we couldn't have imagined what awaited us at the everett costco. costco gets pretty busy on mondays: all the people who avoided the weekend thinking it'd be too crowded comes on monday, thereby making mondays crowded as well. but today was a perfect storm of events: after the holidays so a lot of people coming to return things; since new year's day was on a sunday, today was the observed day so a lot of workers had the day off; and just the usual monday crowd amplified.
we knew it was bad before even setting foot inside of costco because the parking lot was nearly full. it's a big parking lot, and typically only 1/3 is full, 1/2 on a busy day. but the lot was packed, all the way to the edge that border's mystic river. seagulls which normally use the empty portion of the parking lot as a place to congregate had nowhere to go and were just swarming the skies. we ended up parking by the river, the farthest you can possibly park.
there was another problem: not enough shopping carts. fortunately we got lucky and grabbed an abandoned cart before going inside, but by the entrance were hapless customers looking utterly confused over their inability to get a cart.
my mother actually had some clothes she wanted to return, but the return line was so long it snaked outside of the store so she wisely decided to return them some other time.
inside was super crowded. only 10% of the customers were masked. my parents both wore their masks while i went maskless. if there was ever a super spreader event, this would probably be it. it was just a crazy congestion of shopping carts, people going the wrong way, or parked in the aisles blocking others from getting by. there was no time for casual browsing, we grabbed what we needed and went to check out.
check out? the line was so line, it doubled on itself, and continued expanding, so it was wrapped along one side of the store. i'd never seen a line that long ever at costco. to their credit though, they had "traffic directors" near the checkout aisles, directing customers to various checkouts, and the line went pretty fast. i think we were only in line for a few minutes. i overheard one lady manning a sample cart saying she'd never seen a monday so busy before. my mother wanted to get a hot dog but when she saw the crowd of people waiting for their food orders, she decided otherwise.
we left costco a bit after 12:20pm. my mother asked to go to michael's to get some white yarn, and also to look for clip-on earring backs. they didn't have any of the earring accessories at this store (after i looked it up on their website). i used a $5 off coupon that michael's sent to me a few days ago.
i also really wanted to go to total wine & beer but we didn't have time, as we still had many stops left to visit.
next destination was restaurant depot (everett). we were afraid this place would be just as crowded as costco, but it was the complete opposite. there was hardly any customers, and most of the people inside were workers restocking the shelves, or basically just being bored since there were no customers. since we got eggs at costco (5 dozen for $14, 2 packs per customer), we didn't need to get them at restaurant depot. they had fresh inventory of cardboard food boxes and paper takeout bags. i was going to order them online (cheaper, but the cost of shipping offsets any savings), but glad i didn't since were managed to buy them here. we grabbed two cases of food boxes and 3 bundles of takeout bags.
we left restaurant depot by 1pm, and went to the chelsea market basket next door. market basket is always busy and today was no different, except it must've been super busy, because just like at costco, there were no shopping carts. i had to go outside and find out from the parking lot. a parking attendant echoed the words of the costco lady, he'd never seen a monday so busy before. in hindsight, i guess it was pretty crazy at market basket, especially the produce aisles. not everyone can shop at costco (you need to pay for a membership), but everyone can go to market basket. i think i'm just used to insane crowds from shopping at the somerville market basket all the time.
we were done with market basket by 1:45pm. we got back onto the revere beach parkway and went to the super 88 asian supermarket in malden. we weren't sure what to expect, i personally thought it'd be busy like market basket, but it wasn't too crowded. we were here for only 20 minutes, just to gather some additional asian supplies we couldn't find at any of the previous stores. we left by 2:20pm.
we were still missing a few things so on our way back we decided to take a detour to aldi's. aldi's has amazingly cheap produce, baby cucumbers for $1.29 (they're $3.99 at market basket), bags of scallions for only 79¢ (they're $1.49 at market basket, 
and a very thin bundle). before we went inside, we went to the lowe's outlet store next door first, to check out some cheap refrigerators for the cafe. they had many different models, all discounted due to cosmetic damages. if you don't care that your major appliance has a few dents or scrapes, you can find some really nice bargains.
like at market basket, the produce section at aldi's was a mess. somebody had spilled some sort of fruit on the floor and people had trampled over them to the point where the floor around the produce were all sticky and gross. besides cheap produce, my parents were surprised by how inexpensive their meats were. we finished shopping at aldi's at 3pm and finally made our way back to cambridge.
we cut through school street on somerville and got a chance to see the new MBTA station. we stopped at the cafe around 3:30pm to drop off the supplies, 
before returning to belmont. by that point it was almost 4pm and none of us had anything to eat yet all day. fortunately we had a lot of leftovers from yesterday, and my father also had some mung bean porridge keeping warm in the mini pressure cooker, as well as cooking up some sesame-filling fried pancakes we got from super 88.
