my mother called me this morning, said the cafe internet was down, asked me to fix it. the cafe internet seems to be go down at least once day for the past 2 weeks for some reason. hopefully this is a problem comcast knows about and will fix soon. it wouldn't be a big deal except we can't receive any online order notifications when the internet is down. so i was asked to monitor any incoming orders, which i can do because i get an e-mail notification per order. fortunately i didn't have to monitor for very long, because the cafe internet soon went back up.
after eating some pizza rolls for lunch, i met up with bruce and jack at 12:30pm for a day of middlesex fells naturing. i brought my 18-200mm lens, my wide angle, and my macro. i also had my 3D camera and i brought along my drone too. i had some hot green jasmine tea in a tumbler and wore my fleece jacket, even though temperatures were in the lower 60's. there wasn't a cloud in the sky, just blue and sunny.
i was navigating my i picked the wrong middlesex fells entrance and google map kept trying to make us drive in a direction that felt wrong. we ended up on the southern tip of the fells around 1pm. i've been to this entrance before (with LSH) but not jack or bruce. it was jack's first time at the fells as well.
our plan was to walk north and possibly get to the sheepfold pasture. we walked up quarry road path, but seemed to veer off from the trail and walk closer and closer to highway. we then decided to walk west, maybe find a path that would allow us to continue north. there were major trails, more like interconnecting side trails, and as such, were not very well managed or marked, so we got a bit lost. fortunately our phone gps gave us very precise location information, so we could always tell if we were off the path.
one cool thing i found that i'd never seen before was a green scarab beetle. i thought it was a carpenter bee at first because of its lazy flying. when i landed on the ground, i realized it was a beetle and grabbed it before it could fly away. i showed jack and bruce, it was pretty strong, tried to burrow through the cracks of my fingers.
another cool thing i saw (which i only identified later when i got back home) were leaves from a bigtooth aspen. the leaves were semi-circular and toothed, and came in pale yellow, yellow, and red colors. because of their flat leaf stems, the leaves shake in the wind and create a noise.
we ended up crossing the red cross path and making our way to the skyline trail. we then followed the skyline trail southeast until we got back to the parking area.
at one point at an isolated summit on the skyline trail, i asked bruce and jack if they wanted a demonstration of the drone in action. i quickly set it up and launched the drone into the air. i didn't think i'd get very high since the fells in directly within the flight path from logan airport, but it allowed me to reach 400ft without any fuss.
since it rained so much last night, i was hopefully to see a lot of mushrooms. it was very disappointing though, we only saw one group of mushrooms poking out from the leaf litter. maybe it's just too cold for mushrooms, despite the abundance of rain we've had for the past few days.
we made it back to civilization (cambridge) by about 3pm. i grabbed my things and got ready to leave for belmont. i bumped into jeff. i asked him about his big day tomorrow, finally moving out. he said they decided to leave on saturday instead. i asked him about their old minivan, which he originally told me was either going to sell or donate. he said they were going to keep it bit longer, and drive it back to san francisco on an epic cross country trip across the southern US. they plan on getting an electric car for their next vehicle, but there's a 7-8 months wait list, so they decided to hold on to their minivan a while longer. he revealed that his boston biotech job turned out to be a bust, and the company gave him a generous severance package, which he'd been using to basically just vacation here in boston for the past 3 months. they're driving down to DC to visit their daughter, then visit asheville, before cutting through texas, to los angeles, and up to san francisco. jeff said he'd be back in december to start a new job in central square, and rent out a smaller apartment since it's just himself. he also spoke with steve and paul and would be interested in moving back upstairs again next summer.
i got to my parents' place around 3:40pm. i was there for one purpose: to bring in the remaining houseplants so they don't freeze to death over the next few nights where the temperatures will drop into the lower 30's. i managed to move everything except for the water reeds; i put a plastic bag over it instead, with hopes of keeping it warm until i can move it this weekend. while i was there, i also watered the plants with mosquito-bit water.
returning home, i stopped by the cafe around 4:40pm. my 2nd aunt and taiwanese aunt were both there. with my mother, they were all sorting through the bag of yarn i found yesterday. i was going to ask my mother if there were any special plans with my taiwanese aunt for tomorrow, but decided to ask her another time. my 2nd aunt told me she finally booked her dentist appointment, which won't be until after thanksgiving.
i tried the leksands knekke crackers frances gave me. i had them before but forgot what they taste like. i made a video of it, in case she wanted to show her kids. the name translates to "crispbeard," and they're like a crispy dry cracker. the package that i opened were more toasted, and reminded me of pizza crust, so i started calling them "pizza crust crackers." i ate them with some jarlsberg cheese which i bought a few weeks ago from market basket. hard to discribe what jarlsberg tastes like, it's very dense, with a mild sweetness.
for dinner i ate the instant bowl of chicken ribs ramen that my cousin brought from taiwan that she was going to eat at some point but decided to give it to me instead. it was okay, the only treat being that this was authentic taiwanese instant noodles. it wasn't quite enough, and i ate some more crispbeard with jarlsberg cheese, along with an asian pear.
a bit of breaking news this evening: elon musk finally buys twitter, after initially trying to back out of the deal. this is probably not going to go well. seems like he originally said he was going to buy it just to troll people, but now it's finally happened. i had the same feeling the day trump became president.
i spent the rest of the night clearing off enough space from my computer to download the 40GB of photos i had on my camera memory card.