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this was my first day spent at home with my roommate ana since she came back from her 2 week vacation. i'm afraid to ask her how she'll be spending her time now that she no longer has classes. but i took advantage of the morning by using the bathroom, taking a shower, then making breakfast - all before ana woke up sometime after 11am. and by the time she was up and about, i was already making plans to go out and run some errands.

because of the impending rain, there was no painting today. my father did call me from the paint store this morning, and told me that he actually edged the southern part of the house with the leftover quarter of paint still left in the can before going to work. he was at the store buying 2 more gallons of final color. our next paint day looks to be this friday.

i played around with my newly SSD-enhanced macbook pro. i now have two recovery portions, one of which i erased last night. what i really want to do is merge it with the main drive, but i'm afraid of making a mistake and erasing the whole drive in the process, and i have gigabytes worth of data on there i haven't backed up yet. i did however erase all the system and library files from the old HD drive, now that i'm only using it for data storage and not a startup disk. i was kind of surprised i managed to erase all of it, since sometimes system files have high privilege access or are locked.

the sky got progressively darker, but the rain wouldn't come until later this afternoon, so i still had time to take care of some business. it was however particularly windy, but i had the windshield of the motorcycle to block most of it while i was riding.

first stop was ac moore at assembly square, where i was picking up a skein of lion's brand landscape yarn for my mother. i'd already picked the yarn and verified it with my mother before i saw the display of stitch studio mystic waves yarn. they look similar and priced the same ($5.99), but mystic waves is 30% wool while landscape is 100% acrylic. i decided to get the wool yarn instead, and picked a purple colored skein. i had a 50% off coupon but the cashier did me a favor and used her 55% off coupon instead. knitting people stick together!

next, harbor freight tools. i was there to get a set of spade drill bits (13 pieces, $9.49) for the deadbolt installation project at my parents' house. it took a long time to find, along the far wall with the other drill bit equipment. i also had some coupons and scored a box of nitrile gloves, a pair of gardening gloves, a box of solar-powered waterproof led string lights, and tool bag, and a set of wood chisels (also for the deadbolt project). leaving the store, the sky looked especially dark, and the wind was blowing particularly hard. i quickly rode home, finding a choice parking spot on the private way.

i found ana in the kitchen, doing a load of laundry, eating lunch, watching friends on her laptop with high volume, and running the dishwasher, not in that order. by now i have a pretty good feel about her schedule and around 2:30pm she went to go take her nap. that's when i decided i had time to go visit the new dollar tree store that'd opened on beacon street, replacing the family dollar. they carry a lot of off-brand products, but surprisingly had some name-brand things as well, like the pears soap i like so much. and unlike the falsely named family dollar, everything at dollar tree was indeed just a dollar. i ended up buying some shower caps for my mother (to be used as a seat cover ever since someone stole the cambridge cover i gave her last week), some snacks, a set of brushes (for use with the backyard porch oiling project), and a pair of false halloween teeth.

things were already a little wet when i went, and continued to be so when i came back home. by around 3pm it started to rain. i was tempted to go outside and get some photos of people caught in the rain but it was just too blustery outside and i decided it was much nicer to be indoors.

ana woke up around 5:30pm, which i thought was unusual, because her routine is to sleep until 7-8pm, take a shower, then make dinner to be eaten by 10pm. it made me think she might be going out, and sure enough, some friends came over and they went out around 8:30pm. one of them was alfonso, the spanish doctor here in town doing research. he seemed like a really nice guy, quite a resemblance to my old friend luke b. he'll be living here for 3 weeks come december. i also found out tonight that ana's flight back to spain is december 1st.

i finished my bag of leftover salad while ana was in the shower, then made some pizza rolls. i kept on smelling cigarette smoke, and that was because ana was outside smoking with an umbrella in the rain, but had the door open so she could continue to videochat with her friend on her laptop, which was inside the house. she did this a few times, i too weary to complain to her about it, but i did suggest to her that life would be easier if she gave up smoking.

once she was gone, i could finally use the bathroom in peace, before taking a shower. she wasn't gone long, came back around 10:30pm.