my father brought over a potential renter this morning around 10:30am to see the house. she came with her friend (who's currently living in the apartment above my grand uncle's place). she seemed nice enough, a woman in her 40's from shanghai. i thought she was an astrophysicist as well but turns out she's doing some work with harvard university, either as a teacher and/or taking classes, on which subject i don't know. she thought the master bedroom was the one i was renting out until her friend corrected her.

"there's no lock on the door?" she asked seemingly concerned. i told her since it's usually just me living here, there's no reason to have locks. she noticed the slide bolt lock in the bathroom. "could you install one in the bedroom as well?" she asked. my father had told me that something had happened at her current place with her roommate(s), which may explain all this concern about security. but i actually find it kind of offensive, that she wouldn't trust me enough, living in my house no less, to make such a request. what about my safety, letting a stranger live in my place? none of my past roommates have ever asked about locks, and certainly none had the audacity to make a request that i install new ones for their benefit. at that moment i didn't want to rent to her. but i was in a generous mood, and told her i did have a skeleton key for the door (which is entirely useless, since even if the door was locked, i could still open it with my other skeleton keys).

with that they left, having made no decision. given the short notice, and the fact that this potential renter is currently living temporarily with her friend at my grand uncle's apartment (i heard she was afraid to return home), i had a good idea that she'd probably take the place. but if she needed some more time to think about it, i didn't mind. take it or leave it, it didn't matter to me. there seems to be a lot of people who want to live at my place. with my spanish connections, i figured it was a matter of time before they'd send someone my way.

i had a chance to examine my wounds in the daylight. the light scratches on my right checkbones had scabbed over. the area still hurt, but it wasn't bad, a combination of healing scratches and subdermal impact injury. it wasn't bruised, at most a slight reddening. i also noticed some knicks on the back of my left hand. it must've happened when the handlebar jack-knifed right before sliding, punching me in the hand. i was a little preoccupied with my face injury so i didn't notice it last night. besides the scabs, they also hurt when i press down on them so they're definitely impact injuries.

besides a tea egg, i also made another smoothie for lunch: a banana, 2 cups of frozen fruit, 1 cup of almond milk, 1 cup of kale stems, and a piece of peeled ginger root. almond milk is the easiest way to make any smoothie more delicious. i like it more than the usual fruit juice. the only problem is drinking a cold smoothie on a cold day only makes me even colder. hot teas are my preferred winter drinks.

despite wiping out last night, it didn't make me gunshy about getting back on the bike. if anything, today would be a good day to ride, with fresh snow still on the ground, before it melts and turns to ice within the next few days. maybe take it slower on turns, and i'll definitely keep my eyes open for slick patches. i took out my cargo bike from the basement and inspected the damage. i knew the bell had broken off, but now i could see the fresh scratches on the handlebar and brake lever. i used a piece of tinfoil to rub out the "rust" from the handlebar scratches.

riding by observatory hill, i stopped to briefly take some photos of a black squirrel. i watched as it chased away a grey squirrel.

in belmont, we held a search for my father's nexus 7 tablet, after he finally revealed that he hasn't seen the device for days. i haven't seen it around the house in over a week. could it haven't been stolen from the cafe? i installed the android device manager app on my father's phone in the hopes that we could relocate the tablet that way. his devices showed up, but apparently the nexus 7 hasn't been online since 1/10. could someone have stolen it on that day and wiped the data? next i tried the timeline feature on google maps. nothing seemed out of the ordinary, gps tracking all in the usual spots, so that was a good sign at least. maybe the nexus 7 just ran out of power, or perhaps my father just simply turned it off before it disappeared. my father said he'd look for the tablet again at the cafe.

i was careful in how i biked home, now with compact snow patches turning into icy spots. bike lanes seemed dangerous covered in snow clumps, so i rode in the streets whenever i could. everything was fine until i got to observatory hill, the site of last night's incident. i went especially slow, until i saw a steady flow of water flowing down the hill. harvard custodial services were pumping out the building. i carefully rode over the man-made stream, but apparently not careful enough because at some point i realized the water had frozen into the notorious black ice. i narrowly fell off the back again before i braced myself with both feet and slowed down to a walk as i finally made it down the hill. observatory hill is a death trap!