i found my father raking the leaves in front of the house. after i had some sweet rice porridge with glutinous rice balls and leftover ribs, my father and i went back outside to do some yard work. while i raked the leaves from underneath the bushes, my father mowed the front lawn, pulverizing the leaves for our compost bin. when then moved into the backyard and did the same. there was so much leaves it'd jam up the lawnmower at times, making some awful noises like maybe the mower would explode. we then moved the picnic table before fertilizing the lawn. we had just enough autumn fertilizer to do the front and back yard. we dug up the bed next to the raspberries and dumped a whole barrel of compost into the future squash bed. the only thing we didn't do was move the wood piles; i think that's where we'll find the rabbit hole, because all over the grass i kept seeing rabbit pellets. finally we strung up my solar-powered globe string lights to the southern fence. when night came, the globes turned on but only for a few hours because it hasn't been fully charged yet indoors; hopefully being outside it allow it to get more sunlight.
my mother updated me on the status of our california relatives. my cousin, his wife, and their daughter all contracted covid, but my aunt tested negative. that in itself doesn't mean she doesn't have it, but it means the fever she seemed to be running prior to testing was just psychosomatic, just like how my father was convinced he had the coronavirus in the early days of lockdown when our digital thermometer read a few degrees high for him. turns out that was only his forehead; when he measured his ears, his temperature was actually lower than ours.
after dinner i returned home. the temperature actually went up by 1° from 46°F to 47°F, as the stormfront approached boston. this morning the forecast was for the rain to begin at 6pm but now they were saying not until 10pm. nevertheless, there was a lot of moisture in the air and i felt a few misty drops. when it finally did rain, it wasn't the spectacle that was promised: they said something about thunderstorms in november, but hardly heard it, and only noticed when i looked outside.
my mother accidentally received a shipment of tide pods, i took a few to try at home. i've never used laundry pods before, they seem too much of a gimmick, something to get people to spend more money on, while i'm fine with my liquid detergents. the pods felt delicate, like they'd break open if i handled them too roughly or dropped them on the floor. i could also see why children would be attracted to them, they look a lot like gummy candies. they were small, i ended up using two tide pods to do a load of laundry, adding them first to the tub before adding in my dirty clothes.
while folding my clothes in the bedroom i got a chance to experiment with the blue audio transmitter. i brought it to belmont so my mother could watch her shows with the headphones i brought as well. she thought it was cool but prefer her old way of watching tv, said the headphones had too much of an echo she didn't like. back at home, i tried repairing the transmitter to the bose speaker and it wouldn't work, maybe too much interference. i finally managed to get them to sync up in my bedroom. first i tried getting the audio to work with my DTA box using the left-right RCA jacks. that worked well, i was able to control the volume with the remote. i then tried to transmit audio from my OTA channels on the samsung HDTV; the RCA audio didn't work but i managed to get the toslink to work. the only downside was i wasn't able to control the volume with the tv remote, had to use the volume buttons on the speaker. but a better than the panasonic HDTV in the living room, which couldn't transmit any OTA audio.
so how did the tide pods work out? the container said 4-in-1, but it didn't say what exactly were the 4 components. i assume one is detergent, two is oxi-clean, and i'm guessing three is some kind of fabric softener as my clothes felt softer than normal (but i could be imagining it). the smell is okay - i guess that's what regular tide smells like - but i would've preferred some other scent. would i ever buy tide pods on my own? not really: i could see the convenience of having all your laundry ingredients in a handy "container" and i could see how it'd be useful if you were going to a laundromat, but i do my laundry at home, so a large bottle of liquid detergent is not a big deal for me. besides, i think the pods seem really delicate, and a recipe for disaster if one accidentally broke.
i watched the sunday night football game between the ravens and patriots. conditions were awful, torrential rain, but new england seems to thrive in bad weather, especially when playing at home. the patriots ended up winning, which shocked the sports pundits, who all picked new england to lose against baltimore and their MVP QB lamar jackson. and with buffalo losing their game tonight, the patriots are still in the hunt to win the division and get a playoff berth. new england didn't win pretty but they won, that's all that counts. even then the game went down to the final seconds, with the ravens having a chance to win the game. but it started raining so hard so it difficult to even see what was happening on the field, and with no more time outs, the ravens offense just crumbled.