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david was still home when i woke up at 9:30. he apologized if he woke me up from skyping with his wife. i told him to chat away since i didn't hear anything. i offered him a breakfast bagel but he said he'd grab something to eat from the MIT student center. he left before 10:00.

what little snow that'd accumulated from last night i went out this morning to shovel. the snow on the sidewalk had already been compacted so i used the overturned edge of the shovel to noisily scrape away the ice. afterwards i probably had the cleanest sidewalk on my block. the snow in the backyard was soft slush that i easily removed, making sure not to damage the few snowdrops emerging from the ground.

a pleasant surprise this morning: i got an e-mail from the HDTV repair service letting me know that not only did they inspect my broken board, but they also fixed it as well. and to top it off, they'd already shipped it too. it's expected to arrive on wednesday, i can't wait! this will either be $80 well spent or another one of those expensive life lessons.

i'm terrible when it comes to keeping track of my work hours. usually when i do remember, i scribble something down on pieces of paper that will later get lost. for the sake of invoicing, i finally took the time today to figure out my hours. it was a combination of notes, memory, blog entries, e-mails, and document date stamps. maybe this will finally teach me a lesson to keep better records.

i was going to ride to belmont to help my parents throw out the old couch. when i got my bike out from the basement, i noticed one of the rear brake arms was sticking (wouldn't spring back to its original position). i was going to try removing it but it was hard to do with the rear basket in the way. so i ended up dribbling some triflow oil into the seams. a minute later the brake arm was working again.

the old leather (faux?) couch was a sleeper sofa, so there was the mattress, the removable metal frame, and then the sofa frame itself (wood covered in leather). the mattress and the metal frame were easy to carry out, but the sofa frame was too large so my father ended up cutting off the attached cushions to give us more clearance. no more than 15 minutes after we left everything out on the sidewalk did a van pull up outside our house and a man took the metal frame (i guess to sell as scrap metal). he also took a broken microwave we tossed out as well.

for dinner we had some red roasted chicken with mushrooms (oyster and shiitake). my father kept on telling me how easy and cheap the recipe was and said he'd teach me how to make it next time so i could do it at home.

david still wasn't home by the time i got back to cambridge around 7:30. there was a package on my doorstep, the mini displayport to DVI adapter ($4.10) i bought on ebay last tuesday (shipped from china, that was quick).

david didn't end up coming home until 9:30 with bags of groceries. "i think i got too much for just 2 weeks," he told me. he fixed himself a salad and some sliced pita bread with a humus dip. so healthy! for dessert, some milano cookies and a mug of warm milk or dipping. he paid his rent with a stack of $20 bills he got from the ATM. he told me he's still a little jetlagged and woke up this morning at 6:00 unable to go back to sleep. while watching a trailer for the new season of game of thrones, i asked him if watches the show. he said no, but he has read all the books up to 4. he told me if he has the time (he doesn't have to stick around while his crystals grow in the lab for a few days), he wants to visit washington dc this weekend, maybe stay an extra day there. he finally went to bed around 11:30.