even though temperature was in the lower 40's, i had no trouble starting my motorcycle after it's been sitting outside for a week covered in snow. the snow was gone but there's been a few nights of below freezing temperature. i'm happy to report that my new battery seems to be holding up just fine, i just had to pull the choke out all the way and the engine started on my first try. i also could've taken the bicycle, but today was very windy, and i didn't want to get blown around on the streets.
my parents were just about to grill some steaks on the stove when i got to belmont. i'm of the opinion that the only proper way to cook a steak is on the barbecue grill, 
especially after experiencing it first hand in the backyard when kelvin and sandy were staying here and we grilled a few steaks. these ones grilled in the frying pan were okay, but it didn't have that smoky char of a real barbecue steak.
we left for a supply run at 1pm, first to the waltham costco, followed by the waltham market basket. seems like every single cart that was leaving costco was buying a package of kitchen paper towels and toilet paper. not that we seem to be experiencing the worst of the pandemic, people are beginning to horde again. though there seemed to be a lot of cars outside costco, it wasn't that crowded inside. it was the same at market basket. we even went to the market basket liquor store next door in search of chinese baijiu but the closest thing they had was japanese whiskey. besides, my mother had already bought 4 bottles of wine earlier at costco (a small asian woman with white hair in front of us in line bought $485 worth of booze, i hope it's all for herself and she's not having a party).
we didn't return to the house until 3:45pm. since it was going to be a cold night (34 degrees low), we left most of the refrigerated stuff in the trunk of the car; they were cafe supplies and we didn't have any room in the house refrigerator.
after dinner i returned home. the temperature had dropped into the upper 30's by that point, but with the wind chill it felt more like 25°F. i was dressed for the occasion, but i forgot to bring my handlebar mitts and my hands were freezing this morning. i ended up wearing my normal gloves underneath my leather motorcycle gloves; it was a tight fit, but the additional layer managed to keep my hands warmer.
i finished watching the latest episode of the good lord bird (episode 5). this one had ethan hawke's daughter maya playing the role of john brown's daughter annie. the episode ends with the girls relocating to a safer place, when onion suddenly realized he forgot to tell john brown the password. deciding to return to harper's ferry, onion reveals to annie that he is in fact a boy and kisses her before jumping off the wagon. annie's final words - not spoken but shown in close captioning - was "onion, i know!" i tried looking it up online to see if anyone else noticed this before; so far i haven't seen anything. i'm tempted to post it on reddit to see if somebody else caught it.
so today is the election day eve. tomorrow i go cast my vote for joe biden and then i wait with the rest of america and probably the world to see who the next president of the united states will be. 4 years seemed to have gone by so fast, i remember election night 2016 like it was yesterday. i'm hoping to be shocked again, but this time in a good way.