there was two receptionists at the oral surgeon office, the pretty blonde who's usually there, and an asian girl. a nurse whom i've never seen before brought me to an examination room. i was there to just my stitches taken out. the collagen layer had already fallen out (the dentist warned me about that), first in little hard crumbs, then finally a large soft glob that completely dislodged on thursday. doctor chan easily removed the stitches in one long painful pull. "all set!" he told me. i asked if i could go back to my regular diet. "stay away from carbonated drinks for another week," he said. he also told me to come back in 4 months to check on the progress of the bone implant.
i went to the chinese supermarket across the street before going home. the strap to my cambodian-purchased north face knockoff bag finally broke. i'm just glad it didn't happen while i was riding, even though there was nothing in the bag. fortunately i could put everything into the rear racks of my bike, although i made sure to pad some of the vegetables with my hooded sweatshirt.
to get from chinatown to across the longfellow bridge involved a detour that took me over beacon hill. i noticed the police presence again, but in front of the state house things were pretty quiet, and across boston common i could see people casually ice skating on frog pond. were the police just being caution just in case?
back at home, i took a few minutes to cool down, before grabbing my things and headed out to belmont on the bike. that was 4.5 miles into boston, and then 4.5 miles back, followed by another 3 miles to belmont (carrying a heavy backpack by that point), for a total of 12 exhausting miles. as soon as i got in the house, my mother told me they lost power.
i tried calling belmont electricity a few times, but just got an earful of muzak. i knew the blackout was pretty widespread because all the wifi networks in the area were missing when i pulled down the network services menu on my phone. my mother was knitting in the living room, reading instructions from some patterns she managed to print out. my father was in the bedroom reading on his phone. i was looking over the video i shot with the HTC re camera of my bike trip back from boston. later i helped my mother empty out the jar of sichuan paocai i gave her on thursday.
what a relief when the power finally came back on an 1:30 later.
out of curiosity, i logged into the oneplus website to check the status of my phone order. i was surprised to see it had already shipped, from california no less, the city of industry. weren't they supposed to contact me when this happened? i wasn't too disappointed though, since it meant the phone would be arriving soon.
later i found out on the news that there was a protest in boston today. demonstrators tried to get onto the expressways in order to block traffic but they were stopped by the police. i'm not sure if the protesters are enduring people to their cause with these civil disobedience acts. even though they didn't manage to get onto the highways, the fact that they blocked the exit ramps caused lengthy traffic jams coming in and out of the city.
after some turkey rice noodle soup for dinner (coupled with some sichuan paocai), my father and i went down to the watertown home depot to look for parts: i was searching for some nuts and screws to attach my rear light bracket, my father was looking for faucet connector hoses. he also bought some new fluorescent tube bulbs for the cafe.
back at home i tried to find a suitable ROM for the teclast P89 G3 8-core tablet pc + phone i bought in china. unfortunately it's not very popular, and i was only able to find one ROM. the tablet itself has some pretty amazing specs, but there's something wrong with the OS that prevents google services from working correctly. i may try rooting it first, that make fix the problem without having to reinstall a new ROM.