it looked like there might be a brilliant sunset based on the amount of dramatic clouds in the sky, so i went out to the backyard and sent my drone into the sky. but be something to do with the temperature drop, because the clouds all dissipated as soon as the sun started to set. a few times my DJI fly app crashed on the samsung 9+, not sure the reason. a crash is better than a freeze, which was what used to happen when i used my pixel 3XL to fly the drone. i've since heard that DJI finally fixed their pixel incompatibility issues and the 3XL would work fine now. i still use the 9+ just because i have it plus it has 128GB worth of storage space.
so last night i discovered i might need an adapter to connect the 1/2" PVC pipe of my aeroponics manifold to the pump. but i ran a quick test in the bathtub, inserting the barbed adapter into the 1/2" PVC. it goes in about 1/2" and fits pretty snugly. 
the pump seems to be able to pump water through the PVC with this simple setup, and i couldn't really tell if water was leaking out from the interface between the barbed insert and the PVC pipe. nevertheless, i still went online tonight (supplyhouse.com) and ordered some 3/8" x 1/2" PVC SCH 40 male x socket adapters (78¢ + $5 shipping). they should arrive by thursday. and the only reason i have to do this is because my vivosun 400gph pump uses a 3/8" adapter and not a more universal 1/2" adapter (otherwise i could've bought an adapter at home depot for 75¢). if i had to do it again, i'd buy a different pump.
we also made another temu order. the $30 off $130+ purchase deal had last night had disappeared. it was now $40 off of $150+ purchase. i feel like temu is using some kind of algorithm to slowly pull you into buying more and more things from them. instead, i created a new account using my google e-mail (and installing the temu app on my phone). as a new app customer, i was able to score a $30 off $100+ order coupon. i them spent some time repopulating my shopping cart with all the items previously in my father's cart. this is probably our last temu purchase for a while.
when evening came by i thought we were having dinner but my mother said the meal we ate earlier was our dinner. in that case i started getting ready to go home, probably needed to supplement my meal with some at-home ramen. but my father grilled a salmon steak and my mother mixed up a caesar salad from a kit she got from aldi's. i finally left around 7:20pm.
after a shower, i figured it'd be a quiet night of monday night football, a game between the bills (12-3) and bengals (11-4). both teams are heading to the playoffs, with buffalo having already won the division. the bills are also within striking distance of potentially becoming the number one seed, depending on what happens to the kansas city chiefs (13-3). i was naturally rooting for the bengals, a bills loss meant their game against the patriots next sunday would be meaningless in terms of playoff ranking, so new england might have a better shot at winning (and clinching a playoff wild card spot).
however in the first quarter, something happened. buffalo safety damar hamlin, after tackling a bengal receiver, got up, then a few seconds later, collapse to the ground. we knew it was serious because the ambulance came onto the field. i'd never seen that before, usually a player is carted off the field by an injury cart (which in itself is sort of weird, to have a sport where you have a dedicated cart that takes injured players off the field). then i heard they were administering CPR. at first i thought nothing of that, because that's what ambulances do, right? but it took me a second to realize that's very abnormal to administer CPR on a player. CPR is only done when the victim isn't breathing. the game stopped as emergency workers tended to hamlin. the sports newscasters were left speechless, and kept cutting to commercials that were loud and cheerful, the opposite of what was happening on the field.
finally it looked like they might restart the game after hamlin was taken away by ambulance. but the coaches of the two teams got together, and all the players left the field as the game was temporarily suspended. after a while it became official: there would be no game tonight.
so i looked up on google to see if a player of any sport has ever died while playing. to my surprise, that's actually happened before in the NFL, chuck hughes of the detroit lions, died in a game against the chicago bears. he had an undiagnosed heart condition. that game wasn't suspended, they continued playing. expect to hear a lot about chuck hughes if hamlin ends up dying from his condition. i find it kind of weird, that football is supposed to be this super macho sports, but when a fellow player gets injured and it looks pretty serious, his teammates are on the sidelines crying and they can't play anymore because they're too distraught. i know it sounds kind of heartless, but these are all giant muscle guys who crash into each other as their profession. are players today just too soft compared to players from the 70's?
last night i changed my bedsheet right before bed. my old sheet had a big rip in the middle, and i was just too lazy to change it out. i try to make my bed in the morning after waking up, but a lot of times it's just haphazardly made. i make it again before bed though, just so i can feel like i'm sleeping in a newly made bed. it's basically just throwing the comforters so it's not all crumbled and fluffing up the pillows, nothing too complicated.