i had to run an hour earlier. the advantage of running earlier is the temperature is cooler, but already it was approaching the 80's, and today was a humid day. i ran into victor who chatted me with for about 15 minutes. i always feel like quitting when i run around the river but so far i haven't, other than those first few runs when i was trying to get my bearing. i still haven't been able to run a continuous loop around the river - i stop to walk across the two bridges - but i'm fine with that. coming back, i bumped into susan and we chatted for about 10 minutes before i finally came home.
i had enough time to take a shower before riding my motorcycle to the porter square star market to pick up some more boneless chicken thighs on sale. once again i didn't get the sales price. when i complained to the guy manning the self-checking stations, he gave me a $8 discount, but later when i did the math, it still wasn't the sales price. i can't even remember the number of times star market has screwed me over regarding prices. someone should really investigate why they make it so difficult.
because of the star market drama, i didn't make it to the cafe until 11:15am. i replaced the prefilter on the honeywell HPA300 with a brand new one. around 1pm during a busy period at the cafe, i got a call from michael saying he was having both computer and printer issues. i told him i wouldn't be able to get away until 4pm. around 2pm it rained for a brief period, enough to get some outside patio chairs wet. as quickly as it started, it just as quickly dried up, so about an hour later, you wouldn't even have known it rained. i managed to leave the cafe by 3pm, first going home to switch to my bicycle before riding down to harvard square to see michael.
for some reason the driver for his HP laserjet P1102W printer was missing. i downloaded the latest driver software from the HP website, but it wouldn't run in the latest version of monterey. i did finally find an older version of the driver installer that did work, and managed to install something, but when i looked for what i just installed, i couldn't find it. not sure if this fixed the printer issue, but instead of hitting the wifi connect button, i turned the printer off and on, and after that the macbook was able to see the printer again. the more pressing issue was outlook wouldn't run. not only did it contain the client list, but a database of all their prescription info. outlook simply wouldn't run under the parallel software. after fiddling with it i discovered it was because the mail data files were corrupt. fortunately michael had a time machine backup from june, and i was able to restore those files. he did however lose all his data from the past month, but fortunately he had hard copies that he could manually input back into the database.
with that all of michael's computer issues were fixed. he wanted to pay me but i wouldn't accept. so he suggested he take me out to dinner one night next week, which i was more amiable to. he said i should pick the restaurant, i told him we could eat at what da chick in watertown (i've only gotten takeouts there, never eaten there).
i got back home by 4:30pm. i grabbed the boxed dyson vacuum and walked down to the UPS store on somerville avenue to return it. coming back, i wanted to check out star market to see if they had anymore chicken thighs on sale, but a kid standing outside (looked like he might be an employee) told me the supermarket was closed because of an electrical fire. they were in the process of throwing out all the perishable foods and he said it might be closed for a while until they repaired the damage.
i fell asleep on the couch around 6:30pm and didn't wake up until 2 hours later. groggily i went to the kitchen and made dinner - tortellinis with a simple readymade jarred pasta sauce. it rained again a bit more later in the evening. i only knew this because of the news, because it wasn't raining hard enough that i could hear it. maybe enough to wet the sidewalks and create a few puddles, but we need even more than this is. luckily it might rain again tomorrow night.