i was tasked with going down to cambridge city hall to get a copy of my grand uncle's death certificate so my father could have it as proof documentation to show the social security office. however when i woke up this morning it was raining, which i wasn't expecting until later in the evening. the forecast did say there would be a brief lull period in the every afternoon. so i waited until after noontime when the rain looked like it stopped, then biked down to central square to the city clerk's office. the whole process took about a minute. "can i help you?" a woman asked me from behind a desk. "i'm here for a death certificate," i said. "date of death?" she asked me, not bothering to get up. i told her. she didn't even ask me for my grand uncle's name so i added that without prompting. they don't check id's for death certificates because decease records are public. "how many copies?" she asked. i told her two. seconds later i heard their large printer firing up. "that will be $20," she told me. the printouts were on this grey color paper with the cambridge seal already embossed on the documents. i placed them in a manila folder and proceded to return home.

my parents were originally going to pick me up and take me to belmont, but i suggested they could park nearby and we could walk to harvard square and eat at gyu-kaku for japanese barbecue for lunch. they brought their visitor's parking permit which basically allowed them to park in harvard square; unfortunately most of the parking spots around the harvard area are metered, so we ended up putting $2 worth of quarters for 1-1/2 hours of parking time (harvard curbside parking is expensive, 25¢ for 10 minutes).

my parents had never been to gyu-kaku before even though they've heard me raving about it (i've been here thrice: with: eliza, GC, julie). we each got a variation of the lunch special ($10.95 each), with my mother upgrading her order ($2) so she could try the garlic rice. for meats, we picked yaki shabu beef miso, pork belly white soy, spicy pork, and beef hanger steak miso. my parents liked the yaki shabu beef miso and spicy pork te best as they were thinner sliced and had more flavors. they didn't care much of the different sauces, even though i was hitting the spicy sauce so much i must've used half the bottle. my mother also liked the garlic rice (served in a stone bowl) but i tried it and couldn't really taste any garlic even though i could see the garlic slices. overall my parents though it was pretty delicious and worthwhile, and felt stuffed afterwards.

my sister had dropped off hailey back at the house in belmont. we've been complaining how smelly her dog was and she finally washed her last night. when we found hailey, she must've discovered some dog treats laying around and there was an empty ziploc bag and labels from dog treats (sans treats).

earlier my parents went to target to buy a new floor lamp for my mother. the one that she had had a wobbly base (stripped threads). the new one that she bought was different - it had 5 lamp heads - which was more than she needed. i told her she could replace it but they'd already bought it and it was just $20, so we assembled it and put it in place.

as today was a cloudy and rainy day, i wasn't expecting much in terms of solar production. nevertheless, we managed to make 1.62 kWh of energy. the highest amount of electricity generated today was only 400Wh. since it's going to be even rainier and cloudier tomorrow, we're not expecting any substantial production until wednesday, when we're expecting 3 days at least of sunny weather.

after dinner my father gave me a ride home. i could've waited for my sister to come and pick up her dog, but there wasn't any knowing when she'd get here. later in the evening alex sent me some photos of tokyo, where it'd snowed 8". they don't typically get this much snow so of course it snarled the city to a crawl, and they didn't have the infrastructure to clean it all up.