i biked to the cafe this morning to fix my mother's broken xiaomi fitness band. she told me yesterday it had problems sync'ing. in order to fix it, i made her phone forget the device through the mi fit app and then re-established the bluetooth link. it was an easy fix, didn't even require an account number or passwords, which i brought along as well. i returned home soon after that.

last night i finished watching big bad wolves on amazon prime, after reading the director of gunpowder milkshake had made a movie a few years ago that quentin tarantino was raving about. it's a well-made thriller, about vigilantes kidnapping a suspected pedophile and torturing him for a confession. it falls under the torture porn genre so it's not for everyone, and it's very well written and bears repeated watching to catch the clues along the way.

i thought it'd be a very stormy and wet day, but the storm clouds won't arrive until 4pm at the earliest, if they even get here. so until then it was a very dry and calm day. in the early afternoon i returned to market basket to get some rice vinegar. i was in the asian food aisle but surprised there was no rice vinegar to be found. i then went to the dressing and oil aisle and that's where i found the rice vinegars, so many variety it was hard to choose. i went with the classic marukan-brand. i was also eyeballing the sushi but decided not to get it. while checking out, a man in front of me in line was buying a bunch of aloe fronds. i asked him what he does with it, he said he uses them to make drinks. i don't think i ever seen anyone buying aloe fronds before even though i have seen them for sale. he also told me i can bottled aloe drinks, which i think i have tried in the past, sort of a flavorless drink (think coconut water) with jelly elements.

my mother went to the dentist this afternoon in arlington. she was going by herself and i was worried she 1) wouldn't be able to the find the place, and 2) wouldn't know how to park the car once she did. she hasn't really driven the car in a while, the longest she's driven recently would be from the cafe to my house. i volunteered to drive her on a few occasions, but she was she'd go alone. in the end my sister ended up driving her and leaving her there to walk back afterwards, as the dentist office was right along the alrington-cambridge border. my mother's had a toothache for at least a year now. she was going to wait and get it done in taiwan, but with the pandemic, who knows when she'll be able to go there. i figured the dentist would do a root canal, but apparently the tooth was in bad enough shape they just pulled it out. the dentist will see how it heals and whether they can do a future dental implant.

once again i took a nap in the early evening, around 6pm, waking up sometime after 7pm. my body felt achy and a little sweaty from sleeping in the warm living room.

besides an encore preparation of smashed cucumbers (this time with rice vinegar), i decided to also roast the parsnips i bought yesterday.

i still wasn't happy with the smashed cucumbers. yesterday they were too sweet, today they were too sour. i tasted the rice vinegar, i really didn't notice any difference compared to regular vinegar, of which i have many different bottles (red wine, regular, cider, balsamic). i think next time i'll need to add some sugar just to balance out the sourness. i could also ask my mother, who occasionally makes this as well, maybe she has some flavor tips. fortunately i bought another cucumber today (english), so i can make this recipe a few more times. i can't imagine anyone would object if i ate a lot of cucumbers, i imagine they're a lot healthier than what i normally eat.

as for the parsnips, i first trimmed off the tops, then parboiled them in water for 8 minutes. this is to soften them up, as i read the thicker pieces can be tough if roasted directly, particularly the woodsy interior. once they finished boiling, i cut them into smaller pieces then tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper, paprika, and ground garlic powder. i then placed them on a pan and roasted them in the oven for 30 minutes, turning them with tongs every 10 minutes so they brown on all sides.

the final results looked like home fries, but taste more like sweet potato fries. they're sweet but also have a very strong fragrant taste (of the parsnips) that confused my brain as it couldn't quantify just exactly what i was eating. that was my dinner, half the parsnips fries and a whole bowl of smashed cucumbers, along with a glass of chocolate milk. i finished it off with a pluot and a lindy's italian ice mango-pineapple flavor.

i ate while watching the bluejays-redsox game, as there was nothing else to watch on tv. i couldn't even watch it on tv, had to stream it from an illegal sports broadcast site on my laptop. red sox ended up winning, continuing their buffalo homerun derby.