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yesterday i swapped out the bucket with a larger plastic rectangular recycle bin. when i went down to check on it this morning, i was happy to see the bin wasn't leaking, because i didn't check it for cracks before i put it in service. i poured out the water into the bucket and dumped the water in the backyard. i also opened a few basement windows and turned the oscillating fan back on to help dry out the puddles.

i went to the community garden in the late morning to do some weeding and use up the rest of my espoma plant-tone fertilizer in the growbags. i also watered jen's garden. even though it was a warm day, i wore plants because i didn't want to get anymore mosquito bites. there was one other gardener - sam - who had the plot in the far northeastern corner of the community garden up against the fences. i saw him harvest a bunch of carrots, they weren't too big, but still large enough to make a meal or two out of it. he said a lot of his tomatoes were dying, a combination of powdery mildew, seasonal blight, and rats. i continued working in my own garden, snipping off the striped mallows which have mostly turned to seeds. i also removed some diseased tomato leaves.

after finishing with my plot, i went around the garden admiring the plots of other gardeners, seeing what interesting things they're growing. i finally returned home after an hour.

after a quick shower, i watched the noontime news broadcast with a glass of cold matcha latte. they were announcing the winners this week for the vaxmillion drawings. they'd already picked the names on monday, but need time to track down the winners and verify their vaccination status. a weymouth man won the $1 million, a chelsea teen got the $300k scholarship.

i thought about going to belmont to pick up some potting soil so i can repot my prayer plants (the dirt seems to be infested with fungus gnats still), but the sunny weather of earlier had changed to somewhat cloudy by the early afternoon and i didn't want to risk getting caught in the rain.

i got my lab results yesterday, my cholesterol is a little high. my doctor wrote me a letter today, which is basically what he tells me every year, which is he wants to see my LDL levels lower. he likes to see me at 130, while my latest blood work revealed 182mg/dL. i was actually better last year at 149mg/dL. the last time my overall cholesterol level was below the recommend 200 mg/dL maximum was more than a decade ago, june 2010, when it was just 172 mg/dL.

my mother called me, asking me to get some boneless skinless chicken thighs from star market, the final day of the sale. i went and saw they only had 4 pileas left (from an initial 14 when i was there just 2 days ago). because i didn't have anymore room in my freezer, i biked down to the cafe to drop off the thighs. i also took the opportunity to transport my own pilea plant, so i can remove the babies and plant them in their own pots. i carefully packaged it up in a cardboard box lined with paper, then tied it to the back of my bike with bungie cords. i pedaled slowly and avoided bumps, managed to move my pilea to the cafe in one piece.

i was about to leave the cafe when it started raining unexpectedly. i waited another 10 minutes for the passing shower to leave the area before biking home. i also brought home 3 empty fido jars, which were only at the cafe because they used to hold sichuan paocai.

i got a little hungry in the afternoon so snacked on some gorgonzola cheese with table crackers. i found gorgonzola cheese to be too bland, i like my blue cheese with a more pungent flavor, like danish blue cheese. afterwards i was still hungry so i made some indomie mi goreng.

in the early evening i went back down in the basement to close the windows and turn off the fan, as we were due for some more thunderstorms. later in the evening i made another ham sandwich for dinner along with a glass of half & half ice tea lemonade. i finished off my last bag of cherries, i can start on the longans tomorrow.

the rest of the evening was a combination of red sox baseball game (boston lost to toronto, 13-1), olympics coverage, retroactively updating may blog entries with photos, and finishing a quiet place part 2. it's okay, but if the aliens can't swim, why didn't those cannibalistic marina survivors take one of the many boats and escape to one of the islands? in the end i've found it a serviceable monster horror movie. i also ordered some more memory cards this morning, a 128GB PNY pro elite microSDXC ($17) and a 3-pack of PNY 65GB elite-x ($21), you can never have too much memories. from phones to cameras to web and action cams, they all need a micro memory card.