i briefly worked on my bike this morning. i wanted to put it into 5th gear (from 4th gear) but i didn't have time so i just oiled the chain instead.

i went to market basket. it was actually kind of cold today, temperature in the upper 30's lower 40's with a bit of wind. originally i was going to get my 16oz clear cups from target, but realized market basket would also carry them. they sold 50-packs at $3.99, i ended up buying 2 packs. i also got some spicy california roll for lunch. i really should learn how to make sushi, then i can eat all the sushi i want.

while preparing to eat my sushi, i turned on the tv and all the channels had breaking news about the new york grand jury indictment of trump over his hush money case. the stormy daniels case is the least serious of all the pending criminal probes involving trump. i wouldn't expect trump to go to jail because he paid an adult film actress some hush money. but it's just an appetizer of things to come. the georgia election tampering investigation is way more serious. that's more like, "going to jail" kind of crime.

after lunch i went outside to work on the bike again. i put the chain into what i thought was 5th gear and took it for a test ride. red sox opening day was today, and there was supposed to be a flyover of a quartet of F-15C and F-35A jets over boston. i decided the best place to watch would be from prospect hill tower. once i was on the bike, immediately i realized i set the gear wrong. instead of 5th gear, i went the other direction (larger gear), and was now riding in 6th gear, which felt even more like i treading underwater.

there was already a crowd of 2 dozen people on top of prospect hill tower: some construction guys, a few guys in suits, some neighbors, and some people who looked like they were on their lunch break. nobody really knew where the jet planes were going to come from, but i was looking towards boston. around 2pm someone shouted "here they come!" and we all looked north as 4 jet fighters flew across the sky. i was expecting them to be louder for some reason (like a sonic boom!), but they as much noise as a typical commercial plane flying across the sky. the jets flew above us for just a few seconds, then disappeared behind the new union square towers, with nothing more to see after that.

i went back home to continue working on my bike. i moved the chain into the proper gear this time - 5th gear. i also cleaned up some caked-on grease in the freewheel sprockets and derailleurs with simple green foam cleanser and a special sprocket cleaning brush. i then readjusted the front and rear brakes (they felt a little loose). the way my rear brakes work, one brake arm presses against the rim before the other brake arm engages. because of that, the brake pad that engages first has more wear, so it had to be replaced.

i was done by 3:30pm, and decided to take the bike out for another test ride. i rode to the cafe to drop off some more reuben sandwich ingredients. i was also there to deliver my mother's used samsung galaxy S9+ - the phone i'd been using with my DJI drone - because my father said his moto G7 wouldn't turn on anymore nor the battery charged up. in the meantime he could use the samsung galaxy to take and receive calls, until the moto replacement battery arrives tomorrow. i returned home with some more scallion bread and a package of seaweed snacks.

when evening came, i ordered chinese takeout from chow joy on somerville avenue. there were multiple ways to order online. i noticed their preferred method was through their website, and that they charged a convenience fee. when it finally came time to order, i used door dash via a google portal, and that for some reason had zero fees. it was so simple, i ordered in a matter of seconds, faster than buying something off of amazon. i received a text saying they got my order. the original wait time was something like 25 minutes, but after about 7-8 minutes, i got a text saying my order was ready. so fast! so i walked down to pick up my order.

i ended up getting some beef pan-fried noodles for $14.93 after taxes. pan-fried noodles was one of my favorite chinese food dishes as a child, and i haven't had it a long time, i want to say decades, so this was nostalgia food. i thought the portion was a little small though, it came in a 28oz plastic container. as for the food itself, it was okay, your typical american chinese food. they also have a bunch of spicy salt & pepper dishes that look pretty good and that i'll try one of these days.

i ate while watching the celtics-bucks game. this was supposed to be an important game that would decide who got the number one seed and home court advantage throughout the playoffs, before boston went on a losing streak against teams they were supposed to beat, so now the chances of getting the one seed are slim. nevertheless, a celtics victory would send a message. boston ended up destroying milwaukee. the final score was 140-99. celtics were making all their shots, and the bucks were missing all of theirs. so now boston is 2 games behind the bucks with just 5 games left in the regular season. to get the number one seed, boston has to win all of their games, and the bucks have to lose 2 of theirs. and that's only because boston has the tie break, so even that scenario the celtics and bucks would have the same record, but boston would get the number one seed because the celtics have a 2-1 record against the bucks this season.

i bought those two quansheng UV-K5 radios yesterday. in my research i found out you can't assign names to the memory channels. that sucks a little bit because who can remember all 100 memory settings just from frequency alone? so i went searching, and found a small transceiver radio that can not only receive airbands, and clone frequencies, but can also assign names to channels. this radio was the radtel RT-890. i must've seen this radio when i was researching the JJCC radio my father bought off of temu and then later returned. there's even less information about the radtel RT-890 compared to the quansheng UV-K5. but from what little i saw, i actually like the radtel better than the quansheng. the cheapest price i could find for the RT-890 was $36, and that was the ruyage UV58+, a rebranded model of the RT-890. but finally sold me on the radio was discovering it was recently made compatible with CHIRP, which means we can program it easily with the computer. so i ended up buying yet another radio, the ruyage UV58+. i think this is the radio my father will end up liking better. i almost regret getting the quansheng now, but they're so cheap ($25), it's nice to have them as a backup radio, or just something else to play with besides those discarded cobra-brand GMRS radios my father's been investigating for ages now.