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my upstairs neighbors were stomping in their kitchen above my bedroom at 8:00. my roommate was frying eggs at 9:00. between the noise and the smell, a perfectly good sunday morning of late sleeping was ruined. the only good news was my roommate decided to leave the house early. i asked where she was going, she said she "heard that the harvard museum is free sunday mornings." that's funny, because she heard it from me since i told her at least twice, but i guess she forgot.

i used the bathroom, showered, ate 2 slices of pound cake, then packed up my things and biked to belmont. temperature was 40°F, borderline cold, but i decided to wear my thermal underwear anyway in anticipation of the ride back home later in the evening.

i brought some tangyuan balls which my mother turned into lunch with some eggs and glutinous rice wine. unfortunately these tangyuans were 8 years old; instead of being soft they were hard like dried dough balls. i ate them anyway, didn't want ancient food going to waste. at the very least it cleared out some space in my freezer.

my father told me yesterday that the russian silverberry seedlings in the sunroom already sprouted leaves. this is good news because i was afraid they wilted since they lost all their leaves during winter. but this is natural behavior for a deciduous tree. besides, they're supposed to be weedy, and i don't think a mild winter would be enough to kill them. but this is a reminder that i should my indoor seedlings as soon as possible. which such a mild winter, it already feels like spring time outside, which means the 2012 growing season will get a head start. besides the usual vegetables, i also want to germinate some milkweeds, lunarias, and chinese chives; some of them require vernalization in the fridge before they'll properly germinate.

the highlight of the day was watching the mavericks-knicks game featuring breakout sensation jeremy lin. it's weird rooting for any team other than the celtics. i like dallas as well, but wanted to see new york win just to see the continuation of linsanity. i'd never seen jeremy lin play before so this was my first time. his playing style didn't seem very spectacular but was adequate; nevertheless, he had a good ability to either score himself or get shots to others. you could argue maybe teams underestimate his talent but the scouting report is already out on him and opponents are aware of his weaknesses. you could see dallas trapping him a bunch of times, but more often than not he managed to get out of the jam. at times the ball handling was sloppy (not just lin, but the whole team), but given how little time teams have to practice in this compacted shortened season, it's surprising there aren't even more turnovers. overall it was a good game, a couple of lead changes, but the knicks ended up winning with lin being the team scoring and assist leader.

during the post-game press conference, 2 taiwanese reporters (in thick accents) kept asking him about his grandmother despite the fact he told them not to bother his overseas relatives. it was kind of weird because the questions had nothing to do with basketball; i wonder if the other sports reporters thought it weird as well.

when my father came home i played back the game (which i had the foresight to record) for him to see. we watched it during dinner, fast-forwarding the commercials, reducing the total game time to less than an hour.

there was a smell in the house when i got back home but it wasn't that bad; i'd consider that a small victory. the internet went down again; my roommate sought me out, almost in a panic, but also annoyed and slightly accusatory at the same time. "does this happen a lot?" she asked. no, but it's been happening a lot more since you've been living here, so it's probably something wrong with your laptop. she went into the closet to reset the router but when her computer didn't immediately come online, she seemed confused. "you usually have to wait a few minutes," i told her. when i checked my own computer i could see the internet just fine. "maybe you can try restarting your machine," i suggested. after rebooting, her problem was gone.

i've realized that nordic ruins are were word walls can be found in skyrim; i finally made that connection. i spent the bulk of my time in whiterun improving my weapons and armor. wearing enchanted smithing items, i can now upgrade my equipment to legendary status (not sure if that's the highest quality; prior to that i thought flawless and epic were the best). i read somewhere about the smithing iron dagger hack to quickly improve my smithing skill. i desperately need a source of steel ingots so i could improve my steel plated armor. i could forge it myself but corundum ore is hard to come by. i'm still working on my enchanting skills, haven't figured out an easy way to improve my expertise in that field yet. after i properly configured my equipment and squared away any loot, i fast traveled to silverdrift lair, northeast of whiterun. there i was attacked by a frost dragon, which i quickly killed as soon as it landed. at one point it even grabbed me in its jaws, but i still managed to whack it with my fire axe to make it drop me.