AUG

20

2008

i went to the garden this morning after picking up my prescription for another 3 month supply of blood pressure medication from the pharmacy. when i got back home, instead of coding, i spent 3+ hours washing my backyard deck, including that of my upstairs neighbor. i made two gallons of the wood cleaning solution, using a scrubbing brush to apply the solvent, misting everything with a hose to keep it from drying up, then later spray washing the deck with water. i wasn't able to do a portion of my neighbor's deck because he had too much stuff outside (BBQ grill, adirondack chair, potted plants). when i accidently bumped into him while he was coming home, i asked if he'd mind moving some of those items inside, just so it'd make my job a little bit easier. "oh, you can clean around that stuff," he told me. besides not even bothering to thank me for cleaning his deck for free, he wouldn't even volunteer to move his stuff for me. neighbors like that, we needs neighbors? while waiting for the solution to work its cleaning magic, i also took the time to wash off the algae growing on some of the shingles on the house.

the past few days i've been getting this tickling sensation in my throat, itchy eyes, and a slightly runny nose. those who suffer the same symptoms probably already know what's causing it, but it took me until today to realize now is the start of the ragweed season. not sure when i first discovered i was allergic to ragweed, must've been a few years ago. i personally always thought that only weak people get allergies, so it was disheartening to learn i may be one of the millions of sufferers. the suffering isn't always consistent though: i could take a big whiff directly from a ragweed and not show any symptoms. but usually around the beginning of fall, the itching in my throat tells me that something isn't quite right. fortunately i have some leftover claritin tablets from a bout of sinus-related hearing loss back during the spring.

julie came over in the evening. i made some chicken burritos and fried some plantains. i asked for details about her recent trip to yellowstone national park. we watched project runway and for once the judges agreed with us that daniel was due for elimination. later we watched some olympics highlight, including usain bolt breaking the world record in the 200m dash.

AUG

19

2008

AUG

18

2008

so just like that, with about a week's worth of riding, i'm back to being transportionless again. it's not too bad, i'm busy for the next few weeks anyway, so even if the perfect day arrived for me to do some naturing, i probably still couldn't go. this way my still-recovering foot has even more time to heal itself back to normal.

without my motorcycle, it's back to piggybacking rides to the supermarket with my parents. i went with my father to market basket, where i picked up some groceries. back at home, i made a goat cheese spinach omelette with a dash of bacon and fresh ground pepper. i'm a big fan of goat cheese because it tastes like goat, makes me feel i'm at a farm. the omelette was so good, i wanted to have another one after i finished it. my lunch was actually inspired by bruce, who would always tell me about the dinner omelettes he'd make for jack (i personally think omelettes are breakfast/brunch only).

went to the garden to do some watering (also to mail a letter along the way). the cosmos are days away from blooming, i want to be there when it happens. i noticed i'm not producing as many tomatoes as last summer. i think one of the reasons is because my tomato plants haven't been swallowed up by the morning glory vines. they provide a service because the interweaving tendrils prevent the tomato plants from collapsing, but there are more morning glory leaves than there are tomato leaves now. i may go into the garden tomorrow with a pair of scissors and do some pruning.

leaving the garden, i noticed a bunch of butterflies visiting the flowers. monarchs are common, but every once in a while i see a tiger swallowtail, like today. less common are american ladies, and i managed to spot a first: a silver-spotted skipper. i shot them with a combination of telephoto and macro lenses (the ones with the black background are probably macro shots).

back at the house, it was more coding work. client B got in touch with me about a 3:30 conference call. when the time arrived, they postponed it for an hour later. i went over to my neighbor renee to fix her computer. problem this time: her DSL modem just needed to be reset for her to get back online. she said she was thinking about getting a new computer (hers is more than 5 years old running windows 2000), possibly a mac. i hope so too, she won't be knocking on my door for anymore computer help! 4:30 came the conference call, lasted for about an hour. i got that post-conference call boost of confidence, but soon afterwards came crashing down when the reality of the workload set in. i love meetings but sometimes i wish i was the guy coming up with the ideas and some other poor programmers/designers could do the work! sort of like - don draper!

for dinner, i fried up a plantain. i then spent the next 2 hours blowing a fan out my kitchen, trying to clear up that canola oil smell. a few weeks ago i bought a bag of plantains at costco, and i still haven't finished them yet. they're starting to go bad, so i'm forcing myself to a plantain diet. a bit of plantain is okay, but too much can be gross. they're not really like bananas, mushier (maybe because they're over-ripened) and a bit sour on top of the sweetness. unfortunately i still have 3 more to go.

