5 more days!

with just 5 days left before i leave, all the important things have been taken care of (with the exception of backing up my photos). i made a new to-do list with some small non-essential but convenient items. most of them were last minute food items. one thing i had to do was to deposit some more money into the bank to cover the cost of all the gifts i've purchased over the past 2 weeks. i took a shot from the asthma inhaler before i left for union square. i didn't feel the chest constriction from the past few days, but also the weather warmer (low 60's), so that might have something to do with it. in fact, i felt like maybe i could pedal for much longer and much faster without getting tired.

i thought about going to the nearby marshalls and galleria mall but didn't think i had enough time, so instead i went to market basket to pick up some cheap sandwiches and a few boxes of jello for wangyan.

since getting the lumix ZS40, i've yet to do a side-by-side comparison between that camera and my standby canon 60D with the EF-S 18-200mm lens. as far as clarity is concerned, you can't beat the dSLR. but as far as reach is concerned, the ZS40 is actually wider (24mm versus 29mm equivalent); and for zoom the ZS40 wins hand-down (720mm versus 320mm equivalent). i can however attach my EF-S 10-22mm wide angle lens to the canon 60D, which gives me a maximum wide angle of 16mm equivalent, which is the widest i can get without going fisheye.

i made some planting pots with the 45 plastic cups i had on hand. heating an awl over the gas stove, i punched drainage holes into the bottoms.

it was 1:30pm, i was just settling down for some lunch, when my told me that they lost both their internet and cable. i told her to call comcast, but she ended up calling my mother, who called me. i quickly ate and called comcast asking for any outages. they said no. so i rode down to my grand uncle's place to troubleshoot the problem. i was on the phone going through the protocols with an agent, when the modem suddenly kicked back into life again. minutes later, the cable returned as well.

i went to belmont ahead of my parents. the nearby mcmansion construction has built an additional floor (4th floor?) so tall that it can now see our house over the house that sits in between our properties. why belmont doesn't pass a law to prevent the construction of mcmansions is beyond me. they're an eyesore, but from a town perspective, it's a cash cow because they can collect more property taxes the larger the house. and given how expensive property tax already is in belmont, the town must be rich. one problem with these construction jobs is its easy for the workers to case the neighborhood. that's what we think happened to my parents during the last mcmansion project; after the house was built, my parents' got burgled a short time later. we think the neighborhood was cased and they learned when people weren't home.

my mother had a plate of duck gizzards purchased when she was in chinatown earlier today getting a teeth cleaning; the cleaning didn't happen because there was something wrong with the novocaine. she also bought these massive meat buns, $1 a piece. the bun itself is a little sweet, reminds me of char siu buns. i left belmont by 6:30pm to attend a special community garden meeting.

the 7pm meeting was held at the graham & parks school on linnaean street. i'd passed by the school thousands of times but never been inside. it was a meeting between the gardeners and the coordinators of the sacramento field renovation project. we've known about it a year or two ago that the city of cambridge wanted to create a more direct path into the field. the only viable way is to cut through the adjoining community garden, but that would mean the lose of several garden plots, including mine. the plot i have isn't that great situated under a mulberry tree, but what it lacks in sanitary conditions it makes up for in sun. i'm not too torn up about losing that plot, because they'll assign me a new one. unfortunately it might be one of the new back plots, which get very little sun. i also have my parents' garden (which will get a lot of sun this summer after we trimmed the hell out of that backyard maple tree). and i might look to join another community garden, like the one on raymond park. sure, it's not walking distance, but i think that location gets more sun, and at this point, having good sun exposure is the most important thing. stuart the coordinator was a pretty nice guy, seems like he's been doing this a lot so understands the important of listening to everyone's opinions. in the end it just seems like a formality; the days of my current community garden plot are numbered.

* mary pays 2 months rent