t
o
n
y
a
n
g
'
s
 
w
e
b
l
o
g


i called my father early this morning (8:30am), asking him to bring in the bird feeder, after i discovered from photos i took on sunday that one of the male house finches has some sort of eye disease. at first i thought it got its eye pecked out, but when i examined the photos more closely, it seemed to be affecting both eyes. doing a search for "bird disease puffy eyes" brought up avian conjunctivitis, which seems to only affect finches for some reason (and mainly house finches), never seen it before, or just hadn't noticed. long story short, so of course my father left for the cafe without bringing in the bird feeder.

my mother then called me about an hour later, said she was trying to reach my father but his phone wasn't working. she was asking to confirm the taiwanese-manufactured battery charger my father wanted her to buy.

i printed out my state taxes this morning (had them done last week), put it in a manila envelope with 2 forever stamps (less than 3 oz.), and mailed it off. that officially concludes my 2021 taxes. i'm getting a $165 refund from the state.

since today was going to be a nice weather day, i figured it'd be busy at the cafe, so i didn't bring anything with me, just left on my bike and went. that would turn out not to be the case however, and for the third tuesday in a row it was a slow day, mostly small orders.

i was waiting for 2pm so i can leave and go to my parents' place to take down the bird feeder. i'd also bring out all the garden refuse bins (stuffed full of pruned maple branches), relocated one of the hostas (growing too close to the cherry plum tree), and maybe dig out the bamboo moat. however when my father said he was going to the post office to mail some documents to taiwan, i asked him to stop by the house and take down the feeder, saving me a trip. instead i waited until he got back and left by 2:50pm.

i stopped at my house first to grab some grocery bags then went to market basket. because it was so warm (65 degrees), i didn't take my jacket. unfortunately that had all my face masks so i had to enter market basket for the first time since last spring (during a brief period where somerville rescinded the mask mandate) without a mask. of course somerville had once more rescinded the mask mandate weeks ago, but knowing that we'll probably experience another spike due to the omicron BA.2 variant ("stealth omicron"), i've still kept my mask on whenever i'm in indoor crowded spaces. about 70% of the people were masked (including most of the workers), and it did feel a little weird not having one. i was also worried that somebody might think i was an asshole anti-vaxxer. fortunately it wasn't too crowded, and i grabbed what i needed and left.

half of the stuff i got was cafe supplies (like milk, scallions, bean sprouts, baby cucumbers) so i stopped by my house to unload my own groceries before continuing to the cafe. of course i could've just brought them tomorrow morning, but because it'd be raining, i didn't want to carry everything with me when i walk to the cafe (since i wouldn't be able to bike). i brought my drone, but the sunny weather earlier had turned cloudy, so i didn't do any flying, left the drone at the cafe.

i returned home again by 4pm. since i didn't have lunch at the cafe, i'd bought a package of spicy grilled tuna ($8) and had a late meal while watching the early evening news.

i didn't get a good night sleep last night so i wasn't surprised when i fell asleep on the couch, waking up by 8pm. i wasn't too hungry, but around 9pm i made some quick white cheddar shell pasta with kale. i ate while watching a benjamin franklin documentary on PBS.