i went home to feast on my fried chicken. i also made a matcha latte, pouring the matcha powder out of the foil ziploc bag into a glass jar. i had a breast, a wing, and a drumstick. by the time i was finished i felt gross, hitting that fried oil threshold.
by 1pm i biked down to the community garden to work on my plot. i chatted with a 2nd year gardener - gail - who had my old plot by the new access road to sacramento field. i told her she had a great plot, very sunny. she was hoping to upgrade because a lot of people don't realize her plot is an actual garden and not a footpath and end up trampling her plants. later after i thought she'd left, she came back and asked if i was "tony yang." i said yes, surprised that she seemed to know me or know of me. she asked if i worked on the census last summer, i said yes. turns out she's the field supervisor for the area, the boss of my boss, and i actually had another interaction with her back when i worked the census and was chatting with her on the street before i realized who she was. small world! she told me she too had ptsd with certain addresses.
i started by digging up the creeping buttercups in the northeastern corner. i pulled out a few goldenrods, i almost consider them an invasive weed. i replanted two daylilies that seemed to be bulging out of the dirt. i moved the forget-me-nots that self-sprouted in one of the grow bags to the northeast corner. i started filling my 5 grow bags with new garden soil. i was in the garden for nearly an hour before i noticed that my garden neighbor had chopped down all the garlic chive borders in the northwestern corner. i took another look and discovered he'd also completely uprooted one of my prized monkshoods! i went digging in the garbage refuse bins and found them all there. fortunately monkshood plants are pretty hardy, and i was able to retrieve most of them and replant them later after i finished filling the grow bags. i relocated carpets of sedum to the edges of my plot. i relocated wild seedlings: moneyplants, striped mallows, forget-me-nots, garlic chives. finally i watered everything. 2 hours later and covered in dirt, i was finally finished by 3pm.
i returned home to help my mother order new furniture for my sister's godmother, but when i saw they didn't forward me anything, i decided to go down to the cafe and do it in person. besides, i needed to go there to install the new eufy 2k indoor webcam i got last week.
first i called the gardeners in the plot next to mine, who dug up my monkshood. i was ready to chew them out, but they were very apologetic, said they wanted to get ahold of me (but didn't have my number) to say sorry, and was willing to replace the lost plants. i told them i fished out my monkshood from the garbage and replanted them, no harm no foul. i think if they were being assholes about it i would've made them pay for a new plant, but they were pretty contrite, i was satisfied with their apology. after that i finally left for the cafe.
my sister's godmother had been browsing wayfair and decided on a new tv stand (smaller) and a couch. she was at the cafe, i helped her order her furniture as well as a pedestal swivel base for her HDTV. i think the only other thing she needs now is a nice carpet for her living room, but taiwanese people can't normally conceptualize carpets since nobody in taiwan has carpets.
my father helped me take down the old wyze panning webcam and install the new eufy webcam. i went with the eufy because of it's higher resolution (2k vs 1080p) and overall better image quality. the wyze was good for its time, but the 5-minute delay between notifications (which can be removed with a paid subscription) negated the usefulness of uploading video snippets to a free cloud server. i consider the eufy a 3rd generation webcam (the wyze being 2nd generation, and our old foscam webcams 1st generation). the default configuration for the eufy is to just record onto the memory card, but it also has a paid subscription service for cloud storage, and an RTSP option for saving to a local NAS. the eufy has a more robust AI when it comes to recognizing human motions (free), the wyze human detection is now a paid service. the only things i don't like about the eufy is encrypted videos, which can only be downloaded through the phone app, doesn't have a standard mount (uses nail hooks instead), instead designed to be placed outside.
i finally left the cafe by 5pm. i decided to revisit the community garden with some empty pots so i can collect some herb plants and grow them in containers instead. i bumped into the gardeners who uprooted my monkshood, a senior couple. they apologized once more.
afterwards i potted 2 mints and an oregano. i also potted a purple deadnettle, not an herb, but i wanted to relocate it. i chatted with renee, then chatted with david (the married david with the kid), before chatting with anne marie. renee was tending to her plot, but only half of it. i thought it was something she was doing on purpose but she was penalized for not using her plot, which have of it going to a gardener on the long wait list. i also bumped into mark, who i noticed already planted cucumbers. when anne marie heard this, she warned him that they might die because we're due for some cold weather next week (30's). mark revealed that he started the seedlings indoors.
i finally left the community garden an hour later, wasn't planning on staying so long. i did a load of laundry to wash off the dirt i'd accumulated on my t-shirt and jeans, and took a shower afterwards to rinse off the filth. i ate a fried chicken thigh, then later had a breast, a wing, and a drumstick. i had a cosmic crisp apple for dessert, washed it all down with some seltzer and gatorade and celestial seasonings begnal spice tea.
i continued watching episodes of legend of the seeker, down to episode 10 of the first season, the one where kahlan dresses up as a mord-sith (which by the way, is probably one of the best representation of BDSM culture in the fantasy genre). i can't believe how perfect bridget regan would've been as wonder woman. too bad they didn't make the movie when she was in her 20's, but the time they finally got around to it, she was already in his mid-30's. but gal gadot isn't very much younger, only by 3 years. from what i gather online, a lot of people agree that regan would've been a much better wonder woman.