i noticed it late tuesday night when i was taking out the trash, a sharp pain at the bottom of my foot. i thought nothing of it, but when i went to my parents' place yesterday, the pain came back and i took notice this time. i checked underneath my foot and removed with a pair of tweezers what i thought was a splinter but actually it was just some dark-colored lint.

the bottom of the foot is an awkward place on the body to work with. i'm not as limber as i used to be, and contorting my body so i can see the bottom of my foot presented some challenge. plus with my failing eyesight, the distance from eye to foot is such that i can't see it clearly without my glasses, but with them on i can only focus at a distance. looking at the entry wound, i couldn't see anything else, but when i pressed down it'd hurt, which made me think i might've stepped on a piece of glass. glass splinters are the worst because they're virtually impossible and therefore hard to see.

i was sort of hoping the pain would just go away on its own (like somehow my body would naturally eject the foreign glass material) but the pain was still there this morning, so much so that i devoted all my attention to finally removing the glass splinter. i first tried soaking my foot in an epson salt bath for 20 minutes. i thought it worked, but when i walked on the foot, the pain soon came back. the soak did seem to open up the puncture area a little bit more. so i tried covering up the region with some white elmer's glue and peeling off the glue once it dried, hoping to pull out the glass splinter in the process. while waiting for the glue to dry, i made lunch: an onion bagel sandwich with egg, swiss cheese, and prosciutto, all washed down with a mug of almond milk. hobbling around either on my heel or arch was actually more painful.

after i finished eating my lunch, it was time to peel off the dried glue. i examined the glue patch to see if there was any glass shard attached but there was none. at first i thought maybe the glue trick worked, but when i pressed down on the puncture spot, it still hurt, so i knew something was still inside. i started to get worried. maybe i needed to go see a doctor about this. but before i do, i should try digging around the wound area with a knife to see if i can pry out the glass. i had a leatherman micro but the knife on that wasn't sharp enough. so i used the sharpest knife i had: an x-acto knife (disinfected with some alcohol).

i put the tip of the x-acto blade into the tiny hole at the bottom of my foot. i didn't think i touched anything yet but was surprised to see what looked to be a small sliver of glass coming out of the wound. i extracted it with my fingertips, just a tiny shard of glass, but apparently enough to cause all that pain. i pressed down on the puncture again and the pain was gone. the glass splinter had been successfully removed!

with my foot back to normal, i was out in the backyard raking the leaves. i couldn't find any garden refuse bags in the basement so i only managed to collect a single trash bin of mostly oak leaves.

i went to the community garden to collect some more larkspurs. i hadn't been there in a while, and was surprised to see that all my golden raspberry plants were gone. true, i told the garden committee they were free to scavenge whatever plant they wanted from my plot, but i wasn't expecting them to do such a thorough job. thankfully there was still a lot of lakspur seedlings. i ended up collecting 5 containers. while i was there, i also uprooted my tomato and eggplants, and collected all the wooden poles. i'll need to come back a few more times to gather all the stones and my last tomato cage.

i went to belmont (via motorcycle, riding while the weather is still nice) to do some raking there. i cleaned up the entire front lawn, collecting a dozen barrels of leaves. it went faster than i expected, and i recorded the whole thing with my action camera set on time lapse (bad exposure though, glare on the horizon, and bad camera placement, cut off my head for most of it).

i helped my mother cancel a flight she booked for my 2nd aunt earlier today (my 2nd aunt is leaving from florida for a caribbean cruise in january). turns out she got the times wrong, and booked a night flight when it should be a day flight. she used priceline, but i couldn't get the ticket information using the confirmation code. i ended up contacting priceline using the text chatting feature on their website. it took a bit of time, but i liked the inpersonal nature of texting instead of calling, and my agent managed to cancel the flight.

after dinner i returned home. while i was using the bathroom, freddy returned around 7:30pm. that seems to be the typical time he comes home from work if he isn't doing anything else. i saw him cooking an omelette, he ate in his bedroom, and i didn't see him the rest of the night.