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i went to bed late last night (4:00), caught up reading the stars my destination (1956) by alfred bester, said to be the forerunner of the cyberpunk genre. earlier this week i was still reading what einstein told his cook: kitchen science explained by robert wolke, but tired of non-fiction, i decided to change course and sample a bit of science fiction instead. even though the kindle was originally for my father who ended up not wanting it over a chinese-brand ebook reader, i actually use it a lot. since the kindle, i haven't gone to the library at all, but i'm actually reading more than ever before. i still prefer non-fiction, either history or science.

anyway, since i went to sleep so late, i woke up late, around 9:30, which in my normal schedule isn't all that late, but i've been waking up around 8:00-9:00 these days. i think i wanted to get up early so i could catch some olympics tennis coverage. i still managed to still the tail end of the federer match, followed by djokovic, then sharapova. there was even some andy murray but i didn't see the end.

i tried the store brand granola and maple syrup pecan with some yogurt for lunch. it wasn't that good, kind of puffy like a breakfast cereal, not dense like the quaker natural granola i've been eating.

in the early afternoon i went with bruce to the watertown best buy so he could buy a blu-ray player. he ended up getting the LG BP220 blu-ray player with smarttv ($80). a lot of players these days come standard with the ability to stream content off the internet; the BP220 doesn't have wifi but it can access the web with a wired connection.

i was there when bruce connected the new blu-ray player to the new HDTV. since he didn't have any blu-ray movies, i went back to my house to retrieve the only blu-ray movie i own, a copy of disney's pinocchio still in its original packaging. i let him borrow the movie for demonstration purposes, since i wasn't watching it anytime soon.

the weather started out grey then it was sunny and humid for a while, before it became overcast again. there were periods of torrential downpours in the late afternoon. my upstairs neighbor steve happened to be home and send me a message to come up if i wanted to see the leaking skylights. what i saw wasn't that serious, and there was no leaks despite the rain. it's basically one western-facing skylight; not sure if we really need to replace the whole roof just to fix that one window. somehow he managed to talk me into calling some roofers to come by and give us an estimate, because he never seems to have the time to do it.

LJ came home around 6:40. i let her inside the house after listening to her fumble with the lock for half a minute. roommates who never figure out how to use the lock are also roommates who turn out bad i've discovered. her brain just isn't wired to be delicate, and when you try to brute force the key, the lock won't work. anyway, she made no mention of the broken fan, i'm still curious to know what she's going to do about it. maybe when she told me about her attempt to buy a used replacement fan was her way of getting off the hook, irregardless of success or not. i suppose i'll need to speak to her about it tomorrow. i kind of don't care (because i have other fans) but it's the principle of the matter: if you break something, you have to replace it. maybe she was home sick when they taught that in her china school.

i ate the rest of my leftover risotto for dinner. day old risotto just isn't as good as freshly made risotto. i still have enough ingredients to make another batch tomorrow but i'm not sure if i want to eat risotto again so soon.

since i didn't need to do anything important with my laptop, i used it to continue my backup work. i managed to transfer 800gb worth of data over a period of 8 hours. i have 500gb more to go and then i'll be completely backed up.