t
o
n
y
a
n
g
'
s
 
w
e
b
l
o
g


i rode the motorcycle to belmont this morning for an OSJL run. we left by 11am, which happened to coincide with some torrential downpours as we drove to waltham.1 we got some planter boxes for our mints and gardenia. we also got some boxes for the garlic chives, saving me the trouble of building my own. we got a teriyaki chicken subway sub before returning to belmont around 12:20pm. it kept on raining but the downpours were mostly gone.

we did some research on pulley clothesline, as my mother is always complaining about no place to dry her clothes outside as we've taken up her former spot by the basement entrance with raised beds and wire trellises. there's a good place to install a pulley clothesline from the sunroom entrance then 30 ft to the cedar tree. when we asked my mother she was for it at first and thought it was too much hassle and said she didn't want one anymore.

my father and i went to the watertown home depot around 2:45pm to pick up a new water heater to replace the one in my sister's basement which started leaking the past few days. the weather had improved since earlier, and the sun was even out, making it hot. we got a rheem's tank that was 40 gallons (enough for 2-4 people) with a 12 year warranty and more importantly of the right height for the low basement. all the floor units were sold out so we had to ask one of the employees to help us get one from the top shelf. we also left with 4 bags of potting soil.

we went to my sister's place around 4pm to drop off the water tank; she'll call home depot installers tomorrow morning to schedule the repair. supposedly they're able to do it on the same day if you call them on a weekday morning. at what cost though we don't know. if it was just a simple electric hot water tank we might be able to hook it up ourselves, but this is gas and better to get a professional. besides, home depot will also take away the old tank free of charge.

returning home, we stopped in front of a nearby house that was dumping a bunch of flower pots. had we known, we probably didn't need to buy some earlier. they also got rid of a bag of rose-tone organic fertilizer.

when we got back by 4:30pm, we put some soil in some pots and planted the mints and replanted the gardenia. we also prepared the two long boxes for eventual garlic chive transplanting.

my father found an old switch he wanted me to get some info on. originally purchased from radio shack, it's a 120VAC 10A DPDT relay switch. what's cool about it is the transparent housing which allows you to see the inner workings. wiring seems to be confusing, there seems to be multiple conflicting ways to do it.

after dinner i returned home by 7:45pm. because of street cleaning, there was no place to park so i had to stash my bike on the private street 2 blocks away. i waited 15 minutes before putting the cover over the bike as downpours are once again forecasted for tomorrow.

i got out of the shower right when the final episode of game of thrones was starting. i hadn't planned on watching it live, but the stream i've used over the past few weeks was working again so i watched it. everything was going great until the stream was blocked 40 minutes into the show. i had to download the episode and watched it half an hour later.

so they killed daenerys. it wasn't a surprise, given how she went totally loco last episode and burned king's landing down. what made it even sadder was she never got to sit on the iron throne, because jon snow interrupted her moment and then gave her the shiv after they embraced. drogon taking her away was a fitting tribute to the dragon queen. that they sort of fast-tracked her to be the bad guy this season was unfortunate, after building her up to be the hero. at the same time, jon snow (who has the best claim to the throne) doesn't become king, and gets sent to man the night's watch again. is the wall even necessary, now that the night king's dead? many people were probably thinking sansa would then become queen (and she probably thought that herself), but it ended up being bran, the least likable GOT character. however, sansa does become the queen of the independent north, which isn't a bad consolation prize. besides bran, another character i hate is bronn, who was created by the showrunners as an exposition device but ended up being this magical character who shows up out of nowhere and can never die and in the end gets all this undeserved glory. i could've done with less bronn and more screen time for other characters. i'm glad that game of thrones is finally over. there are plenty of other great shows to watch.


1 today was actually the rain date for the postponed may fair happening in harvard square. i ended up not going but the whole time i was thinking about those poor people getting soaked in the rain, and especially the sidewalk chalk artists, which is usually the only reason why i go.