we left around 10am, walking out underneath the ladders of prado painters who were cleaning out the gutters. unlike alfonso, mauricio doesn't take photos. he also talks a lot (for a guy who's english isn't quite as good as his friend's), which prevented me from explaining certain landmarks on our tour because i didn't want to interrupt him. harvard yard was unusually devoid of students for some strange reason, which made me think many had already left for winter break (not the case, winter recess doesn't begin until the end of december). i did snap a photo of him in front of the john harvard statue of lies. from there we moseyed our way to the IHOP.
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the last time i was at an IHOP (this exact one in fact) was a late night back in june 2009 when john paid me a visit. the menu selection was staggering, and i myself had a hankering for belgian waffles, but the weekday breakfast combo special was too good to pass up. mauricio and i both ordered the same thing, the breakfast combo ($6.99) with a mug of hot chocolate ($2.50). he'd never had pancakes before, nor experienced maple syrup. his favorite seemed to be the hash brown though, which he kept asking me for what it was called. we chatted and i learned that he's a clinical trial assistant back home in madrid.
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mauricio ended up treating me to breakfast. i didn't fight him, figured he was staying at my house for free after all. later i took him down to charles river then we snaked back to harvard square for a pitstop at the coop to check out some souvenir prices. we returned home by around 1:30pm. while mauricio decided to take a short nap around 3pm, i left for belmont via motorcycle.
i found my mother on the road with her bicycle, waiting for the traffic to clear so she could cross. she waited a long time because i was already home waiting before she finally got back. looking at the most recently OSJL ad, she saw a bunch of yarn for sale. since this was the last day, she insisted we go investigate. so around 3:30pm we drove down to the waltham OSJL. they had yarns, but most of them were non-wool acrylics or cottons. she still bought a bunch though, as we finally returned home around 4:30pm.
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my father came home with a 6 gallon carboy the previous restaurant tenants had left behind. this will come in handy if i ever decide to restart my moonshine experiment, or get into hard cider making. he was also wondering how much a wine press would cost; seems like the typical price is around $300 or so. but a search on craig's list revealed a seller on the upper west side (manhattan) selling a like-new apple press and crusher for only $100. before dinner, i ordered a 50% discounted ASUS google nexus 7 2013 tablet for $100 from groupon for my father to use. his old 7" hisense table is broken beyond repair, and the 8" teclast P89 3G tablet i got him from china uses a china-disabled version of android. the only good thing about the P89 is the retina display. at least with the nexus 7 i know everything will work fine.
after dinner i returned home. i knew alfonso and mauricio wouldn't be home because they were out watching the celtics-bulls game. it was being broadcasted on ESPN and i managed to stream the final quarter. i didn't realize spanish pau gasol was playing for chicago. it didn't matter, because boston would end up winning, despite with no players i recognized. isaiah thomas seems like he might be the star of the team though, makes me intrigued enough that i might want to tune in to some more celtics games.
alfonso and mauricio finally came home around midnight.