starting from yesterday i have to wake up early every morning for the rest of the week. yesterday was the urologist appointment; today was a 10:00 on-site visit with client N to set up interactive P on the hardware that will be shipped out tomorrow to the museum fabricators. i rarely ever see any of their other employees since i usually just deal with the project manager and maybe a designer or a video editor. they were out of empty rooms so molly put me in the common area. the office was nice and air-conditioned and they turned off the main overhead lights to keep it even cooler. i left around noontime, riding the motorcycle back to cambridge.
i made a spinach feta cheese omelette for lunch. the spinach was frozen and i had to defrost it for 3 minutes in the microwave. it was still hard and i ended up breaking off a few pieces with my hands. i cooked the spinach first just to thaw it out, then put the cooked spinach in a bowl. to the frying pan i added a pat of butter before cooking 2 eggs with some milk for the omelette. once one side was cooked and the other side was starting to become done as well, i threw on the spinach and some crumbles of feta cheese, then folded the whole thing and slid it on a plate. the final result was okay, but i feel like i got my steps mixed up. the spinach was just a big glob. maybe next time i can mix the spinach in with the eggs. it could also use some bacon bits, it was a bit bland.
also on my daytime menu was a mango lassi. this time i left out the skim, went with a cup of yogurt, the flesh of one whole mango, and 3 tablespoons of sugar. it was better than last time, just like the lassi you'd get in an indian restaurant. some recipes call for cardamon to be added. i'm curious how that'd improve the flavoring. maybe i'll try that next time.
i wrote out a 11 part documentation for client N, so they'll have some instructions on how to set up the PC in case they need to have more computers. i also packaged up the program and uploaded to the server.
the rest of my day was free after that point. it wasn't yet 2:00 and i thought about driving up to deer island in winthrop just to check it out. i postponed that trip after i realized i had some community garden stuff i had to take care of.
the garden inspection was 2 weekends ago. since i didn't hear anything from them, i thought i'd passed, until i got an e-mail on tuesday from the committee. it wasn't as specific as last time, just a general e-mail to the few gardeners who were flagged. the violation was not keeping our borders clear of encroaching plants.
i was surprised to find several large red tomatoes on my 2 tomato plants. i had to stake one of the cages because it toppled over again. another shock: a supersized zucchini! bigger than a champagne bottle and smaller than a baseball bat. there's another smaller zucchini growing nearby which i left alone, hoping it will become ginormous as well. i also have a lot of basil, both regular and thai.
i pulled up a garbage bin full of mint, asiatic dayflowers, and other weeds. afterwards i gave the garden a good watering since some of the plants looked wilted (stunted cucumber and my hot peppers).
my community garden plot actually doesn't look so bad this year. i think the salt marsh grass mulch really helps to make it look neater. if i can't find any next season i'll just resort to hay. but next year i may try row covers or black mulching fabric, so who knows.
i went to the assembly square mall to look for bike supplies. sports authority had cheap bell bike cable kit for $5. at k-mart i was looking for a bell comfort tire but didn't find any. they had them at sports authority for $20 but i remember they were cheaper. the rear tire of my trek 800 has comfort tire, which is more road friendly; the front tire still had mountain bike knobbies, and i was wondering if i should replace them (knobbies are good when i ride in the winter though).
back in january i bought a bottle of pert plus fresh, the exciting new menthol scented shampoo and conditioner. in the dead of winter when everyone is trying to stay warm, this is an awful shampoo to use because it's designed to give a cooling sensation. but now in the dead of summer, it was time to revisit the freshness. i could hardly feel it tingling this time around. i'm going to try and use up as much as i can before the weather turns cold again, even though these shampoo/conditioner combos tend to dry out my hair.
finished the last of my mexican soup leftover from 2 weeks ago for dinner. i'm not sure what i'll do with my tomatoes and oversized zucchini. i may try my hands at making zucchini bread. for the tomatoes, i've never made a pasta sauce from fresh tomatoes before, so i may try that. use it for a lasagna (speaking of lasagna, went to star market and got some frozen stouffer's lasagna dinners because they were on sale, $2.50/box).