i called alewife co. this morning to schedule an appointment. i spoke with victor again, he was surprised mike never got back to me even though he told victor he would. it didn't matter, i had a ballpark estimate for the repair, as long as they stayed within those numbers, i could live with it. even if they didn't, alewife co. seemed the cheapest of the limited number of plumbers i managed to contact this month, everyone else charged more per hour and nobody else was willing to do a free estimate. victor even said it was a smart idea to nail down an appointment, that way they had to fix it. he scheduled me in for next wednesday morning. that also happens to be the same day my upstairs neighbors are coming back, but they won't be here until the afternoon, so hopefully it'll get fixed by then.

having successfully booked the appointment, i felt a tremendous weight had been lifted. the plumbing would finally get fixed, and i can finally seal up the wall and repaint my bathroom and go back to normal. i was nervous for the next few hours though, afraid that they'd call me back and cancel the appointment because they couldn't do the job.

for lunch i warmed up a chicken cordon bleu in the oven and ate while watching the wire on HBO max. i moved the motorcycle closer to my house then swept the leaf debris from the sidewalk with a broom and raked some leaves in the alleyway.

i went to star market in the afternoon to grab some clementines on sale as well as boxes of cheez-it crackers. there was a long line so i did some browsing to wait for the line to get smaller. i noticed they have a lot more exotic spices these days, truffle salt and szechuan peppers. szechuan peppers looked especially colorful, but the actual amount of sichuan peppercorn is very small.

it was another grey day, we never once saw the sun, but it wasn't raining. temperature inside the house continued to drop by a few degrees, it was down to 62°F today. it got cold enough i put on some wool socks, then later slipped into a fleece jacket. i could feel the cold in the tip of my nose, like a dog's snout. i even brought out the space heater, ran it in my living room for an hour; it heated up the room briefly before the cold robbed it of warmth. but i know the pattern, it's like this every fall: first i use the space heater for a few days, but eventually the room temperature drops into the 50's and that's when i turn on the heat for the season.

for dinner i warmed up the last of my leftover rice porridge. afterwards i had 3 clementines, they were sweet, i was afraid they might be sour. i watched the thursday night football game between the packers-cardinals. arizona is the only undefeated team remaining at 7-0, while green bay only lost once this season with 6-1. the game was close and it looked like the cardinals were going to win the game at the end or the very least tie it, but an arizona receiver missed a catch in the end zone that was later snatched by a green bay defender for a game ending interception.