while my father painted trim (final coat on fascia above garage and sunroom, final coat south-facing soffit), i was busy prepping the basement windows (final sanding, removing screws, patching with wood filler, caulking, and bluetaping) before finally priming them. i didn't paint until after 12:30pm, in which by then the temperature was above 50° anyway, good enough for oil painting. and one point we switched jobs: he primed some damaged shingles while i continued with the acrylic semi-gloss on the sunroom soffit.

tomorrow: final coat of white semi-gloss on all basement windows, front entrance base board, then we're completely done with trim painting, with only yellow final coat left to do. unfortunately it looks like rain on wednesday and thursday so those 2 days are bust. but friday and saturday? we could be finished with painting by this weekend!

at one point while he was adjusting the ladder so he could caulk something by the master bedroom window, my father lost control of the ladder and toppled backwards into raised bed 4, crashing into the trellis, breaking nearly all of the wooden stakes. i guess it was a good thing there was the trellis to break his fall.

i returned home after dinner. riding the motorcycle in with my handlebar mitts, i couldn't help thinking all the things i tried to keep my hands warm riding in late autumn and early winter. i've tried everything, from multiple layers of gloves, to using rubber liners, to wearing mittens, all with various degrees of success (the mittens worked best, but hard to work the shifters and knobs). but now with the mitts, my hands are toasty warm. do they sell these things here in the US? if i never went to china i would've never known these things existed! now the only part of the my body that's cold are my ankles for wearing thin socks.

ana was home with i got back, boiling some chicken soup on the stove. the heater was on (autoschedule to kick in at 6pm) but she had the kitchen window wide open, which when i saw it was like throwing money out the window. i winced. "ana, are you cooking anything greasy?" she said no, and when i told her about the kitchen window, she quickly closed it, mistakingly left it open.

i bought a sandisk 16GB USB 3.0 ultra fit low-profile flash drive. it cost just $2.45 but shipping was $5, which is about the normal price for this item anyway. i paid using my amazon reward points so i essentially got it for free. what's the point of getting a 16GB drive when 32GB can cost about $10 on sale? i wanted a small drive so i can install an emergency backup of OS X. i might be able to find a 8GB USB drive somewhere around, but that's only USB 2.0. and i don't want a larger capacity because then i'd be tempted to use it for actual file transfer work.