by 10am i hadn't received any phone call yet. unwilling to wait any longer, i went about my business, borrowing the car and driving down to city paints on the cambridge-arlington border to pick up a few gallon of paints. i decided to go with sweet pear instead o valley view. i got 2 cans of flat finish acrylic ($34/each), and 1 can of semi-gloss white ($46). i was a bit confused as to why it was acrylic, since i primed with oil. the paint guy told me that most exterior paints these days are acrylic, but uses an oil primer as a base coat.
i spent the rest of the morning prepping the garage door for painting, go as far as doing some more sanding with the orbital sander. i stopped a bit before noontime when it surprisingly started to rain. my father came around around that time as well, bringing with him some leftovers for lunch, which i quickly ate since i didn't eat anything yet today.
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i spent some time trying to determine what color to paint the fascia. in some places it seems like it should be yellow, but in others it's better as white. in the end we decided to just do all fascia panels as white, for consistency and ease of painting.
because of the intermittent rain, we couldn't do any painting, so instead we went to home depot to look at roller shades. the ones they sell at the store can be custom cut, but they're all too short. they also don't do repairs, but sell a complete set. 
they seem cheaply-made, with a cardboard core instead of a wooden core (like the ones we currently have). the woman who works at the blinds department told us about the store in belmont that does shade repairs (the same one we visited last thursday!). as if on cue, the blinds repairman finally called me (1:30pm). he was insistent that he do a home visit to do measurements, even though we already decided on keeping the roller shades, just wanted to replace the old fabric. his services sound expensive though. even with home depot, a custom shade of 122"x66" costs close to $300 (from their website). we need to get three shades replaced, so it'll probably run us close to around $700. if only we can find fabric of that length! we could simply make our own shades, skip the middlemen. anyway, the repairman will come tomorrow morning at 10am.
it got dry enough in the afternoon that my father and i went ahead and primed the garage door, one of the last unprimed section of the house. my father cut a normal-size roller in half so he could dip it directly in the can. i used a foam brush to reach any areas he couldn't get with the roller, like corners.
afterwards my father returned to the cafe while i returned home, where i still had some work to do. i'd brought back a pruning saw and tried to cut a low branch from the locust tree in front of my house. i managed to get through half of the branch but it was too tough so i just gave up. now i'm afraid the half-pruned branch will fall down on its own and hurt someone! 
next i did more oil staining on the backyard deck, the railing of the middle landing, the railing in front of my bedroom window, the bench, and a few deck panels. i used a small staining brush to swab on the timber oil first before using a rag to rub in and off the oil. i think if i use an even larger staining brush i can work even faster (i'll check the dollar store tomorrow for cheap throwaway brushes). i'm hoping to get my floor of the deck completely oiled before ana returns home this weekend.
i turned on the heat in the evening. it was actually 64° inside which is relatively warm for my house in mid-autumn, but i figured why not bump it up to a more comfortable 68° so i fired up the furnace. i baked some french bread pizza for dinner. i've been eating a lot of processed food when i'm home, can't remember the last time i visited market basket, the refrigerator is mostly empty. while my pizza was in the oven, i went to star market to get some asian pears, a bag of mixed salad greens, and some baby carrots.
