today was the first day of a 3-day august heat wave, so i went down to the community garden this morning to water my plants. i also managed to collect another bag of mostly cherry tomatoes with a single cloudy day tomato.

i also took a tour of the other garden plots. this stage of the season, there's a lot of diseases going around, especially in such a densely planted garden. cucumbers pockmarked with bacterial wilt transmitted by cucumber beetles, all tomato plants stricken by various stages of late season blight.

as this was just the first day of the heat wave, it wasn't hot enough yet to warrant turning on the air conditioner. however, my room temperature slowly went up, from 77°F this morning to a high of 81°F by late evening.

i had cereal for lunch and stayed inside the rest of the day. i only went out briefly to bring in the trash cans, mine as well as renee's, not out of altruism, more so i can position their trash cans so they're not directly below the dripping 3rd floor AC. i bumped into upstairs david, who told me he extended his lease and will be here until the end of october. i was hoping steve and paul would be back next month so they can see the water damage inside my wall and might want to replace their pipes, so my repair plans will have to change. good news is i can have peace and quiet for a few more months, as david is less noisy than steve and paul. i also bumped into jen, who thanked me for helping to water her plot by giving me a milk chocolate bar she got from their switzerland vacation.

i got a chance to watch the first episode of the much awaited marvel series what if.... out of all the new marvel series, this was the one i was most excited about because i actually knew a little something about the original what if comic series. first episode was a what if peggy carter was turned into a super soldier instead of steve rogers. the episode seemed long because it was so dense with action, but it came under just half an hour. at times i actually thought captain carter would make a better movie than captain america. i was amazed when i heard that many of the original actors were voicing their animated characters, but not everyone (steve rogers wasn't voiced by chris evans).

i also finished watching the first season of mike tyson mysteries. originally i just watched a few episode from the third and fourth season, but they were so funny i ended up downloading all four seasons.

i'm still trying to find a good place to put my pileas. i don't want to put them outside where they'd get direct sun (i heard that turns the leaves yellow). however, putting them in my dining area up against the french door windows resulted in too little light. i had one pot in my eastern facing frosted window, but that too got too little light. i finally ended up putting them in my living room against a north facing window, which surprisingly is the brightest non-direct-sun window in the house.

in the afternoon i had a smoothie. for dinner a buffalo chicken salad sandwich, same as yesterday, with some limeade. i had a brown sugar boba popsicle for dessert. i watched the rays-red sox game, boston managed to stop their losing streak against the rays with a 20-8 spanking. the game was never even that close, tampa bay scored a few homeruns in the 9th inning (including a grand slam) but it was garbage time and there was no way they were going to make up that deficit in just a single inning.