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my motorcycle started up fine this morning so i didn't have to jump the battery even though i was ready to do so. temperature was in the upper 30's, cold enough that i slipped on my handlebar mitts. it was marti's last day in cambridge, i could hear her still walking around upstairs. not sure the exact time she's leaving, but steve and paul said they'd be back this weekend, as early as today. it's not something i'm looking forward to.

my parents were doing some preliminary pre-thanksgiving clean-up. i was busy with some plant maintenance. the two remaining lotus plants have died back enough that i removed them from their individual buckets and added them to the rest of the winterizing lotuses in the barrel. later i covered everything up with a large piece of styrofoam. the gardenia leaves seemed to be speckled so i took it outside and give it a shower with the garden hose, which i had to retrieve from garage storage. while i was there i also grabbed my bag of diatomaceous earth powder and dusted the soil of some plants. i took the cactuses outside and gave them a more thoroughly dusting, as they seem to be harboring the most amount of fungus gnats.

i noticed my father had a new long planter box of fresh soil for his scallions. only when i went outside did i realize he's dumped out the previous mint mix to take the pot. his reasoning was the mint seemed to have a lot of bugs, but i told him the mints would die left unpotted (though it'd survive the winter outside no problem), so he put back the pot and took the long container for the garlic chives, which didn't seem to be very well and had a lot of grass mixed in with the chives. finally, i soaked the dahlia tubers. i dug them out 2 weeks ago and left them in the basement to dry. apparently i waited too long because they were all dried up and looked dead. so i soaked them in a bucket of water for a few hours before letting them dry again. i'm not hopeful they'll survive, i'll need to overwinter them in some dirt, maybe there's a chance a few might still be alive.

it was my first time trying the sichuan paocai i'd made, although my mother had already ate some. the perfect mix of crispy spicy with salty and sour, like being magically transported to chongqing.

after dinner i motorcycled back to cambridge. i was afraid the engine wouldn't start but once again i had no problems with the battery. i rode behind a car that was driving the current cambridge speed limit of 25mph, but then dropped down to the new speed limit of 20mph, and then went even slower than that (18mph). cambridge's decision to decrease the citywide speed limit to 20mph is going to create an insane level of road rage. if they want to decrease the speed limit to prevent auto accidents, why not just ban cars outright? it's such a stupid idea, i hope they get enough hate mail in 2020 that they end up changing the speed limit back to 25mph, which is already pretty slow.

back at the house, the upstairs lights were all dark, which meant nobody was home, a good sign. i was afraid i wouldn't be able to find a parking spot but since steve and paul weren't back yet, that meant two less SUV's contesting for parking space. a short time later i went back outside to put the cover on the bike as it's supposed to rain all day tomorrow.

one of the E12 (candelabra) LED light bulbs arrived today. it was the one with 4 LED's soldered onto a plate, the most basic of design (all the other E12 LED bulbs i bought uses COB technology). i swapped out the incandescent bulb of my hallway lantern lamp. two things i noticed: it wasn't very bright (despite being advertised as 10W) and the color was cool white, which made it look very bluish. i got this for the salt lamps but because of the bluish hue, they probably won't work very well.

i spent some time adding some new weatherseal around the frame of my rear door (earlier i added some sealing foam to the basement door of my parents' place). i've had a package of frost king EPDM D-section weatherseal for some time now, but hadn't had a chance to use it until tonight. i was going to put a strip underneath the door, but instead i put it on the threshold, which is less liable to come up. i also added sealing to the side of the door, which seemed like a great idea at the time, but i ended up not being able to close the door. i finally fixed it by cutting the weatherseal in half (it had a double-D pattern) but i made a mess sticking and removing the seal mutiple times that it stripped some of the wood.

i'm not going to be able to get a good night sleep as i'm scheduled to wake up early to attend victor's harvard square tour at 7am. why did i agree to it in the first place? and why have it so early? and what's even the point? does he need photos? is that why he wanted to ask me and dennis? not only is it going to be early, it's also going to be rainy. i just want to get it over with and go back to bed. i secretly hope that when i go to his house tomorrow morning, he won't be there, or will haven't forgotten about our appointment.