up to this point nothing's gone wrong with the painting project. that is, until today: while readjusting some blue masking tape i'd put up on the ceiling to paint the crown moldings, i managed to strip off the paint underneath. thankfully i'd just started (so i only got to a corner of the living room), but pretty much anywhere that i taped, i ended up stripping what's underneath. the problem was i didn't sand the ceiling so the 3 decade old paint below had virtually no adhesion. the new paint managed to stay on, but if you rip it just a bit, you can peel the whole ceiling off like removing dried glue from your finger. so my father and i sanded the damaged areas and reapplied a coating of primer onto them. afterwards we painted the upper and lower moldings with a coating of latex semi-gloss.

we finished by 2pm. my sister showed up with my newly ordered motorola KRZR phone which she had already activated for me. since it was pouring rain outside, my father gave me a ride back home on his way to work while i left my motorcycle temporarily at their place.

a handful of wet magazines were waiting for me on the floor when i walked into my house. there was also an amazon package on my doorstep, some additional books i'd ordered. i got the people's history of the united states by howard zinn, some light reading before bedtime. i first saw the book when andrew lived at my place for a few months, but still didn't know too much about it. then i read the first chapter and it showed me a take on american history that was never taught to me in high school history class. i've always wanted a copy for myself, but never got the time to pick one up until now. it's definitely one of these required readings for anyone interested in history.

i played around with my new phone a little bit more, trying to unsuccessfully copy some music files onto it. have i mentioned how much i hate my carrier, verizon? i've only just realized this, but they actually override the native user interface of their phones with some proprietary verizon interface. not only does this impostor OS look ugly, but it's also poorly designed, and created to steer you towards their online store so you can buy ringtones and wallpapers and subscribe to their vcast video service. there's got to be a better way, right? if i wasn't tied to this family plan which i share with my parents (in order to save some money), i'd dump verizon in a heartbeat and go back to AT&T (which, come to think of it, isn't that much better either, but at least i don't think they replace the phone's interface with one of their own). i'm not even a particularly big fan of the KRZR, but it's missing an antenna which on my old LG phone used to poke me in the groin like a dull knife in my pocket.

in the evening i went to the cafe for dinner. my mother made a specially prepared feast for suhan, who's mother sent my mother a care package from taiwan and this was her indirect way of thanking his mother. suhan's girlfriend was there as well. as the rainstorm left town, i went outside and watched some mammatus clouds glowing in the sky.

afterwards we sat around chatting, eating some of my homegrown tomatoes, and playing around with my mother's camera. after my parents closed up the cafe, they brought me back to belmont so i could retrieve my motorcycle. the ride home was more memorable than usual; maybe all that much-needed rain cleared the air, but as i cruised down the street, i could smell everything: somebody else was painting their house, somebody was baking, somebody was making curry, and some unknown trees were sending out a sweet fragrance. back in cambridge, i got home just in time to watch the red sox come back from an 8 run deficit to win the game against the devil rays (but honestly, it was never supposed to be that lopsided, tampa bay genuinely sucks).