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i waited for james in front of the noodle alcove in chinatown, except the noodle alcove wasn't there anymore. in its place was a new yet-to-be-opened seafood restaurant in the process of renovating. the noodle alcove is gone! it was one of my favorite places to eat in chinatown. all my beloved haunts are no more: apollo grille had the best box lunch specials in boston but now they don't serve lunch anymore; my old favorite vietnamese restaurant to chau burned down many years ago; and now the noodle alcove! if you've ever hung out with me, you know that it's a right of passage that i eventually bring you to the alcove.

james and i went to suishiya for lunch instead. suishiya used to be one of my favorite places, until they raised the price on their box lunch specials at the same time skimping on the ingredients. they still have good sushi though, which is what i wanted, but after looking over the prices, i lost my yearning for raw fish and went with a lackluster box lunch special in its place. the last time i saw james was back in january. on this occasion, we were the first customers so we grabbed the window seat. james was all dressed up today, lack of clean clothes his excuse.

afterwards we walked to the common; while james went back to work, i walked around in the sweatering heat (90+ degrees), trying to find things to take photos of. i watched a softball game a litle bit before the heat got to me and i went back to chinatown to retrieve my motorcycle.

before i went home i stopped in a cvs to look for some poison ivy remedy. the outbreak on my hands didn't look like they were improving, and since yesterday, they seemed to be doing a little worse. after some careful deductive reasoning i think i must've gotten some poison ivy oil on my regular hiking bag. anyway, i found this stuff that julie recommended called "tecnu." when she first told me about it, i thought she was making it up, so i was surprised to see they actually had it. tecnu was developed in 1961 by robert smith (of the cures?!) as a cleanser for radioactive dust in the event of a nuclear holocaust. turns out it was also a pretty good remover for poison ivy oil! i came home and tried it out. it comes in two bottles, a remover solution (the actual "tecnu") for getting rid of the oil, and a gel for relieving the itching. tecnu smells like the cleaning fluid they used to use in my high school and the gel smells like elmer's glue. in the meantime, i don't know what to do about my hiking bag. i don't think i can launder it yet at the same time if there's no poison ivy oil on it, i'm going to keep on getting outbreaks whenever i use it.

for the rest of the day i tried to keep cool. since i was in my bedroom most of the time, turning on the only air conditioner in the living room didn't make much sense. instead i tried to move as little as possible, and cooled off with a fan and several showers. i spent the day reading my "romance of the three kingdom" book. in the evening, i watched the red sox game while having some ramen for dinner.