the most important thing i had to do today was to get in touch with my mother's health insurance. yesterday at their place i received a letter from the insurance company saying they needed more information, with a deadline of the end of this week. but since my parents won't be back until the end of the month, it's a little difficult for them to get the necessary information. so i tried to do it on my mother's behalf, but just as i feared, only the insured person can make changes to the policy. so i scanned a few documents as pdf's and sent them to my father, who will try calling the insurance company tomorrow morning (night time in taiwan).

i rode the bike to market basket in the afternoon to get some groceries. i thought about making some risotto but i don't have any white wine in the house. instead i will make some chicken salad sandwiches with the frozen chicken breasts i have in the freezer.

back at home, i bumped into ed peterring down the street in his honda elite scooter. he stopped to chat, extolling the convenience of his ride. i'd like to own a scooter. my 750cc honda shadow spirit motorcycle just isn't built for city riding. i also like that i can park a scooter just about anywhere, but it's small size also makes it easier to steal.

with insulation work happening in just about 2 more weeks, i needed to clean out my basement. since it was trash pickup tomorrow morning, i took the opportunity to toss out a few things, including my collection of old suitcases (some i inherited from past roommates, others i picked up off the streets). i have some canister track lights i want to see if i can give them away on craig's list, as well as an unused beaded curtain (with a portait of the mona lisa) i'm looking to give away as well instead of just throwing out. i still have a lot of things to toss, but it's going to take some time to dig through the clutter.

prior to dinner i was snacking on some carrots and celery, first with some leftover spicy humus dip, then a french onion dip. for dinner i finished the last piece of fried chicken from yesterday. i'll make the chicken salad tomorrow.

ever since i heard on monday that the latest lollipop (5.0) version of android cyanogenmod (12s) was available for the oneplus one, i've been waiting for my phone to update itself automatically via OTA. but i grew impatient, and since i still have stock cyanogenmod (11s, kitkat), it was a simple matter of downloading the new ROM and updating the system software via the built-in CM recovery. i still held my breath though, one reason being that i didn't backup my data at all (although the data technically wouldn't be affected), but another reason was i didn't want to accidentally brick my phone if something happened. but just i like read online, upgrading to the new OS was a breeze and i'm not finally rocking android 5.0.

i don't know if i notice any sort of improvements. what i do notice is the UI has changed a little bit, and things i got used to with cyanogenmod 11s are slightly different under 12s. as far as i'm concerned, i could've stuck with 11s and been very happy with it and the only reason to upgrade to 12s is just so i can say i'm using the latest version of android (which technically isn't true since 5.1 just recently came out). i'll have to do some research and find out if there are any cool things i can do with lollipop. right now i'm a little annoyed at not being able to find or do the things i'm normally accustomed to doing. for some reason it lost all my e-mail accounts because it uses a new mail app. browser windows are tabbed together with apps (this can be turned off). and how it renders text within the browser is different from the way it was before.