thankfully tropical storm elsa stayed quiet throughout the night and i was able to get a good night's sleep. what woke me later was the storm picking up, as the rain began to beat against te side of the house, the windows, the trash cans, and loudest of all, the back of the air conditioner in the living room. the racket was enough to get me out of bed.

for lunch i had a matcha latte along with a cup of nongshim black shin noodles. i also made some tea (the weather was cold enough to warrant it) with the indian loose tea sample my parents gave me. although the ingredients looked good, the flavor was acrid while i like my teas mellow and sweet.

throughout the day, there would be intermittent bands of heavy rain that clattered against the back of the air conditioner, drowning out all other sounds. i watched the storm passing through boston on the doppler radar, the eye seemingly taking a direct hit over the city. the forecast said once the storm went by there'd be some clearing in the afternoon.

i don't know how it happened but i managed to crack my phone screen protector again. i'd just replaced it a little over 3 weeks ago and i've already managed to damage it. say what you will about tempered glass screen protectors - their durability, their clarity, their ease of application - but all it takes is just a tiny chip to produce a hairline fracture that will then propagate and crack the rest of the screen. not to mention you then get tiny shards of class everywhere. fortunately i had a brand new box of replacement glass protectors (3) for the pixel 3XL on hand. i don't even remember how i cracked the protector in the first place. i've dropped the phone a bunch of times and nothing happened to the protector, but i take it out of my pocket one day and there's a crack. sometimes i think if i should go back to plastic film protectors again (which don't crack), but then i remember they're not as good: they will prevent your actual screen from getting scratches (resulting in a foggy display) but they don't prevent the actual screen from getting cracked if the phone is dropped.

the clearing didn't come until nearly 6pm. had it arrived sooner, i was actually thinking about riding back into boston to visit haymarket, which i wasn't able to do yesterday. but even with the sun out, there'd be puddles everywhere, and the chance of being splashed with street runoffs by an errant passing car was high, so better to just stay home.

i made tteokbokki (korean rice cakes) for dinner. once again, the cold weather warranted a warm spicy meal. i made it late, wasn't done until 9:30pm. i ate while watching the new black widow movie. i came in with low expectations but was pleasantly surprised by how entertaining and funny it was. the black widow can be dour so it was a good idea surrounding her with characters with a sense of humor. florence pugh and david harbour stole every scene they're in, it must've been a fun set.