today was the first day of a sub-heat-wave hitting the boston area this week. temperature outside was a toasting 87°F while indoors i maintained a cool 77°F, all without air conditioning, just natural cooling and some help from the wall insulation. but this always happens: the first day is the cool day, but then each day gets progressively hotter, until it's actually hotter inside my house than it is outside. and the insulation becomes a hindrance at that point, because all that heat gets trapped, unless i somehow find a way to vent it out. but because it's not an official heat wave, i won't be installing the AC yet.
there wasn't much to eat in the house, i finished the last of my chobani greek yogurt, and was looking to make a grocery run later today, maybe combine that with a visit to the community garden. however, i ended up going to harbor freight tools with my father in the afternoon to buy some parts to create a new thermal fuse patch cable for the broken briel espresso machine (some butt connectors $1.99, a cable stripper/cutter/crimper $3.99).
later we went to the somerville home depot to buy a new fence. we thought it'd be in gardening but turns out it was on the other side of the building, down by lumber. the fences that were there seemed to be remainders and nobody was really in charge. we finally snagged one assistant who helped us, but we ended up buying the wrong fence, 
a cedar fencing ($62) without any pickets and was just flat boards. the assistant had to come with me to the other side of the building to return the cedar fence before i could buy the fence we wanted ($32, only one piece left, and it had a damage board), all the while my father was tying up the fence to the hood of the car. afterwards i ran back down to the other side of the building one last time to meet up with my father before we drove away.
by the time he dropped me off at my place it was around 4pm already. it felt too late to make a grocery run, so i decided to start making a new thermal fuse patch cable.
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i started by cutting out the broken thermal fuse from the old cable, saving the two ends to reuse in the new cable i was making. the stripping/cutting/crimping tool was a piece of crap (not surprising, given what we paid): the blade on the cutting part was completely dull so i had to use another cable cutting tool, the only thing that worked with the stripping tool. i also took one of the butt connectors (nice) and stripped off the heat-shrink wrapping, to get to the actual metal connector. the connector was too long for what i wanted to use it for, and i tried to think of same way to cut it in half. i ended up using a bike cable cutting tool, which did cut the connector, but also crushed the ends so it wasn't usable anymore. fortunately i had plenty more butt connectors. i'll just need a dremel tool with a rotating saw to cut the connector in half (tomorrow). then i can crimp the connectors with the cables and thermal fuse. espresso machine repair will just have to wait.
i spent the better part of the day glued to the amazon website, refreshing and clicking away in search of amazon prime deals. i ended up scoring an amplified HDTV antenna ($23), pair of jlab ear buds ($5), xtech steam cleaner ($28.75), 60m laser distance measure ($37.59), waterproof motion sensor solar light ($7), a 64GB microSDXC card ($20), and a300ml secura espresso milk frother ($42). the last item had nothing to do with amazon prime, my mother called me at 11pm asking me to buy a new one online with a large capacity. what i really wanted was a new vacuum, but the only thing noteworthy that was on sale was a shark rocket handheld ($130) and i didn't like it because it seemed too unwieldy and didn't have a retractable cord.
i was going to bake a lasagna in the oven for dinner, 
but decided against it because it'd heat up the house too much. instead, i just had some korean instant noodles and a can of smoked baby clams. later i used up 2 more mangos for a lassi.