i started the day chatting with wangyan, who suddenly contacted me on wechat. she said she watched a movie called brad's status (2017) that takes place at harvard university. she said it looked very beautiful. i told her chances are it wasn't actually filmed at harvard, since the school doesn't allowing movies to be made on its campus. i asked her if she was going to munich again and she said yes. i told her it was just a relatively short 8-1/2 hours direct flight from munich to boston. i was telling her about thanksgiving and black friday shopping. she said she will visit boston one day, but not on this trip. she then said she was poor, and told me the reason is because she recently bought another house in chongqing. then she told me that she and her boyfriend bought the place together, so that they can live together when they get married next year. wow! talk about breaking news! in a matter of seconds i learned that she was buying a second house, has a boyfriend, and that they're getting married! i'm happy for her but it makes me a little sad to find another single friend no longer single. she said they met back in 2013, at jiuzhaigou, but only "fell in love" 2 years ago. he works in guangzhou, but is actually from jilin. suddenly it made sense why she was visiting dongbei last winter, it was to visit her boyfriend. he must've also taken all those photos of her. it wasn't that i wasn't being observant, but she kept it hidden pretty well, never showing anyone else in her vacation photos except for herself.

i drove to rite aid this morning to pick up some prescriptions before arriving in belmont. i was a little worried because i noticed the fuel gauge was running on empty, despite the nearly 2 gallons worth of extra gasoline i added to the tank late saturday night. i stopped by the somerville avenue cumberland gas station to get $30 worth of gas.

at my parents' backyard a lot of plants had wilted from frost damage over the weekend. it was still cold enough that a few bird baths had ice in them. it was the perfect time to clean out the raised beds as there was garden refuse pickup tomorrow. the most important thing was to dig out the dahlia tubers so they don't die from the low temperatures. i was surprised to find how many more tubers we had, like digging out sweet potatoes. i also dumped a bag of garden soil into each raised beds (RB1, RB2, RB4). despite the cold, it was a sunny day, and i kept taking off layers until i was working in just a t-shirt.

at one point the contractors working across the street parked a long flat-bed truck right in front of my parents' house, blocking the driveway. they were setting up a chain-linked fence. i asked them how long they'd take, i told them i was leaving in about half an hour. before their time was up they finally moved the truck.

i left for home depot to look for sandpaper for the belt sander. i decided on some 60 grit paper. when i finally arrived at the cafe by 1:50pm, i realized the sandpaper i got was not the kind used for belt sanders. i was going to go back to home depot to get the right kind, but decided to try just hand sanding the two pieces of replacement corners. it was actually quite easy to do, and made me question why it took so long for me to just try sanding it by hand, but instead trying to go the complicated route, like using a belt sander, or even thinking about buying a handheld router to round the corners.

once i got the wood corners sanded, i nailed them in place. that was easier said than done, as i kept bending the finishing nails, and the remaining wooden columns weren't in very good shape to begin with, so it took several nails to hold the replacement corners in place. afterwards i patched up the gaps with the wood filler. once everything dries and hardens i'll need to sand everything done again, but we're definitely getting closer. there's a good chance i'll be finally painting this week.

i returned home around 4pm. i hadn't eaten all day, and thought about going to armando's to get some pizza, but the paid parking discouraged me as i didn't have any quarters for the meter. i went to star market to get some honey crisp apples and a bundle of asparagus. i wanted to get some poke but they're closed on mondays (even though i saw people inside, i think they were cleaning). i had some carrots and humus to stave off my cravings until dinner, where i ended up heating another container of frozen beef broth for some noodles. i added some maitake mushrooms for some additional flavor.