i arrived in belmont around 10:45am, to go on a costco/market basket supply run with my parents. we finally left around 11:30am, and didn't get back until after 2pm, after making a stop at the cafe to drop off the supplies. at costco we bought a large bag (25lbs) of scotts ez seed patch & repair for something like $50. they also started selling david's butter pecan meltaways, which is my father's favorite cookies, so we bought two tins of it. at market basket i got myself some rooibos tea and a few packages of korean ramen. they sold little pots of african violets for $3.50 each and i was tempted to get one, but they weren't in very good shape (broken stems), so i'll look elsewhere for my african violets.

back in belmont my mother boiled some frozen leftover homemade chinese dumplings for lunch. my father tore into one of the meltaway tins immediately afterwards. we also made another batch of baked nachos. these were very soggy this time, a combination of too much ingredients on the chips and possibly contributed by the already soggy salsa. for best nachos, you really need to use a bigger oven, not just a toaster oven.

i went down to the basement grow room to check on hydroponic chinese mustards. i noticed one of the mustards in the mason jars was wilting, the healthier of the two. i removed the paper wrapper and was amazed by the amount of roots that'd grown; it was wilting because it'd used up all the nutrient solution. i ended up mixing a 2L batch of new nutrients and watering all the jars up to the halfway mark, still leaving some roots exposed so they can take in oxygen. i accidentally broke off a leaf and tasted it: crunchy, a slight mustard taste, but not as spicy as the japanese red mustard, with a slightly bitter aftertaste. these hydroponic jars are proof that i can successfully grow plants without soil. the next stage is to build my aeroponic setup, which i almost did today, but once again it didn't happen. maybe next weekend.

my home internet was still down this morning. i kept checking the outage status and my live webcam to check if it's online yet. sometime in the afternoon comcast/xfinity must've finally fixed the issue because i could view all the smart devices in my house again. i contacted xfinity via online chat to cancel the technician appointment for tomorrow. nearly 48 hours of internet downtime, i wonder what happened?

in the late afternoon i went outside to adjust the front lawn sprinkler. instead of horizontal, i placed it vertically on the lawn, to get a larger spray pattern. i turned it off afterwards because rain was forecasted for later tonight. i checked the instructions on the ez seeds we bought, i don't think it's the right one. it's designed more for patch & repair, not for whole lawn reseeding. we'll need to return it.

we had sour and spicy fish stew again for dinner. i left soon after eating, to beat the line of storm showing on the doppler radar. it didn't rain until 8:30pm, it was strong enough that it was beating against my east-facing window, but lasted half an hour at most. later on the news they said 0.3" of rain fell, which is not an insignificant amount, even though the meteorologist made it sound like it wasn't going to rain in boston at all.

i bought a jellas-brand orbital jig saw tonight ($36, but i used reward points to lower it down to $27 after taxes). this is for my year-overdue bathroom remodeling project, to make the cutout in the baseboard and the sheetrock. i also realized i could cut a 45° bevel on the wooden baseboard for the corner. originally i thought i also had to buy a compound miter saw to achieve similar results.

i really have to get this finished within the next few weeks, before the weather turns too cold that i can't paint the bathroom and leave the window open to air our the fumes. in my mind i see the project to completion, but i've been paralyzed with either laziness or indecision, and haven't been able to get started on it, even though it's going to be october soon.

anyway, it was one of the cheapest jigsaws i could find but still had a bunch of features. i liked that it's 6.7A (800W of power), features an LED light (though not a laser guide) and dust collection. it comes with a guide ruler, for making straight cuts, which was the feature i wanted most (with some other name brand jigsaws, you pay extra for the guide). it also comes with an assortment of replacement t-shank blades. basically all the woodworking skills i know i learned from wood shop in middle school. nearly 4 decades later, those are still some valuable skills. i remember we had a band saw (which we called a jig saw) to make special cuts for our various projects. i remember i made a folding tabletop bookcase with teddy bear silhouette book ends, including holes for eyes. it may still exist somewhere in my parents' basement.