without an updated registration decal sticker, i didn't dare ride my motorcycle again for fear of getting ticketed; instead i rode my bike to belmont in the late morning with the hopes of finding my registration and sticker. my parents already searched last night and didn't find it; my own search proved similarly fruitless. i had no choice but pay the $25 to get a duplicate registration and decal. it seems sort of silly, that the cost to get a replacement registration is more than the registration itself ($20). on the RMV website, it said i had to call them directly if i needed a decal along with the registration. so i called, but it was too close to lunchtime that nobody answered and i could only add my number to the callback wait list with a wait time of more than one hour.

in the meantime, i was outside doing yard work. after watering the plants, i pruned some newly-emerging bamboo canes, pulled out some 2nd year lunaria plants, planted half a dozen snapdragon seedlings, dug out some natural hollyhock seedlings and relocated them to various parts of the garden, did some weeding, and moved out the foxglove and columbine seedlings.

finally i got a callback at 2:45. my agent said i could get my replacement registration and decal done over the phone, but since they'd have to mail it to me, it wouldn't arrive until sometime next week. "could i just do it at the RMV?" i asked. he said yes, which was opposite of what their website said (from the web, it seemed like the decal sticker had to be specially ordered via phone). i had about 2 hours before the watertown registry closed so i got into my parents' car and drove down.

i've always gone down to the registry early in the morning to beat the crowds. but how bad could it be in the late afternoon? nevertheless, i brought my travel mug and a phone loaded with reading material, i was prepared to wait. however, when i saw the line stretching all the way to the entrance of the nearby country buffet, it caught me off-guard. the wait to get to the counter to get a number was more than 15 minutes.

when it came to my turn, i told the woman i needed a replacement registration and decal sticker. "how do you want to pay?" she asked me, with left me a little confused. didn't she just give me a number, and i sit down and wait? "with a check," i answered. she told me, "if it's a check, is it already filled out? otherwise you have to fill it out on the side." "can i pay with cash then?" i asked. apparently cash wasn't an option. "how about credit card?" i asked. "yeah, you can pay with credit card," she said. i gave her my license plate number ("it's a motorcycle," i told her, "MCN plate," i added. "i know what motorcycle plates are!" she sassed back). after she rung up my visa, she gave me a decal sticker, then printed out a new registration along with a receipt on her printer. and that was it! no additional waiting! i got everything done right at the counter! it's the first time i've gone to the RMV where i didn't have to wait (besides the wait to get to the counter). if i knew it was this easy, i could've gotten this done in the morning and had time to go home and get my motorcycle and finally get it inspected.

back in belmont, i finally had time to wrap handlebar tape around the vinyl handlebar grips of my utility bike. i got some cheap fabric tape, one roll was enough to do both grips. i've never wrapped handlebar tape before, i think i did a pretty good job. they're not designed to be placed over grips, which have finger grooves, but the tape had enough stretch to fold over them. i'm doing this because i think (though i'm not entirely sure) i'm allergic to the vinyl material, which was what was giving me those palm rashes. although by now i'm so used to wearing bike gloves when i ride, i still wore them when i went home. besides protecting my hands from the vinyl, the other good thing about bike gloves is i'd always wear my bike helmet along with the gloves, to look less pretentious were i just wearing the gloves on their own. now if i don't have to wear the gloves anymore, i wonder if i'll go back to my helmet-free ways. the fabric tape actually feels pretty good, but i wonder if they'll get wet if i leave the bike outside, and how long it'd take to dry afterwards.

when my parents came home (sometime after 5:00), we had the same noodles for dinner we had yesterday. when my mother was out in the garden snipping off some more fresh greens, she accidentally beheaded an eggplant. i was livid, but there's enough of the plant bottom that maybe it might grow a new stalk.

i returned home, eager to watch game 1 of the NBA finals. i'm actually rooting for cleveland, because i know nothing about the golden state warriors. i'm actually surprised that they're in the finals. during my lengthy NBA hiatus, good teams have become bad, and bad teams have become good. stephen curry? who's he? at least the cavaliers have lebron, and if he wins another championship, the people of cleveland with be so happy, prodigal son finally returning home and doing good. but right before the game started, i heard a loud knocking on my door...

it was renee again! i'm so sick and tired of being her on-call IT guy! she knocked on my door yesterday, something wrong with her printer. she kept trying to print page 8 of a pdf document but only blank pages would come out. her problem: page 8 was actually page 4 (even though it was marked as 8 in the document itself), and the actual page 8 was just a blank page. her problem tonight was she suddenly lost her document on her macbook. when she told me the problem, i already sort of had an idea what it is, but i still went to her house to check. sure enough, she 4-finger-flicked away her windows; all she had to do with 4-finger-flick everything back. but to add insult to injury, she tried to volunteer me to print out flyers for the neighborhood block party, which i normally don't attend anyway. "it shouldn't cost too much," she assured me. next time she knocks, i'm not going to answer the door.

i only missed about a minute of the game when i got back. it was a close game, and even went into overtime. golden state won in the end, with a team that had very few players i recognized. the problem with cleveland is only lebron is good; everybody else on the team is okay at best. the team he had before he betrayed his hometown and left for miami, that was a better team.