trying to get back into shape, i went running this morning. there was no spring in my step, it's back to square one again. i felt like i had weights in my shoes and 2 blocks into the run i was already panting. didn't see too many other runners now that all the harvard students have gone home. there were a lot more bicyclists, which got me thinking about doing some bicycling myself. the problem with bicycling is i consider it a mode of transportation, and i already have a 2-wheeled form of locomotion called a motorcycle that can go 85mph without me breaking a sweat. i'm also a leisurely bicyclist and i do more coasting than actual pedaling. the amount of calories burned in my 30 minutes 3 miles run around my stretch of the charles river would probably equal an hour's worth of bicycling for me. nevertheless, one advantage of bicycling is i can bring my camera with me. bicycling is definitely more fun than running though. first i have to buy a bike lock though.

i stopped by the community garden on my way back from running. it was awfully busy for some reason, with my adjoining garden neighbor wayne with his wife bojana working their plot. wayne's the guy with the beautiful rows of fresh greens. they were bickering like a couple that'd been married for a long time. i asked wayne if i could help him water his garden whenever it looks dry, and he said sure and thanked me, and asked if i'd been watering it over the past few weeks, because they were on vacation, and had asked another gardener to help them water but she told them that their garden was mysteriously watering itself.

i bumped into my next door neighbor renee when i got back home and ended up doing some free computer fixing work again when she told me her PC was malfunctioning once more. i really hope she makes good on her aspiration to buy a mac, as she puts it, "because they have a lot less problems." to completely fix her PC would take me half a day. i managed to put out one fire, downloaded adobe acrobat so she could read some pdf attachments. her XP system also expired (actually that's my fault, i gave her my serial number that one time i went over to reinstall a new OS on top of her virus-infected windows 2000) so i'll need to come back again and fix that (it's not broken, it just has that annoying "you might be using an illegal copy of windows" warning on the screen).

so after a shower and a bowl of oatmeal for lunch, i went to belmont to do some work at the garden there. earlier i'd taken a quick trip down to pemberton farm to see if they had any salsa peppers in stock. one of the woman who worked there said they were all out, and probably wouldn't be getting anymore at this point. i just ended up buying a rosemary plant ($3.99). after watering the vegetables in belmont, i washed my motorcycle with one of the new sprayers. around this time of the year my bike usually gets covered in a fine mist of sticky tree sap (especially if it's been parked underneath a tree, which is hard to avoid on my tree-lined street).

afterwards i went to the watertown home depot to look for some more plants. i picked up a bottle of plant food pellets and after asking a few store employees, found the seed and bulb bins located near the store exit. i was surprised none of the seeds were on sale yet but i picked up a few cheap packets of exotic sunflowers. however, the bulbs were all 50% and i spent a long time digging through the boxes trying to find some good ones. perennials (that includes bulbs) are plants for the lazy gardener (that's me); you basically plant them once and then they bloom every year after that, with very little care. i wanted to get some bulbs for my community garden but couldn't decide what i wanted. instead i found some shade loving bulbs, a bag of mixed caladium (7 bulbs for $3.50) for a shady part of the belmont garden.

back in belmont i watched a few more episodes of freddy's nightmares until everyone came home. my father left to refill the propane tank while my mother was busy weeding the lawn. my sister was blowing bubbles for hailey to catch, one of her favorite activities. hailey loves it so much that she'll sit and stare at the bubble bottle, waiting for someone to use it. once my father came back he quickly mowed the lawn before starting to work the barbecue, while i was out front washing 2 cars. at some point a black cat wandered into our backyard, stuck on a fence post. hailey didn't see the cat at first, but when she did, she started barking. my father had to help the cat down and put it on the other side of the fence. we had barbecued corn again for dinner. instead of the low quality corn i bought from haymarket (7 for a dollar), the corn tonight was big and juicy. ironically, that's not the best kind of corn for barbecuing (not when i slather on the korean barbecue sauce).

after dinner, with what little remained of daylight, everyone except my mother was out in the backyard. my father was transplanting some chinese chives, while my sister was obsessing over some bare patches on the lawn (courtesy of hailey) and was preparing to sow some new grass seeds. i was working on the shady side of the backyard, by the hostas and the ferns, planting the caladium bulbs i bought earlier.

although the evening was a wee bit chilly (in the 60's), i managed to get home fine in my t-shirt. the weather forecast calls for rain throughout the rest of the week, so i may be grounded for a few days. the last thing i did before going to bed was to put the rain cover on my bike, in preparation for the deluge.