with a forecast of rain for tuesday, i didn't want to give up my motorcycle parking spot so i rode the bicycle instead. around noontime i went down to porter square to pick up some patons classic wool yarn for my mother using a 25%-off-everything michael's coupon. i also had a 50%-off-one-item ac moore (michael's accepts competitors' coupons) which i used to score a wilton mini tart pan (12-cavity, $12, but $6 after coupon) for our portuguese custard tarts (pastéis de nata) experiment. i returned home to load up my backpack then made my way to the cafe to drop off the yarn for my mother, before making my way to belmont.

once i arrived, i set up my action camera to shoot a timelapse video of me raking the rest of the front lawn. leaf raking is one of those perfect moments for timelapsing, but i'm so obsessed with timelapse videos these days, i'd shoot a timelapse for practically anything. raking itself didn't take too long, it was the cleaning up that took more time. although compared to painting, it was fast!

i waited for my parents to come home (around 3:30pm) so my father and i can finally install the new awning. once we slid the awning into the bracket we'd already nailed into the house fascia a few days ago, we could prop in the wooden brackets and the awning could hold on its own before we screwed everything into place. we took a long time to measure with a leveler, making sure that the awning would slope away from the house, and that the awning would also be leveled from side-to-side so rain would drip off from just one end. that's when we realized that the awning bracket itself wasn't leveled to the entrance, but rather leveled to the bottom of the gutter, which is actually slightly slanted. this was the original position of the old awning after all, and despite the bracket misalignment, the awning was surprisingly still leveled.

so after our final measurements, my father went ahead and secured the wooden brackets to the side of the house. each one took 8 wood screws so they're probably the most secure things attached to the house. the difficult part was the topmost l-bracket, which we couldn't quite reach with the awning in the way, so the wings of the awning had to be moved ever so slightly. but in moving the wings, it threw off our previous calibrations which meant once we were done securing the brackets, we had to do another round of measurements before we can finally screw the 2 legs of the awning to the brackets.

problem came when my father first fastened the rightmost awning leg to the bracket. neither of us noticed it at first, but in order to drill in the long wood screw, my father had pushed out the right wing by half a centimeter. so it threw off our calibration and when the awning was finally attached, there was a slight slope to the left of the awning. i was angry that we didn't take the time to make sure there was no shifting before we fastened the last screws. my father's opinion was it was good enough and nobody would notice. i'd wanted to unfasten the rightmost wood screw and maybe reattach it, but even i knew this was impossible once the hole has been drilled (the only way would be to make a new wooden bracket). so we got into an argument as to what to do, and finally i just gave up and told my father he could do whatever he wanted.

afterwards my father left to go visit my grand uncle in the hospital. he called to say he'd be eating dinner with my grand uncle at the hospital (special hospital food), so my mother and i ate on our own.