today i began a starter culture for the sourdough bread i want to make. a cup of warm water and a cup of flour went into a clean glass jar. airborne yeast cells seem to thrive where its warm, but there are very few warm places in my house. i finally decided to put my starter jar on top of the warmish (70°F) aquarium light. i just hope i don't end up growing some weird aquatic algae culture in there. the real hardcore sourdough makers leave their starter outside, to capture some of the wild native yeast. maybe i might do that during the summer, when the weather is warmer.

bruce came by around noontime so i could help him download his recent european photos from my loaner camera. he then gave me a slideshow tour of bavarian germany and st. gallen switzerland. he left me a bookmark from the sankt gallen library (a 1983 UNESCO world culture property).

i make the ugliest omelettes. not sure if it's my technique or the equipment, but my omelettes are either crumbly, or charred, or a combination of both. today i forgot to add some oil to the pan so of course the omelette got stuck and i had to scrape it off. i started with one strip of bacon, chopped into bits. that just seemed to make the bacon angrier as it smoked up more than usual, forcing me to open a few windows for ventilation. i then set the bacon aside and worked on cooking the cube of frozen spinach i defrosted from the freezer. the final omelette also had goat cheese and coriander chutney. though ugly, it tasted pretty good. unfortunately for health reasons i can't eat omelettes everyday, otherwise i could get more practice making them.

my sister freaked out in the late afternoon, said hailey had a tick on the back of her ear. she couldn't really describe it nor could she snap a photo to send to me. i ended up returning to belmont (in the rain no less) to diffuse the situation. turns out it wasn't a tick, but just a pea-sized wart with a bit of dried blood because hailey must've scratched at it at some point. unless it grows any bigger, i wouldn't worry too much about it.

back in cambridge, i ate the rest of my chicken tikka masala. chicken overload!

for much of the day i was trying to make sense of the various cable-internet deals from both comcast and verizon. why is cable so expensive? more so now that everything is digital. besides paying for the service, they also charge you to rent a set top box for each tv you have in the house. they have appealing package deals that even if you qualify for them, they're only for a limited time (after that the prices skyrocket). that not even mentioning the additional fees like upgrade and downgrade fees.