AUG

17

2008

after dinner my godmother and her son alex dropped by briefly, bringing over some food, including a package of longans. after watching the women's diving final, i came back home, where i caught a new episode of mad men. with the clock approaching midnight, it's time for me to begin the late shift and hopefully finish this code work i've postponed for a delivery tomorrow morning.

AUG

16

2008

i don't want to seem mean, but i've been sitting on this for a few days and now that the olympics swimming events are over, i feel like i can finally share it with you. michael phelps is really good looking when he's floating in the water after a race, gasping for air. but once he regains his breath, it's a different picture. his fatal flaw: his teeth. the young man has awful teeth, like they should belong to a horse instead of a human. when he smiles i almost can't believe a mug like that is capable of winning all those olympic medals. maybe with all that endorsement money he can afford to fix his teeth now.

AUG

15

2008

i probably didn't need to visit the garden today since it was thundering during the time i was there. but sometimes it thunders and we don't get any rain so it couldn't hurt giving the plants a precautionary drink of water.

the tomatoes have grown so out of control, it's hard to even know if there are any tomatoes to pick. particularly my two largest tomatoes, which have been swallowed up by a thicket of wild morning glory vines. fortunately ripen tomatoes are more noticeable because they're red; or in the case of the special tomato plant julie gave me, they're an orange-yellow color. i managed to pick one red and one yellow tomato.

at this stage in the season, i can finally distinguish the difference between the cosmos and the ragweed. both plants look almost identical, but their flowerheads are very different: cosmos have the traditional round buds while the ragweeds form these cylindrical columns of soon-to-be pollen distributors.

i picked a plastic grocery bag worth of old basil leaves from my garden. hopefully by pruning them back i can get a second crop. the leaves i picked don't look very pretty but hopefully they can cook well. i also picked off some salsa peppers. i was going to leave them on the plants until they turned red but my mother wanted some for cooking. i was surprised how long they were, more like cucumbers than peppers! i also picked a single "giant" thai hot pepper just to try it out. next i went to julie's garden to water her plants. i pruned back her african basil, snipping off most of the flowers off in the hopes of producing more leaves. it's my last day of garden care since julie returns to town tomorrow. i only really needed to water just that one time. besides the basil, i also took two cucumbers from her place, as well as 3 peppers. and i ate a cherry tomato will watering her plants. afterwards i went to market basket to buy a package of frozen strawberries for my smoothies.

had a busy day, the client have started to ramp up the production schedule. half of the day was spent coding, the other half answering e-mails and testing movie clips they kept on sending me. at least the communication is all electronic; i absolutely hate it when clients call me on the phone for anything that's not an absolute emergency. towards the end of the day i knew i wouldn't make the deadline so i told them i'd give them something by monday morning. but they were determined to get something in their hands by today so i sent them what i had, which seemed to satisfy them for the time being. the good thing about a monday deadline is i buy myself some more time; the bad thing is i end up working on the weekend. fortunately most of it is done, just need some tweaks.

by late afternoon the sky darkened and the rain started to fall. thunder, lightning, the works, but still rather mild compared to some of the street flooding storms in weeks past. in hindsight, i probably didn't need to water the gardens after all.

for lunch, i made an omelette: 2 eggs folded with some cheddar cheese and salsa. washed it all down with a smoothie (banana, frozen strawberries, passion fruit juice) followed by some watermelon slices. for dinner, your basic ramen. for whatever reason, i tend to eat the most ramen on friday nights. washed it all down with some diet root beer (accidental purchase), followed by more watermelon slices.

if you're not watching mad men, you're missing scenes like little girl playing with a dry cleaning bag!

AUG

14

2008

a forecast of a strong rainstorm kept me inside for much of the day (besides work that is). i only left the house briefly with bruce to retrieve his broken laptop from microcenter. earlier this morning i went to star market to pick up another watermelon. my evening consisted of olympics watching, code writing, leftover pasta dinner, and a new episode of burn notice. i better get some sleep if i want to have enough energy to continue coding tomorrow.

AUG

13

2008

bruce and i headed to sudbury this morning, to get one last nature trip before he goes back to pittsburgh for the semester. the place i picked was the nobscot-weisblatt conservation land. astute readers will recognize it as the spot i was visiting before my motorcycle accident back in early june. as a matter of fact, the trip would go pass the exact spot of my crash, as well as the police station i spent some time waiting in. i jokingly referred to it as part of my trauma recovery treatment. i even recognized one of the police officers, who passed by us in a cruiser.

with all the recent rain, the forest was covered in mushrooms, which was pretty much the bulk of what we saw. nothing i haven't seen before, and after a while all the ones we saw were pretty much a handful of the same, ranging from the microscopic to the scarily large. the one interesting thing was some possible puffballs in aspic growing along the path by the long vernal pool; they resembled juicy eyeballs or maybe giant tapioca pearls found in boba ice tea.

