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JUL

25

2020

my parents were in framingham for a 11am acupuncture appointment for my mother with a taiwanese specialist recommended by my godmother. i found the newly arrived quick connector hose fittings outside, my father had already installed most of them. the only good thing i can say about them is they're new. material and quality-wise they seemed inferior. instead of real brass, they were simply brass-coated aluminum, so they felt substantially lighter than the real brass fittings we have. regardless of what they look like and the quality, they still work. though it is obviously a "you get what you pay for" example.

when my parents came home in the afternoon, my mother made me some noodles for lunch as i hadn't eaten yet. she also made some more air fried char siu, her third attempt, improving each time. this time she used actual char siu sauce so it was more authentic but i felt it wasn't charred and crispy enough.

i brought my old activated carbon, the one that i purchased off of ebay for cheap but doesn't fizzle like the name brand carbon. i poured about half a cup into small dishes and placed them in the refrigerator and freezer in an attempt to get rid of the smell. i heard activated carbon is better at absorbing odor than baking soda (though more expensive).

i did a quick survey of RB4, dug up the soil looking for earthworms. it didn't take long to find them, and it didn't take long to identify them as jumping worms, as they squirmed violently to escape the container i put them in. it was too hot to continue digging, and i wasn't going to get all of them realistically. the ones i did catch, i left the container in the middle of the lawn, hoping for the robins to find them. that didn't happen and when i went outside a few hours later, the worms had all dried up.

my father made dinner, cooked up half the large zucchini he picked from the yard, along with some air fried shake & bake chicken thighs. the chicken were a little undercooked around the bone area, i still managed to eat two.

i'd wanted to catch the NEOWISE comet again, and i brought all my gear, including a change of clothes (jeans, windbreaker jacket) and my picaridin-based insect repellent, which i haven't used in many years. but it meant having to wait until 9pm when the sky is dark enough to see the comet, and that probably meant i wouldn't get back home until after 10pm. i decided to skip the comet (and the mosquito bites) and go home early so i could do more online census training.

finally got a chance to use one of the biore deep cleansing pore strips i had in my bathroom medicine cabinet for a while. the pores on my nose felt especially clogged up, it was time for a deep clean. it was very satisfying to pull it off afterwards once it dried up to reveal all the uprooted pore gunk.