because it wasn't overcast, the sunroom had warmed up to the point where my parents had to move the naturally refrigerated food into the fridge to keep cool. i ate the last of the thanksgiving turkey for lunch. my mother carved up what remained of the turkey and used it to make a turkey broth for dinner later.
since i don't much care for college football, the only game worth watching on tv were the world cup matches. today group C and D played. france beat denmark (2-1), australia beat tunisia (1-0), and poland beat saudi arabia (2-0). the last match of the day was probably the one everyone was watching: argentina vs mexico. messi and company were the favorites to win it all this year, but things didn't look good when they lost to saudi arabia. they needed to beat mexico today otherwise face elimination. thankfully the team that should've won did win, and argentina beat mexico 2-0.
i've been checking out amazon regularly to see what kind of black friday weekend deals they were offering. i ended up buying a new used phone, "renewed" as they call it in the parlance. the deal that initially caught my eye was one for a renewed google pixel 5a 5G 6GB/128GB for $190. i've been wanting to upgrade my pixel 3XL - which i bought back in february 2020 - so nearly 3 years old. it's a great phone, i love the camera (just as good as an iphone camera, some say better). however, it only has 64GB of storage, which at the time i thought was a lot, but now is so filled with apps and data that i have to download and clear out my photos a few times a week in order to have space for the phone to work. anyway, i knew my next phone would still be a google pixel, and i already did the research, and determined that the pixel 5a 5G was the phone for me. so when i saw it for just $190, it was ready to buy. but then i looked around some more, and saw that a brand new unlocked pixel 6a 128GB was selling for just $299. so i thought maybe i should get the 6a instead, never bought a new phone before, not since i got my oneplus one many years ago. i kept looking, and saw renewed pixel 6 128GB for $270 and pixel 6 pro 128GB for $385. so for $80 more for what i was prepared to pay for a 5a, i could get the 6 (which is better than the 6a). and for $115 more than what i'd pay for the 6, i could get the 6 pro (best of them all). the only reason i would even consider getting the pro is for the optical zoom lens. but at that price, it was more than 2x the price of the 5a. which led me back to the 5a, and possibly the 6. specs wise they were very much the same, but $80 more for a phone that just came out last october, i thought it was worth it to get the newer phone. so that's how i ended up buying the google pixel 6. it's not due to arrive until next week.
with the load about to be finished, my father and i went down to the basement to watch the LG washer in action. it was about to be finished with rinse mode, after nearly 1-1/2 hours of washing. the way it cleans the laundry using nothing more than sloshing around the water in the tub seems like it wouldn't work but it does. after it finished rinsing, it drained the tub (happy to see our drain hose extension didn't leak) and started the spin cycle, which according to the washer said it'd last for 10 minutes. it started to spin, but at the 8 minute mark it stopped and began to fill the tub with water again, like it was doing another rinse cycle. it also increased the time to 24 minutes. we stayed and watch, and when it drained all the water once again, it started to spin. something did seem like, and after a few minutes of what seemed like strained spinning, it started filling the tub with water again. i manually stopped the cycle. i then manually put the washer into a short spin cycle, 10 minutes. but when it got to the 7-8 minute mark, it tried to fill the tub again.
a bunch of problems were happening all at once. the drain hose takes a convoluted route to get to the sink, and if the washer can't properly drain the water, it'll stop washing. we fixed this by uncoiling the drain hose completely into the sink, no fancy rollercoaster routes. but most likely the issue was a balancing error. we noticed when the washer was spinning, that the washer itself shook a little too violently. the washer most likely sensed it was out of balance, and in order to remedy this, it filled the tub back up and tried to spin the clothes to rebalance the load. unfortunately the balance issue more likely had to do with the machine itself not being properly balanced. using a level, we could see it was balanced side-to-side, but was slightly off-balance front-to-back. my father tilted the washer while i crawled on the floor and turned the screw legs.
after we did these things, i manually made the machine run another short spin cycle. not only did it continue pumping water into the sink, but this time it managed to spin completely without attempting to refill the tub. the washer itself vibrated less as well. when the load finally finished washing, we tossed everything into the dryer and ran a normal cycle. we inspected the towels beforehand, everything looked very clean. one or two towels had heavy stains - one had black grease, another had a scorch mark - the washer did the best it could, but those stains still remained a little bit.
about an hour later it alerted us that the load had finished drying via the app. say what you will about wifi-enabled washer and dryer, but it's kind of nice getting notified when laundry is done. it's definitely not essential, but a nice perk of having a fancy washer dryer combo. anyway, my father and i went down to the basement to check on the load. the towels and tablecloth were completely dry. one thing i noticed is the clothes don't come out of the dry piping hot. i think it runs a cooling cycle where it just tumbles dry without any heat. this step is entirely unnecessary, as we like it when clothes come out of the dryer all hot.
i wanted to do some gardening today, but with all this laundry drama, it was finally close to sunset by the time we were all done with that. looks like i won't be able to do any yard work until monday, since it's going to be rainy tomorrow. just clear the raised beds, plant some garlics, and put the hoses away, possibly clean the garage a bit.
we had turkey broth noodles for dinner. afterwards my father and i were surfing temu.com, trying to see what other cheap items we could buy, after already buying $60 worth of stuff from temu last night (just $40 after a 30% off coupon). i ate a flan before finally leaving around 8pm.
temperature was in the 40's and a little humid. the sky was mostly clear and i could see the stars, but it wasn't all that cold. i kept expecting my signal lights to fail, but ever since i did a deep clean and got the contacts to like-new condition, they haven't failed once. looks like most of my neighbors are already back since i couldn't find good parking. i stashed the bike behind a car on the private way then put the cover over it since it's going to rain tomorrow.
i watched don't worry darling on HBO (free this week on youtube tv), that florence pugh psychological thriller that got a bunch of bad press when director olivia wilde starting date harry styles (one of the actors). it wasn't too bad, and there was a slight scifi element to the storyline (which i won't spoil).
since i was getting a pixel 6, i also went online and got some glass screen protectors and a case. i got the simplest case i could find ($8), from a company called amzpas that only recently started listing on amazon a few days ago.
earlier today i read about a trade-in offer from google where you can upgrade a 128GB pixel 6 for a 128GB pixel 7 for just $20. the deal expires on monday so i didn't think i could qualify for the deal. but i took a look at it again, and i have 30 days to trade-in the pixel 6, so in theory i could still get the offer. seems like a pretty good deal, for $20 more i can get a brand new pixel 7, google's latest phone offering that they only just introduced last month. so now i'm comparing pixel 6 and 7, trying to figure out if i should upgrade. in the meantime, i went onto amazon and cancelled the order of pixel 6 screen protectors and case.