"is that your car?" i asked the carpenter fixing a neighbor's doorframe. with those simple words i saved him a few hundred dollars from having his car towed due to street cleaning this morning. he barely escaped, a tow truck was already positioning itself behind his car, ready to tow it as soon as the police showed up to write him a ticket.

i left my broken panasonic television on the curb today, after one final check to make sure the tv didn't miraculously fix itself. i hope they take it away. if they do, it opens up more opportunities for me to toss the handful of dead monitors and television sets in my basement.

i went to the community garden in the early afternoon. i received an e-mail from the UIOLI committee (not sure what it stands for) "to remind [me] of the need for more frequent and thorough weed removal." apparently the work i did in the garden a week and a half ago wasn't up to community garden standards. so i went back today to do some more work. however, there wasn't much to be done, not after the last time i weeded. i cleared the pathways with a pair of gardening shearers, but that was pretty much it. if the UIOLI has anything more to say, they'll have to get more specific.

some random photos from other garden plots:

i bumped into ed on my way back and had a long chat. he was talking going to the aerosmith concert at fenway last week, or actually just hanging around outside because he couldn't afford the tickets but could still hear the music happening inside. he'd seen aerosmith live a bunch of times in his youth, where he used to party every other day. "we drank so much beer back then," he said, shaking his head with a smile. he also told me he was in gang of 150-200 kids, although when i asked about the name of the gang, he didn't tell me (perhaps it was nameless). before i left, he asked me to keep an eye out on his place, since he was leaving town for a week, helping his sister do some house painting in virginia. "yeah, if you see guys taking furniture, call the cops."

later in the afternoon i went to the dollar store to get some baking soda then the supermarket to pick up a few grocery items.

i needed baking soda to soak those articles of clothing that have that weird fishy plastic odor. afterwards i rinsed them off and hung them outside to dry. not sure if it worked because i could still smell the foul scent on my hands.

when my roommate returned home in the evening, i introduced her to some american-style hot dogs, which she said she never had before in china. she also sampled some nathan half-sour pickles and drank some root beer. she said the root beer tasted like feng you jing, which is this traditional chinese medicine that contains menthol and wintergreen extract and comes in a little green bottle.