i was slow to get out of bed but what suddenly woke me up was this: i noticed the webcam at my parents' place was down. this could be a few things. power outage? possible, but i was still able to control the wireless smart plugs. ip address change? maybe. but my imagination thought the worst: that a burglar had broken into the house in the middle of the night and deactivated the camera.

i fueled up the car before stopping by the cafe on my way to belmont. earlier i noticed there was some adjustments on the cafe's nest thermostat. sure enough, my 2nd aunt asked me how to use the nest. just intuitively, she'd already raised the temperature, but was confused when she saw the thermostat showing red. i told her that meant it was heating, nothing to worry about, it's normal.

i then drove to my parents' place, anxiously pulling up into the driveway. when i entered the house there was nothing amiss. i checked the ip which turned out to be the culprit. i updated the number on my webcam app and was able to see the camera again.

i went to home depot again. seems like i go every day. i wanted to get there before the noontime crowd of contractors on supply runs. i bought some more molding (5ft) and bought 2ft worth of 3/4" quarter round. i also got some finishing nails and a nail set.

back in belmont, i checked the tire pressures, as my father told me one of the tires on the camry gets a little flat. the one on the front driver side was only 28psi, while all the others were 32psi+. i fired up the electric compressor and inflated the tire. afterwards i windexed the windows then applied 2 layers of glass-x.

i finally returned to the cafe by 1pm. my sister had bought some poke and i ate lunch before going outside to work. she must've gotten the deluxe because it seemed to have everything, i didn't ask her how much it cost. today was supposed to be a bitterly cold day with wind chill in the 20's, but by the afternoon it wasn't too bad, with temperature in the 40's.

i actually did very little work. i couldn't cut any more molding until the column was repaired. the quarter round strip i bought was actually not the right size; the rounded edge seems to be 1/2" not 3/4". i'm just going to sand it down by hand using a combination of power sander and sandpaper. so the only thing i did do was to nail down the 4 good pieces of molding i cut yesterday. i tried to get them to match up, hiding the misaligned corners in the back so nobody would see it. i noticed i just got regular finishing nails when i should've gotten stainless steel, hopefully it won't make too big a difference. i also used the nail set to tap in the nail head without accidentally marring the molding. my sister helped me to tape everything back up (i won't be able to work on it until next week, and it might rain over the next few days). progress has been very slow and now that the weather and turned cold, it's sort of harsh working outside. i've noticed the back of my hands have been awfully dry the past few days.

i was back at home by 3:20pm, the earliest i've been home this week. i went to the dollar store to get some candy and some jerky for this weekend's hike. the house was cold (59-60°), but i still refuse to turn on the heat. instead i did a load of laundry, the dryer adding some ambient heat to the house.

when i took a shower later, i noticed the water was especially hot. actually, i've been noticing how hot the water has been all week. at first i thought it was because the weather had turned colder, which somehow affected the water tank, but today my suspicion got the better of me and i went into the basement (after accidentally tipping over a potted plant, so i had to clean up a mess of dirt in the kitchen). my suspicion was confirmed: my upstairs neighbors had turned up the heat on my water tank! i usually set it slightly below A, but now it was nearly at B. they must've made a mistake, not knowing which tank was theirs, but even after they made the adjustment, they never turned mine back down. it goes to show that they're kind of inconsiderate. the previous tenants would've never done this.

i reheated the leftover beef broth from yesterday and cooked up some more chinese noodles for dinner. i added a teaspoon of vietnamese garlic hot sauce for extra flavor. i washed it down with a schweppes pomegranate seltzer and later ate a jazz apple.

i ate while watching game 5 of the ALCS. with ace justin verlander pitching for houston, this would be an uphill battle for boston. red sox struck first, putting a run on the board. then later they added 3 more runs. red sox ended up winning, and will now go to the world series.

while lying in bed preparing to sleep, i couldn't stand the cold anymore. temperature was already 59°F and would only get lower until i did something. so i finally turned on the heat. set to the lowest default (59°), i heard it firing a few times throughout the night, preventing my house from getting too cold.