i pull up some weeds with my bare hand, and the next day i start seeing blisters. a few at first, but then it gets worse. the more i scratch the more they come. i find the only thing that will relieve the itching is rinsing with cold water. i also sleep with my hand outside the blanket, otherwise the warmth will trigger a nocturnal scratching fit until i wake up with a bloody hand. maybe i should be wearing sleep mittens? however, this only happens once, because after that, i wear gloves all the time when i'm working in the garden.
inside my grow closet it was toasty warm: 81°F underneath the syran wrapped buttercup squash seeds, with 75°F elsewhere in the closet, a few degrees higher than my room temperature. i also thinned out the thai basil, leaving a seedling per pot (8).
i walked down to the community garden (without mask) in the late morning to plant my hyacinth beans and bitter melons. i planted the two hyacinth beans on the western side (taller trellis) while the two bitter melons on the eastern side (more sun). not much else was happening in my plot, the bearded irises at the far end of my garden have started to bloom.
i got back home by 12:15pm and made myself a cold matcha latte. the matcha powder had no problems dissolving in the cold milk, but the teaspoon of honey i add to sweeten the drink did not like the cold temperature at all. either go without honey or use a more syrupy sweetener.
i biked to market basket in the afternoon after figuring out what i wanted to make for dinner the rest of the week (buffalo chicken wrap). i bought a bowl of korean hot chicken buldak to try out. they also sold jars of baek kimchi which i got to try out. i noticed something in the produce department: they got rid of all their one-way signs; although they still kept the one-way aisle stickers in the rest of the store. maybe they're phasing out the one way aisles altogether? it doesn't seem like anyone was following them anyway during the pandemic. i stopped home briefly before biking down to the cafe.
i dropped off some chinese sausages and my mother and i tried the baek kimchi. it wasn't that good, tasted like sauerkraut but not as sour, zero spiciness. if nothing else, at least we got a glass jar out of the purchase. afterwards my father and i went next door to the flower shop to disassemble some of the furnitures so they can be moved out when the floor guys come on monday to resurface the wooden floors.
i left by 4pm. it felt so much hotter and stuffy in the house compared to outside. normally i'd crack open my living room window, but because i have the outdoor facing webcam mounted on top rail of the lower sash, it'd mean i'd have to reposition the camera. keeping the windows closed also means less pollen getting inside the house.
john told me today they're selling their brooklyn condo. the open house is this sunday. i know he talked about moving back to the boston area, but in the end, they settled for a place in pelham, which is still accessible to the city via subway/commuter train. actually, they already signed the paperwork on their new house, just waiting for their old place to be sold so they can make the exchange. it's the end of an era! the main reason for moving was better schools in pelham compared to city schools.
i started making dinner around 8:30pm. buffalo chicken wrap is simple: grill the chicken cutlets on the smokeless foreman, chop into bit size pieces and mix with some red hot buffalo wings sauce, assemble in flour tortilla with chopped lettuce, parmesan cheese, and blue cheese dressing, then roll up and eat. i had a hard time rolling up the wrap, i think the secret is to warm up the tortilla. the chicken tasted rubbery, maybe i overcooked it. the recipe i found said to use rotisserie chicken, or maybe shred the chicken next time instead of grilling and cutting it into pieces. i grilled all my chicken so i have enough ingredients to make a few more wraps for the rest of the week.
today is an special day in blog history: iamtonyang.com is 20 years old. i sort of don't believe it, can't imagine how i kept this up all these years. yeah, there's been days were i missed entries, especially if i was traveling and simply didn't have time to blog, but more than 90% of my life has been documented, sometimes in minute details, for the past 2 decades. to think my blog is older than some of the people i meet on the streets! i was the master of oversharing online before it was even a thing. will i ever stop blogging? at this point, i'm so used to it, it'd be weird if i don't reflect and write down everything i did that day. here's to another 20 more years!