my roommate left the house at 9:30am this morning. i was out the door by 9:50am, restarting my running routine. the last time i ran was more than 2 months ago, back in early april. temperature was in the mid-60's, the sky overcast looking like it might rain. it did however rain overnight and there were leftover puddles in the streets. i download the nike running club app into my phone and turned it on when i walked down to the charles river, along with my xiaomi fitness tracking. the run wasn't too bad, my usual loop around the river, with walks across the bridges. both xiaomi and the nike running app gave me nearly identical run distance of 1.73 miles for the xiaomi and 1.72 for nike. both apps also alerted me simultaneously with voice prompt when i reached my 1st mile mark. the nike running club app was a recommendation from my doctor, who swears by it, but i wasn't impressed with my initial use. there are also different modes like guided runs or training runs, maybe i'll try one of those next time.

another reason for running was it gave me an opportunity to see what's growing this time of the year. some cambridge residents put a lot of efforts into their gardens, one street bouquet was especially impressive. around the charles river i came across at least 2 fruiting mulberry trees, one of them possibly a fabled white mulberry. a saw a flicker pecking in the wet grass by the boat club.

i stopped by the community garden to get some photos. my nigellas are really putting on a show now, at least 2 dozen blossoms in various colors, seems like no two were alike. i ran into renee, who almost said contemptuously, "you're running now too?" when she saw my running outfit. she was meeting susan for a walk.

i got home a little after 11am. i used the bathroom and weighed myself afterwards, surprised that i didn't lose as much weight as i thought (given how much i was sweating). it is my first run after all after a 2 month hiatus, it's going to take a few weeks before i notice improvements. i then took a shower.

for lunch i heated a chicken cordon bleu, which takes about 30 minutes to bake, so the news was already over by the time it was ready.

i then spent nearly an hour taking passport photos of myself for both my US passport and my taiwan passport. i used both natural light, external flash bouncing off the ceiling, my pancake light, and a mylar reflector board to bounce some fill light onto my face. even then, with ISO and shutter speed tweaking, the photos were still dark, but i'll fix them up in photoshop. for the backdrop i used a white poster board i had for just such an occasion, taped to an extended tripod. originally i was wearing a white shirt but i thought it'd get washed out over the white background, so i changed into a light blue shirt instead. i took two different versions, one with glasses, one without, in case they had different criteria. i ended up taking nearly 60 photos, i think i got a few that will work. getting the passports done is important because only then can i finally get a haircut. i've been waiting all this time so i could get my long-hair self into my passports as sort of a posterity measure.

at 2:30pm i took the motorcycle to belmont. after letting hailey outside to use the bathroom, i started dragging all the branch bundles onto the curb for garden refuse pickup tomorrow. my sister came home at that point, said she needed to take her car in for servicing. she parked in the driveway, blocking my easy access to the branch bundles, making it harder for me to move them onto the sidewalk. when it was all done, i counted nearly 24 bundles, and nearly a dozen additional garden refuse bins. i think the trash pickup people are going to be very annoyed when they come by tomorrow morning.

i came inside the house just in time to watch the trump arraignment coverage. there was no live footage inside the court room, so it was all political pundits ("talking heads") followed by an OJ helicopter coverage following trump's motorcade as it left the court house. he made a publicity stop at a cuban restaurant, but the live footage was very pixelated because of poor reception, and it seemed pretty obvious what he was trying to do, to go someplace where people still love him.

i came back home by 3:30pm. i watched some more arraignment coverage, then switched to youtube to see reactions to the nuggets winning the NBA finals last night.

lauryn came home at 6pm, immediately started cooking. she was in her room for the rest of the night, coming out to use the bathroom just one, not even to shower, though i heard the shower curtains rustling. as for myself, i put a frozen chicken alfredo meal in the oven around 7pm and ate while reading cormac mccarthy's blood meridian on the laptop. cormac passed away today at the age of 89. many have said that blood meridian is the great american novel and i wanted to check it out for myself.

i picked two good passport photos from the batch i took this afternoon and processed them: cleaned up the background, adjusted the brightness/contrast/level. so what i do with these is i get them printed out at walgreens. originally i laid them out on a 8x10" sheet inside of photoshop. but the cost to print out an 8x10 is $3.99, while it's just 38¢ for a 4x6. so i laid out the photos onto the smaller size, one with glasses, one without. i'll send them out to walgreens tomorrow and have them printed, and can pick them up the same day. then on thursday i'll go down to the taiwan embassy and get the paperwork done for a passport renewal.