had a lot of things i wanted to do today but didn't get to too many of them. for instance, cleaning the basement, or refinishing my rear french door. after a few slices of pound cake for lunch, i contacted both alewife co. and distinct plumbing. it's been nearly 2 weeks and mike from alewife co. still haven't sent me an estimate yet, so either he doesn't want the job or he's simply too busy. distinct plumbing did text me back, said he had time saturday to take a look at my plumbing, but didn't set any specific time. i need to find more plumbers because so far the ones i've contacted have been very unreliable in getting back to me.

in the afternoon i went to the porter square post office to drop off the clark shoes my mother wanted to return. i then went to the nearby star market to get some boneless chicken thighs on sale ($1.77/lbs). these were cafe supplies but i forgot to use the company card.

i went to the cafe to drop off the chicken. i left with another bento box for dinner.

back at home i went to the beacon street star market across the street to see if they had chicken thighs. i bought 2 more packages, this time remembering to use the company card. i stopped to gaze at the terrible decision to replace the store sign with one that's just 10% the size of the previous sign. whoever decided this should be fired. to make matters worse, they didn't clean up the wall behind the sign so you can still see the silhouette of the previous sign, making it look even worse.

my godmother went to new york city recently and brought back some goodies. she gave my mother a package of licorice watermelon seeds but my mother can't eat them with her bad teeth so she gave them to me. i tried them: they smell really fragrant, but the seeds are very hard to the point of brittleness, and the flavor itself seem to be only on the shells.

i still have quince jelly from when i made them back in 2010, so who knows how long these grape jelly will last? when i look at them through the light, there seems to be different layers of jelly, like there's a solid chunk in a middle and some solidified at the bottom. i won't know for sure until i open one of the jars.

i reheated the bento box in the evening for dinner. there was a thursday night football game between the bucs and the eagles. i watched that but when it looked like brady was going to win, i switched to the NLDS game between the dodgers and giants. i actually thought it was the NLCS game, so i didn't understand why they had starter max scherzer closing the close game (2-1) or why they were so happy to win. dodgers will face off against the braves on saturday, while the red sox start the ALCS series against the astros tomorrow night.