instead of running this morning i decided to bike down to chinatown for a supply run. however when i called my mother to ask what else she needed, so said she didn't need anything, already got some trader joe bokchoi, which was the most important thing. everything else my 2nd aunt would get since she was down in chinatown today for a dentist appointment (she'll bring it to the cafe tomorrow).

so i suddenly found myself with a free day. the reason why i wanted to go down to chinatown was because the temperature today reached 48 degrees - a rare treat as the daytime temperature has been in the 30's for most of the week it seems. it was already kind of late for a morning run, i figured maybe later in the afternoon if i was still up to it.

instead i did a load of laundry - bedsheets and bath towels using a vinegar/baking soda treatment - and made an early lunch of ham egg bagel sandwich and a smoothie. i had too much in the washing machine and it actually jammed a few times because the towels and sheets were wrapping around the agitator. my new heavyweight down comforter was arriving today, and i wanted fresh sheets for the anticipated arrival.

today was the last day to renew the cambridge food license. the city had contacted my father on several occasions but since he never checks his e-mail, he didn't realize the deadline. finally someone from the city came to the store and told him he had to renew the license by today otherwise face fines or even the loss of the license. so i went online and filed the paperwork.

in the afternoon i went to star market to get some chips. temperature was already 48 degrees and sunny, warm enough that i decided to go for a run after all. i left the house around 2pm, dressed in only a t-shirt and running shorts. that turned out to be a mistake, as it was colder than i expected. even when i had the sunshine on me it still felt cold. i ran as fast as i could just to finish up and return home.

passing by the community garden, i spotted ann. i haven't seen her in months, and stopped to say hello. i ended up helping her carry two garden gnomes back to her apartment on the street one over. these were cast iron garden gnomes (that ann found on the sidewalk one year), much heavier than they looked, and felt like ice in my hands.

i finally got home by 3pm. i showered then did another load of laundry, washing all my dirty running clothes and oil-smelling work clothes. this time the washing machine did not stop and worked like normal.

my father called me. the city contacted him, wanted him to pay for the food license today in order to make the renewal official. i went into the account and paid the fee with the cafe credit card. so crisis averted.

i tried the kyoo self-service kiosk service today. set up was pretty easy, it basically pairs with square (though allowing kyoo to access all the permissions felt a little risky). i couldn't get the menu to work but finally realized i had to "refresh the catalog" and suddenly all the food items showed up. it also imported all the images as well as additional info, like store hours. it's pretty much ready to go at this point, maybe tweak the menu a little bit more, and we also need to get a new square stand with built-in contactless and chip payment functionalities.

playing around with windscribe VPN, i got the wireguard protocol to work. i installed the app on my android phone and i was able to get wireguard to work just fine, so i knew it worked. to get it to work on my macbook pro, i ended up using the windscribe wireguard config generator. i was then able to get wireguard to work using the custom config file. i also found out something today: windscribe works for streaming, so far the streaming services don't recognize the VPN ip's as VPN's. however my camelcamelcamel extension doesn't work with VPN, it gives me a 403 forbidden error.

i ran time machine tonight. it told me i haven't backed up since late march. because it's been so long, time machine took forever to process the data before finally starting to back up. there's a good chance i might have to leave my computer on overnight so the backup can finish. i think that's what i did last time.

i bought a 5TB external WD hard drive off of ebay tonight for $85 ($90 after taxes). it's manufacturer refurbished, but i've bought "reconditioned" drives in the past and never had a problem. it's for backing up downloaded data anyway, like movies and shows, so the data isn't very vital (i wouldn't back up photos on refurbed drives). i was also checking out brand new 2TB SSD drives selling for $100, but i rather have the quantity instead of the quality.

my replacement oral-b toothbrush heads arrived tonight. no wonder they were cheaper than usual: these were german imported heads. they're still oral-b, but the coloring is a little different. i think they'll work fine. i've bought knockoffs in the past and they were terrible. at least these are genuine oral-b toothbrush heads, just from germany.

i didn't have dinner until around 10pm, made a pair of hot dogs.

i was waiting for my new heavyweight comforter all day, even washed the sheets because of it. however by evening it was nowhere to be found, even though amazon continued to say "still arriving today" on their website. finally by 11pm i got the bad news: the comforter won't come until tomorrow. i'll have to wait an extra day before enjoying the comforts of a warmer blanket.

i recaulked the bathroom about 2 months ago (before LSH arrived) but already its failing. i noticed deep cracks in the caulk a few weeks ago. if i had to guess, maybe the corners weren't completely dry before i caulked. so i had no choice but to recaulk, and tonight was the night. i started by first removing the damaged caulk. i then left it to dry completely for several hours (that was my mistake last time: i recaulked as soon as i peeled off the old caulk) before finally recaulking. finally close to midnight i recaulked the bathroom, which only took a few minutes. now i'll just let it dry overnight and i'll be ready to use by morning (only needs 4 hours of drying before water exposure).