kevin woke up super early, like before 7am, judging from the sounds i heard in the kitchen this morning. he was long gone by the time i finally woke up around 10:30am, after spending an hour surfing reddit from bed. for lunch i ate the last of my homemade blueberry muffin.

i started 3 new book safe projects. first step is to saran wrap the covers then glue all the pages together. my bottle of white school glue had dried up, but i had a small bottle of mod podge that i used without needing to dilute it first. 2 of these books will also have the covers on them to make them blend in more in a bookcase. afterwards i stacked them on top of each other, weighed down with more books. tomorrow i can start cutting into them, which is a tedious task but i have plenty of sharp x-acto knife blades.

the whole day was spent waiting for the arrival of my father's new moto G7 phone. i kept refreshing amazon's package tracking, hoping for some update. around 2pm i opened the amazon app on my phone and saw that the package was now 6 stops away from delivery. i biked down to the cafe where minutes later it phone finally arrived.

what was supposed to be an easy transition turned out to be a little more involved when we realized the sim card inside the moto G4 was a microSIM, and the moto G7 required a nanoSIM. i put the phone back in its box and raced down to the harvard square verizon office to upgrade to a nanoSIM. once i had the right size sim card, i raced back to the cafe.

the G7 seems like a pretty good phone. it's slightly heavier than the G4, and has a glass backing instead of a plastic one which makes it feel more substantial in the hand (although it won't matter once it's in a case). i like the longer 6.2" 1080 x 2270 pixels screen, although in practice it doesn't have much use since the notification bar still occupies the top portion while the navigation buttons take up the bottom. nevertheless, the all-screen look is very clean and simple.

i returned home by 3:50pm, just in time to catch the articles of impeachment vote by the senate. it went down by party line (as expected), with mitt romney the sole republican to break away from the ranks and to cast a guilty vote for donald trump. what a better world it would've been if romney had been president instead of trump. i was following it on MSNBC but switched to a few other cable news networks to check out their coverage. frankly, those other networks (foxnews, CNN) had much better graphics, with photos and party affiliation of each individual senators voting; by comparison, MSNBC was kind of garbage. CNN had the best, with the graphics underneath so it wouldn't obstruct the live view of the senate chamber on this historical vote, which took up most of the screen.

kevin came home by 5:40pm. the first thing he asked was, "have you seen a package?" i pointed to the kitchen, where his order of surgical masks had arrived. minutes later he came into the living room and told me these masks were fake. apparently they're just paper, and not the kind that he wanted that were also water resistant. i didn't believe him at first - figuring all masks of this type were made of paper. but then i went onto youtube to look for some videos, and sure enough, good surgical masks have a water resistant outer layer. he tried returning them on amazon but because they were bought through a 3rd party seller and these are considered medical supplies, they can't be returned. he wanted to make a formal complaint but didn't have much recourse. the ad never said anything about them being water resistant, and had he read the reviews (there were several, all negative) he would've learned that most buyers said the same thing, that these were cheaper inferior masks, "china knockoffs." after a while, i talked him into thinking there were genuine, just not what he was expecting. he said he'd keep these and look again online for a different seller.

for dinner i made a egg prosciutto cheese basil pesto english muffin sandwich along with an italian dressing salad followed by a small honeycrisp apple and some rooibos tea. i also tried some of the tony's chocolonely chocolate i bought yesterday. a single thick bar costs $3.50. normally i'm not one for eating just milk chocolate alone, but these were actually pretty good, i may buy them again if i ever get a chocolate craving.

last night i discovered amazon sells "amazon renewed" google pixel 3 (64GB) for $259. other than the fact that it's a used camera (though supposedly in like new condition with a 90-day warranty), it's faster and more powerful than the pixel 3a and $65 cheaper. i've got no qualms about used electronics as long as it's in like new condition. i wasn't sure about it but finally decided to get one and see just how like new it really was. if it's good i'll talk my mother into getting one as well, even though she might prefer the less powerful (but brand new) pixel 3a. the one thing i don't like about the pixel 3 is no headphone jack; but it makes up for that with IP68 waterproofing. the renewed google pixel 3 is scheduled to arrive next week.

kevin told me he's going to the doctor's tomorrow. i asked him why, even though he could've not told me, none of my business, but i was curious. he said since he recently got his lasik eye surgery before coming to the US, he wanted to get a routine eye exam to make sure his prescription hasn't increased. this is actually his second time visiting his doctor in the short time he's been here, the first time was just a meet-and-greet and to make an eye exam appointment. i also showed him the baofeng and how we're able to listen to the cambridge police. he was amazed since chinese police broadcast are always encrypted. he said he might get one so he can try talking to me from his work place.