my father had already painted the basement windows with the final coat of semi-gloss white by the time i arrived in belmont by 10am. temperature gun reading said the house exterior was in the mid-40's, which was warm enough for acrylic. we opened the first can of final paint, sweet pear, and began painting the outside walls of the garage. while i edged with a combination of traditional and foam brush, my father was up on the ladder on the roof painting the corner area. the whole time i was also documenting our work with my action camera set on 1 sec time lapse.

my initial impression of the color was that it was too yellow, but after it dried it looked okay, no hint of green. we worked from 10am to 2:30pm, with still at least a quarter worth of paint left in the can. while painting the eastern face of the garage, i even managed to use the roller for the very first time of housepainting this year (up until this point i was always using the more detail-oriented brush). even after priming the house looked a little rough, but this acrylic final coat really blends well and makes the house look super clean and brand new.

my father washed up and left for work at the cafe while my mother came home soon afterwards. because it was acrylic paint, i washed the brushes in the sink with warm water, so much better than having to deal with thinner in oil paint cleanup. i only had a banana for breakfast and searched the house for food. when my mother got back she fixed me a quick bowl of fried rice. i stayed until 7pm then returned home.

ana made lasagna tonight, or actually this afternoon for lunch. i was curious how she made it and she let me sample a little bit, chatting as i waited for the lasagna to reheat in the toaster oven. it had a bechamel sauce layer, which i've never had before. another layer was the vegetable chicken soup she was cooking last night. say what you want, but she can really cook!i told her i was going to make some membrillo this week with the quince pulp i saved up.

i finally held my breath and went ahead and installed the SSD hard drive (crucial MX200 500GB SATA 2.5 inch SSD CT500MX200SSD1 $140 into a 15 inch mid-2012 macbook pro 2.3GHz 8GB/500GB running OS X 10.11.1). it was a complicated affair of removing the DVD superdrive, swapping out the 500gb 2.5" HD with the 500gb crucial SSD drive, and finally reinstalling the 2.5" HD back into where the superdrive used to be using a hard drive caddy tray. i was worried about the tray because it seemed to be missing a plastic bracket, but it made up for it by securing the 2.5" HD using tiny headless screws. the HD also seemed to be too thick and wouldn't sit flush inside the caddy, so i was afraid i wouldn't be able to close the computer case. but everything managed to fit in the end.

after the hardware fun came the software fun, as i cloned my system onto the new SSD drive, minus the user folder (which will continue to reside on the regular HD). carbon copy cloner said the whole procedure took 1:30 hours, but it felt more like 2+ hours. i then started up the computer with the SSD. what would normally take around a minute now takes just a few seconds to boot. i pointed the location of the home folder to my old user folder. applications now open up near instantaneously. it'll take me a few days to see what other speed improvements there are.