it was pouring rain this morning, but luckily my sister volunteered to drive me to her godmother's house for the internet installation between 12-2pm. she came shortly after 11:40am. while we were driving there, my mother called to let us know that the cable guy was already there.

i figured it'd be a quick installation, 5-minutes tops, just enough time to connect the comcast xfinity gateway to the wall outlet. but by the time we made it upstairs to the apartment, the cable guy (a big russian fellow with a neck gaiter) was telling us some bad news: none of the connections were working, there was no signal, and he had to get access to the cable room to troubleshoot the problem. the cable room could be anywhere in the building, though typically it'd be located on the same floor. while he went searching, my sister called the maintenance people and went downstairs to their office even though technically they were closed.

a few minutes later my sister called me from downstairs, said she found someone would could take the cable guy to the control room. i went in search of the cable guy but couldn't find him, but eventually he stepped out of the elevator, where i relayed the message to go downstairs to access the cable room. my sister returned to the apartment. i helped my sister's godmother finish assembling a few ikea chairs she bought by tightening the screws.

it took the cable guy a long time to return, but finally he did. he said the cable room wasn't in the basement but rather on the second floor. someone how found someone who not only knew where it was but could get him inside. he said all the connections were messed up (because they were installed by the electrician, not an authorized comcast technician), but he managed to fix the cable for my sister's godmother's apartment.

from that point on things moved ahead quickly. my sister's godmother had to slip out a bit before 1pm for a 2pm doctor's appointment near south station. my sister and i stayed in the apartment, waiting for the cable guy to finish up. they do a new thing now where they have you set up the network name and password. the first time the new network showed up it didn't have internet access, but the cable guy rebooted the gateway and the second time we managed to get online. he left soon after that, reminded us to fill out the customer survey.

i ran a speedtest, the wifi speed was 60Mbps. i tried setting up the android tv but it required my sister's godmother to input an authentication code with her phone, but since she wasn't there, we couldn't complete the setup. the tv could still get online, but it just wasn't tied into a google account.

my sister and i rearranged some of her godmother's living room furniture. with the dining table and the HDTV, and a tv stand followed by a future sofa, there wasn't enough space for all the furnitures. the table by the window is a nice place to eat or work on the computer, with a great view of boston. we tried putting the HDTV by the wall near the bedroom where there's an existing alcove space, but the HDTV was too wide for that area, the only way would be to put it on a slant. we ended up moving the table so the long side was up against the window, and taking two chairs and turning them into a makeshift HDTV stand. it didn't seem like we were there for very long, but we didn't leave until 2pm.

by then the rain had stopped. my sister drove me to h-mart. while she sat in the car, i went in to get some fish ice cream sandwiches (brown sugar boba flavor), and some crackers that my sister wanted. she described it as "yellow, with a picture of a girl on a bicycle" but i couldn't find anything that matched the description. i ended up calling her to ask if it was in a bag or a box, she walked me through the store to tell me where to find it, turns out i was standing right in front of it, though somebody had flipped the box over so i didn't see the bicycling girl (actually she's on a scooter).

my sister stopped by the vet to get some drugs for hailey before finally dropping me off. i gave her a fish ice cream sandwich while i took 2 packages of cookies.

i felt a little motion sick while i was at my sister's godmother's apartment. i think it was just because i didn't have anything to eat today. when i finally made it back home by 2:30pm, i made myself a matcha latte. it was my first time using the whole foods matcha, i couldn't really tell a difference from my previous matcha, so that's a good sign. i think whole foods groceries are expensive, but you can't beat them in terms of quality (as well as it should be, since you're paying premium price).

i ended up cancelling my sister's godmother's tv stand from wayfair. she needs to properly measure her living room space before getting anymore furniture because i'm afraid she doesn't have the space for everything (table, HDTV, tv stand, sofa). i was afraid wayfair wouldn't let me cancel the order because it'd already been updated on their website as delivered, but they were pretty cool about it, it seems like it happens often enough that it's fairly routine to cancel a disappeared delivery.

i started making dinner around 8pm, some korean rice cakes. first step was to make the seaweed broth, which requires 15 minutes of simmering. while i waited, i split apart 3 potted buttercup squashes that had double seedlings. i should've done this a long time ago, but only got more potting soil yesterday. the seedlings that i removed might not too well since the roots were damaged during the removal, but if they surprise we'll have some bonus squashes.

i had some leftover frozen rice cakes as well a container of leftover frozen tofu. i left them cooking in the spicy tteokbokki sauce while i took care of the grow closet, watering some gravel trays as well as potted seedlings.

it was nearly 9pm before i finally ate. the rice cakes was delicious as always, the sauce a little soupy because i simmered them with the lid one so it wasn't able to reduce and thicken. i had dinner while watching legend of the seeker, the 2008 syndicated fantasy series that lasted 2 seasons. for a show this old, the quality is amazingly good, because they had the foresight of shooting it entirely in HD.

later in the evening i finally tried one of the brown sugar boba fish ice cream sandwiches. maureen had asked me to do a reaction video, so i spent a lot of time in the kitchen setting up my camera, my light, and my microphone. i used my external zoom mic, but because i had it attached to the top of the camera, it picked up the autofocusing vibration sounds of my 28mm lens, which was pretty loud; next time i should have the mic separate, then add the external audio in post-production, something i've never done before. as for ice cream sandwich, it was delicious. the bobas were a bit hard, not as soft as real bobas, more like gelatin, but i think that's because of the frozen nature of the ingredients. but from now on i will eat nothing but brown sugar boba flavored ice cream sandwiches, i can't go back to normal ice cream sandwiches.