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there's hasn't been a sunday where kevin's stayed home, so today was no difference, as he woke up by 9:30am and left for the office around 10am. the sound of backpack zippers closing gave me confidence that he would be gone soon. i went back to the bathroom to use the facility in peace before taking a shower. i walked to the supermarket to get a box of green mountain hazelnut coffee for my mother before biking to belmont by 11:30am.

after lunch my father did some antenna testing with the box of adapters i brought over from my house. around 1:45pm we left for binbin's place in burlington to pick up the mail and check to see everything was okay. we managed to coax my mother away from her netflix and come with us with promises of visiting the bedford OSJL.

with driving and holding a phone becoming illegal in massachusetts next week (not just texting), i bought a phone holder which arrived yesterday. my father installed it in the car attached to the windshield and was using the android auto app as an onboard gps. we also tested its ability to both receive calls and text. text was particularly special because it seemed to be able to read the text back to you. my father also made a phone call to me using voice command, but it wasn't able to recognize my mother's number. later on in bedford we saw a police office chase down a vehicle and pull it over. not sure exactly the reason (the car wasn't speeding and didn't seem to violate any traffic laws), but maybe it was for using the phone while driving.

the first thing we noticed when we got to binbin's place was how cold it was inside. that's always the case however, the lower floors are cold while the upper floors are warm. while my father went to go start up the car in the driveway, i checked the thermostat which was showing a low battery warning. i went through the house searching for AA batteries, opening a few electronic toys. all of them were either the wrong size or rusted/leaking. so i disassembled the electronic door lock i installed last month and took out those batteries to test. no matter what we did, it kept displaying the low battery warning and nothing else. maybe it needed better batteries. with a few very cold nights later in the week, we thought it'd be wiser to fix the thermostat before leaving. so we drove to the nearby gas station and i bought a package of duracell AA's (2) for $5.20.

back at the house, my mother sat in the car while my father and i went back inside the house. we figured all we had to do was replace the batteries, but our worst fear was realized when nothing happened, it still only showed the low battery warning. i popped out the fuse, thinking it might be broken, but the fuse was fine. i finally went online to download the instruction manual. i was looking for info on a tiny button i saw inside the thermostat that looked like a reset button but i just wanted to make sure. once i got confirmation, i hit the button, the LCD flashed, and the normal display started showing again. we set the thermostat to manual and put the house at 55°F. i also wanted to turn off the gas fireplaces after i realized they were still on (when we touched the fireplaces last time, they were slightly warm) but my father said to leave them on, so there'd still be a tiny amount of heat in case the thermostat malfunctioned again.

outside we bumped into tom's girlfriend frances. we chatted briefly before leaving, just to let her know everything was fine with the house.

from there it was a 10 minute drive to the bedford OSJL via route 95. we've never been here before: i thought it was smaller but my mother said it was bigger than the other two OSJL we occasionally visit (everett, waltham). at the very least they had more stuff, my mother said they carried things she never saw at the other stores. we left with $40 worth of merchandise, including a bag of bird seeds. we left by 3:40pm, took us 20 minutes to drive back to belmont.

after dinner i left for home by 7:15pm. i wanted to get back before kevin. i passed by his workplace and on the road back i didn't see him, so he was either still at work or already home. turns out he was still in the office. i used the bathroom and showered, turned on the tv by 8pm to watch the NBA all stars game. kevin didn't get back until 8:30pm, carrying with him a large onion and ham pizza. he'd already ate with coworkers, but bought a pizza as well, which was already cold. we both had a slice, i taught him how to warm up the pizza on the stovetop using a frying pan and some tinfoil.