around 11am i got a call from laurie reminding to show up at her parents' place at 2pm to help her photograph some of her rings. an hour later i woke up, made myself a breakfast of scrambled eggs and a banana strawberry fruit elixir. at 2pm i climbed a snow bank and got into my parents' suv (which i was borrowing) from the driver's side door because the road was flooded from the torrential downpour. i then spent 10 minutes trying to parallel park once i got there, the car wedged awkwardly on a pool of ice (laurie even called me on my cell phone asking if i had gone to the wrong place). we took photos in her mother's office, trying to display the rings and other jewelries on different black fabrics. while i clicked away with my camera, laurie was busy working on a ny sunday times crossword puzzle (which she said reminded her of how amanda and i used to be so obsessed with the metro crossword puzzles). we discovered that we'd need to use a light box in order to cut down on the amount of incidental reflections. i gave laurie a ride back to her car parked a few blocks away after some careful negotiating out of the icy parking spot, then went to my parents' cafe. i got there too early for dinner, so i went home to belmont for an hour, taking a tour of the backyard which i haven't visited in a while. the lawn was thoroughly saturated with water, the rainfall making it even worse. parts of it were like a slushy marsh while others were like a polar landscape dotted with sinkholes were you can see the melted ice below the snowy crust. later my sister and i returned to the cafe for dinner with our parents, my 2nd aunt (back from a month long vacation in taiwan), and my aunt & uncle. we had these little fried meat buns along with edumame beans, broad beans, and sweet & sour spicy cabbage. it was a pretty good dinner, everyone ate fast, speaking very little until we were full. i got a ride back to cambridge afterwards, where i will spend the rest of the evening debugging code despite the fact that i am very sleepy tired because i had another bout of insomnia last night up to 6am.