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the house was chilly this morning. even though the indoor temperature was 66°F, the moisture in the air on yet another wet day made it feel much colder. i briefly debated whether to continue suffering needlessly, or just suck it up and turn on my furnace for the season.1 that's when i came up with an idea: clean the oven! it has a self-cleaning mode which takes 3 hours to complete but one of the side effects is it will heat up the house in the meantime (since the oven bakes at 900°F to get rid of the food splatters). i removed the 2 metal shelves, locked the oven door, and cranked the knobs to oven cleaning mode.

perfecting an omelette recipe is my neverending morning project. into 2 eggs i beat in a handful of chopped scallions and chopped cilantro. i cooked 2 strips of bacon first in a pan, poured out the fat, then sauteed a fistful of fresh chopped spinach with what little fat still remained. i removed the spinach then added a pat of butter back into the pan before pouring into my egg mixture. once both sides are relatively solid (i have no omelette flipping skills; i transfer to a plate then transfer back to the pan to cook the other side), i add the spinach, the chopped bacon, and some crumbled goat cheese as a filling, before folding the omelette in half. viola! the super omelette! pretty tasty, but because i didn't add any milk to the eggs, it was a little stiff. but good enough that i'll make it again tomorrow. all these green ingredients make me feel like i'm eating something healthy, but the eggs and bacon and goat cheese satisfy my baser food instincts.

in the early afternoon i went to harvard square to deposit a check from client R. there was a slight misting with coated my glasses as i rode my bicycle into the square. on tuesdays there's a farmer's market, which seemed to be quite busy despite the foul weather. i brought my umbrella but it wasn't raining seriously enough to warrant its use.

i was glad the house didn't burn down when i returned home. i left the oven unsupervised, although there was probably very little risk. i finally turned off the cleaning mode by mid-afternoon. by then the house was extra toasty, and smelled faintly of melted sugar, which wasn't bad at all. i spent the rest of the day drinking plenty of hot teas and going to the bathroom (too much tea).

i made a tuna fish sandwich for dinner, once again adding some fresh ingredients like scallions and chopped garden-grown hot peppers. i watched the red sox world series documentary, "4 days in october" on ESPN. it's bittersweet, since the red sox aren't in the playoffs this year. but reliving 2004 made me fall back in love with baseball and that team of idiots.

for some reason i felt like a little wii tonight and turned on the machine. okami was still in the drive. 70+ hours of game play and all those old skills came back like muscle memory. the problem was i forgot many of the brush strokes and the weaknesses of the various demons i had to fight. i ended up narrowly surviving a battle, and decided it was best to move on. next i revisited metroid prime 3. i've been stuck on the boss mogenar battle on bryyo. i haven't touch metroid in even a longer time, so i was basically all thumbs with the controllers. pau came home around that time and watched me get killed by the boss. "this is a hard level," i told him, attempting to cover up my video game skill deficiency.

i discovered last night while channel surfing from bed that the syfy channel is broadcasting old episodes of friday the 13th: the series, a syndicated horror staple from the late 80's. i only found out today that the show was filmed in canada, which explains its otherworldly vibe. i also didn't realize the series only ran for 3 seasons; i thought it lasted much longer than that. i was seriously in love with robey back in those days. i hope syfy continues its broadcast because i want to see all these episodes!


1 as a rule, i won't turn on my furnace until after several consecutive days where the daytime temperature is below 60°F. even so, if i didn't have a roommate, i'd try to stick it out until thanksgiving if i can. cold weather masochist!