it finally rained today, but disappointingly brief, all but ending in the boston area by late morning. while the temperature dropped into the 70's, the humidity increased, so there was still no climate relief. i slept well, going to bed at 1am, getting up around 9:30am, despite it being humid enough that i'd wake up intermittently in a sweat. i did have a bout of itchy palms in the middle of the night as i scratched in the dark, fearful that i might reduce my hands into bloody pulps.

my job today was to head over to belmont to await the delivery of our new sunroom window shades from awardblinds.com, after more than a month of waiting. fedex would probably leave them at the door, but with the rain, i didn't want them to get soaked. i thought maybe the rain had let up by 10am that i could take the bicycle, but a steady shower said otherwise, so i walked to harvard square to catch the 73 bus.

there are so many pokestops in harvard square, you could easy fill an empty pokemon bag simply by taking a short walk within the yard. i saw a large group of pogoing chinese teenagers huddled under umbrellas, blocking the sidewalk (play while you can, since pokemon go is banned in china due to government gps sensitivity). surprisingly, there wasn't a lot of pokemons to be had: a raticate (first), caterpie, pidget, and zubat. riding the bus, a krabby and weedle ran away before i managed to collect a spearow, another raticate (CP 344!), another spearow, weedle, and finally a pidgey. we passed by mt.auburn cemetery, which is another hot bed of pokestops. i made a mental note to visit one day next week.

there wasn't yet any packages when i finally got to my parents' house. i ate 2 slices of cold pizza before helping myself to some cable. i've been without cable for so long, even when it's available, i don't watch very much of it.

while i was out in the backyard tending to the garden (1:20pm), i heard a large truck pull up in front of the house: a fedex semi! i ran to the doorstep to greet the delivery man. he made a fuss saying how he might not be able to get the cargo over the bump on the sidewalk, but then i told him these were window shades, in which time he suddenly remembered that he got his orders mixed up. he pulled out a long package from the back of his truck, weighing approximately 29 lbs. i signed the form and carefully maneuvered the long package through the house into the sunroom.

around 2:30pm my father came home to install the new shades. we started with the western face of the sunroom, because it had the most sun, but also because it was the easiest to access. we measured exact and the shades arrived exactly to our measurements, with no margin of error. it was actually kind of easy installing the shades: the hardest part is drilling the screw holes and then turn the long screws by hand. other than that one very long shade on the southern face, the two others were light enough to be installed by a single person. we actually made very good progress, but only took as long as we did because we made sure the shade fit on each side of the room (they did).

as soon as we installed the first shade facing west, we noticed a difference in the temperature of the room, that it was suddenly cooler. these sun shades are great because they block out the sun but still allow the breeze to blow through, and people from the outside can't see in but we can see out.

around 4:30pm my father gave me a ride back to my place. he turned on the air conditioning in the house, as both temperature and humidity began to rise ever since the rain stopped in the late morning. i took home 4 leftover slices of pizza. in the car was my mother's bicycle, so she could ride back home as soon as my father returned to the cafe.

i pan-seared the pizza slices for dinner, pairing it up with a fruit smoothie (fruit juice, aged banana, frozen fruits). in the evening the temperature had dropped to the upper 70's so i tried to circulate out the warm air inside the house by using some window fans. it didn't seem to help very much, but at least it was cool sitting by the open window. fortunately the 90's are over: all next week the temperature will be in the 70's and 80's.