after lunch i took a shower. i occasionally do some cleaning while i'm in the shower, like scrubbing the mildew from the grout between the wall tiles or removing the soap scum from the curtains. i had a container of tilex and sprayed it inside while i showered. bad idea! it stripped off the transparent leaf patterns on the curtains - that stuff is strong!
in the early afternoon i went to belmont. in anticipation of the repairman's arrival at 3:00, my sister and i cleaned up the living room. she lured hailey into my parents' bedroom with a bone treat when the repairman eventually showed up. he was vietnamese and without prompting took off his leather sandals when he came into the house.
it took less than 10 minutes to fix the HDTV. he basically swapped out a large circuit board (about the size of a small skateboard) that controlled the power supply. the new board wasn't exactly identical, the numbers and arrangements of capacitors were different. i've read that other people just had their capacitors replaced to fix the problem, so swapping out the entire board was a bit overkill (but better safe than sorry).
it was such an easy fix, samsung could've just mailed me the replacement part and i could've done the repair myself, saving them some money. i asked the repairman if he's seen this problem before and he said that samsungs are pretty reliable (despite what i read online). once he re-assembled the HDTV, i turned it on with the remote and it seemed to be working. gone as well was the annoying flashing LED at the bottom of the screen. as advertised, the repair was entirely free: the only thing i had to do was sign a work release form.
after the repairman left, we let hailey out. she didn't even know there was a stranger in the house at first, but immediately caught the foreign scent and dashed around the house in search of the intruder. eventually she settled down in her chair but she was still huffing angrily.
i returned to cambridge. sometime in the late afternoon i fell asleep again on the couch. the weather today was much nicer, in the 70's, with a cool breeze. it was actually a little cold on the motorcycle with just a t-shirt.
for dinner i was going to eat some leftover pasta from almost 2 weeks ago. it seemed sort of bad then and now it was probably worse. i even went ahead and microwaved it but after one bite i threw the whole thing away. instead i just had some canned soup.
in the evening i watched game 5 of the stanley cup. it was a tight game, but vancouver managed to score a single goal which was all they needed to win with a final score of 1-0. now the pressure is on boston to win on sunday. even if they do, game 7 will be back in canada, and so far the bruins have yet to win a game in vancouver. i'm still watching the whole series with a sense of detachment since i was never a hockey fan to begin with. i'm actually more excited about the red sox, who seem to be on a hot streak right now.
bram came home around 10:00. that was the last i saw him as he retreated to his bedroom.