i had noodles for lunch at my parents' place while watching the patriots-broncos game streaming on youtube tv from my pixel 3XL phone. new england hasn't played in 2 weeks due to a coronavirus outbreak in the team, and a few players were put on the covid watch as late as today and they still held the game. patriots lost: good defense held denver to just field goals, but the lack of a proper offense after having no practice time meant they couldn't put up points.

during halftime i was out in the backyard with my father tilling raised bed 2 and preparing it to be a garlic bed. after pulling up all the plants, we added two bags of garden soil, two containers of compost, and my father drizzled some fermented soy bean mush which smelled like a chinese public toilet.

after the game was over i came back outside and sprinkled some espoma garden food (10-10-10) into the garlic bed before raking it into the soil. using the handle of a trowel, i made about 100 holes in the raised bed, each 3" deep and 6" apart. i then snipped off the garlic stems (curing since early july) and collected the largest garlics for growing. though these garlics were small, some of the individual cloves were large, so there still may be hope that i could get some big garlics next season. into each hole i added some bone meal before planting the cloves. so hopefully by next july i might expect to see some garlics. this is my third planting; if they're still not doing well i'm going to give up on growing garlics.

after cleaning RB4, i noticed a plant in the pot where i tried to germinate some toothache plant seeds maureen had sent me a few months ago. they never germinated after 2 months so i gave up. imagine my surprise when i saw the toothache plant and one telltale flower! i'll try to keep it alive indoors over the winter.

there was a buccaneers-packers game in the late afternoon between brady and rodgers. green bay went into the game undefeated, but tampa bay won 38-10, i don't think green bay scored any points in the second half. it's still really weird watching tom brady on another team. a part of me wants to root for him, but another part of me wants to boo him. i want him to do well but not too well. it also sucks that the patriots are now 2-3 (behind the bills and dolphins no less) and buccaneers 4-2.

my father was barbecuing the nearly 5 lbs. of drumsticks i bought from star market this morning (on sale 97¢/lbs). while closing the garage, i got two of my fingers caught in the door (left hand, middle and ring fingers). it was painful but there didn't seem to be an damage, at least not externally. it hurt when i flexed my palm outwards, and there was a throbbing prickling sensation on my finger tips. it stopped hurting after a while, although there was a swollen feeling in my middle fingertip, which got the brunt of the door crush. my father said the same thing happened to him, he actually severed his fingernail, and it took a while for it to grow back. my mother also revealed so got her finger caught in the garage door a long time ago as well.

my mother was exclaiming how delicious the drumsticks were. the secret is high heat to crisp up te outside, followed by low heat to cook the inside, before putting on the sauce (a sweet thai chili sauce) and cooking for a few more minutes. just for kicks, my father roasted one of my leftover garlics. it tasted pretty good, the spiciness of the garlic subdued, tasted a little like roasted chestnut, or a baked potato with a garlicky sweetness. we ended up roasting a few more garlics.

riding home, i had a hard time with the clutch because i couldn't close my left hand without my fingers hurting. after a few minutes i got used to it and could grab again.

it was cold inside my house, 61°F. still not cold enough to turn on the heat, although i did use my electric space heater while i was in the bathroom, then later in the living room to heat up the place a little bit before turning it off. temperature will go back into the 70's later this week, but each week there's less warm days and more cold ones. i could at least hold out for another week.