there was a harvard lecture about the disappearance of jack ma this morning that i completely forgot about. by the time i remembered, it was already 20 minutes into the zoom lecture and i'd basically missed all the important stuff. fortunately i received an e-mail after it was over with a link to the recorded lecture, so i was able to see what i'd missed.

i saw a woman leave my upstairs neighbors house. at first i thought maybe it was paul's daughter, but when i saw her get into her SUV, it had the compass real estate agency logo on the side. could my neighbors be thinking about selling? or possibly renting out longer than just the summer? who knows, but change is afoot.

today was grey, with rainstorms starting in the afternoon. i biked down to market basket in the morning to grab some corned beef. it was my first ride since fixing the rear brakes yesterday, bike performed flawlessly. i've been riding with just the front brakes for so long, i was hesitant to engage the rear brakes.

i was worried there'd be a lot of people at market basket with a possible snowstorm arriving in the middle of the night, but it was relatively uncrowded. i made a beeline to the corned beef section and discovered they only had the expensive cuts, all the cheap point cuts were gone. i even asked a butcher who told me they had none left. it made me regret coming so late, maybe if i came yesterday i could've scored some cheap corned beef. all because i was hoping they'd discount what was already a rock bottom price. they still might have some available at some of the other market baskets (waltham, burlington), but i also have a corned beef i picked up earlier this week in my fridge, so it's not a complete disaster. and with april coming up soon, the easter hams will be on sale so that's something else to look forward to. i follow the migration of specialty food items like an alaskan hunter tracking the caribous. i left with some japanese noodles for my 2nd aunt and a package of glazed pecans.

i made myself a cup of almond milk matcha latte for lunch.

in the afternoon i tackled another item on this week's todo list, which was to clean the aquarium. ever since i started cleaning the tank with the magic eraser, there hasn't been much glass algae. there is however hair algae that doesn't seem to be stopping anytime soon. the problem is the hair algae grows on the roots of the anubias and java ferns, choking them and taking over the tank. i've been meaning to clean the tank more often but i should really get serious about it because the hair algae can grow back in just a few weeks. the aquarium water itself looks fairly clean, just looks like about 2 inches worth of water had evaporated. cleaning the tank means getting rid of the hair algae and replenishing the water. it took an hour to clean. i saved up some aquarium water in used 2 liter soda bottles, because its good water for plants.

i was hungry enough afterwards that i made some indomie mi goreng. i tried to poach an egg but the water wasn't hot enough so the egg barely cooked. i also added some leftover spicy tofu. i retreated to the darkened living room to eat and rewatch season 1 of for all mankind, but there was a somebody standing on the front porch, ringing the doorbell for upstairs, and i was afraid it was some kind organization looking for a donation, so i turned off the computer and pretended not to be home. the person didn't leave though, and i couldn't wait any longer, so i resumed my video and continued eating.

the rain started in the afternoon. supposedly it'll transition to slow for a very hours in the very early morning, before stopping by sunrise. i'm hoping there won't be any snow so i don't have to ride to belmont and clean the solar panels one last time. i'm hoping conditions are good enough tomorrow that i can ride to chinatown and haymarket for some supplies.

i was shopping for a new crankset for my trek utility bike. i had my eye on the shimano tourney TY501 24/34/42 170mm crankset. the tourney line is their cheapest offering, and i'm already using a set of tourney derailleurs (front and back). cheapest i saw on amazon was $31, which was just the crankset. i then came across the same crankset on ebay for just $21. from the photo it looked like it also included the left crank arm though there was no mention of it in the description. even without it, it's still $10 cheaper so i bought the ebay one. i had to replace the original left crank arm on the trek because the bike pedal was loose and wore out the thread to the point where the pedal fell out. i removed the left crank arm from another bike (170mm) and frankenstein'ed it onto the trek. it doesn't match because the trek is black while the replacement pedal is silver.

i reheated another bowl of vegetable soup for dinner. this time i added the bacon afterwards, but it still didn't really improve it. i have one more serving left for tomorrow night and then i never have to eat vegetable soup again. good news is i still have a huge supply of cooked bacon.