while waiting to pay at the 12 items or less line at market basket, the woman at the head of the line was yelling something. i didn't catch all of it, but at one point she said something about "you people taking away jobs from americans." she later apologized while she pushed her cart out the door. that was a strange place to let your racist freak flag fly, considering the somerville market basket is a patchwork of ethnicity and probably 9 out of 10 people immigrated from another country.

the drama continued. the woman ahead of me in line 1) didn't have enough money to pay for her groceries so her friend had to come bail her out, 2) her friend didn't know how to use her debit card, 3) the first woman became paranoid when she thought the cashier had forgot to bag one of her items, and 4) her friend wanted cash back even though she said no when asked the first time. basically, it took me 15 minutes to get through the express checkout line. i recognized the cashier from the many times i've shopped at market basket. we gave each other the "what a day" look and both shrugged.

returning home via one of my many shortcuts, i snapped some photos on harrison street in somerville (the road that sort of runs behind the star market). there's a tibetan maypole (apparently the house of a traditional tibetan doctor), a seemingly abandoned house with boarded up doors and windows flying a tattered american flag, and another large american flag mural nearby. i almost didn't notice a young man was sitting outside his porch smoking. i raised my camera to take a photo of the tattered flag. he told me i could throw a rock through the window to get a better action shot.

parking the bicycle outside, i noticed clumps of feathers on the sidewalk, evidence of a recent pigeon kill. i'm assuming that hawk i saw a few weeks ago apparently is still around and lives in the area. it seems pretty efficient at hunting pigeons, so i don't expect it to starve anytime soon. i've just glad i didn't have to witness another barely alive pigeon.

something happened to me as soon as i got home: my nose started running and i began to sneeze. at first i thought i must've contracted something at the supermarket, but the common cold doesn't work that fast. i probably contracted the virus sometime tuesday when i was outside in the wet snow. cold weather itself doesn't make me sick, but it probably weakened my immune system. it takes the virus a few days before showing symptoms, and today was that day. i also started feeling fatigued. soon after taking a hot shower and getting something to eat, the symptoms subsided.

for dinner i had some toaster oven baked fried spring rolls. i washed it down with a bottle of goya jamaican style ginger beer. that stuff is spicy! although sometimes it smells like cleaning fluid (but it still tastes good). the spiciness might be due more to additional natural ingredients than the natural spiciness of ginger: one of the ingredients is capsicum, which is found in hot peppers.

i'm almost done with no more heroes on the wii. i'm the number 2 ranked assassin, just one more to go before i become number 1. i had a hard time beating the previously ranked number 2 assassin, bad (bat?) girl. the trick is to defeat her with sweeping charged attacks using the tsubaki mk-iii with the perpetual power attachment (which cost a whopping $1,000,000 to buy). previously, i was playing muramasa until i got stuck on just the 2nd boss level. likewise with metroid prime 3, stuck at a boss level as well (it's a shame though, metroid is a really great game).