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i forgot to take out the trash last night. not a big deal, i didn't have very much anyway, and there wasn't anything in the trash particularly smelly that i absolutely needed to get rid of. in my defense, because of the new year day observation on monday, trash pickup wasn't on the usual day, which caused the confusion.

i cooked up the package of sweet & smoky bbq chicken sausage to go with my oatmeal. caveat? that chicken sausage expired back in early december! i bought it for my mother but she never ate it and i sort of forgot about it and left it in their refrigerator. because it's unopened and because it originally had a long shelf-life, i figured, what's the harm of another month? i'm happy to report that i did not get sick. for my money, i still prefer the apple chicken sausage though.

james morales escaped from a rhode island detention center on new year's eve and had been seen in the boston area, where he used to live. morales had been facing charges of stealing weapons from the worcester army reserve center as well as child rape. this morning he tried to rob the bank of america in central square with a note; he left empty-handed, but not before his face was captured on camera, thus beginning a local manhunt. the sky was busy with helicopters (although i wonder how many were police, and how many were news reporters).

i went to the cafe in the afternoon to help my father install heat cable on a water pipe that seems to burst every winter. getting to the pipes was a challenge, as it was on the ceiling of the stairwell going to the 2nd floor apartment of my grand uncle's house. we had to set up a ladder with a wooden plank so we could step on. the first plank we used my father assured me it wouldn't break, but it made a loud cracking sound when we both stood on it. turns out that plank was partially cut to begin with, and it cracked right along the cut. the second plank we used worked better.

i'd never seen the plumbing before but one look explained the problem: the water pipe is right next to an uninsulated exterior wall. it's been repaired in the past, so there's all sorts of spray foam and fiber glass insulation, and pipe foam covering, but all seemed to be temporary patches, not a permanent fix. looking at the tangle of different plumbings made me feel like a surgeon, looking inside a body trying to diagnose the problem.

the heat cable was another temporary fix, but at least it'd be better than past passive approaches. we ended up coiling the cable around the copper pipe, and it actually went around 2 different pipes. secured with zip ties, we also wrapped foam insulation over the pipes and cable. finally, my father tied up the temperature shutoff sensor, but actually to the outflow pipe. it's not ideal, but all the pipes are located in the same vicinity, so hopefully the outflow will have the same temperature as the inflow.

the only bad thing to working in that confined space is all the fiberglass particles. even though i wore gloves, i got painful bits of fiberglass in my forearms, and maybe i breathed in some as well.

afterwards i biked to my parents' place. i turned on the news around 4pm to see that morales had been captured. he unsuccessfully tried to rob the winter hill citizens bank, and was pursued and finally captured by police a few blocks away near foss park. thus concluded the manhunt. he didn't have a weapon on him, but the man was desperate, and posed a danger to the community.

we ordered domino's for dinner: one garlic parmesan sauce with bacon mushroom and red peppers, one alfredo sauce with pepperoni sausage and pineapple. i managed to eat 4 slices (half a large 14" pie). i returned to cambridge with 4 more leftover slices.

sauerkraut update: there were leaks this morning, but it stopped by evening. not to say it's not fermenting, because every so often i see a large bubble travel up the airlock spout. looking inside the jar, i do see that the shredded cabbage is nicely submerged under juice do to the fermentation weight.

after using the bathroom and taking a hot shower, i relaxed on the sofa, surfing the web with the laptop balanced on my stomach, the heat from the computer giving me additional warm. what now seems like a habit, i fell asleep around 9:30pm, waking up an hour later, which means tonight i won't be able to fall asleep until late again (3am). these are not normal sleep habits.

around 12:30am i lost a bunch of tv channels: 2, 4, 5, 38, 44. it would've freaked me out but this happened before. all those channels share the same transmission tower, there must be some power outage issue. 15 minutes later channel 5 came back, but not the other channels.