i offered to go with him to porter square at least, but he said it wasn't necessary. that was for the best, because temperature this morning was still in the lower 30's, and i didn't want to step outside if i didn't have to. after he left i saw him standing outside taking a selfie of himself with the house. he was hauling his large suitcase (stuffed with asian staples), a backpack, and a plastic bag with a bag of rice inside.
DC left behind two packages of ramen, a bag of tapioca flour, a disc of palm sugar, a bottle of shao xing cooking wine, 2 jars of thai soup base, and a 2023 chinese calendar (the super market must've given it to him as a gift for buying over $100). he texted me when he was on the subway, and later in the early evening (4pm) when he finally arrived in charlottesville.
it was still early, i could've gone back to bed, but instead i enjoyed my first taste of solitary living in two weeks, retroactively filling in some old blog posts. i used the bathroom, took a shower, then left for belmont around 11:30am. i packed my motorcycle handlebar mitts for my return trip home.
temperature was 40 degrees by that point, made colder by the very strong winds. for once i was glad to be traveling by motorcycle, as the heavier vehicle prevented me from getting blown to the side of the road, which would've definitely happened had i been bicycling. on more than one occasion the wind was so strong, 
i had to crane my neck to avoid it, otherwise so much wind was blowing in my face that i couldn't breathe.
my mother made some wonton soup for me for lunch, otherwise she spent the rest of the day in the bedroom watching korean dramas on the imac.
my father and i were busy taking care of our indoor plants. i moved some of them from the sunroom down into the basement after clearing out some space in the grow room. the sunroom gets very warm during the day, but near freezing at night. it's cold enough that i wouldn't want to be there when it gets dark, so the plants must not like it either, even though they seemed to be doing fine so far. but tonight it's going to hit the 20's, the coldest night so far this season.
all that's left in the sunroom are a bunch of christmas cactuses, a pruned wintering lantana, and two pruned lemon verbana plants. i read the cactuses don't like temperature below 50 degrees and they definitely will not survive a freeze. 
i'd like to move them to someplace warmer, but they still have a lot of fungus gnats in the untreated soil. so i sprinkled some systemic pesticide granules, replaced the yellow sticky traps, then watered them with Bti-infused water. i'm hoping this 3-prong approach will kill the gnats for good. i'll move these remaining plants to the basement tomorrow, which have been remarkably free of fungus gnats (maybe because of the systemic insecticides i've been using).
around 3pm we left for the mt.auburn star market to do some thanksgiving shopping. they had a sale on turkey: 97¢/lbs. for fresh, 47¢/lb. for frozen. the only catch was you needed to by an additional $35+ worth of groceries. we ended up getting a 21 lbs. frozen turkey that only cost us $10. we could've shopped there longer, but my mother had to use the bathroom, so we hurried and pay, ending up spending $100.
for dinner we had the "ning-chi spicy fermented bean curd" but the chinese name said it was mala stinky tofu. it definitely smelled stinky, but we added to much vegetable ingredients which diluted the flavor. the napa cabbage ended up soaking all the spicy oils. my father said if we added some more salt it'd bring out the flavor. i'm willing to try this packaged stew again, but with less added ingredients next time.
i left soon after dinner, since the later i stayed, the colder it'd get. it was already 33 degrees by the time i left belmont. with the handlebar mitts however, i felt pretty warm. unfortunately i noticed the left blinker light wasn't working. when i moved the toggle to the left, the left lights would go out. the cold weather must've gummed up the switch, which needs a cleaning to make it work better. after i got back home, i tested the switch without the handlebar mitt, and it worked again.
after a shower, i settled in for an evening of sunday night football. there was a chiefs-chargers game, i was rooting for the chargers. they would've won too, but with about a minute left in the game, mahomes and friends advanced the ball and ended up scoring a touchdown to win the game for kansas city. there was also a jets-patriots game earlier this afternoon. an ugly game all around, the scored tied at 3-3 with about 30 seconds to go in regulation. jets punted the ball in a routine play, but marcus jones caught it and returned it for a touchdown. basically the game was won entirely by the defense, both on the defensive end and offensive end. it's the 14 consecutive victory against the jets.