i moseyed my way over to belmont for lunch. today was probably the last 50+°F day of the year, so i wanted to take advantage of the relative warmth by washing and then waxing my motorcycle in preparation for winter storage. my father suggested we could also change the oil, but if we did that, then i'd probably end my riding season and leave the bike in the garage.

after washing the bike, i went with my mother to the watertown target to get a few container of motor oil. the crowd wasn't bad, seemed like any typical weekend day. the only hint of black friday shenanigans were boxes of HDTV's interspersed throughout the store, like an easter egg with large flatscreen televisions. they moved some of the departments around in order to make room for the expanded toy and christmas decoration aisles, so it took a while to find automotive. unfortunately they were all sold out of 10-40W motor oil.

when we returned home, i waxed the bike (meguiar's car wax). when i was finally done, the motorcycle looked all shiny and new, and even had that new bike smell (if that's even possible). my hands unfortunately were marked with tiny nicks and scratches for cutting myself on all the little hard-to-reach crevasses and hidden sharp corners throughout the bike.

my aunt managed to inherit a broken roomba from a friend. i put the battery from this "new" roomba into her old roomba to see if i could charge it up. it began to flash red which meant it was doing a deep cycle discharge. less than 30 minutes later however, the light was a steady green. when i tried to turn on the roomba, it didn't do anything. my recommendation for her at this point is to buy a genuine new battery from the store and try it in her roomba. if it works, we'll know it was the battery. if it doesn't work, then we know it's the roomba, and can go return the battery.

for dinner we continued to work on the leftover turkey. i made the ultimate turkey rollup, including the following ingredients: hoisin sauce (with a touch of sesame oil to keep it from being too sticky), homemade cranberry sauce (yes, double saucing), turkey meat, spicy cellophane noodles, sour pickled greens, scallions, and cilantro.

for once it wasn't that cold when i returned home, with temperature in the mid-40's. riding back, i suddenly realized tonight was my 20th high school reunion. it wasn't like i was going to go (i told andrew this back at his september barbecue), but i was still curious to know who went. in this age of facebook, what's the point of a reunion when i know pretty much everything about my high school classmates through their online social oversharing? and from what little i've glimmered the few times i accidentally log into facebook, their lives are so diametrically opposite to my own life that we almost have nothing in common at this point. the people i'm most curious about are the handful that've never attended a single reunion. now, for better or worse, i may be joining their reclusive ranks. (my old classmate john wagner got in touch with me: wags, if you somehow find this blog, hello!).

packages were waiting for me on my doorstep: more crocs for frances, and my order of replacement xenon bulbs for my various halogen lights. i bought 3 (35W) through ebay at $1.55 each, which is much cheaper than the stores. they're also xenon, which is supposed to be better than halogen in terms of efficiency, but i heard xenon bulbs have a bluish glow, so i was worried they were the wrong color. when i plugged one into the light above the bathroom sink, i was relieved they were warm yellow. the brightness however was lacking, and that's when i realized the original bulb is actually 50W (there's no marking on the halogen bulb, so i couldn't tell what it was).

unfortunately it looked like they gave me a wrong bulb because one of the boxes said it was a G4 10W bulb. i wrote the ebay seller to lightly complain, but told him i wasn't going to return the wrong bulb since it wasn't worth the effort and money. later when i went to actually look inside the box, i realized there was actually a 35W bulb inside. i ended up rewriting the seller to gently apologize for the mix-up. later i ordered some 50W bulbs as a backup for the one in the bathroom.

i went out briefly to put the rain cover on the motorcycle. not to make myself sound like a crazy bike person, but i did it to keep the condensation from forming so when i go to ride it tomorrow i won't have to wipe dry everything.

i was curious to see if canon factory had received my lens yet, so i checked their website:

i figured maybe they just haven't gotten around to processing my lens yet. then i thought the package should've at least arrived today, so i checked the tracking number through USPS. this is what they told me:

so they did try to deliver it today, but the canon factory was closed. although i'm disappointed they didn't receive it yet (hopefully on monday), i'm sort of relieved they just didn't decide to simply leave a $500 lens on their doorstep. with my 18-200mm lens arriving in about a week, there's no longer a rush to get my 70-300mm telephoto back.

i ended the evening with a hot soak in the bathroom, reading the latest issue of entertainment weekly (actually 2 weeks old, i have a magazine backlog).