my father bought a stainless steel tent stove this morning. he saw it first for sale from walmart, the same one he tried to get directly from the chinese manufacturer 2 years ago but once the 
company realized how much it'd cost to ship it to the US, they cancelled the order. there are other stainless steel tent stoves, but this model is special in that its double-walled. my father was going to buy it from walmart, but found the same stove from the distributor's website, a company called vevor that sells all sort of equipment and tools, at a cheaper price, so he ended up ordering it from them instead. it's due to arrive next week. not even sure how we'll use it since we've never done any sort of winter camping and don't have a shed where we could use this stove.
there was some gardening chores to do, but i decided to put them off until tomorrow, when the daytime temperature is supposed to be in the 50's. 
the only thing we did was to stack 3 rain barrels in the southeastern corner of the yard; readjust the solar panel for the east-facing security light; and my father climbed the roof to take down the DBJ-1 antenna so he can fix the copper tail that we trimmed too much of. i refilled the birdfeeder (didn't see any birds today) and collected the rest of the "cherokee sunset" rudbeckia seeds.
my mother decided instead of cooking she wanted to order chinese takeout from joyful garden in the watertown mall. that way when my sister came to pick up hailey in the evening, she could also eat with us. after deciding what we wanted to order, my mother made the call at 5pm, my father and i went to go pick up the order 30 minutes later.
because we were paying cash, my mother was able to speak to the owner and get a discount on the order ($120). the order wasn't ready yet so i wait about 10 minutes before a large bag came out of the kitchen. they also seemed to be doing pretty good dining service, about a dozen tables.
this was our 3rd time order from joyful garden this year (may, june). third time around the food was okay (better than mulan at least), but maybe because we basically got the same thing as last time, so a lot of the novelty had worn off.
after dinner i returned home. i didn't check the temperature before i left, but if i had to guess, it was low 40's to upper 30's. i didn't feel as cold as last night because i had on my thermal underwear, but my torso felt a bit chilly and so did my hands. unlike on a bicycle where i'd warm up after a few minutes of pedaling, with a motorcycle there's no way to warm up. maybe i should dig out my old lighter fluid hand warmer. they also sell electronic ones.