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temperature was in the 40's, i had to turn on the motorcycle choke to get it started but once it did i pushed the choke back in. i dressed warmly, had on my fleece jacket with the additional vest layer, but i brought my handlebar mitts anyway just in case it got colder later tonight coming back.

the first thing my mother told me when i arrived in belmont was my california cousin zhouke tested positive for coronavirus, as well as his daughter. now my aunt and uncle are waiting for their test results, but my aunt told me mother she already has a fever, so there's a good chance she has covid as well. it's one thing if everyone recovers, but if anyone takes a turn for the worse, that daughter-in-law and her mother will not be welcomed anymore.

turns out this morning my parents went to their framingham acupuncturists after all. coming back, they stopped by the waltham costco. my mother said they got a package of momosan tonkatsu ramen and fixed me a bowl, said it was really good. the first few sips were good, the broth a more delicious complexity than your average instant noodles, but after that it started tasting like every other ramen i've ever had. i also had a slice of panettone bread and some persimmons. later i had some sesame paste glutinous rice balls. i also tried the over-fermented glutinous rice; there's no sweetness but the alcohol is very strong, has a bitter taste even of hard booze.

the backyard maple has finally shed most of its leaves. my father said the ground was still too wet to mow so we're going to do it tomorrow instead, shred these leaves and add them in the compost bin. afterwards we're going to fertilize the lawn. so the only thing we did today in the backyard was to bring in all the jasmines and gardenia plants, as temperature tonight was dropping into the low 30's. we also disconnected the hose from the on-demand pump again and drained the remaining water from the hose so it doesn't freeze up overnight. i filled the birdfeeder with black oil sunflower seeds.

when evening came around my father and i went outside to grill the barbecued ribs my parents got at costco. we cooked the good face first, since later on the grill will get hotter and liable for flare-ups. after 15 minutes, we flipped the ribs over to cook the underside. the fat drippings must've accumulated at the bottom of the grill and couldn't run off into the pan because the grease ended up catching fire. my father had to remove the ribs and turn off the propane as the grill was enveloped in a bonfire. it was so hot, the thermometer on the barbecue lid went off the scale. even when we closed the lid, flames were licking from the sides. only after did the grease all burn away did we turn the grill back on. now using low temperature, it was a much quieter cookout and we slow-cooked the ribs for another 30 minutes before they were finally ready.

i ended up having 5 sticks of ribs, although i could've just stopped at 4, that 5th piece was an unnecessary bonus. returning home, i tried starting the engine without the choke but it wouldn't kick it, and it was only after i turned on the choke did the engine roar to life. i didn't put on the handlebar mitts, my hands were a little cold, but my arms were toasty warm and through blood circulation it was enough to keep my hands warm.

my taotronic bluetooth transmitter arrived today. i was surprised by how small it was, give how much i paid for it ($36). i hooked it up to my HDTV using the optical cable and i managed to pair it successfully to my bose speaker, but it wouldn't play any audio. i kept searching for an option in the menu but i didn't find anything. i did see a clue though, that there were separate audio options for the various HDMI connections. so i turned on the roku and fired up youtube tv; sure enough, audio finally played from the bose speaker. because the optical toslink is for digital audio only, it meant the audio i receive via over-the-air channels doesn't count for some reason; only AV connections from actual digital sources can work with the toslink. good news is there was no delay, voices sync'ed up perfectly with the speakers. bad news is i couldn't control the volume with the tv remote, only through the volume buttons on the speaker itself. digital audio encoding doesn't contain volume info, that's probably why my remote didn't work. i'm still on the fence as to whether or not i'm going to return the transmitter. maybe my mother might want it, she was asking about a way for her to use earbuds to listen to the tv.

steve and paul were quiet for the most part, but starting at 9:30pm they started blaring their tv sound again. i had to drown out the noise my streaming my audio through the bose speaker, finished watching wayne on amazon prime. now i'm watching dicktown based on the recommendation of maureen.