i went with my parents in the afternoon (2pm) for a 4 stops supply run. first we went to the everett home depot where my father picked up a few circuit breakers while i went to the garden department and bought a potted hydrangea ($30). next was nearby costco, where besides the usual supplies, my parents also picked up a new 1200watts panasonic microwave to replace a broken one at the cafe and a brand new set of garden spray nozzles. then we drove a bit to restaurant depot, picked up a box of mangoes ($5.99) amongst other supplies. finally we went to the chelsea market basket and managed to fill a shopping cart with additional groceries, including some fried chicken for dinner. we finally left by 4:40pm, braving a bit of rush hour traffic to get back to the cafe (5:15pm) to unload the supplies.

the circuit breaker he thought was broken turned out to be okay; he just didn't did put it into the switchboard panel the right way (it has to clip inside a hook). he decided to keep the 2 new breakers he bought, in a case one of the breakers should ever fail again.

it was a crazy day for pogo'ing. through no planning, i reached level 25 naturally on my own last night. i'm starting to think you see more advanced critters the higher level you get. i caught a bunch of mons i'd never encountered in the wild before, including 2 rhyhorns, a snorlax (i always see them in gyms, never thought i'd get one of my own), and a sneasel. later in the evening i activated a lucky egg and went on a 30 minute evolution binge, adding 4 new mons to my collection: wartortle, crobat, bellossom, and dragonair.

we actually made a detour back at my house before going to the cafe. it was to allow me to drop off my hydrangea plant and to grab the 4 lbs. brick of sugar i had in my kitchen (my parents thought about buying sugar at market basket but we simply had no more room in the car). that detour allowed me to bike back home after a fried chicken dinner. i had my fuji bike stashed in the garage, and today was a good day to get it back home. i even left my bern helmet and gloves there. the ride felt great, all these months i've been peddling on my trek utility and that thing is heavy with 26" wheels. the fuji is light with bigger wheels (27") and it rides so smoothly despite being an old bike. i can cruise faster, go up hill faster - i don't know why i don't just ride the fuji all the time.

my father turned off the furnace in the basement for the season. they use hot water radiator heating, so even though the thermostat was set to off a few days ago, the boiler was still heating the water in anticipation for an eventual reheat. in order to stop burning oil completely, the furnace has to be completely turned off. but by doing that, it cut off the power supply to the nest thermostat so that it went into debug mode and wouldn't display anything else besides an error message saying there was no electricity. without electricity, the built-in battery eventually drains and the thermostat will go completely dead. that's not a big problem, but my father has grown used to seeing the outdoor temperature display whenever he passes by the thermostat in the hallway. the only way to reactivate the thermostat is to provide it with its own power, bypassing the furnace. to do that we need to wire a 24v transformer from the basement to the thermostat wires.

karen was home but confined to her room the whole time where i heard her talking for almost the entire evening, to whom i don't know. i only saw her briefly, when she finally opened her bedroom door while i was moving some plants back inside after i set them out earlier to get some sun. later she went to sleep and said good bye from the other room.

they finally put up the solar panels on that house. it doesn't seem like a lot of work, so i don't know why getting solar panels cost so much.

i contacted sunmeng tonight, wished her a happy birthday (even though she didn't remember mine back in february). i know she doesn't have a lot of friends, and figured at least somebody ought to recognize her special day. but turns out a lot of people were wishing her a happy birthday (who are all these people? are they really her friends?). she also send me a photo of the lemonade she made.