i left for aldi's in the late morning, followed by a stop at bianco and sons for sausages. aldi's was mostly empty, i picked up a bunch of vegetables. the produce prices are pretty cheap: 79¢ for a large bag of scallions, $2.15 for a bag of mini avocados, $1.89 for a bag of baby cucumbers. a delivery truck driver saw me pulling up at bianco and said, "you must be cold." temperature today was in the 30's, but it wasn't that bad riding in the sun. i felt it mostly in my hands, forced to clutch onto metal handlebar levers that were ice cold. plus, due to the approaching holiday, traffic wasn't too bad. coming back, i went through newly opened school street, after it'd been closed for 2-1/2 years. the reason why was now clearly evident: it's because the gilman square green line extension entrance is right off of school street.

i went to the cafe to drop off a few things. i was planning on going to my parents' place to pick up the allbirds shoes that my mother wanted to return, but my sister said she was going to the harvard square store on thursday, so she could return them then. that saved me a trip, so i returned home instead, 2:15pm.

there was street cleaning this morning, but the large clump of wet leaves by the curb had frozen completely solid overnight, so the street sweeper machine did nothing to clean them up. december is a weird time for street cleaning anyway, precisely for this freezing reason. i remember in year's past where we'd have snow on the ground by this point, and street cleaning would be postponed until the spring.

i made an utterly decadent deluxe bagel sandwich for lunch, with garlic guacamole, butter fried egg, and some bacon. i also made some matcha latte.

i tried out my wide mouth mason jar sprouting lid from temu. i didn't have any seeds to sprout other than some mustard seeds. i soaked them in tap water and drained most of the water before leaving the jar in my bathroom, the warmest part of the house. right away i noticed a design flaw: a quarter of the straining holes are very large, potentially allowing seeds to fall out. fortunately the mustard seeds were large enough that they wouldn't, but a few of the small ones still managed to escape between the cracks. i think the sprouting lid would work better with larger seeds, like mung beans. i gave mine all away to my father, i'll get some more the next time i'm in chinatown (which probably won't be until next week, since it's going to be raining on friday).

i finished watching the last 4 episodes of the recruit. i really like it, but i haven't seen much hype about the show online. the last episode ended on a cliffhanger, i hope netflix at least extends the show into a second season. the show reminds me of burn notice, that you learn a lot about the spycraft business.

for dinner i thought maybe some more korean ramen, but i realized i still had some leftover chicken pot pie in the fridge, so i finished that instead. not the best, but it's food, and it's filling.

later in the evening i took out the trash. my upstairs neighbors never bring out the containers, even though they're usually stuffed with their trash before trash day. tonight one of them did bring out the recycle and compost bin, but for some reason forgot to take out the trash bin, even though it had their trash in it.