which might mean i have to just replace the entire chain. but i forgot that i have many other bicycles beside the ross. there's the old red schwinn with the front and rear baskets. there's a trek mountain bike. by that point cristina and kiki had come downstairs to see what was going on. we decided that kiki can ride the red schwinn. i pumped up the tires, oiled the chain, then adjusted the rear wheel so it didn't rub up against the chrome fender.
that meant kiki would be spending the day with cristina instead of going on a tour of boston with me. i'm fine with his decision (he only has a week in boston, and he did come here to be with his girlfriend), but i was kind of looking forward to doing some shopping in chinatown. maybe he's free on wednesday or thursday afternoon, but on those days i like to get dinner at my parents so i won't have the whole day to spend.