this morning i finally saw new fries in the aquarium. i counted no more than 3, then later only 2. i'm not optimistic about their survival. it's cruel, but i'm not set up for breeding guppies so i'm just going to let nature take its course. strange thing is the supposed pregnant female doesn't look any less smaller now that she's given birth. i wonder if she'll have more babies tomorrow? it's particularly hard for these 2nd batch of fries to hide and avoid the adults because i have less vegetation in the tank than i did a month ago. i also did yet another water change today, vacuuming the gravel, and cleaning out the filter. the filter smelled particularly fishy and i replaced the charcoal bag. i cleaned a few days ago but already new brown algae is starting to grow on the glass.

in the afternoon i got a ride from my sister and went to market basket to get some groceries. it was the emptiest i've seen the place and even then there were more people than the crowdest day i've seen at the nearby star market.

in the evening i went with julie to a MITOC lecture at MIT about cold weather injuries. there was a surprisingly large turnout, most of the folks appear to be students, although the free lecture is open to everybody. two speakers were scheduled: the first was a meteorologist who used to work at the mount washington weather station. he gave a slideshow that gave a brief history of mount washington and the kind of crazy winter weather up on the summit. the second speaker was a former director of the US army cold weather injury research and gave an informative talk about winter weather injuries with accompanying gruesome slides of trench foot and frost bite damage. it was an interesting lecture but very long: it started at 6:30 and didn't end until almost 10pm.

afterwards julie and i went to punjabi dhaba in inman square for dinner (they don't close until midnight). i got the lamb curry.

i missed the state of the union address (probably wouldn't have watched the whole thing anyway, the most exciting part is just the beginning and seeing when democratics or republicans applaud or sit down) but i found the above photo pretty funny.