the weather has disappointed me once again. i was expecting as much as an inch of rain to fall by this morning, but there was only a light misting at most, not even a drizzle. cristina could've taken the bike to work today, but i talked her out of it last night, even putting the fuji away in the basement. later i learned she took the bike anyway, as her silver helmet was gone.

for lunch i made a quick egg and ham english muffin sandwich sprinkled with some leftover mexican cheese while watching WBZ news. i really just care about the weather forecast, particularly the hour-by-hour doppler radar. after i see that, i can usually turn off the tv because nothing else interests me after that.

i left the house in the afternoon to pick up a watermelon from star market, the last day where it was still the $3.99 sale price (normally it'd be $7.99). i petted a shiba inu tied to a signpost (a very thick and hard coat, not at all soft like i imagined) and petted it again on my way back, now tied to the entrance of pho 'n rice because it started to rain a little bit.

i was going to take the ross road bike to belmont (the trek utility bike is just too slow), but when i took it out of the basement, i noticed the chain was all rusty from being in storage all these years (since 2012?). some of the linkages were even rusted together. i dropped everything, put on some latex gloves, and went to work trying to fix the chain. i lubed everything with triflow but the stuck linkages were still stuck, nothing i could do. i ended up putting the bike back in storage and taking the motorcycle instead, as i was running late.

the reason why i didn't want to take the motorcycle was the threat of potential rain. sure enough, there was a sudden downpour later in the afternoon. i watched helpless as the motorcycle got soaked outside. the rain can't really hurt the bike, but it feels wrong since normally i'd have it covered. also, i don't like getting water spots, which i will have to wipe off at some later point.

my mother made chinese chicken noodle soup for dinner, with some garden kale. afterwards my father and i went to the watertown home depot to return a few things and buy a can of white appliance spray paint (we are repainting the refrigerated beverage display tomorrow morning). my father forgot his wallet and i only brought a single credit card. the things we were returning wasn't purchased with the card i had, so we opted to get store credit. unfortunately, they wouldn't give it to us because neither one of us had our id, which for some reason they needed to see.

i realized we'd run into another problem later on, when we paid for our spray paint, which also required a photo id. but the employee manning the self-service station just pressed a button to give us authorization without needing to see our identifications. the clouds outside looked particularly menacing, but there would be no rain the rest of the night.

driving home, i was playing some pokemon go in the car. a few blocks away from my parents' house, i caught my first tauros. i'd actually seen them at gyms, and a few times i saw their distinctive silhouettes on the tracking display.

i returned to cambridge. cristina was already home, had already showered and ate and was in her bedroom surfing the web on her ipad, doing research for her labor day weekend trip with spanish friends to montreal, toronto, and niagara falls.

in the background i watched the last (4th) preseason football game between the patriots and the giants. tom brady made his last appearance before serving his suspension, to be seen again sometime in october.