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before i can give a synopsis of what happened today, i first have to address what happened tonight. i noticed the paint on my bathroom wall near the toilet were bubbling. at first i thought maybe it's due to the humidity, and figured it was nothing serious and would go away on its own. but the more i thought about it, the more concerned i grew. i'd never seen this before in the 19 years i've lived here. i also knew from past experience that when there's bubbling in the paint, it means there's a leak behind the wall.

so i got dressed and went into the basement to check. sure enough, the main soil stack coming from upstairs - that also happens to go behind the wall of my bathroom - was leaking. just a slow leak, but enough to create a puddle. how long it's been going on i can't say, but i do remember smelling a strange wet basement smell coming from my heating vents a few weeks ago that i just attributed to the unusual wet weather we've been having. first thing i did was send an e-mail to the upstairs tenant david, but he never replied back. i then wrote paul and steve to give them a status update and attached a few photos to show them the urgency. in the grand scheme of things it's not a big deal, we'll get it fixed eventually, things go back to normal. but it's things like this that will crawl inside my head, making me anxious, and i won't be able to calm down until it does get fixed.


i woke up early to get ready to do a supply run with my parents. they were supposed to call me, but by 10am while i was getting dressed i noticed their car was already outside and my father peering through the living room window. he asked if i had a cooler (they forgot to bring one), and when i said no, he said they'd run to the cafe and get it before coming back. 15 minutes later they were back and i was ready to go.

there was a little bit of rain this morning, and it would rain intermittently throughout the rest of the day. we first went to the everett costco to get a few things, but more importantly to get more brown sugar boba popsicles. the place was crowded but it was insanely crowded like on some weekend days. they had the boba popsicles in stock.

next we went to restaurant depot to look for takeout containers. everything we wanted, they were all sold out. we'll either have to check methadone mile baifu to see if they have any in stock, or buy them online.

by the time we left restaurant depot by 11:45am, it was pouring rain. originally we were going to visit the chelsea market basket but decided against it and drove back to belmont. the downpour was just a passing band, and once it was over, everything was calm and peaceful again. we made it back to my parents' place by 12:20pm.

for lunch we had some leftover barbecued drumsticks from yesterday. drumsticks taste better a day later, the chicken isn't so soggy and the marinade and the smoked-flavor seem stronger. we also tried some of the frozen taiyaki ice cream we bought from costco. given the size of the box and how it said there were 30 pieces, each taiyaki must've been pretty small. while we each had a piece, i was reading instructions on the box that said to microwave/bake/airfry the taiyaki first. so they're not supposed to be eaten frozen! so i microwaved a second batch. they taste like taiwanese egg cakes stuffed with a sweet custard filling. they were also a bit soggy, maybe we have to wait for them to dry and crisp up before eating.

i was in the backyard taking photos of some of the plants. there was nothing to report that i didn't already see yesterday. i did notice that the long bean flowers aren't entirely ugly: the flowers have a bit of a violet hue to them. the flowers appear closed, don't have that distinctive opened bonnet appearance (like a violet flower) of typical beans.

while i was taking photos of the chinese asters and rudbeckia flowers in the front yard, my mother snuck up on me after finishing her walk. when we went inside, she panicked because one of her wireless earbuds was missing, must've fallen out during her walk. so she went back outside to retrace her steps. 10 minutes later she was back empty-handed. i went out with her again, figuring 2 pairs of eyes better than one. she was trying to remember where it could've fallen out: here she took off her hat, here she was taking photos of some flowers. we'd been walking for nearly 10 minutes when she put her hand in her jacket pocket and fished out the missing earbud. crisis adverted!

my father fried a fish out on the barbecue grill for dinner. it tasted fine, but the final few bits were really fishy for some reason. afterwards i stayed a bit longer than usual watching a youtube travelogue of a chinese man doing a road trip to tibet. even though some of his his behaviors were kind of cringeworthy (negatively critiquing the bad tea in tibet, giving food away from a late night restaurant to a stray dog, trying to do 4-wheel drive maneuvers with just a 2-wheel drive SUV), it was still interesting to watch, and he used multiple techniques, from image-stabilized action cameras, to drone shots, to time lapses.

before i was about to leave, i looked outside in the backyard and saw a large rabbit eating some grass. i went out and chased it to the southwestern corner. i tried to scramble over some chickenwire fencing but rabbits are not good climbers so it bolted down the western side of the house towards the locked gate. i chased after it and it disappeared into the raspberry thicket. by that time my father came out with a bamboo pole, trying to flush out the rabbit. it surprised him when it suddenly bolted out of the raspberries and headed to the southeastern corner of the yard. there was just too many places for a rabbit to hide in that corner. as it was getting late, we decided to leave it alone, come back tomorrow to look for the hole where it managed to get into the backyard.

my father finally gave me a ride back to cambridge around 8pm. we stopped by star market first to get some boneless chicken thighs on sale.