a friday where utterly nothing happened except a visit to the garden and a trip to the supermarket for snacks. i ran into dave again while watering. besides his own plot, he's responsible for 2-3 plots where the owners have decided to take extended leave for the summer.

for dinner i heated up my leftover vodka sauce and half a box of rigatoni, which turned out to be way too much. cristina came home around 9pm, hanging out with coworkers (eating emac and bolio's near fenway).

my old crazy roommate mary texted and called me last night via wechat around 12:30am. i wasn't going to answer it because it was her, and i sure as hell wasn't going to answer it being that it was so late at night. who knows, it could've been another nervous breakdown, and i didn't want to have any part in that. then this morning at 10:30am i received a text message followed by two calls, none of which i looked at or answered. finally out of annoyance and curiosity, i read her messages. the first one - from last night - was written in english. she basically asked if she could have her suitcase back, the one she let me borrow. this was the suitcase i had every reason to return to her, but when my parents asked her about it when she abruptly moved out of my place, she said she didn't want it anymore. i figured letting me have it was the least she could do after trashing my house. so i wasn't expecting her to contact me 3 months later asking to have her suitcase back. the other message was written in chinese, and i figured it was just a repeat of what she wrote in english.

i was going to confer with my parents for advice. i had no immediate use for the suitcase, and technically it still belonged to her. i figured i would just leave it on the side of the house and have her come pick it up at a certain time so i wouldn't have to even see her. but before i could reach my parents, my father called me, asking for the whereabouts of the suitcase. apparently i wasn't the only person she contacted, as mary also got in touch with my parents about retrieving her suitcase. i told my father i had it and that i was just going to leave it by the side of the house, but he said he already spoke to her, and asked her to pick it up from the cafe, for one final moment of awkwardness before we hopefully never see her again.

i got the suitcase from the basement. it's actually a very nice suitcase, a chinese brand (binhao) hardshell luggage, and i'm actually a little sad to see it go. mary retrieving her suitcase also gave me the change to return the USB backup drive i found in her bedroom. but i wasn't going to give it to her without making a backup first. not that i'd ever spy on her, but if her craziness ever starts some shit again, i like to have some insurance that we can at least track her down in china. my father arrived before to pick up the suitcase before i could finish copying. after i successfully made the backup, i threw the usb drive into the luggage and my father took everything to the cafe.

mary was supposed to pick up the suitcase around 2pm but when i called my father at 4pm she still hadn't shown up yet.