i ate the leftover shaobing from last night with a mug of hot chocolate for lunch before biking down to chinatown to get some licorice black melon seeds. i didn't bother calling my parents to ask them if they needed anything because i knew they'd try to talk me out of going. i left by 1:30pm, a little late, but i figured it'd be a quick trip, a little more than an hour.

today was the perfect day for a bike ride, temperature in the 40's and sunny. even though it was still cold, we're actually running 4° above normal for the month of january. i just wore a pair of blue khakis, didn't need to double layer. i readjusted my bike seat before going, had it perfect. i discovered i have a pretty sensitive butt, if the seat is just a fraction of a degree off, i can instantly sense it with my posterior.

the ride into boston was uneventful. with so many people still working from home, not a lot of people are out on the roads and i didn't run into too many other bikers. it took 28 minutes to arrive at ming's market, and less than 15 minutes of browsing before i paid and left. i've gone to ming's so many times, i'm starting to recognize the different cashiers but i don't think they recognize me, especially not with my facemask and new haircut. what i really want are tamarind candy and candied ginger, neither of which ming carry anymore.

i biked into chinatown and parked because i wanted to check out that new supermarket i saw last week. turns out, it's more like a small grocery store. they were busy but only because the c-mart on lincoln street closed back in may. i then wandered around chinatown on foot a bit because it's been ages since i've been here. i actually walked down to lincoln street to see the closed c-mart for myself. later i read online that a developer had bought up the parking garage property and wants to tear it down and build a bigger building. it's devastating when a neighborhood loses a supermarket. true, there's the other c-mart on herald street and ming's market on washington street, but those are on the outskirts, more south end than chinatown. there's just jia ho supermarket, which is tiny by supermarket standards. while wandering around, i also another new small grocery store. since i was there, i decided to get a vietnamese sandwich for dinner. when i went inside the store, the owner told me they were sold out of sandwiches for the day.

i finally left chinatown by 2:45pm. since traffic was light, i did some illegal riding down one-way streets so i could get back to the public garden to get home. instead of taking the charles river bike path across the MIT bridge, i went the other way, and crossed over longfellow, riding along the pedestrian sidewalk. i thought maybe that way would be faster, but it took the same amount of time, 34 minutes for me to get back home (i did stop briefly on the bridge to admire the boston skyline and take a photo, and i also took photos of the trophy collection underneath the longfellow bridge).

unfortunately by the time i rode home, the bike seat was out of alignment again, and my butt was not too happy. i don't know what it is, maybe i'm just too heavy, and my weight is tilting the seat no matter how much i tighten the bolt. at this point i might get a new bike seat, this one is just too much of hassle. my old ripped-up (smaller) bike seat never had this problem.

i finally got home by 3:15pm, nearly 2 hours.

my government stimulus check arrived today, $600. i think it actually got here a while ago, but was sent to my upstairs neighbors by accident. i received a large stack of mail this morning (not the regular delivery time), which makes me think that was the most likely possibility. $600 will probably be good for groceries for a few months. when the democrats take over the government in about a week, there's a promise of an additional $1400 of stimulus.

it was cold in the house but i was too stubborn to turn up the heat or to even bother wearing socks so my feet was cold the whole day. finally when 6pm came across my scheduled heating kicked it, but it took probably close to 2 hours before my house was toasty enough that i felt warm. for dinner i was lazy so i just heated up some frozen french bread pizza. tomorrow i need to make a grocery stop to get some food.