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my upstairs neighbor sent me an e-mail this morning: despite the torrential downpour last night, the roof did not leak. i think he's just using roof repair as an umbrella fix so he can get new replacement skylights. that being the case, i'm in no hurry to get anything done.

my found drop leaf table makes a good laptop desk, it's just the right height. now i can work a little better from the living room and not have to worry about burning my crotch from the notoriously hot macbook pro. my father stopped by my place (enroute to the super market) with the newly arrived digital hygrometer/thermometer. the readouts are sort of overkill since we only just need 2 numbers (humidity and temperature) and don't really care about the highs and lows and comfort level icon. it can either stand on its own or attached to a metal surface with the magnet on the back. it will live in my parents' basement so my father can monitor the humidity and see if the basement air conditioner is actually doing anything.

i showed my father the heavy duty cuisinart food processor i'd been using. he didn't believe me when i told him how heavy it was until he tried to lift it. he was impressed with the speed but thought it was too much power. he left with a box of shredded zucchini from last saturday, to be converted to zucchini muffins. i still have half a zucchini in the fridge.

i went to star market where there was a sale this week on cherries, $1.99/lbs. i heard the sounds of construction before i realized what was going on: they were finally tearing down the old condemned VFW hall. they must've started yesterday because it was pretty much completely razed by this morning, the excavator making one last pass through the debris field. what's most amazing are the half dozen trees-of-heaven that sprouted in the gap between this building and the one next door. it's nice to have trees but i get the sense that they're going to chop them down.

while paying for my cherries (2 bags for a total of 5.35 lbs $10.65 - if it wasn't for the sale, they'd be $32), i heard a girl behind me asking, "do you like canons?" she wasn't referring to the heavy artillery used in past warfares, but rather to my camera which i had slung on my shoulder. she was trying to decide between canon or nikon.

i wasn't planning on going to my parents' place but since i didn't have anything better to do, i went in the afternoon. i can't help it that i keep on finding free stuff on the streets. high population density and the fact that a lot of people are moving during the summer means there's always fresh curbage to be had. 2 blocks down from my place i came across a honeywell window fan. i already have one of those (for blowing out cooking smells) but could always use another one since they're pretty good at circulating the air. somebody had dropped it at one point so there was some cracks and the one of the retractable fins wouldn't lock anymore but otherwise it looked to be in good shape. i threw it on the back of my rear baskets an strapped it down with my bungie netting.

it was close to 2:00 when i arrived in belmont. since i didn't eat anything yet, my mother fixed me up some rice porridge with kimchee and leftover duck. later when my father came home i helped my parents clean one of the windows (removed the 2 panes of storm windows and the screen and windexed everything).

my father's laptop got infected with the win 7 internet security 2012 spyware today. it kept on popping up ominous virus detected warnings and asking him to pay to register the software to remove them (which is all a scam). there's a manual way to remove the spyware but it involved too many registry edits that i decided to try a program instead. i used spyware doctor, which ran a diagnostic and detected well over 300+ additional spyware or suspicious elements on my father's laptop. when i went to go fix it though, it was asking for money to register the program, exactly what win 7 internet security 2012 was trying to do! i felt like i was fixing one spyware with another spyware. how do i know spyware doctor is even a legitimate program? so i did the next best thing: i found a serial number to register spyware doctor and that seemed to fix the problem. apparently spyware doctor is a legitimate after all.

my godmother's son jack dropped by in the early evening. he works at a hotel and came over with some documents for the 2 weeks hotel room our chinese relatives are booking in needham when they arrive next week to visit their daughter. hailey was having none of it however as she barked and growled when jack came into the house. i'd never seen her so ferocious before, and we couldn't even bribe her with dog treats. later she calmed down, but whenever jack made a move to get up, she'd started growling and then barking again. if only my sister was home, she's hailey's master, she'd totally take control of the situation. it was pretty embarrassing. i know she's just afraid (since she'd hide behind my parents before resuming her menacing display), but the way she was acting, i was starting to get a little fearful myself. we need a dog whisperer!

after jack left, my mother made some noodles for dinner. even though it wasn't anything fancy, i liked it better than some of the stuff my sister makes. good food isn't able expensive ingredients or spending a long time cooking.

it was nice riding back to cambridge knowing that there'd be nobody home when i got back. i did some reading in the bathroom, showered, then watched some baseball. my found fan was mounted on the window, pumping some cool breeze into the living room. i had my cold water in my insulated thermos and a big bowl of cherries. i also whipped up a batter of no-knead bread for tomorrow. i've yet to make it during the summer, when the weather's warmer which should help with the rising. i'd had more failures with no-knead than successes. i'm hoping this one will be good.

bram actually wrote me an e-mail, not really to say hello or thanks, but was asking if i found a laptop modem in his room. he also said i could help myself to the leftovers in the fridge and cupboard. like the leftover maggot-infested kiwi. i didn't bring that up though, nor the fact that he "forgot" a pair of fancy underwear. i did ask him about the mysterious expensive spice (which is probably some kind of curry powder).

finally, i heard the news that the george lopez show will be cancelled after this week. i'm actually sad to see it go. i didn't think much of his show at first, but it had a more laid-back urban vibe that was missing from the other talkshows, reminded me of old arsenio hall. guests come on his show looking like they're ready to party. i thought he got the shaft when conan took over his original 11:00 timeslot. i can't believe the show could be losing that much money; how much does it cost to make a talkshow anyway? what will go in its place? more tyler perry reruns? i can believe that would make anymore money. and now i hear rating for conan isn't so good either. if they can boot george lopez, how safe is o'brien? i actually don't think conan is very funny, and there's nothing new about his show now that it's on TBS, with the exception of they can say "shit" over the cable airwaves.