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overcast, rainy, and cold - that was today's weather forecast. at least it meant not having to visit the garden to water the plants, although i was afraid what the cold weather might be doing to some of the more tender seedlings (i'm looking at you basil). in the afternoon when it looked like it'd finally stopped raining, i went to the cafe to borrow the car so i could take a trip to lexington to get some salt marsh grass mulch from wilson farm. along the way i passed by hillside garden & true value on blanchard road in belmont and decided to take a look, hoping to find some tomato cages and possibly some mulch, thereby saving me the trip to lexington. they have galvanized wired tomato cages in various sizes, the ones that look like a stack of metallic halos. i searched all last year for them but couldn't find any, so i got as many as i can this time around (6), at $1.99/each for the 42" tall variety. at the cashier i asked the woman if they had any salt marsh grass. to my surprise, she said yes, but didn't know when they were coming in. at $8 a bundle, it was a better deal than what i would find at wilson farm, so i decided to come back again next week to see if they received any new shipment.

frances' wedding present arrived today. she asked me to help her order them online this past weekend, a double set of expensive leather-bound silverware storage cases ($125/box). the american-based manufacturer wouldn't ship to norway (or if they did, it would incur import duty taxes) so frances asked me to ship it to her instead. the shipment was a lot bigger than i expected, about the size of a large air conditioner and weighs 22 lbs. a quick check of USPS rates for large international packages sets me back $100 for shipment cost. frances is paying for it anyway, so it's not like i'm paying (or i am, until she pays me back), but the trick is getting the package down to the nearest post office so i can send it off.

sophia came back home in the evening lamenting how she did a very bad thing. i thought maybe she got fired, but turns out she fell off of her dieting wagon and ate a few pieces of brownies during some sort of symposium today. looking to further indulge in her forbidden food binge, she asked me where was the nearest mcdonald's. i told her i wouldn't mind hopping on the motorcycle and going down to davis square to get some french fries for her. she gave me some money and i ended up getting 2 double cheese burgers and 2 orders of fries, along with a hamburger for myself. i got there with just 5 minutes to spare before they closed and the clerk seemed antsy to get me to leave so they can call it a night. it started to rain a little bit on my way back, and the package of junk food left an ugly grease stain in my bag.

later we watched the lakers nuggets game while i ate my real dinner, a box of grilled eel sushi my mother had made for me earlier.

i have a set of wide angle lenses for my old nikon coolpix 4500. i was surprised to discover what i thought to be a relatively wide angle using my nikon wide angle converter wasn't very wide at all, about the same using the widest setting on my standard 17-50mm lens on my canon (27-80mm equivalent). with my latest canon wide angle lens however, i can now reach a 16mm equivalent. it still can't beat my nikon fisheye converter lens with its 8mm equivalent and 183° field of view. however, the canon wide angle has far less vignetting than the nikon fisheye, which can be expected for a camera lens that cost 7x more.