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i woke up at 8:30am this morning, aware that kevin was still home. he was in the kitchen eating breakfast with all the lights turned on even though it was daylight. not sure why i woke up, i could've waited him out, but i wanted to show him that he was leaving so late that i would already be up by then. he finally left around 9am; my friday could now official begin.

i first went to the porter square post office around 11am to get some stamps (currently forever stamps are 55¢ each). there was nobody there, i told the clerk i wanted to buy some forever stamps, she showed my 4 varieties (US flags, military work dogs, frogs, and winter berries), i bought a book of winter berries for $11. next i went to the porter square star market. i never really appreciated just how big it is, whenever i've gone there it's never to browse, always to pick up something specific and go. it's a really nice supermarket, but market basket is my jam. i went there to pick up a few things: a sale on sugar bee apples ($1.49/lbs), some fried chicken (8 pieces for $8), and a mix of tomato sauce and stouffer's frozen lasagnas that were on sale. i finally returned home by 11:30am and ate some fried chicken for lunch. i also finished a whole package of strawberries i bought last saturday from haymarket.

i sent united solar an e-mail a few days ago inquiring about referral fees for the 2 new customers that i talked into getting solar with them. since i didn't hear back, i figured they just blew me off. so i was surprised when kevin actually wrote me today, and said because i was used as a reference for 2 eventual customers, that i'd earn $100 each. had i actually referred a customer, i could've made $500. so not bad!

i didn't have very much else going on today. my yellow sticky traps that i ordered from china through ebay arrived today. i could've waited, but that would've meant a week delay in my soil drench plans, and i really didn't know when they'd come, that's why i ordered another pack from amazon which arrived sooner. according to schedule, i also paid the december meal tax for the cafe; my mother instructed me to just take the credit card total from the squared report and use those figures to calculate the tax.

i installed a paywall bypass plugin for my chrome browser. how i used to operate in the past was i'd ration my usage of certain newspaper websites like the new york times or boston globe, since i can only read a few articles before i hit the paywall and have to pay. it seems to be working well, except boston globe will still give the paywall warning, but after a few refreshes it eventually goes away. funny thing is i see all the ads, so my usual adblock doesn't seem to work in conjunction with the paywall bypass (the author recommends uBlock Origin). i actually don't mind, doesn't make me feel as guilty if i'm still contributing to their ad revenues.

i've been trying to watch the new apple+ series servant, got 3 episodes on my computer, finally managed to finish them. i actually stopped after the second episode and went online to read the synopsis of all the remaining episodes. i'm going to nope out of the series, just not interested. i don't care very much about any of the characters.

i was hungry so i finished the rest of my fried chicken for dinner around 6pm; i will restart my greek salad regimen this weekend. i added some hazelnuts along with a few clementines to pretend this was a healthy meal.

kevin (my roommate, not the solar guy) came home at 7:45pm with some more packages for him that was left on the doorstep. he was asking if i saw a small thumb drive that they said was also delivered but he didn't see it. i asked if he checked his packages, he said yes, and he went outside (in his long underwear, that seems to be his uniform whenever he comes home) twice to see if it'd been delivered to the wrong house. checking the tracking status, it said the drive was bundled with the map and i told him to look again, and sure it, that's where it was. are young people always this clueless? he said he was going to tape the map to his wall, i warned him not to damage the paint, but i'm pretty sure there will be some damage after he leaves. can't be worse than when my friend andrew lived here for a few months and put nails into my brand new walls so he could hang some pictures. i'm telling you, i've seen it all.

kevin disappeared into his room. most likely he'd already had dinner so didn't make any tonight, saving me from having to endure another night of his cooking. with the temperature forecasted to be in the 60's tomorrow, i thought about taking the T down to deer island. i've been a few times, but either by car or bicycle (by bike is the hardest way to get there, not even sure how i did it so many times). google map estimates a travel time of 1-1/2 hours, first by subway then by bus.