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i packaged up frances' things and sent them on its way early this afternoon. then from the porter square post office i went to the cafe to take a look at the malfunctioning new webcam. it has a habit of going offline, which we figured might be caused be sun-related overheating. i climbed on a ladder and touched the camera; it was warm, but nothing to be concerned about. i then moved the mounting bracket so more of the camera could be in the shade. all seemed okay until the camera went offline again. when i went to go reboot the camera, i noticed it'd already done so on its own, going through its startup routine of rotating the camera in all directions. maybe the problem has something to do with the power? so my father got up on the ladder and rejiggered the plug. also when i returned home i accessed the foscam camera remotely and turned off voice/motion sensor, which had been turned on by default. now we wait and see if the camera reboots itself.

as part of my pre-departure preparations, every day i try to knock off a few items from my before-china-todo list. today i saw paul outside and asked him about their water pressure. apparently they have a regular plumber, paul said he'd call him to make an appointment to take a look at our low pressure situation.

i made chocolate chip cookies today. i'd been meaning to make it ever since eliza was here, even going as far as to set up a stick of butter in the kitchen to soften at room temperature. i had a big box of expired (2013) cookie mix i wanted to use up. it's not my first time make chocolate chip cookes (2008, 2011, 2012) - it's actually one of the easier baking projects. the dough tonight was very sticky, almost too hard to form into small balls. i ate 2 cookies and put the rest into a sealed pyrex container. i'm not that much into cookies, actually; i just made it to get rid of some leftover ingredients.

for dinner i heated up a brick of lasagna. i didn't eat until almost 9pm, i wasn't very hungry for some reason. there was nothing good on television, so i streamed MSNBC's broadcast of tonight's election coverage from my computer.

i performed another water change on the aquarium today, siphoning out 2 buckets (about 4 gallons). i'm still trying to remove as much free floating detritus as possible. i thought i saw some algae, but i either siphoned it up or just my imagination. i read that if the aquarium lights are too bright, it might increase algae growth unless CO2 is introduced into the tank, juicing up the aquatic plants to take up all the nutrients. i also cleaned the glass while i was at it, now the tank looks crystal clear.