for lunch i had a cup of coffee with another mooncake, this time a "five grains" (五仁) rose-scented variety. the rose flavor was nice, but the five grains was unexpected, kind of like a traditional fruit cake filling.

there was nothing on television except live coverage of doctor christine blasey ford's hearing regarding brett kavanaugh's supposed sexual assault of her during high school. up until now nobody had really seen blasey ford; a woman reportedly to be her was actually one of her attorneys (a brunette with short hair). the most striking thing about blasey ford - blonde blue-eyed and scholarly-looking - is her voice, which sounded like a little girl. the republicans were smart to appoint a female prosecutor (rachel mitchell) to represent them, because the optics of a gang of old men grilling a woman would be ruinous for them. it's already more than enough that the supreme court has a sexual assaulter justice (perpetually grumpy clarence thomas), it doesn't need another.

it would've been one thing if there was only one accuser; but since that time, 2 other women have come out and spoken of their own unsavory interactions with kavanaugh. so instead of a he-said-she-said, it's now a he-said-they-said. it's not just troubling the supposed sexual assaults, but that also apparently kavanaugh was quite the drinker in his youth, something which he denies, painting himself as a church-going studious student athlete.

how the republican senate majority has decided to go ahead with a vote on kavanaugh's confirmation tomorrow seems very premature and political. they know the longer it drags out, the less chance kavanaugh will have to be confirmed, and once the mid-term election happens in early november, the makeup of congress might very well change to the detriment of the republicans. it's hard to say for sure who's telling the truth, but it would only seem reasonable that the FBI get involved in an impartial investigation. of course that was before trump politicized the FBI and accused them of being in cahoots with the democrats, sullying their reputation as an impartial arbitrator of truth, at least in the eyes of trump supporters.

the coffee sent me rushing to the bathroom shortly afterwards, interrupted by a phone call from my sister asking me if i was home because she had some pretzels for me. when she stopped by i gave her a wooden ikea shoe rack i had sitting around the house. i returned to the bathroom soon afterwards. coffee not only makes me go to the bathroom, but i drank the equivalent of 3 espresso shots so i was jittering for the next few hours. i keep thinking about that scene in requiem for a dream when the mother takes some speed and goes around the house cleaning. i felt like that as i suddenly had a tremendous desire to vacuum the house. i am always amazed how much dust there is hidden in the carpets, like a near infinite amount of dust.

still filled with caffeinated energy, i decided to bike down to the cafe. temperature was in the upper 60's, cold enough for a light jacket but it was sunny out for a change and i wore a pair of shorts. i put on the blasey ford-kavanagh hearing on tv. paint cleaning equipment was back in belmont, so porch work will have to wait until next week. we talked about installing the nest thermostat before my parents leave for taiwan in a few weeks. i helped my father install a working driver for the cafe's samsung M2070 multi-printer. i left an hour later.

when i got home, brett kavanaugh was giving his testimony regarding the sexual harassment allegations. the hearing lasted until almost 6:30pm, it hijacked an entire daytime's worth of television programming from 10am onwards. what about my news? my local weather? kavanaugh stole that from me! during the kavanaugh cross examination, the republicans started with mitchell but she quietly disappeared as the all male republican senators took turns extolling the virtues of kavanaugh while at the same time castigating the democrats for the so-called farce. the democrats on the other hand really put kavanaugh to the test. kavanaugh played himself as a victim, and during his long opening statement i kind of felt for the guy, until the democrats began to grill him, and he became very confrontation and showed a bit of a temper. his republican minders prepared him well, he wouldn't take the bait when the democrats repeatedly asked him to ask his bosses for an FBI investigation if he really thought he was innocent. but he wouldn't agree.

i snacked on one of the soft pretzels in the afternoon, eventually finishing the whole thing (i still have one more). i made a nandroid backup to my macbook pro via adb, but i'm not sure if it was successful or not because the phone rebooted before the progress bar could complete. i'll have to do it again on my phone to make sure i got a real backup before trying to flash the resurrection remix ROM. however, in just the second day of using lineage OS with the nova launcher, i've already gotten use to it, so i'm in no hurry to reflash the ROM. i went the whole day and there was still 35% battery so much better power management too.

for dinner i had hot dogs again. i ate while watching the season premiere of the good place. it was a special hour-long episode (probably 2 episodes combined into one), i'm not really feeling it this season. afterwards i watched the last episode (6) of BBC's the bodyguard. it was kind of a weak finale, most of the episode was just about diffusing a bomb vest attached to the main hero, and you knew there was no way they were going to kill off david budd, no matter how much they teased he could die, whether by bomb or gunfire.