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i love it when life adds insults to injuries. it's so cruel that you can only laugh. such was the case today when i received a notice from the registry of motor vehicles. since my accident at the start of june, i've missed 6 weeks of prime summer riding opportunity, deprived of my usual mode of transportation, suffered a broken foot, forced to wear a cast, and paid several hundred dollars in motorcycle repair and medical cost. so i wasn't that surprised when the RMV informed me i'd failed to pay my $20 fine (the ticket they wrote me after the accident, "following too close"), and i'd now have to pay $75 in penalties otherwise my license will get suspended. a late fee i can understand. but what's a release fee? is that one of those made-up fee?

didn't i already pay the fine? i checked my bank account. to my surprise, there was no $20 amount ever made out to the RMV. but i have a receipt! i checked my e-mail. there was an old electronic receipt from last month, from the RMV after i thought i paid. turned out it was just a notice informing me that the payment didn't go through, and that i should contact the RMV office. so a $20 fine became a 4x time fine. ha ha ha! awesome. i thought about maybe talking to the RMV about it, but i doubt anyone would listen. i think it's bureaucratic injustices like this like turn people like me into criminals. if life ever gives me the opportunity to right this wrong, i won't hesitate to take it.

i was busy working the rest of the day. much of it was already done by yesterday, but a little 5 second bug fix became 5 hours as i tried to dissect the code and figure out the problem. the project i'm currently working on has gone through so many developers and revisions that it's kind of a nightmare to fix. bugs that appear difficult to solve can be remedied in seconds while seemingly easy glitches can take hours if not days. as of now it's still not fixed and i may have to spend more time over this weekend to find a solution.

went to the garden to water my plants, my aircast wrapped in a plastic bag. as ridiculous as it looks, if it means less clean up when i get home, i'm doing it. i got a few mosquito bites on my legs, my first of the season. i noticed it yesterday, but there are already immature fruits, both tomatoes and salsa peppers. the feathery leaves of the cypress vines kind of remind me those centipedes that get into the house every once in a while. i brought my pruning clippers today and chopped up a few strangling vines, mostly in the raspberry area. i ended up picking another half container of golden raspberries. coming back home, i bumped into bruce and gave him all my raspberries; there's plenty more where that came from.

my father came by briefly, to pick up the wireless ethernet adapter that just arrived today. he was taking hailey to some dog training place in somerville. later julie dropped by as well (before she left for NH for a girls' weekend), with a check for the money she owed me from yesterday (her bank cut up her credit card, her perennial credit card number theft problem). the friend she was picking up actually lives a few houses from me. "what're you doing this weekend?" she asked. "i might clean the house," i said. the excitement just doesn't stop.

thursday night 10pm was formerly the exclusive domain of swingtown on CBS but now that burn notice has returned to the USA network, i'm afraid i have a television scheduling conflict. however, i managed to download last night's swingtown and watched it tonight. a threeway with captain awesome? oh snap!