ana was gone by the time i came out of my bedroom around 10:30a. i knew she was up this morning because i heard her in the kitchen and smelled the scent of espresso. i took the opportunity to do a load of laundry. i had so much dirty clothes, i almost had to do a second wash to fit everything. ana's absence didn't very last long, as she was back by 12:30p. i was sitting in the living room, watching the news, eating a bowl of leftover mexican chicken soup. around 1:00p she made lunch, something fried as usual, i didn't have the stomach to see what.

the big event of the day was the torrential downpours. it began this morning, the sound of rain a pleasant noise considering how we haven't had any serious rain in a long time. this front was a precursor for hurricane joaquin making its way to the east coast. new england has a low probability of getting hit, but the risk is still there, and we can expect some residual weather disturbances at the very least later in the week. the rain stopped briefly by late morning, only to begin anew in the afternoon.

ana did leave the house again at 2:30p, right during a heavy bout of downpours. i enjoyed her second departure by having some more imported smoked duck wings from flushing. she came back at 7:30p with a large suitcase full of winter clothes she pulled out from storage.

i tried my hands at making a rice cooker pancake. i whipped up some pancake mix (egg, flour, sugar, salt, milk, baking powder), even going across the street to the super market to get a carton of milk. there seemed to be a lot of ingredients for my rice cooker pot, but that turned out to be the least of my problems. i have a simple rice cooker that has only 2 settings: cook and keep warm. it'd cook for about 10 minutes before popping off to just keeping warm. 10 minutes is not enough time to cook the pancake, since i heard it should take an hour or more of rice cooking time. i popped it back to cooking a few times, before every time it'd pop right back to warm setting in a matter of minutes. finally i just gave up. apparently to make a rice cooker pancake requires a fancier rice cooker, one that i don't have. i did try some of the pancake filling, it tasted okay, maybe needed more sugar.

i finally spoke to ana about her cooking tonight. first i addressed the oil splatter situation. she didn't think it was a problem, since frying is synonymous with splattering. she does a good job of cleaning up afterwards, but i made her aware that oil was also splattering onto the carpet, which for some reason she didn't realize was potentially a bad thing ("i can feel the oil on my feet when i walk around the kitchen," i told her). instead of using the splatter guard (which she says is useless, but only because she likes to fry with a small frying pan which the screen is too big for), i found her a cover for the pan. not sure if this will help, but at least she's aware of the situation now. the second thing was just to ask her to ventilate the house by opening the window and door and using the fan if she's cooking anything particularly smelly.

ana went to bed later than usual, close to midnight, her laptop blaring the audio of some spanish drama from the kitchen. not only do i have to endure her loud programs, but so do my poor neighbors through the open windows. i think she was doing some late night ironing, as well as running the dishwasher.