my parents arrived a bit before 10am for a everett-malden-medford-somerville supply run, after i just finished shoveling the sidewalk. the snow that fell overnight was the wet slushy kind, which was easy to clean. it continued snowing throughout the day, just flurries, to add some wintery drama.

costco as usual was our first stop. last time we were at the everett store, it was so crowded we parked at the far end of the large parking lot. i wasn't sure what to expect today, especially since it was martin luther king jr. day, so people had the day off. my fears were unfounded, as it was the least busiest costco i've been to in a long time. maybe the snow made people stay home instead. we parked within just a handful of cars to the entrance.

one of the most important things we needed to get at costco were eggs. you might've heard there's an egg shortage (due to the avian flu, something that's not at all covered on the news, even though it affects everyone), so egg prices are on the rise. costco sets egg purchase limits of 2 per customer. that's not a big deal when they sell them in 5-dozen packs, but due to the shortage, they now only sell 2-dozen packs. as an example, last week alone the cafe used about 40 eggs. 4 dozen eggs will only last us about a week. so we gamed the system by having my father buy 2 packs of eggs first, drop them off in the car, then come back again to buy 2 more packs. that gave us enough eggs to last 2 weeks.

we can also buy eggs in even more bulk from the restaurant depot. for the same price however, the eggs are smaller; they do sell larger eggs but more expensive. so until the egg supply chain can get back to normal production (something i doubt will happen anytime soon, as the egg shortage has been ongoing for almost a year now), we have to play these games in order to buy our eggs.

after costco we went to the nearby total wines. i went in alone while my parents stayed in the car and ate their costco hot dogs. my mother came inside a bit later. i was there in search of my wild turkey 101, which my father had finished a few weeks ago. i just like having it in the house. took me a while to find, seems to be a popular bourbon, and they changed the label to make the brand turkey less conspicuous. i also looked for plum wine but they didn't have a good selection, nor chinese baijiu. my mother was impressed with their selection of mini liquors.

originally we were supposed to go to the chelsea market basket, but it's kind of a haul to get there, so we opted for the somerville market basket instead. in the meantime, we turned around and stopped at the malden 88 to get some asian ingredients for the chinese new year dinner my parents are hosting this saturday. it was slightly more crowded that a typically monday, a lot of chinese shoppers buying food for new year celebrations as well i imagine. i noticed the store did something shady: typically for holidays supermarkets have sales on popular items; malden 88 had sales as well, but the sale prices were actually more expensive than before, with a lot of $8.88 price tags symbolic of prosperity, but apparently only for the store. malden 88 also don't offer free bags but they do have plenty of empty boxes, so that's what we used to haul our groceries.

we then went to bianco & sons to restock our chinese sausage supply.

from there we went to the medford ocean state job lot. they had a sale on walnuts and my father picked up a few packages to make his candied walnut recipe. my mother also grabbed some yarn.

then we went to aldi. the flurries were at their worst during this time (12:30pm), snow swirling everywhere, but thankfully nothing really sticking except on grassy surfaces and parked cars. aldi has the best price in produce, particularly scallions and baby cucumbers. they're so cheap it's worth take a side trip just to get those items.

we finally headed back to somerville for our last stop of the day which was market basket. it was surprisingly to see the parking lot so packed. was it snow-related panic buying? but that usually happens before a snowstorm, not when it's actually happening. we lucked out and found a great parking spot right next to the bike stand. the place was crowded but i'm so used to it by now i find it sort of calming. here my parents stocked up on meats: hams, ground pork, and chicken portions. after we got out, i went to the nearby indian store and got some white ground pepper: a little packet cost $6. it seemed really expensive and my mother scolded me for it but cafe is all out and we forgot to get it at malden 88 earlier (foodpak didn't have it).

we left market basket a bit after 2pm. the snow by this point had completely stopped. we went to the cafe to drop off the supplies, which took 30 minutes. luckily we took the bigger honda vehicle today, our toyota sedan wouldn't have been able to fit all the stuff we bought from the 6 stores we visited today.

we didn't get back to belmont until almost 3pm. even though today was supposed to be a cafe rest day, we still spent 5+ hours making a supply run.

our day wasn't quite over yet. my parents didn't clear the sidewalk this morning so my father and i quickly shoveled the front of the house before moving onto the back. the snow had covered our solar panels: the panels on the main roof had fallen off by 50%, but the panels on the sunroom were completely covered. i spent 20 minutes clear the snow off the panels with the extensible foam snow rake. my hands were freezing, my gloves completely soaked. the rest of my body felt warm though, warm enough to strip off my jacket (jacket also made it hard to manuever). i also filled the birdfeeder, which was emptied of sunflower seeds.

my father grilled some drumsticks on the barbecue. winter grilling is perfectly doable, but watch out for cold weather, as the ambient temperature can quickly lower the internal temperature of the barbecue if you're not careful. the drumsticks had been marinated in some salt and spices, and we slathered them with thai sweet chili sauce before taking them off the grill. they were good, but i think we charred them a bit. i ended up eating 3 drumsticks.

when dinner rolled around a few hours later, i wasn't very hungry. my father made some corn & egg drop soup with leftover chicken broth, i had two bowls. i did also eat one more drumstick.

my father gave me a ride back to cambridge. my adidas track suit jacket was waiting on my doorstep. i tried it on immediately. the sleeves were good, but everything else was too tight, from the shoulders to the torso (my pot belly didn't help either). i'm exchanging it for a larger size.

the final football game of the week was between the cowboys and buccaneers. i found myself rooting for tom brady. tampa bay lost, 14-31, in what could potentially be brady's last game. is he going to retire (again) after this season? who knows. with his contract expired, the announcers kept saying there were at least 3 teams who want to hire brady to be their next QB, even if just for one season. my gut feeling is he's going to keep on playing. brady didn't do well this season not so much because he was playing poorly, but more because his team sucked. he still has enough juice left in the proverbial tank for another run.