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on the morning of my 38th birthday i woke up to the suffocating stench of cooking oil smoke. my roommate was making breakfast again. the good new was she was picking up her mattress in boston so i would have the house to myself for a little while. as soon as i heard the thump of the front door closing, i got out of bed. i left when she got back around noontime.

today was a cold day with temperature in the 20's and probably lower with the wind chill factor. it felt seasonable though, which can't be said for much of this winter. my mother made me some traditional chinese birthday eggs when i arrived in belmont. it's basically 2 boiled eggs with some sugar; she also added some tangyuan and glutinous rice wine.

in skyrim, completed a few quests: frostflow lighthouse, contract to kill narfi in ivarstead, and cleared out volunruud. i also neutralized 2 giant camps. the first one i got help from a dragon, which killed the giant; i used my animal control shout to get the mammoth to kill the dragon; then i killed the mammoth. in my next camp, i did the same trick, getting a mammoth to attack a giant. the giant ended up killing the mammoth, but it was so wounded i managed to kill it with a single swing.

for dinner we got some kentucky fried chicken from allston (12 pieces with a side of spicy wings and a small mashed potato). i had a craving for the colonel's secret formula but after finishing a few pieces i don't know if i ever want to eat KFC ever again. i also tricked my sister into eating some of the chicken by telling her they were just crispy when in fact they were spicy as well (she can't eat anything hot).

temperature was 24°F with a humidity of 80% when i biked back home. it was cold, but after pedaling hard up that first hill, i was sufficiently warmed up. i had to wear my heavy duty puffy winter jacket today, along with a scarf. i kept touching my face to get the feeling back into my frozen cheeks.

i watched the season premiere/return of AMC's the walking dead. i watched the first season but found the whole zombie apocalypse too depressing to keep on watching. tonight's episode might actually make me return though; that quickdraw standoff ending sucked me in.