i also contacted annie, a young astrophysics student who stayed at my place in the summer of 2019. she actually contacted me a few weeks ago about finding a 6-months place to stay starting in february. i finally contacted her. 6-months is way too long i said, and the 3-bedroom apartment my parents manage is currently at full capacity. when i called my mother to let her know about the spanish roommate, she actually told me that one of the tenants at their apartment - the married couple - are actually leaving because the wife is pregnant and they need their own place. so i contacted annie again with the update, told her if the room was still available next year, she could stay there.
did my tender seedlings survive the cold night? my weather station says the temperature only dropped down to 40°F last night, so cold but not deadly cold. i walked down to the garden around 11am, bringing with me a clay pot and the last of my seedlings (a goat horn pepper). gail was there, i chatted with her briefly before removing the pots and bags from my plants. they were all fine. i watered them before returning home.
i made two bagel sandwiches for lunch, one for now, one for dinner. i used up the last of my bagels as well as the leftover smoked ham. i didn't have any avocado though, but the addition of the eggs and slice of american cheese was more than enough. i ate while watching the noontime news broadcast. forecast of weekend rain looks more certain now, starting saturday beginning at noon and into early sunday morning.
with another astrophysicist tenant sleeping over at my place for possibly 3 days starting on monday night while his apartment gets insulated, i need to clean up the house over the next few days, primarily today and tomorrow. this is for the best, otherwise i'd never clean up my place, in a perpetual state of post-pandemic clutter. i started slow, finally changed my mildewy shower curtains including shower curtain hooks. these were original plastic curtain rings that came with the place when i bought it over 20 years ago. some of them don't close so well, so parts of the curtains are always hanging loose. my new hooks are rust proof metal types with the ball bearings i bought off of temu.
i got the frosted curtains from temu as well, i need two because of my irregular bathtub layout. unfortunately the material was super thin, slightly thicker than an once ubiquitous plastic grocery bag. apparently these are "premium lightweight" with a gauge of 3.2. they do have magnets on the bottom which keeps the curtains attached to the tub, something my old curtains didn't have. they also don't have any smell (made from PEVA material), something that on my old curtains took weeks of usage to finally get rid of.
i cleaned the bathtub, first scrubbing with some used baking soda, but when that didn't fully remove the smudges, i used some fragrant softscrub. i followed that up with some toilet cleaning as well.
i ordered a new toilet seat cover. the one that i currently have was replaced back in 2015, and it's already looking a little worn, with some stains and rusty screws, so now was a good opportunity to get a new one. the one that i got online is the kohler stonewood round toilet seat in white ($22), which is very similar to my existing toilet seat, the kohler ridgewood (which no longer seems to be available).
in the afternoon i was prepared to ride out to belmont to do some light gardening. it gave me the chance to remove the handlebar clock on my motorcycle. when i finally got it opened, i found out it used a battery size (377) that i didn't have, so i had to order some off of amazon (pair of energizer silver oxide, $2.74), arriving on saturday. i think it's ridiculous that there's a million different sizes of watch batteries, rather than some standardization. every device that i own that uses a watch battery uses a different size, so nothing is cross compatible.
i went back to the community garden first (via motorcycle) to plant some seeds: nasturtiums in each of the grow bags, a row of long beans underneath the western trellis, and sprinkled some nigella seeds randomly throughout my garden plot. i did some watering afterwards. i bumped into wayne, who never seems to remember me. he must be in his 80's so it's weird whenever he mentions his girlfriend, this time in reference to the rhubarb he has growing in his garden. that and a peony, he has nothing else. wayne's plot is the one that i want if he should ever vacate it, since it's right next to my old plot.
i got to belmont around 3pm, right when the automated sprinkler was running. all the seedlings we covered up last night looked fine. i was there to do some watering (even though my father said he'd already watered this morning) and to plant some nasturtium and bean seeds. i put some nasturtiums in every corner of the raised beds, then planted alternating rows of long beans and blue beans in RB4, RB2, and RB1. in RB3 and RB0 i planted some long beans. the blue bean seeds i have are not in very good shape (they all look shriveled) so i'm not confident they'll germinate. the long beans however, i'm confident those will all sprout. after i finished watering, i left by 4:30pm.
after coming home, i walked down to star market to stock up on some chips on sale. they were selling ojai pixie tangerines at $4.99 for a 1lb. bag. the oranges looked much smaller than the ones i bought, these were clementine sized.
when i got back home, i unknowingly emptied a bag of pretzels. i didn't do anymore cleaning the rest of the day. i did however buy some new shower curtains, something a bit thicker. i bought a pair of LiBa brand frosted shower curtains for $19. these are 8 gauge (0.2mm) which is considered extra strength, the next higher up is 10 gauge (0.25mm) which is heavy duty. they're due to arrive tomorrow.
when dinner rolled around i had my second bagel sandwich. looking for something else that warm to eat, i made a bowl of taiwanese ramen. i also tried some of the discount oranges i got from the waltham market basket for just $1 (cheaper than haymarket prices). they were actually pretty good, they got progressively sweeter the bigger the orange size. game 2 between the lakers and nuggets was tonight. lakers had the nuggets in the first half, but in the second half it was all denver. lakers lose, 103-108. are the nuggets really that good? this is a team that has never won the championship before. honestly, denver seems like the kind of place players go and disappear.