rest of my trip on foot. i was down there to deposit some cash into my bank account, a loan from my mother to cover some living expenses until i can get paid from my client (hopefully next month). i used the teller since i didn't completely trust the ATM's. a foreign man at the next window was trying to do some transaction but the clerk told him to use the ATM. he smiled, then said he didn't know how. i wonder if he was illiterate?
afterwards, i went to the harvard square post office to buy some stamps. they used to have stamp vending machines, but in recent years all the post offices i've visited seemed to have gotten rid of them for some strange reason. i usually avoid this particular post office because it's always busy for some reason. while waiting in line, i saw a notice about a robbery at the porter square post office (the one i normally go to) that happened last month. apparently two armed men stole two bags of money from a USPS driver. the thing that caught my attention though was the $50,000 reward. maybe i can make a career out of being a freelance bounty hunter.
after some cereal for lunch, i took advantage of our last day of good weather (before a weeklong series of snow and rain) by doing some bike work: 
i added two additional blue-colored reflectors to the sides of my milk crate, to make myself more visible to oncoming cars approaching from the side; i oiled the slightly-rusty bike chains; i figured out the soft grinding sound is actually coming from one of my foot pedals (i'll need to remove it at some later date to check the bearings and apply some more grease); and i tried to adjust the derailleurs but i still can't get the chains to catch on the largest sprocket of my cassette (i'll have to do some more research to figure out why that is).
i took a quick trip to market basket to buy some cream puffs and some ranch dressing dip before heading down to my parents' place again. one of my reasons for going was to pick up that spare rear bike light. nobody was home when i got there except for hailey. i let her out into the backyard and noticed when she ran back into the house she was limping again on her hind leg.
being a bit of a numismatist myself, i find foreign money fascinating. i always make a habit to bring back foreign money when i go traveling. living in a city with a sizable international population, every once in a while i'll come across some exotic coin. my sister was cleaning out her money jar, sorting through the change. in the mix were a few foreign currencies. the irish penny resembled a canadian penny, the russian 5 kopeks looked like a dime, and the peruvian 10 centimos reminded me of old MBTA tokens (back when we still used tokens).
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even though it was his day off, my father still had delivery duty in the evening because the restaurant's regular delivery person was on vacation. so dinner was once again just with my mother and sister. my sister spent an hour and a half in the kitchen making some pasta dish (spinach pasta with meatballs). i was so hungry by dinnertime that i had two servings.
riding back to cambridge, i decided to clip the rear bike light to the back of the head band of my head lamp strapped to my helmet. midway through my trip, the band popped off and i had to go back and pick up the flashing equipment from the ground. i wish i could have a better way to mount the lights to my helmet besides using the elastic head band.