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taking my blood pressure pill this morning reminded me to get my prescription refilled. i had enough for another week, but with all the snowstorms we've been having, i could be stuck at home again by that point. steve came home yesterday, and throughout the morning i could hear him coming in and out. i figured he'd at least bring in the trash cans out of some shared responsibility since i've done all the shoveling since we had our triple snowstorms, but my mistake for putting faith in someone who cares very little about others.

after some yogurt-granola for lunch, i walked down to the somerville avenue rite aid to pick up my prescription. at times i was tempted to walk in the streets; even though sidewalks have been shoveled, the quality of work changes depending on the shoveler. somes you get really nice stretches of sidewalk - bare down to the pavement (mostly professionally cleaned), and other times you get narrow trenches that were only shoveled once and carpeted with a layer of trampled slush. i also picked up a bag of epsom salt ($5.99 for 6lbs.) and some ferrero rocher chocolates.

i stopped off at the neighborhood liquor store to grab a six-pack of hard cider. they still carry some of the fall harvest woodchuck cider, which was what i got ($10). i also bought a powerball ticket ($2); the last time i played i got 2 matches (one number and the powerball) and made $4; figured it wouldn't hurt, take a shot at winning half a billion dollars.

back at home, i did a bit more shoveling, widening the sidewalk by clearing off some of the snow walls. i came back inside and finally got in touch with my health insurance. the agent told me my renewal isn't until next month, so i had nothing to worry about, despite seeing all these commercials on television about the next health insurance selection deadline (february 15). i also spent some time trying to figure out if i can mount a chin up bar i found a few years ago, but the molding on my door frame is just too tall/wide to fit the bar.

i scooped out my paocai jar in order to add some fresh cabbage. what i really wanted was to get to the long beans layer at the bottom. but when i pulled out a strand to taste, it was just too bland. so i added about another tablespoon of fine salt just to give it more flavor before adding the cabbage. there didn't seem to be enough liquid until i crammed most of the carrots back into the jar. but i ended up having some cabbage left over so i decided to start a smaller fermenting jar, adding some sichuan peppercorn (my old stock, not sure if this would even work), thai hot chili peppers (thawed), 1/4 cup of chinese baijiu, and boiled water that'd been cooled to room temperature.

for dinner i was going to eat some instant noodle i had in the house. when i opened the package however, the noodle smelled really off, like something seriously stale or plastic. i didn't think ramen could go bad, but then i looked at the wrapper and saw an expiration date: 2004! i checked all the other instant noodles i had, they all had seriously old expiration dates (2006, 2008), i tossed them all out. instead i ate a package of xi'an mutton paomo. it was the same brand as one i bought from china, but this one was 180g versus the ones i bought which were only 120g. however, this old package was also expired - i could tell because the pickled garlic was brown instead of white - but i ate it anyway. because that's what i do. eat expired foods.

since china is 13 hours ahead, it was already february 12th over there. i was expecting some birthday well wishing, but only three people reached out: sunmeng, my former coworker fu xinhui, and yangling.

when 11:00 came around, i checked for the powerball drawing numbers. not one single match! not so lucky this time around.