i could feel the chill on my nosetip when i woke up at 9am this morning (i went to bed relatively early last night at 1am). it was actually cold for a change, with the outdoor temperature hovering in the low 30's. some snow is expected later in the evening into tomorrow morning. from the bathroom i fired up the furnace to 68°F and turned it back down to 60° immediately afterwards. this gave me the perfect opportunity to test the new wall insulation. 3 hours later, by 12:30pm, the indoor temperature had dropped by 3 degrees.

i made some oatmeal for lunch with some market basket brand chicken sausage i bought on christmas eve and that i was afraid it'd already gone bad. i'll use up the rest tomorrow night when i made some risotto. anyway, these were raw sausages, not like the sausages i normally get. they tasted okay, but none of the sweetness, and if you didn't tell me otherwise, i might not've guessed they were chicken.

i spent the late morning and early afternoon updating the blog. i admit, blog upkeep has taken a low priority, as there are several old postings that are missing photos or even text. i don't even know why i do it since old postings don't even show up on the main page anyway (unless you purposely search for them, either using my antiquated calendar or manually by adjusting the date code in the URL), but it's more out of personal posterity than anything else. i record it so i don't have to remember everything.

i also sealed the corners of the front door with some foam insulation. the circa 1903 door itself is a terrible heatsink, with a large uninsulated window in the middle of the door that occasionally frost over when it's cold outside and i'm cooking something especially warm inside (like pasta). that's why the foyer area is so cold, and that's why i use 2 draft curtains to separate that region with the living room. i wonder if it'd be better if i used wool-material draft curtains?

as it'd be snowing and raining tomorrow, i decided to ride out to market basket to get a few things: english muffins, peppered ham, swiss cheese, bag of oranges. when i returned home, i moved the motorcycle to a better spot, then bicycled to belmont. i had my action camera mounted to a selfie stick attached on a 90° to a tripod tied down to my rear bike rack. it's an interesting POV, but i'm mostly eclipsed by my backpack. i'll try a higher angle next time.

i was hoping to see some more birds at the belmont suet feeder, but the backyard was eerily quiet. was it because it's just too cold? or maybe the birds found a better source of food? not even a squirrel could be seen. my mother went shopping with my godmother; they went to the waltham OSJL where my mother bought some more suet blocks (one of every variety, $1/each). she didn't get home until 5:30pm. by then my father was already preparing dinner.

we had chicken noodles for dinner, with a savory broth that included some traditional chinese ingredients like goji berries, ginger, ginseng, and dang guai root (Angelica sinensis).

the outdoor temperature was 30° by the time i rode home. i switched to wool mittens to keep my fingers warmer. although cold compared to the warm weather we've had in recent months, 30° is warm considering how cold it can really get during a new england winter. when i got back the indoor temperature of the house was 60°, which is the minimum i've set the nest thermostat to. i had a thermometer in the master bedroom which read 64°, which i found kind of surprising; before i had insulation, the master bedroom was one of the colder rooms in the house.

after a shower i spent the rest of the evening watching monday night football on ESPN streaming to my HDTV via chromecast using my parents' verizon FIOS cable account (i don't have ESPN on my limited comcast cable plan). it crashed often for some reason, seemingly like every commercial break it'd lose the connect. the game was between the denver broncos and the cincinnati bengals. i was rooting for the bengals to win, the game ran into overtime. unfortunately cincinnati lost. it's not too big a deal for them since they're still going into the playoffs, but it does mean their chance of getting a bye week is now in jeopardy.

before i went to bed i set up a 5 secs interval time lapse to capture the first snowfall of the season from my backyard porch. can't wait to see how it goes tomorrow morning!