i heard the call of the cambridge street sweeping announcement truck this morning. by sheer luck, last night i parked in a spot that wasn't getting swept, so i had nothing to worry about and went back to sleep. by the time i woke up and looked outside my living room window, i saw several cars in the process of getting towed. welcome to cambridge!

it was supposed to rain today, but probably not until the late afternoon early evening, so i could still ride to belmont. i took my fuji bike, in case i couldn't ride back, i wouldn't mind leaving it behind in my parents' garage. i left by 10:30am, since my parents were going on a baifu supply run in south boston. when i arrived, my mother had made some pan-fried raviolis, but she forgot about them on the stove and they were all burnt on one side (i ate them anyway).

afterwards my father and i did some more work preparing the lawn for reseeding. we continued dethatching the backyard before my father took one more pass with the lawnmower to trim what grass we do have, which now seem to be growing much faster, with the normalization of rainfall amounts and cooler weather.

we left for baifu a bit before noontime, catching a bit of queen elizabeth's funeral on tv. we drove onto storrow drive, exiting by fenway/kenmore and continuing onwards to south boston via mas ave. the area was conspicuously absent of homeless drug users, there must've been a recent sweep. the parking lot to baifu even opened on both ends (normally it's locked on one end, the side facing methadone mile).

we ended up spending $800 on supplies. they didn't have everything we wanted so we needed to take a detour to an asian supermarket in chinatown. the route according to google maps seemed very straight-forward, but the roads leading up to the access road was a real mess, and one wrong turn and you're either on the turnpike, on the interstate, or heading to logan airport via one of the tunnels. my phone also decided it wasn't able to get any gps access, so i was operating blind. we ended up driving the south boston bypass road, into the seaport district, had no idea where we were, everything looked unfamiliar, while i kept trying to find my bearing through google maps minus gps. we looped back, and managed to get onto west fourth street, which connected to east berkeley, and finally to c-mart. what should've taken us 7 minutes to drive took up 24 minutes.

c-mart was crowded for a monday afternoon, but we were lucky to find a vacated spot in their cramped parking lot. i was just here last thursday, but my parents - especially my mother - probably haven't been here in years. we were here for a good half hour, and while my mother could've spent more time browsing the aisles, my father was in a hurry to leave and was already paying at one of the checkout lines.

by the time we left c-mart, the parking lot had cleared out. the drive to the cafe was quicker than our south boston seaport detour, at only 23 minutes via storrow drive through backbay. my mother had a hankering for bonchon fried chicken and had me put in an order so we could go pick it up. the next available delivery window wasn't until 35 minutes later, so we went to the cafe first to drop off the supplies. as soon as we arrived, i got a bonchon text saying our food was already ready for pickup.

my parents dropped me off on eliot street (so i could run up winthrop to bonchon) while they circled around onto bennett (across the charles hotel). i grabbed the order and ran back to the car, utilizing my newfound running skill (though i was still out of breath afterwards).

we finally made it back to belmont by 3pm. i order 8-pieces of spicy wings ($12 lunch special price) and 8-pieces of soy garlic ($12). i like both, even though i think the spicy is way too hot. i got the pickled radish as a side.

afterwards my father and i were back outside. we were about to dethatch the front lawn one more time, but decided to leave it as is before reseeding; that way the seed can fall beneath some of the loose thatch. even under the best condition the lawn is usually too compact to aerate with a coring tool, i think maybe next year we might rent a motorized aerator, or maybe do some simple aerating with the pitchfork. my father wanted to handcast the grass seeds, but i wanted to use the drop spreader i got this past spring. the instruction said to set the spreader to 17-1/2 for reseeding, but the holes seemed too large, so i went with the 12-1/2 setting, which is for overseeding an established lawn. we made a test patch, the dropped seeds amount wasn't too bad, so we decided to use the spreader for the rest of the front lawn. i did the spreading, while my father raked the seeds into the soil. afterwards he took what was left of the grass seeds and reseeded the area fron the back stairwell to a bit of the back lawn, while i went ahead and raked in the rest of the seeds. it was easy to see where we seeded because these scott seeds have a blue coating. i'll need to buy another bag of grass seeds to fill in the rest of the backyard.

we also tested the watering timer on the front spigot. the timer works, we did a trial run of 5 minutes, it stopped on schedule. however, the front spigot has a leaking coming from the stem, and even after my father tightened it with a plumber's wrench, it still kept leaking, so we'll need to replace the spigot. i'm going to try coming back tomorrow early afternoon and see if i can fix that and also seed the backyard. the latest weather forecast says it might rain again a little bit tomorrow around 3pm.

once again, this weekend i didn't have time to build my aeroponic setup. hopefully i can do it next weekend. hydroponic jar mustards continue to grow. the leaves are yellow which concerns me, could be many reasons: too much fertilizer, or maybe too much light. using the jar setup, i don't think i'm going to be able to grow a full head of asian mustard. particularly the mason jars, which are just too small. the grow light also gives off too much heat, which dries the nutrient solution much quicker than normal.

for dinner my parents made homemade dumplings with chinese celery and ginger. when it comes to dumplings, i can probably eat two plates worth, i don't have any portion control.

i was prepared to be given a ride back to cambridge, but there was still a window before the rainstorm arrived so i pulled my fuji bike back out from the garage and pedaled home as fast as i could. it was already lightly raining, not even enough to dampen clothes, but i didn't want to find out what might come afterwards, so it pushed me to pedal even faster to get home so i wouldn't get soaked. only later in the evening was there a very short period of heavy storms, the rain crashing against my eastern windows, and there were even a few rumbles and flashes of lightning and thunder. all this rain will be very good for the newly-seeded lawn (provided it didn't wash the seeds away).

i bought my bus tickets to new york city. the pandemic killed off a bunch of bus companies - megabus, lucky star, world wide bus - but it a created a vacuum and new companies have taken their place. i booked with flixbus which i've never heard of before. the ticket for monday morning (october 3rd) leaving 7:30am and arriving 11:45am was just $22.39, and the ride back on wednesday 6:45pm arriving in boston 11:10pm was $19.99. there was also a $3.99 service fee, and the seats seem to be assigned. if i'm not mistaken, i think the last time i went down to new york city was october 2016, nearly 6 years ago the last time i went to new york was july 2018, more than 4 years ago. it's going to be my first time going out of state since the pandemic began, and the first time traveling more than 10 miles away from boston. i'll shop for a hotel tomorrow, most likely around the flushing area, with its proximity to delicious foods!