hailey woke me up at 6:00. i let her outside to go use the bathroom. afterwards instead of returning to the bedroom she went to go sleep on the couch in the living room. i noticed i had a new system update for my phone. i'd already upgraded to CM12S (lollipop) more than a week ago; this was an additional update to fix some bugs that were discovered during the OTA process. it had a new feature called voice waking, where i can turn on the phone by just saying, "okay oneplus." but the most important thing was a fix for the battery drain bug. i'd been noticing it recently that the power gets used up much faster ever since i updated. i'd read about it online so i knew of the problem, but only began to really notice it the past few days, when even when not using the phone, the battery gets drained down to 20% or less.

checking the news, i saw the report of the 7.8 earthquake in nepal. there was just a handful of deaths, but later the number jumped upwards of 1000 fatalities, with perhaps even more as more information comes in.

i couldn't fall back asleep and passed away the time playing around with my phone until 7:30, when hailey returned to pester me. i finally woke up for good to give her some breakfast and surfed the web off of my laptop in the dining room.

my sister got in touch with me at 8:20, said something about coming to pick up hailey at after 11:00, when yesterday she promised me that she'd come and get the dog at 9:00. maybe her chinese is bad (after all, she never formally went to school to learn chinese), but she always seems to forget some crucial information when talking to us. it's like, she'll just tell us the punchline, but forget to mean the reason. so i was a little annoyed and told her she had to come and pick up hailey at the agreed upon time. what i didn't understand was she was planning on taking hailey hiking after 11:00, after she made lunch for my grand uncle. if she'd just explained it to me like that, i would totally understand.

anyway, she came at 9:00, and i went with her to home depot to pick up a few things: lawn fertilizer, rosemary to replace the one that died from not watering (the price has gone up from $2 to $4 a pot), and some metal posts. after dropping me off back in belmont, she went back home to fix lunch for my grand uncle, leaving hailey with me, since she'd be back later (so essentially it was a wasted trip for her).

i began working in the backyard starting at 10:00. there were a bunch of things to do: water the raised beds, trim the hedges in front of the house, prune the backyard maple tree (using the ladder), install the trellis for the snap peas and vining flowers, weed the dandelions, rake the dead grass off the lawn, fertilize the lawn, dig up the runaway bamboo rhizomes, plant one of the rosemaries, move the pile of dead logs, pick up any dog droppings, turn the compost. it took me 3 hours but i did (started at least) everything but fertilize the lawn.

the hardest thing was unearthing the bamboo rhizomes. it's scary how far they've spread, but at the same time satisfying when i pull up a clump that's 10-20 ft long. it's hell on the lawn but we can always reseed. it makes me think that we should just kill off all the bamboo, don't even bother growing them anymore. they are difficult to have in the backyard, not because they're hard to grow, but because once established, they quickly become evasive and take over the lawn. all my sweaty and dirty hard work and i think i've only managed to make a small dent. we basically have to dig out the entire southern edge of the backyard to stop the rhizomes from spreading to our neighbors.

my sister returned at 1:00. i was surprised when she told me the time because i thought it was 11:00, possibly noontime at the latest. i stopped what i was doing and gathered up my things to return to cambridge. being back at home is like a vacation now. i'm just used to being at home, close proximity to supermarkets, all my cooking ingredients if i wanted to make something to eat, and a comfortable bed that doesn't leave me itchy like my sister's old room.

i felt really tired, a combination of working in the backyard but also because i didn't get a good night's sleep, with the dog crowding me off the bed and the cold temperature at my parents' place. i crawled into bed at 3:00pm and didn't wake up until 6:00pm.

for dinner i heated up a brick of lasagna. while waiting for it to bake (an hour), i took a shower. i turned up my heat but at some point the bathroom door sprung open on its own and all that precious heat escaped; i ended up using the blowdryer to warm myself before i got dressed. i ate while watching godzilla on HBO. i hadn't seen this remake, and i only watched half of it before i got bored. first of all, they did a switch-and-bait when they had brian cranston playing one of the lead scientists. but he ends up dying after the first 20 minutes, and it's his son that's the main character, the kid from kickass. the godzilla in this movie is more true to the classic godzilla (nothing like the 1990's broderick godzilla remake), but a much fatter (muscular?) version. godzilla is also a good monster, which i have trouble understanding, considering all the collateral damage he causes (destruction of city, not to mention all the lives lost).