cambridge memorial day parade was happening at cambridge common at 9:30. my alarm clock went off but i decided to skip it, rationalized that sleep was more important. besides, i'd already seen one memorial day parade, didn't think cambridge could top somerville.

i met a handful of the unfriendliest gardeners working at the community garden this morning. everyone was just doing there own thing, nobody greeted one another. i dug out 2 large clumps of green garlic from my garden. it's hard to tell they're garlic because they look like small onion bulbs but the leaves most definitely smell of garlic, not onion. my plot is littered with paper-thin elm tree seeds, as well as some green mulberries. it won't be long before the onslaught happens, i really should seriously think about constructing some sort of covering.

i motorcycled to belmont to mow the lawn. normally i'd collect the grass clippings (and use it as green material for the compost bin), but i read it's better to leave the clippings on the lawn as fertilizer. i figured it was worth a try, and saves me the trouble of having to stop and empty the bag.

when my father came home we assembled the scaffolding we had in the garage. originally we were going to use it as a platform for exterior house painting, but then we decided it was easier just to use ladders instead. we set up the scaffolding anyway, just to see what it looks like, but we'll probably take it down soon.

i also helped him replace a broken rear tail light on the honda element. the vehicle failed inspection a few weeks ago, but the mechanic probably wanted to get some business out of it so listed a whole bunch of really small nitpicky things that needed to get fixed. for example, the tail light is working, but has a crack which we taped up, but that didn't seem to fly with the mechanic (it'd passed the previous year). he also said our license plate needed to be replaced but didn't say why. and he added the tires should all be replaced too, but there's no mention of it on the inspection form. my father's thinking about going to our usual mechanic/inspector who's a little more lax when it comes to the rules. but since we had a spare tail light anyway, we just replaced it. it's surprisingly easy, just 2 screws and the tail light comes off.

i returned home after dinner. i was sad to see that my upstairs neighbors were back from the long weekend, along with upstairs noises. i couldn't get any cable reception so i cabled comcast/xfinity. i was on the phone for almost half an hour and most of the time i was on hold. in the end i ended up fixing it myself, but simply unplugging the cable box and plugging it back in. thanks for the help, comcast!

i'm kind of disappointed there was no band of brothers marathon on cable, one of the things i look forward to on these war holidays. the closest thing i got was saving private ryan on HBO, which i watched shuffling back and forth between matt damon's other movie of the night, behind the candelabra.