at 11:30am i went down to walgreens to grab my prescriptions. so a weird thing is one of my prescriptions was denied, but then a few days later it seemed to have gone through. still, i wasn't sure what exactly i was picking up. turns out it was some HCl thaizide, and irbesartan. unfortunately the irbesartan wasn't ready yet, and i have to come back tomorrow, which means i'll be receiving another series of early morning text reminders.
after returning home, i grabbed my seedlings and my tools and went down to the community garden. i was hoping it'd be empty because i needed to pound the u-posts deeper into the ground - which can be noisy - but there were a handful of gardeners.
so in order to bide my time, i went through the community garden to do some weeding, digging up all the dandelions i saw. once that was done, i placed my seedlings to where they'll be planted. then i started digging into the ground my hand, trying to figure out why i can't drive the u-post any deeper. turns out after about 1ft of soil, there's a layer of stone, which may have been the foundation wall of the house that used to be here before the city converted the land into a community garden in 1974. using a shovel, a post hole digger, and a half moon edger, i worked the soil before managing to dislodge a few chunks of stone. i couldn't dig down any further though, there were still too many rocks.
ann showed up to the garden. i was joking with her that my u-posts were probably too tall, and that i'd be getting a stern "talking to" from the garden coordinator. when i put up my plastic trellis netting, i realized they were ripped and needed to be replaced. so i wasn't able to plant my climbing seedlings, so instead only planted the ones in grow bags - eggplants and tomatoes. i'll get the replacement netting from belmont and come back tomorrow to plant the remaining plants. i finally left by 2:15pm, as it was getting close to leaving for the airport.
i packed the remaining seedlings into the car, as well as ingredients for making bagel sandwiches, as i figured my parents might be hungry when they get home (plus i was hungry too). i arrived in belmont a little bit before 3pm.
i was about to move the motorcycle out of the driveway when i noticed the rear wheel was flat. a motorcycle can not be moved on a flat wheel. it'd be like dragging something that weighed 500+ lbs. fortunately i was able to pump up the wheel with the air compressor. i ended up backing the motorcycle into the garage until i can figure out how to fix the flat.
i left for the airport around 3:30pm. even though it was sunday afternoon, google maps alerted me to the fact that there were traffic accidents on both storrow drive and the turnpike, and it'd take 30 minutes to get to logan. i decided to take storrow drive, but after a mile out, google maps informed me of another accident on storrow, which would delay the trip for an additional 7+ minutes, and opted for me to take the turnpike instead, which is what i did.
all was well until i reached the end of the turnpike and exited. they must've changed the traffic pattern because i wasn't sure where i was, and a moment's hesitation made me miss a turn to the airport, and i ended up in the seaport district. luckily the area was fairly deserted, so i made a u-turn when there weren't any cars around to get back on track. that's one of the problems of following the gps directions blindly: you become too reliant on the directions and disregard marked signs.
it only took me 28 minutes to get to the airport, even after getting lost. i parked in the cell phone lot and waited. i could already see my parents had landed, somewhere going through customs in terminal E. i brought my quansheng UV-K5 handheld radio, capable of receiving air band traffic. so from the belmont/cambridge i can usually hear approach chatter, but only from the planes flying overhead, never the tower communication. however when i'm right at logan airport, i can hear both on the approach channel, without needing to be on the tower frequency. likewise, i can also hear the departure channel, both planes and tower. finally, i can hear the airport automated info channel for planes.
i drove to the airport right during the 3:30pm start of the sixers-celtics game. this was a decisive game 7, winner advancing to the eastern conference final. i couldn't bear to watch the game on youtube tv, so i checked the score instead: 29-23 in favor of philly. i didn't like those numbers.
my father called me, said they'd gone through customs and was now picking up their luggage. he said he'd call again when they got out of the airport. 10 minutes he called again, said they were outside. fortunately the cell phone lot is right next to terminal E, close enough to walk, but the area wasn't designed for foot traffic so there are no accessible sidewalks. the terminal wasn't busy today, and i especially spotted my mother waving at the end of the pickup platform.
my father drove us home. sumner tunnel outbound seems to be closed, so we ended up taking the ted williams tunnel and onto the turnpike. there was heavy congestion head into and in the tunnel itself, but once we cleared it, it was smooth sailing. i checked basketball score again, the celtics had come back and tied in the 2nd quarter, 44-44, a good sign, though still a lot of game left.
my mother heard that the greek island trip they were supposed to go to but couldn't because the tour company couldn't find any airfare leaving boston, everyone on that cruise ended up contracting covid. as for them, nobody in their eastern europe tour got sick, even though my mother always seems to get sick when she goes on vacation. she didn't contract covid but her legs were painfully swollen every day, after prolonged walking and sitting.
we got back to belmont by 5pm, which was 11pm german time, the time zone my parents were still on. no mood to cook, we all had some instant tonkotsu ramen instead. i turned on the tv to catch the second half of the game. i was surprised to see the celtics with a commanding 18-point lead in the 3rd quarter, and watched it just in time to see them push it to a 30-point advantage. there was still a quarter left, but barring some kind of catastrophe, the celtics were going to win the series and advance to the ECF to face the miami heat.
i went outside to water the plants, including the front lawn. i reconnected the timer to the faucet and turned it on. unfortunately the packing didn't seem to take, and there was still some leaking from the stem. the front lawn will just have to be watered manually, the faucet turned off afterwards to keep it from leaking. i also checked the motorcycle in the garage, the rear tire had already gone flat after just a few hours. that means most likely it's not a slow leak, which means i can't safely ride it to the mechanic in arlington. i'll need to have it trucked.
my parents regaled me with european stories: experiencing the autobahn, visiting german supermarkets (including aldi), poor eastern european countries, good european bread (even in a burger king bun), best chinese good in frankfurt, nordsee norwegian salmon burgers, my mother losing her taiwan-bought bracelet, stealing lufthansa silverware, german liver sausages.
my parents just wanted to take a shower and then go to bed. because my motorcycle was in the garage with a flat tire, my father suggested i drive home, but because it's street cleaning tomorrow, i knew there wouldn't be any parking spaces, so i opted to just take the bus home instead.
it took me just 5 minutes to walk up to the bus stop, 5 more minutes of waiting before the bus arrived, and then just 8 minutes to get to harvard square, since there was no traffic. i was the only person on the bus for a while until we picked up an old lady in front of mt.auburn hospital. it'd take me another 15 minutes to walk home from harvard square, but ann called me out of the blue to complain about a fellow gardener, and i stopped to answer her call, before continuing home. i finally got back around 7:30pm.
the tonkotsu ramen was more lunch than dinner, so i heated up a spicy jamaican beef patty, while trawling youtube for sixers-celtics post-game analysis.