t
o
n
y
a
n
g
'
s
 
w
e
b
l
o
g


i was up by 8:30 this morning, just didn't feel like sleeping anymore. i went out and put the cover over the motorcycle in anticipation of the impending rainstorm that was due to arrive later today. while i was outside i decided to sweep the sidewalk and collect all the dead leaves. i decided to pay a visit to the traffic office to renew my resident parking permit ($8) and pick up a visitor parking pass. it'd also give me the chance to do some more bicycling. i was fortunate to get there at that time because they close early on fridays (noontime). the woman by the counter next to me was asking the clerk if she could pay her overdue parking tickets in installments for fear of getting the boot. i stopped by the library on my way back.

there was a book on bicycle maintenance i wanted to get, and also a book on chicken raising. plus, i wanted a chance to see the basement level that i didn't get to see yesterday. nobody was downstairs and it felt a little scary. i did find a copy of secret identity, about the secret fetish art of the original superman's artist. i tried the self-checkout, it was pretty easy. you don't even need to scan the books, just put them one at a time onto a special board that apparently reads the RFID tag embedded in every library book. unfortunately the bike book was missing a tag so i had to check it out by human.

back at home i decided to do some more work on the bicycle. for starters, i wanted to get an inventory of the various parts, so if anything needed to be replaced i can go online and check the price. i wanted to do another pass at degreasing the bike but i what i really needed was to do a complete drivetrain overhaul, taking everything apart and doing a thorough cleaning. unfortunately i just don't have the equipment. so besides the photos, the only thing i did was to remove the rusted front reflector bracket and scrub it out a bit with a steel brush to get back some of it's original luster.

my mother called in the afternoon, said she stewed some lamb and asked if i wanted to go down to the cafe and have some. she had ulterior motives though, and asked if i could help my father with some chinese food delivery while she and my sister went out to a jewelry show. i told her i wouldn't help out but changed my mind when i got to the cafe. there might even be a chance there wouldn't be any deliveries until 5:00, which was when my mother said she'd get back. however, as soon as she left, a delivery order came in. the address was ellery square (off of broadway), which coincidentally i passed by earlier when i went to the traffic office and the library. i only had my bicycle (too slow) so i borrowed the car instead. the hardest part was navigating through the usual traffic jam in harvard square, but i knew the roads so it wasn't a big deal. later in the evening came a second delivery, on vassal lane. that one was close enough that i just walked there. my mother didn't get back until 6:30. i packed up my things and bicycled back to my place. i put on the rainbow wheel lights, which worked for the first few minutes, but faded again so that only a few LED's were blinking. it's either the batteries or maybe the cold temperature is causing the electronics to sputter.

i had some trader joe microwaveable indian curry for dinner. the rainstorm i'd been waiting all day to arrive never did show up, but the winds definitely picked up. the seed pods from the honey locust tree outside my house would periodically crash into the house, like somebody knocking on the windows.

i found this note on the sidewalk a few days ago and i was wondering if anyone can decipher it. it's a list of names with corresponding circled numbers. some names don't have numbers, but X's instead, and one of them is marked as RCD, whatever that means. at first i thought maybe it was a score tally from some game, but i can't think of anything that scores like that. what impresses me the most though are the names themselves. other than harry and gretchen, all the other names are very unique. phinn? digby? zeko? hannalei? is this a generational thing? are these common names for kids these days?