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walgreens notified me a few days ago that my prescriptions were ready so this morning i found got a chance to walk down there and pick them up. temperature was warm - in the 50's - but a little rainy and wet. i just wore my fleece jacket. midway on my walk my sister called me asking if i needed i ride. i told her i'd be done in 15 minutes. the pharmacy only had 2 of my prescriptions, i had to get a refill authorization from my doctor on the thiazide. almost home, i called my sister and told her she could leave now.

arriving at my parents' place, my aunt finally contacted them with an update regarding what happened last night. she went to the emergency room where they bandaged up the cut on her face and even gave her a few stitches. because hailey isn't fully vaccinated for rabies, my aunt has to get rabies shots as a precaution. my father left to deliver some thanksgiving flan my aunt wasn't able to have last night as she raced to the hospital.

i had turkey rollups for lunch. i also tried the ube mochi, my first time tasting ube. honestly, i couldn't really distinguish the flavor, non-refrigerated mochi is probably not the best medium for trying out ube. i'll need to eat more ube to figure out its taste.

as it was raining intermittently outside (and feeling very cold because of the moisture and dropping temperature), i didn't go out into the backyard today, saving that yardwork for later in the weekend. i did go downstairs to the grow room to spray the jade plant with insecticidal soap (i saw another large mealybug! how can they keep on coming back when i spray like crazy?) and the orchids with neem oil. i also sprayed the lemon verbana, noticed some aphids yesterday. upstairs i set the pepper plant in the bathtub and sprayed it with insecticidal soap as well; not so much aphids on the leaves but rather on the flowers and the peppers themselves.

the new electronic mousetrap i set up in the kitchen cabinet yesterday was flashing green this morning. when my mother checked the trap though, it was empty but all the peanut butter bait was gone. how did the mouse survive the trap? maybe the batteries are bad. so i set the trap again. the mousetrap in the basement however did managed to catch a mouse, after it's been there for over a month. it seemed fresh, like maybe it got caught just today. hopefully this doesn't mean a resurgence of mice activity after we haven't seen any for months.

i was trying to buy a new used macbook pro for my father, to replace the mid-2012 macbook pro he inherited from me when i got a new used late 2013 macbook pro retina 15" back in 2018. that mid-2012 MBP still works, but will crash intermittently, and will shut down if you close the lid. it's been repaired so many times, i was just going to leave it as a backup machine, not worth spending more money on to try and fix. but it's gotten to the point where it's difficult to use, and a replacement was in order.

i had the specs of the new used machine in mind: 2013-2015 15" retina macbook pro with 16GB RAM and 500GB hard drive. i first checked craig's list, there seems to be a lot of scam MBP sellers, with similar ads that feature non-corresponding photos. the one legit post i saw was a belmont seller offering a 2012 15" retina MBP for $400. unfortunately it was only 8GB/250GB, for that price i could do better. i tried ebay, there were some good deals on 2015 15" retina MBP for around $200-450. the problem with ebay is that its national (maybe even international), and with some auction posts, the prices seem low initially, but once it gets to the final seconds, a dozen bidders will jump in and suddenly the price will skyrocket. we tried bidding on a MBP for $300 but the final price was $430. another auction had a 2015 MBP with a 1TB hard drive that was originally $300 but ended at $730. so it seemed like ebay was not the best route.

i'd checked out backmarket.com in previous occasions, never bought anything from them though. a few months back i found some good MBP deals, but when i looked again, i didn't see any. pricing is kind of weird, a lot of sellers sell refurbished macs in various conditions, and the advertised price is always the starting price, which is a computer in fair condition, but if you want anything that's a little better, it'll cost you.

i then tried mercari.com. i've used them before when i got an asus tablet to test with my DJI drone (didn't work). they're kind of like craig's list, but with a national reach. i feel like they're relatively new so not many people know about it, which is good because it means not a lot of buyers snatching up good deals. they don't do auctions, it's basically just individual sellers hawking their unwanted goods online. i was just browsing randomly, and came across an oregon seller with a mid-2014 15" retina MBP 16/500GB for $400 and free shipping. that's a great price so after conferring with my father, we decided to buy it. after taxes, it came out to $430.

in the news today was reports about the new omicron variant of the coronavirus, and how many countries were restricting travel to and from a handful of african nations starting with south africa. the variant should technically be named the xi variant, but bowing to chinese political pressure, the WHO has opted to skip a greek letter.

for dinner my mother cooked up the book tripe with some sour mustard greens. originally this was a dish for yesterday's thanksgiving, but we already had honeycomb tripe, so my mother ended up not making it until today. we had turkey rollups again. not much turkey meat left, after my aunt and 2nd aunt had a go carving up the bird to take leftovers home. what's left will be turned into stock for use as noodle broth.

my father gave me a ride home after 8pm. it had started to snow but the ground still too warm for any of it to stick besides on grassy surfaces at the most. we stopped by my sister's place so i could drop off some sour mustard greens and a ramekin of flan. my street was a ghost town, most cars still missing during the thanksgiving long holiday (including my noisy upstairs neighbors). the heat kicked in when i got back (eco mode senses someone was finally home), stayed in the toasty bathroom for as long as possible.

even though today was black friday, there wasn't much online shopping. my mother wanted to visit OSJL, but when she found out the yarn sale she saw in the circular was actually over, she didn't want to go. besides the new old macbook pro, we ordered a keurig coffee maker ($40) for my 2nd aunt and some wool socks for my mother.