i went to my community garden this morning to water my plot. at 9:30am on a labor day sunday morning, i was the only one there. remarkably, my garden looked well taken care of even though i've willfully neglected it for weeks now. all the garlic chives i've planted around the perimeter of my plot have cloomed, creating a border of pretty white flowers attractive to morning bees. after watering, i harvested a handful of cherry tomatoes and shishito peppers, as well as a single red dragon cayenne pepper. supposedly cayenne are 12x hotter than a jalapeno. i pulled some weeds before finally leaving, making it back home by 10am for my census conference call.

not including myself, there were only 4 other enumerators on the call, along with my new supervisor. there was also a 6pm conference call, maybe more people will join that one. i knew none of the other enumerators. our supervisor said cambridge was 82.9% complete, and after this labor day weekend the census hopes it will be 90% complete. our supervisor also had a master list of harvard properties, 68 buildings scattered through the area, with 6000 units, and we could go to him if we needed a basic head count. i did share a helpful tip with the group, that the buildings of 16-26 chauncy street are interconnected through a basement corridor: get into one building and you'll have access to the other buildings.

our supervisor answered the one question that i had, which was if our work load would end after monday. he said not at all, and in fact, it might even increase. i was actually disappointed, because it meant maybe more weeks of census work, and i was already getting ready for it to be over soon. but the good news is i will continue receiving that federal paycheck, and i'll deal with any lingering trauma after the end of september deadline.

the conference call was only 30 minutes. afterwards i went to the porter square star market to look for caramel green mountain coffee for my mother. just like at the other star market, the only caramel flavored coffee they had was caramel vanilla cream.

i left for belmont after 12pm, taking the bicycle again so i could tag some pokestops along the way and replenish my supplies. for lunch i had some mung beans and barley porridge. in the early afternoon my mother was craving a subway sandwich after i showed her the new commercial featuring bill belichick. we ordered three foot-long sandwiches online (buy two, get one free deal) and went to watertown center to pick them up after 15 minutes.

i think subway was the first food i ever ordered online many years ago, now online ordering is very common with a lot of these fast food places. their user interface has been updated, although some choices were still lacking, like the choice of bread, or an option for the sandwich to be toasted, because when i went to go pick up the order with my father, the worker who gave me my sandwiches warned me they were toasted and that i needed to toast them at home. we ended up eating then as is, as toasting them would ruin the vegetable ingredients. i got the chicken teriyaki, my mother the spicy italian, my father the chicken and bacon cheese melt with ranch dressing. i could only eat half a sandwich before i was stuffed, saving the other half for tomorrow.

after my father mowed the backyard in the late afternoon, we raked the dead grass, added two bags of new garden soil, then sprinkled grass seeds onto the bare spots before raking them into the soil. this dry summer has killed a large patch of backyard lawn. we also spent some time creating a barricade so hailey won't run into the delicate grass seedlings.

i biked home after dinner, excited to have another opportunity to use the new bike light. i didn't mount the light on the extension bar this time as the bar can't support the weight of the light. instead i attached the light directly to the handlebar.

i did a medium load of laundry when i got home, washing all my census clothes for this coming week. i had some watermelon afterwards while watching the lakers-rockets game, los angeles ended up winning, evening the series 1-1.