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my roommate was gone when i woke up this morning but she did leave the house smelling of burnt rice. it was so bad the smell seeped into my room but i just buried my head in my pillow and tried to fall back asleep.

i saw something unusual today: a car with a front luggage compartment. it was a porsche boxster s, and at first i thought the owner was doing something with the engine until i realized she was just readjusting her luggage. i knew front luggage compartment cars existed but this is my first time seeing one. how common an occurrence is this?

my parents were heading to everett to get some supplies and picked me up along the way. i was surprised to see my sister in the car, since she's usually a disruptive influence on these outings. we headed to michael's where my mother enlisted everyone's help in getting her some yarn with one-item-50%-off per customer coupons. next we went to costco. not sure what happened, but by the time we checked out, my sister had already put everyone in a foul mood and was putting on the silent treatment, texting on her blackberry. i was tempted to grab that thing out of her hand and stomp on it. at the restaurant depot my parents went inside while my sister and i waited in the car.

in the late afternoon my roommate called me. the internet was broken and she wanted to know how to fix it. i navigated her to my network closet but it took a long time to talk her through the repair. "do you see the blinking lights?" i asked. "no, there aren't anything blinking lights," she replied. maybe a blown fuse? but the strange thing was her iphone was working fine (which she told me later), so it couldn't be that. it was her laptop that was having issues. basically all she had to do was reboot the wireless router, but she had zero networking knowledge. i just hope when she finally moves out in approximately 10 days i won't be getting technical support calls from her new place.

my father was helping out the restaurant with deliveries so he wasn't home for dinner. he called afterwards since he was nearby and gave me a ride back to cambridge. my roommate was home but avoided any interactions, including a simple hello. it's not the first time i've had a roommate that runs hot and cold; it's either lively discussions like we're good friends, or total avoidance like we're bitter enemies. it's kind of jarring, something i can never get used to.

i made a lot of progress in skyrim today, starting from bloated man's grotto where i dropped a handful of loot after slaying a dragon by a stone circle and carrying too much weight in dragon bones. from there i had a lengthy fight with a group of encamped forsworns at lost valley redoubt. the payoff was finding a word wall (another "become ethereal" word), where a pair of hagravens were resurrecting a tough magic-wielding bandit chief i recently killed. next i made it to karthspire, where i had another long fight with encamped forsworns, made complicated by a simultaneous dragon attack. i waited for the dragon to kill everyone off but it was taking too long. my follower was nowhere to be seen and i was afraid she might be dead. i ended up defeating the chieftain through strategic multiple savings, and the frost dragon with fire attacks. i then discovered karthwasten, before deciding to fast travel to whiterun to dump some loot. before retiring, i cleared out two nearby giant camps: secunda's kiss and bleakwind basin. there was no mammoths at secunda's so i used a powerful storm shout to weaken each pair of giants one by one before attacking. at bleakwind i managed to get a mammoth to attack both giants, killing one before i took care of the other. i also learned how to use the flying camera (tfc) console command to get better screenshots.