i haven't "mushroomed" in a while (and by that i mean going out and photographing them), but i'm always amazed by their diversity. not just between different species, but even within its own kind there's plenty of variety. there's also the bonus of finding edible ones, but i've never eaten wild mushrooms before that i've found in the forest. it's not that i'm unsure about the identification; often times there's a lot of unsavory bugs crawling on and eating the mushrooms that makes them look unappetizing.

it didn't take us long to get to the summit of tippling rock. although not the highest point in sudbury (that recognition goes to nearby nobscot hill), we still managed to see the tops of the prudential and hancock towers in boston. we had lunch up there (i bought a buffalo chicken sandwich from the somerville subway before we left this morning). an old hiker surprised us while we were lounging, but that was the only other person we saw there.

as for my ankle brace, it wasn't too bad. maybe i was a bit more careful navigating the rocky slopes, but the foot felt okay. i tend to move slowly anyway when i'm naturing (the better to look for things). the only pain came from the brace chafing up against the back of my heel, but nothing a band aid can't take care of. it'll be another month before i'm brace free. in the meantime, i don't plan on it slowing me down too much.

after leaving tippling rock we decided to take a looping trail. one weakness of the preserve is the abundance of little side trails courtesy of the local boy scout troop. even with a map, it was still easy to get lost, which was what happened. although i had my gps, it's an older model that has a hard time getting a signal through the trees. fortunately bruce brought along his compass so we had a general idea in which direction we should be walking. we came across empty (locked) boy scout lodges, a burnt down house (all that was left was the chimney), and a large wooden octagon structure that looked like some posh private residence. eventually we found our way out of the forest and back to the car.

we stopped at sudbury plaza, where bruce tried to get some coffee at a starbucks we noticed from the road. when we actually got there we discovered the place was closed for renovations. while bruce went to get a soda from the nearby supermarket, i browsed the birding store, selling bird houses, baths, feeders, books - basically all your birding needs.

back in town i asked bruce if i could see the monarch butterfly caterpillar he'd been rearing, now a fully-formed chrysalis, awaiting its transformation into a butterfly. bruce hoped the chrysalis would hatch before he leaves for pittsburgh this weekend. after i went home, i got on the motorcycle and visited my garden. all the plants are a bit bigger since my last visit. the row of possible cosmos/ragweeds are definitely cosmos from the large forming flower buds. some of my tomatoes were changing color but none of them are ripe yet.

next i went to market basket to get some grocery. coming back, i went to julie's garden to do some watering. some of her heirloom tomatoes are nearly ripen, but they're all cracked for some reason (possibly uneven watering). i took two cucumbers before i left. i went to the cafe to drop off some cilantro (now at $1.49/bunch) before coming back home.

i made some V8 red clam sauce with linguine for dinner. the use of tomato juice was an interesting alternative but seemed like a poor man's recipe. later i had some of the seedless watermelon i bought from star market, a 16lbs. melon for just $2.99. there's some visceral about cutting into a watermelon, exposing all that red flesh inside, dripping with melon juice. i only managed to eat half of a quarter section, putting the rest away in the fridge after some major grocery rearrangement.

AUG

12

2008

AUG

11

2008

during a break in the rain, i rode the motorcycle over to my parents for dinner. i didn't notice it yesterday - maybe i was just overjoyed to be back on the bike - but the rear brake pedal is set too high. i'm going to have to get back in touch with greater boston motorsports (GBM) to get them to lower it to a more comfortable position. while they're at it, maybe they can also check the rear brake light, which i saw hasn't been going off either. although i can ride again, the angle of my left foot and ankle is in a vulnerable stance so that if i'm not careful, i could possibly aggravate the fracture. i do ride with the ankle brace, which prevents some side to side motion, but also limits my foot from flexing properly so that i can't shift gears as effortlessly as i'd like. returning the bike to the shop might actually give my broken foot some more time to fully heal.

sensing another break in the rain, i made my way home. stopping at the intersection of huron avenue and fresh pond parkway, i noticed a set of keys lying on the pedestrian crosswalk. i getting ready to dismount the bike and retrieve the keys but the light changed to green and i decided against it. whoever dropped those keys (probably a fresh pond jogger or dogwalker) will hopefully retrace his/her steps and find them (hopefully soon, before the keys getting completely run over by all the cars).

back at home, i turned the tv on to more olympics coverage. women's volleyball, men and women swimming, and men gymnastics. i'm still waiting on my opening ceremony download, haven't seen it yet, heard some good things though.