i went to star market at 9:00am to get some ground beef on sale, figuring by going early i'd be able to score some easily. what i didn't plan on was a lot of people had the same idea and by the time i went they were sold out already (supermarket opened at 7:00). instead, i picked up a dozen corn for 9¢ a piece.

my mother came by sometime after 10:00am. she was able to get away since the cafe wasn't busy due to the july 4th long weekend. our first stop was ac moore, where she was stocking up on more yarn with today's 20% off everything independence day sale. after we came out she noticed something was off with the price and figured out 2 skeins of sock yarn weren't actually on sale so she went back inside to return them while i waited in the car, trying to skim free wifi from nearby assembly row.

then we went to the malden super 88 asian supermarket, first time for my mother (i'd only recently discovered this place). originally i just wanted to get some taiwanese sausage for tomorrow's barbecue, but my mother ended up getting $150 worth of groceries. on our way back (via highland avenue) we went through a drive-through wendy's to get something to eat. returning to cambridge, we had a few more food items to buy and decided to stop at market basket (i was a little worried because i knew it'd be crowded, but we scored a parking spot real quick), where we picked up 3 packages of ground beef (for making the burgers, originally we were thinking about trying the porter square star market, but decided the saving wasn't worth the additional time). finally, we went next store to get some beers (tsingtao) before i got dropped off back at my place.

it was around 1:30pm, we'd been out for over 3 hours, and i finally ate my spicy chicken sandwich for breakfast/lunch. i went to the community garden to water my plants (bumped into dave), not before chatting with ed to learn that somebody had cut his clutch cable last night (my bike was safe, i moved it early this morning because a large SUV had parked in front of it).

finally i rode to belmont, where because of the holiday long weekend, i decided not to do any noisy sanding work. i mixed up the ground beef (80% lean, i like it fatty, adds more flavor) along with the other ingredients: blue cheese, worcestershire sauce, huy fong sriracha (normally frank's red hot sauce but the bottle was expired and tasted a wee bit funny), scallions, garlic (both ingredients my mother helped me chop), grey poupon mustard, and black pepper powder (normally gresh ground pepper but my parents didn't have any peppercorns).