my parents came around at 10:30am to pick me up so we could go on a supply run to the everett costco. today was one of the most crowded days to be there, on a weekend and the last day of the month (before februrary's coupons expires). i haven't been there in a while, they did some renovations, moving the fruits and produce department to the far right corner of the store. the checkout lines were crazy, all the way to the far end of the store, until i realized it was just a single line and there was a "traffic coordinator" at the front of the line directing customers to open registers. the only thing i needed there was a bag of potting soil. when we finally went to go pay, my mother left the store to go outside. but it took us forever to checkout because the customer at the head of the line was making a complicated purchase that seemed to involve two separate purchases and everything had to be rung up a second time. when we finally left the warehouse, we found my mother standing next to the car watching youtube on her phone (we forgot to give her the car keys).

afterwards we stopped by the cafe to drop off some supplies. by that point it was 12:30pm. we didn't go to belmont until 1pm. there was the possibility that i was making korean rice cakes for lunch, but we were all so hungry, it was quicker to microwave some frozen mini soup buns we bought at costco.

in the late afternoon my father and i replaced the old automatic toilet seat with a new one we bought last february but was only now installing it. the bidet on the old seat had stopped spraying and my mother was complaining to us to replace it. the old seat was the wrong size anyway, an elongated seat on a round toilet bowl. the new one we got - the bio bedit USPA 6800U (costco online purchase $200) - is a round seat. it was easy to install because a lot of the plumping had already been modified for the previous automatic toilet seat. this new one has a bunch of new features: user presets, night light, dual speed warm air dryer, activated carbon deodorizer, pressure sensor, kide mode, and a bunch of wash settings like oscillating, pulsating, and massaging. the only thing i use on the toilet seat is the heated seat function, which is always on. nothing like a warm toilet seat on a cold winter day. i've never used any of the bidet functions. the new seat has a night light which bathes the toilet bowl in a blue light.

my father gave me a ride back to cambridge after dinner. the whole reason why i got a ride today in the first place (besides a supply run) was because i thought it was going to be raining in the evening. the rain didn't come until much later, i could've easily biked instead. i hauled the large bag of potting soil out of the back of the car. i didn't realize the golden globes was tonight, i caught it after the first hour. it was a remote award show, so all the nominees were zooming in from their own homes. it was kind of cool, some people dressed up, while others were just in their normal clothes.