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i covered the motorcycle yesterday knowing it'd start raining during the night. there was a brief lull around noontime (verified by a doppler radar check) so that's when i made a run for it. i pulled off the cover and rode to belmont for dinner. once the mufflers had some time to cool off, i put the cover back on the motorcycle.

i spent most of the afternoon watching the patriots-hawks game. my mother was doing laundry then later she and my sister left for trader joe's to get some groceries. hailey was pestering me for attention but later curled up asleep on the sofa chair. outside was the intermittent patter of light rain and subsequent misting.

when my father came home in the early evening, we added some new memory chips and a wireless adapter card into a legacy pc that belonged to one of the new restaurant owners. my father promised to set up a machine so they can do some light web surfing. i was in charge of procuring the upgrade parts and installation, my father volunteered to load the necessary software. the machine wasn't in too bad a shape, a 2002 presario desktop with 1.4ghz celeron and a 40gb drive.

you can always tell when my sister makes dinner because suddenly we're not eating asian anymore and the food has more of a western bent, with ingredients like pomegranate seeds and apple chicken sausages.

i returned to cambridge after dinner. it wasn't raining, but the roads were still wet and there was a pervasive misting. i learned a valuable lesson: a motorcycle windshield is useless in the rain at night. the problem is they don't have wipers, so it becomes almost impossible to see through. combined that with the glare of oncoming traffic magnified through the rain-soaked screen makes for a dangerous combination. i rode the whole way back with my head either off to one side or high above the windshield. it's something i don't plan on doing anytime soon.

back at home, i was faced with a dilemma. there was a big parking space directly in front of my house. more than enough space for my motorcycle parked slightly perpendicular to the curb, but not enough for both a car and a bike. i thought about it for a while, and didn't like the idea of somebody attempting to parallel park in the remaining space, only to realize their car won't fit, but in the process potentially bumping into my motorcycle. so i decided to err on the side of caution and reparked my bike so it's parallel to the curb, taking up enough space so that nobody would attempt to wedge their car in the space that's left. i've become very sensitive to the upkeep of the new bike. i wiped it dry when i got back, and then put the cover on it soon afterwards. i've become that guy who's always fussing over his vehicle, looking out the window every once in a while to make sure nothing's happened to it. i can't wait until the winter when i put the bike away in storage and i won't have to worry about it anymore.

i found myself embroiled in another knife auction on ebay. i wasn't completely happy with the bucklite replacement knife i won a few weeks ago, because it wasn't in pristine condition (there were a few dents on the knife edge). i found a new auction for a 1994 new-in-box bucklite 422BK and put in a bid because it was soon to expire. i was the highest bidder until within a minute to spare i was outbid. i upped my maximum by 50 cents, figuring i had nothing to lose, and ended up winning. i'm not even sure why i got this one, but since it's in pristine condition, i'll probably just leave it in its box and use the 2 other bucklites i own. i'm afraid i've become a little knife crazy. i'm also on the market for some cheap authentic indian arrowheads (no replicas), i will be trolling the auctions looking for some good deals.

a very weird episode of mad men tonight. the theme seems to be "people getting screwed," or more precisely, don and peggy, figuratively and literally. don seems to have lost his mojo, including his ability to get any woman he wants, and his special no-contract status at the agency. even his jokes felt flat ("how do you know i wasn't at home with my family reading the bible?" crickets). the episode culminates with him getting sucker punched in the back of the head by some hitchhiking drifters (in the world of tv and film, has any good ever come of picking up hitchhikers?). and people more powerful than him keep sitting behind his desk! elsewhere, i don't agree with peggy's latest tryst. i thought she would maybe would hook with that young creative in her office, or maybe she and pete would rekindle their one-night-stand romance. no joan this episode, nor in the sneak preview for next sunday, which makes me worried. is she out for good? not really a fun episode like last week's, kind of a downer. hopefully don draper will get his mojo back and start screwing with other people instead of having it done to him.