despite the fact that today was moving day, i was dismayed to see that li wasn't entirely packed yet. did he plan on coming back and having lunch, before spending some more time packing? i left for the cafe via bicycle around 11:30am, to wait for li to get out of his meeting so we could drive back to the house and move his stuff. when he showed up around 12:15pm, he had lunch first at my parents' place before we left. i didn't eat yet, i was going to wait after we finished moving. we went to go see the apartment afterwards. one of his new housemates and coworker was at the house, boiling some dumpling for lunch.

we came back to my place, where i sort of nervously hung out in the living room while li was gathering up his things from his bedroom, the kitchen, and the bathroom. to his credit, he seemed to be packing pretty fast, like he had a plan. 15 minutes later he was done, and we started moving things to the front door, and then onto the car. good thing i had the honda element, because a smaller car wouldn't have been able to fit everything, he had so much stuff. even he was surprised.

we drove to my grand uncle's place, where i parked the car outside. i was backing up slowly when the car suddenly lurched backwards at high speed. i was really lucky i didn't smash the car parked behind me, it was a miracle. li's roommate was still home and came downstairs to help him move all his stuff into the house. li and i shook hands and i returned to the cafe.

my original plan was to bike home and continue to clean my community garden plot. but when i arrived at the cafe this morning, my mother said my father needed my help to take my grand uncle to see the doctor later in the afternoon at 2:20pm. so instead of going home, i waited at the cafe for half an hour before i went back to my grand uncle's place, where my father was already there helping him out of bed and dressed. it took some time getting down the stairs, the both of us lifting my grand uncle as he baby stepped down the stairs. the whole time i was thinking why we didn't go out the back entrance where there was a ramp access. the only problem was we'd have to cut through my sister's bedroom, and it's such a hoarder's mess that it'd be impossible to navigate a wheelchair through it.

at the harvard vanguard clinic i pushed the wheelchair while my father led the way and checked in my grand uncle. we took the slow elevator one floor up to the second floor. the waiting room felt familiar because i used to have harvard vanguard as my insurance and came to this cambridge clinic for a few years. for some reason it was completely empty, which is unusual, but afterwards people started trickling in. they saw my uncle right away, my father pushed him inside while i waited outside, reading about the michael flynn guilty FBI plea on my phone using the free wifi.

my father pushed out my grand uncle and we went downstairs to get an x-ray before coming back upstairs. once again, we didn't have to wait long before somebody came to ask my grand uncle to come in. once again i waited outside, reading an issue of the new yorker, about ghost scams happening in new york chinatowns. when my father came out, he said my grand uncle had a minor lung infection (causing excess phlegm build-up) and his doctor prescribed a course of antibiotics.

we got dressed (people in the waiting room where watching my father helping my grand uncle put on his jacket, which took a few minutes) then went downstairs to pick up the prescription from the clinic pharmacy. earlier i saw former coworker mick; now i spotted cambridge mayor denise simmons picking up some drugs. the pharmacy only gave my father 3 pills, to be administered every other day due to my grand uncle's age. we drove back to cambridge, where i helped my father hold my grand uncle as he slowly climbed the stairs back to his house.

it was almost 4pm and i was looking to get home before it got dark, as i didn't bring my bike lights, not thinking i'd be either at the cafe or out of the house the whole day. i didn't eat yet all day and my mother said she had some chicken curry. in the end i decided to eat quickly before rushing home. later i realized i had my fuji bike, which has the built-in light-up wheels, so i didn't have to worry about lights. there was also several packages from amazon: 2 were for my former roommate li, 1 was for me: a digital scale for my mother, a multimeter for my father, some bosch drill bits for my sister's bosch drills (not arriving until next wednesday apparently, found out yesterday), and a zyliss garlic press for myself.

i got home a bit after 4:30pm. i immediately went through the house checking for things li left behind. his situation is special but not unique, when a former roommate moves elsewhere instead of returning home. in cases like these, roommates typically can afford to take everything. in li's case, most of the stuff he left behind were food items he didn't want anyway.

the one thing he did forget accidentally was his bath towel and his little body scrubbing pad. i texted him a photo, he asked if could bring it to the cafe tomorrow or he could swing by and get it himself. he also had a tory birch package on my doorstep when i got home. after the inspection, i changed the bedsheets and vacuumed the room (ended up vacuuming the whole house while i was at it), i plan on sleeping on the guest bedroom tonight as my reclamation ritual.

how did i end up going from zero garlic press to two garlic presses? well, i bought the x-chef garlic press as a black friday deal ($7.99). when i finally received it, it was a lot bigger than i imagined. i was willing to love it and adopt it into my expanding collection of kitchen utensils, but then i saw a sale for the zyliss garlic press ($10.50), which looked much more sophisticated, so i ended up ordering one, figuring i would either return the x-chef or the xyliss, based on which one i liked best. right away, i like the design of the zyliss much better, even though it doesn't have a separate basket for the garlic that the x-chef has. i won't know which one is better until i test them both with real garlic, and unfortunately i don't have any large cloves in my kitchen, only some tiny ones that really should be thrown out. hopefully i'll get some garlic tomorrow so i can do a test.

i didn't eat the rest of the night, the curry was my single meal of the day. i did drink the bottle of nantucket nectar i grabbed yesterday from the harvard lecture, orange mango flavor. actually, that's not true, i did finish the leftover thanksgiving turkey that's been in my fridge for over a week. it didn't smell bad and i didn't have any symptoms afterwards so it was safe to eat after all. i ate while watching the 2-hour season premiere of agents of shield. i also drank the coconut juice li left behind.

i checked the FCC licensing database and noticed they had updated my operator class to amateur extra (they didn't send me an e-mail however). they also assigned my father his call sign, which means we can legally talk over the VHF/UHF bands and use local repeaters. i wasn't able to get ahold of my father to tell him the news; he was staying over at my grand uncle's place for a second night because my grand uncle is too weak to get out of bed to use the bathroom in the middle of the night so my father has to be on standby duty to assist.