after having some oatmeal for lunch, i went to the porter square post office in the early afternoon to ask in the remote chance if they'd seen karen's sister's package. i was hoping it wouldn't be crowded but there was 6 people ahead of me in line. i had no choice but to wait patiently. i was however amused by the fact that the woman directly ahead of me in line was the same height as me; usually when i meet people they're either smaller or taller, never the same. when it was finally my turn at the counter, the clerk went searching for the package but found nothing. he kept saying he didn't know what to tell me, that if was marked as delivered then it was delivered. my own theory is it probably got dropped off at the wrong address, and hopefully my neighbor will return it to me sometime soon, before karen leaves on thursday.

since i was in porter square, i went to michael's to pick up a skein of caron cake yarn for my mother, as well as some felt fabric for her ongoing amigurumi projects. i then went to the porter square dunkin donuts to see what they had for munchkins. are there always never enough donut holes? at least this one had chocolate glazed, which are my favorite. i picked up 10 for $2 then another small cup of vanilla chai. a homeless man opened the door for me as i left the store. he rattled his chain cup behind me as if reminding me to pay for his unwanted service.

the lid i got was different that the one i received yesterday in that it doesn't close. carrying it with me either in the basket or the cup holder was impossible to do without spilling everything. i ended up riding very slowly with one hand and holding the drink in the other. i made it to within 3 blocks of the cafe before the streets narrowed significantly that i had no choice but to completely finish the chai in order to continue riding. next time, get a taller chai (which should fit in the cup holder) or ask for a different lid.

i arrived at the cafe to drop off the yarn and felt but also to pick up some zongzi for the duanwu festival which was today. last night i spoke with a few former chinese coworker friends (wuweiyu, wangyan) back in china about their zongzi experience. wangyan tried to make some of her own but failed. wuweiyu ate a spicy beef zongzi, which i've never heard of before. she listed a few other common flavors, including a rose-scented bean paste. anyway, my mother had given away so many zongzis she made over the past few days that we barely had any left for ourselves. she did give me 4 taiwanese zongzi and 2 pork zongzi.

i was going to leave but my mother asked me to stay until my grandmother arrived. normally one of my parents would go pick her up in the afternoon from my aunt's apartment, but today my grandmother and aunt were coming to the cafe on their own via wheelchair and buses. while we waited, my mother fixed the amigurumi pikachu she made by moving the eyes lower to make it look cuter. when my grandmother finally arrived, her hands were freezing (today's temperature was in the upper 50's) and my aunt had a hard time pushing the wheelchair because one of the brakes was engaged. i saw the restaurant owner passing by and i casually waved to him. he stopped to give us a free watermelon.

i returned home around 4pm, stopping briefly at the mass ave rite aid to pick up some ice breakers cool blasts peppermint chews (one of my favorite mints). after i got home, i went out again to market basket to get some sandwich ingredients for tomorrow. i also found some classic malt ovaltine, which i bought a container to try, prepared to give the rest to miguel. i bumped into bruce on my way back, we confirmed our nature outing for tomorrow morning.

karen is scheduled to return to mexico in approximately 48 hours. i know there were a few things that annoyed me, but after these 4 months, i found her to be a pretty good roommate in the end. i'm kind of sad to see her leave, but happy at the same time. happy for her so she can go back to her boyfriend, and happy for me because i can have the house to myself again.

for dinner i knew it wasn't going to be salad again. i should've had some zongzi in honor of the duanwu festival. instead i heated up some leftover pozole, i still had 2 servings left. i added a dollop of habanero sauce which was a mistake because the pozole was already pretty spicy.

karen came home around 8:30pm. she had some japanese noodles in central square when she left work late. i showed her the malt powder and we tried making a vanilla milk shake with some of her vanilla bean ice cream and whole milk. it was pretty good, you could really taste the malt. maybe a bit sweet, not sure if that was the ice cream or the combination with the malt powder. we probably added too much milk, maybe add less next time. she called miguel and told him we were making malt milk shakes. he jokingly cursed us.