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because cleber forgot to paint my front door yesterday, it cost me another warm weather day having to stay home and wait for the paint to dry. the front steps still don't seem dry so i left the house via the backdoor for much of the day. i left the front door upon until a neighborhood cat wandered into my house. i then closed it until there was just a crack. cleber spray-painted my light fixtures and patched up a few spots on the porch. he left to work on a second house but said he'd come back later to put in the lights (he never did come back, but he'll probably return tomorrow).

my day wasn't a total loss because i did have a home project to work on: cleaning the flagstones in the backyard. first i moved all the furniture, then i swept off the dead leaves, before using the kärcher K3.47M pressure washer. it reminds me of the ghostbuster proton pack, with the attached proton gun. there's something soothing cleaning with the pressure washer, as 1750 psi of water blasts out of the nozzle. it actually has a bit of a kick, and the vibration made my wrist hurt afterwards. i worked stone by stone, making sure not to hit the gaps otherwise it'll spray all the dirt out. i never noticed it before, but the pathway actually has a bit of a slope for water drainage. it took a bit under 2 hours for me to finally finish. i even did a square of sidewalk just for fun.

yesterday i cleaned the brass (?) mail slot on my front door. it'd been weathered over the years, and i worked on it with a steel brush and some bicycle lubricant. i managed to get it pretty shiny. if i really wanted to do a thorough job, i should take the whole thing off the door and give it a better cleaning. one of the unique things about my house is i have an old-fashion hand-cranked twist doorbell on the door. when you turn it, it sounds like a bicycle bell (often times i won't hear it if i'm in my bedroom). i realized just today that it's actually mounted sideways. i was trying to find how much the thing is worth; the only place online that carries them sells it for about $20 a piece (not including the bell).

my father dropped by in the late morning, bringing with him a gallon of milk and took a turn cleaning a few flagstones with the pressure washer. for lunch i had some fluffy scrambled eggs mixed with some blue cheese crumbs. i did leave the house just once, to put some fuel in the motorcycle. it was kind of risky living the front door unlocked and slightly ajar, but steve was home and the mailman was in the neighborhood delivering the mail, so i wasn't too worried.

in the late afternoon i was out in the backyard again, this time re-assembling the dried light fixtures - screwing in the panes of glass and adding a CFL light bulb to each fixture. this way when cleber returns tomorrow, he can put them back on the house right away.

metroid prime 3 is my new wii poison. it's quite immersive in the amount of futuristic details and each level presents new surprises, whether its a plot twist in the story, cool graphics, nasty bosses, or new weapons. i don't think i've ever played metroid before, but i think it used to be a 2D horizontally-scrolling shooter. the game certainly has come a long way. i also played some endless ocean, not so much a game as it is a scuba diving simulation. it's kind of like an underwater scavenger hunt where you collect animals by identifying them - or - an interactive 3D aquarium. you can also play your own mp3 songs from a SD memory card. i know it's just a simulation, but i still found myself spending close to an hour exploring a coral reef and identifying 13 different kinds of fish. it's kind of like i'm usually doing when i go out naturing. endless ocean probably looks better on a large widescreen HDTV though. finally, i discovered today that i can't play any PAL games, even though the wasabi zero mod chip supports both NTSC and PAL. not too big a deal, and not like what i'm doing is entirely legitimate anyway, so i'm not complaining too much about it.

had some toaster oven french bread pizza for dinner while watching the latest episode of glee. talk about a love polygon! rachel and puck? puck and quinn? quinn and finn? finn and rachel? puck and santana? oh, i almost forgot, kurt and finn! and when will mister schuester hook up with emma the guidance counselor?