i spent the afternoon in belmont, with not much going on. there was a football game (on the NFL network, which my parents get on their verizon FIOS) between the eagles and the redskins, with washington pulling ahead to put philadelphia on the precipice of missing the playoffs this season. i managed to get my htc re camera working one more time to demonstrate to my parents how cool it was (even if i will probably return it at some point).

i got a oneplus one invitation! unfortunately i already got an OPO, and based on my experience, i'm not so quick to recommend it. it's a good phone, but the company that makes it has some shady business practice. like erasing negative comments from their forums. or not taking responsibility for poor quality control, like the yellow LCD issue (which i have, but it doesn't bother me that much). also the invitation is weird, there's sort of this pressure tactic, where you just have 24 hours to activate it, and once activated, you have just 24 hours to buy a phone otherwise the invitation expires completely.

in the evening - on the advice of my sister - we went to sabzi a persian restaurant in arlington. 4 please. do you have a reservation? are we supposed to have a reservation? yes, usually. but we were there early enough that they still managed to seat us among the various empty tables. i never had persian food before, but figured it was some variety of middle eastern. the kabobs caught my eye and i ordered the persepolis, with 2 skewered meat variety i couldn't read but thought i'd give it a try. my sister got appetizers: a persian salad that was cold enough to make my teeth hurt and sour enough to churn my stomach; and an eggplant dip with hints of mint that tasted like sweet mashed baby food (i couldn't taste the eggplant).

the pervasive flavor was sour, with a mild sweetness a close second. when my order came, i realized i ordered some sort of beef and some sort of chicken. they were cooked tender, but kind of bland. the chicken had a very mild sauce if any, and i covered it with lime juice and pepper and this unidentified crush spice from the table (like sweet sanza crumbs) just to make it more flavorful. the beef was disappointing. it looked like a very unappetizing ground beef sausage. the flavor was unusually sweet and artificial, brought back memories of frozen tv dinner salisbury steak (for which i grew up on).

the bill came out to be $90: at that price we could've gone a little further down the street and gotten some blue ribbon barbecue takeout for much less but more delicious.

once we returned to belmont, i packed up my things and left for cambridge. i'm riding the smaller trek bike today since my regular bike is currently on hiatus until i can replace the rear brake arms. the good thing about this other trek bike are the bigger mountain bike wheels which can better ride over all the gravel and road debris.

rest of the evening i was watching the chargers vs. 49ers game on CBS. it turned out to be a pretty good game, with san diego in the fight for a playoff spot and san francisco trying to be the spoiler. chargers came all the way back from a significant deficit to tie the game and take it into overtime, which they then won by a kick. the best play of the game though was when the 49er quarterback ran the ball for a 90 yard touchdown.