it was a supply run monday. first stop was restaurant depot, to stock up on takeout containers. i was afraid it'd be busy like that time we went in mid-april when businesses were all starting to remerge from their pandemic hibernation and restaurant depot was ground zero for nearly every single restaurant coming to restock their supplies. it was much more subdued this time around, judging from what little cars were in the parking lot.
next we went to the chelsea market basket, their flagship store. the rain seemed to be letting up by that point, with storm clouds seemingly receding in the sky, and even what appeared to be breaks of sunshine. there's so much selection here, i've never been to this market basket and not seen something i'd never seen before. while we were paying it looked awfully grey outside; i thought maybe it was because of tinted windows. but when we went outside, it was raining again. the car was already filled with all the things we bought at restaurant depot, it took some creativity to fill all the market basket supplies.
then we went to the everett costco. we were just at the waltham costco yesterday, but came to the everett chain in search of brown sugar boba popsicles. unfortunately they were all sold out - just like in waltham. they also didn't have the fish ice cream sandwich. we didn't leave empty-handed though, my mother found the gluten-free noodles my sister wanted, i stocked up on drano, and my father bought two bottles of 56% alcohol erguotou baijiu plus a large bottle of kirkland-brand canadian blended whiskey. so the trip wasn't a total loss, even though we didn't find the popsicles.
with rain continuing to fall, we made one last stop, to bianco & sons sausage in medford, to buy some chinese sausages. my mother asked for the garlic version but they only had one version (non-garlic). she also noticed the price had increased, and she asked the cashier, who informed that as of today all the prices had gone up. a 5lbs. box of chinese sausages normally would be $20 but now sells for $22.
with so much many supplies, we stopped at the cafe around 1:15pm to drop them off. my father accidentally locked the doors to the car then left the key inside, so we couldn't get into the vehicle. i had to call my sister who came out to give me a ride back to belmont to grab the spare key then return to the cafe to unlock the car doors. i got back by 1:35pm, we unpacked, then finally left by 2pm.
we had lunch, a combination of market basket chicken wings, roast beef sub, fried haddock sandwich, and a container of azuma calamari salad we picked up yesterday from costco. the salad wasn't bad, it didn't taste like squid, more like chicken to be honest.
soon afterwards my godmother stopped by to drop off some food items in honor of duanwu festival which was today. normally my mother would've made some zongzi but this year she decided to skip it, although i told her i could make my own after watching some youtube videos and consulting online. she gave my father a large bottle of johnny walker whiskey (so much alcohol in the house) and gave me a package of smoked duck from mulan. i was a little confused, she said it was because i love smoked duck, but it's actually my mother who likes the duck. before my godmother left, my mother finally came out of the bathroom to say hello. we gave my godmother the non-stick granite stone 4.5qt pan she bought for weiwei.
i spent some time in the backyard taking photos with a combination of fuji 3D camera, google pixel 3XL phone, and my dSLR. i only went back inside when it began to rain again. since it'd be raining again tomorrow, i didn't bother reapplying the diatomaceous earth powder, i'll do that wednesday.
a downy woodpecker was drumming on the wooden siding of our backyard neighbor's garage. all the cactuses seem to be forming new buds from where my father pruned the overgrown "branches" last weekend. judging from the amount of precipitation in empty buckets, it rained about a centimeter.
i took some higher quality images of the red milkweed beetle using the dSLR. i even picked it up off the milkweed (pretty docile) to see if i could hear it squealing (didn't hear anything). i found a single shed belle of india jasmine blossom. kind of weird, but i don't remember it flowering during the winter, only the smaller regular jasmine blossoms. but this is a good sign, the belle of india is much more fragrant and the flowers stay on the plant longer. later my father came out and we tied a few more climbing squash plants to bamboo stakes. there's a handful of female squash flowers ready to open tomorrow, but just a single male flower. my father said he'll try to manually pollinate them in the morning.
my sister came to the house around 5pm, lured with the invitation of free food. my mother decided we'd be ordering takeout for dinner from joyful garden in the watertown mall. after deciding what we wanted to get, my mother called them at 5:30pm and my sister went to go pick up the food by 6pm. it was only a month ago that we got joyful garden takeout (for mother's day), and we ordered pretty much the same thing this time around, minus the fried porkchops, which are too sweet (mulan has better porkchops).
there was much food, we had a ton of leftover. but i only took home the remaining market basket chicken wings. my sister ended up giving me a ride back to cambridge.
i found out from my mother that my sister upgraded her phone, from an iphone 7 to an iphone 12. that's explain why i saw an iphone recharging at her place when i stopped by to feed hailey. she wasn't using it anymore so i asked if i could use it for my drone flying. 
so she brought it over to my parents' place when she came over. i made sure she'd transferred everything before wiping the old iphone 7. her new iphone 12 seemed like the same size as her old phone, but the iphone 12 has a screen that fits the entire screen with no home button, while the iphone 7 still had the bands above and below. the screen on the iphone 7 is only 4.7 inches, with a resolution of 1334x750px. it's a bit small, but if i can using the DJI fly app without crashing, it'd be worth it. i remember reading something on one of those drone forums that said the iOS version of the DJI fly app is more stable. i can't wait to take it for a test flight, maybe on wednesday. if it works (stable), my mother is looking to inherit my asus tablet.
i installed the DJI fly app on the iphone. one thing i noticed right away was the warning zone actually showed my location down to a street address. i never saw this before on the android version. otherwise everything looks to be the same. something else i noticed a few days ago that i saw again today: 
a 7-1/2 mile diameter flight restrict warning emanating from boston. first time i saw it i thought maybe a dignitary was visiting the city, hence the flight restriction. but when i saw it again today, i clicked on it to get more info, and it said "BOS vs TOR" as the reason. it took a while for me to figure out it was because of a baseball game down at fenway. the flight restriction is fairly large for such a localized event, nearly stretching all the way to my parents' place. i might've crossed into restricted space the last time i flew, because i remember it was giving me a 2 minute countdown warning. i backed out of it before anything could happen.
when my sister originally got this iphone 7, she maxxed out the storage so it has 128GB of memory, so i don't have to worry about running out of space. i also felt some nostalgia using an iphone again. i haven't used one since i migrated to the pixel 3XL, and the last one i had was also a hand-me-down from my sister, an iphone 5s. the iphone 7 seems to have the same screen but the phone is flatter, the 5s is a bit thick. i'd still prefer a larger screen (for these old eyes). my hope is one day an alternative android fly app will be made for the DJI mini 2. i heard about litchi ($25) but it currently doesn't support the mini 2; they're waiting for DJI to release the SDK, hopefully sometime in 2021.
an amazon package arrived for me today. i couldn't figure out what it was since i don't remember buying anything from amazon. 
turns out it's the replacement screen protector for the ASUS tablet, the ones i managed to get them to send me using the lifetime warranty. i didn't have time to apply the new screen tonight, i'll do it tomorrow. i also need to replace the glass screen protector on my pixel 3XL, i managed to crack the screen some more today, not sure how i did it.