i walked down to walgreens in the late morning to get a condolence card to send to maureen and her family. listed under the "sympathy" category, a lot of them were christian religious themed. i picked one that just had a generic message. i actually brought along my drone, figured if i found a good spot i'd launch it into the air and get a nice view of somerville from above. but the thought of losing the drone over a vast swath of residential properties made me reconsider. another time perhaps, or from higher grounds. in the meantime, i'll still be on the lookout for good launching places. honestly, i can launch just about anywhere - even from the sidewalk - as long as there aren't anybody nearby. once the drone is up in the air, it's pretty much impossible to see during he daytime unless you know where to look.

for lunch i made one of my most ambitious sandwich: guacamole spread (avocado, kosher salt, olive oil, minced garlic), cooked hickory smoked christmas ham, bacon-fat fried egg sprinkled with everything bagel seasoning, topped with tomato and onion slices, served on whole wheat bread with a side of bacon. it tasted okay, but the bread is just too soft and kind of disappears. for tomorrow i'm going to try toasting the bread, or cooking them first with butter. i ate my sandwich with a yakult yogurt drink, a mug of chinese plum juice, and a glass of black tea.

in the afternoon i started another batch of jiu niang. same process as before, except i'd be using angel rice leaven powder. the package was expired, but i'm hoping it's still viable (otherwise i would've wasted a lbs. worth of glutinous rice). the direction said the yeast powder is good for fermenting around 5 lbs. of rice. that meant i only needed to use a 1/5th of the 8g. (an online video i found showed someone using 3g of powder to 2 cups of rice). but since the rice leaven was expired, i figured it wouldn't hurt if i used the whole package. the powder was very fine, the consistency of flour. the label said the rice leaven is a combination of rice flour and Rhizopus oryzae with no mention of yeast, so i wonder if this will produce an even sweeter jiu niang since yeast is what turns sugar into alcohol.

i didn't leave the house the rest of the day. i had a feeling that my upstairs neighbors went to their vineyards retreat to spend the holiday. i overheard steve teling another neighbor about their christmas plans. i noticed their car was gone and they were suspiciously quiet all day long, though i thought i heard some phantom noises. when evening came around and it was still quiet, my suspicions were confirmed. it would've been nice if they told me, but honestly, i really don't care, i'm just glad they're not here for a for days.

i spent most of the day retroactively filling in old blog postings. fortunately most of them have text, all that's missing were the photos. i'm currently nearly done with september; i still have all the summer months to deal with.

for dinner i ate the bread my parents made over the weekend along with several slices of christmas ham. that was enough to last me into the night, along with some clementine oranges and more black tea.

the celtics season started tonight, their first game was against the milwaukee bucks. seeing how they didn't play well during the pre-season and was missing key player kemba walker due to lingering injury issues, i just assumed boston would lose tonight and i didn't even bother watching the game. so imagine my surprise when i checked the score later in the evening and saw that the celtics were up 1-0 for the schedule. i quickly pulled the game from youtube tv and watched the final few minutes.