i remembered the wimbledon men's singles final was this morning, so turned on the tv to watch djokovic (2) vs alcaraz (1). it's true, for most his career, djokovic was thought of as the villain, while federer and nadal were the shining knights upholding the true values of tennis. but djokovic has outlasted them all, and has more grand slam victories than any other men. anyway, i found myself rooting for djokovic today, if nothing else, it's because he's a familiar constant for the past 2 decades of tennis, while spanish alcaraz represents the next generation. basically, rooting for the old guy (36) instead of the young guy (20). i missed the first set, where djokovic won 6-1. i caught the game towards the second set, where the results were quite different, as alcaraz won after a lengthy tie break.
when my father arrived, i loaded the mini-shopvac into the back of the car. he needed to get a 9v battery so we made a quick stop at dollar tree, before continuing to belmont.
i went outside to take a survey of the garden. torrents of rain was pouring out of the overfilled rain barrels. the squash vines are growing like crazy, and seemed to have taken over RB2 to the point where the peppers and eggplants aren't getting enough sunlight. i got some cross plant snaps (from temu) and went outside to tie some garden stakes together to form a trellis. the snaps fill perfectly on the 6 stakes i got from ocean state job lot a few weekends ago, but they didn't fit the older stakes, which were too thick. i saw the white moth orchid had flowered. my dried pennywort seemed to have revived itself, after i soaked it in water and put it in a shady spot.
my mother called me inside for lunch. i had a bowl of wonton, to which i added a heap of homemade chili oil (from december). i also replaced the memory card for the front door facing wyze cam. the old sandisk memory had died, and yesterday i replaced it temporarily with a 128GB card. today i swapped that old with a smaller 64GB card.
my father was monitoring his 12v car fridge the whole day. he estimated that it uses only about 30Wh per day (running at 33°F), and that it can run off of the 100Ah LiFePo4 battery for weeks. i personally think it'll only run off the battery for only 3 days. i guess we'll find out during the testing phase. theoretically a 100Ah running a 12Vdc load has 1200Wh. that'd mean in an ideal setting, the fridge could potentially run for 40 days.
i continued watching wimbledon. i missed the 3rd set, alcaraz had come back to life, taking it 6-1. in the 4th djokovic won, 6-3. but match was essentially tied, for the crucial 5th set. alcaraz ended up winning with a dominating performance.
my father wanted to go to home depot and get some drywall anchors for our folding cafe table. i did some online searching and found that we could order some from amazon and have them delivered by tomorrow for free. what we needed were drywall toggles, not just anchors. home depot had some nice metal ones, but amazon had plastic toggles that looked like they'd work just as well. we got some toggler toggles for $9 (20 pieces including screws), supposedly strong enough to hold 143 lbs. of weight each.
i got some replacement speakers for my father's 2015 macbook pro. i replaced the right speaker back in august 2020. instead of buying a new pair (which would've cost no more than $20 off of amazon), i bought a used right speaker off of ebay. it worked for a while, but just recently the speaker has gotten very staticky. the left speaker also broke a few months back, and i got a used left speaker off of ebay. i haven't even replaced it yet, but now it looks like both speakers have gone bad. instead of replacing the left speaker and somehow buying a new right speaker, i did what i should've done from the beginning, which was to just buy brand new replacement parts off of amazon. i bought a pair for just $12, due to arrive on tuesday, even comes with tools and replacement rubber feet for the computer.
the rain had mostly stopped by the afternoon, so my father and i went outside to do some gardening. mostly squash vine maintenance: my father pruned off any leaves or vines blocking the other plants, while i used duct tape to remove what seemed like an infestation of squash bug eggs. i noticed many new squash fruits. a few were quite large, big enough to warrant special attention as we reinforced them with twine so they won't topple and bring down the other vines. i don't know if we'll have as many squashes as in past years, but it seems like the most we've ever had growing from hanging vines. peeking into a squash flower, i also saw a squash bee, which is a good sign that these beneficial insects have returned. maybe we owe our new flush of squash fruits to these bees.
the swallowtail caterpillars seemed to have gone missing. my father noticed the larger of the two had disappeared a few days ago, followed by the disappearance of the second caterpillar. he said he spotted some liquid that might've been caterpillar guts. i personally like to think maybe they crawled somewhere and turned into chrysalises, but after a cursory search i didn't see anything.
my mother was in the garden earlier this morning harvesting some scallions. she seemed disgusted with something, and told me she never wants to grow gardenias ever again. later when i went to check out the gardenia plant, i understood why: besides multiple flower buds falling off the plant, apparently squirrels also mistake them for fruits and rip them off to eat. there are no more gardenia flower buds left. i ended up moving it out from underneath the shadow of the maple tree and out somewhere with my light. our next step is to severely prune back the gardenia, essentially make it into a bonsai.
i finally saw some growing bitter melons on the vines in the western bed. the two that i saw were no bigger than a finger, but it's a good sign that soon we will be harvesting bitter melons.
my mother made dinner - sour fish stew. it was kind of like a hot pot where the stew had bits of everything - fish, sour pickled cabbage, pork, tofu, wood ear mushrooms. afterwards i had some longans.
my father gave me a ride back to cambridge at 7pm. it'd started raining again, the second batch of the day, where it'd already rained 1-1/2 inches in boston. i came into the house and smelled something acrid. i ended up running the air purifier in the kitchen to get rid of the smell but the damage was already done. i kind of can't wait until lauryn moves out in the beginning of august. gives me time to do a deep clean of my kitchen.
i ran the AC briefly because it was so humid (even though it wasn't that hot inside the house, the outdoor temperature was 73 degrees). i used the bathroom and took a shower. relaxing to some tv, i discovered my xiaomi mi box android tv remote no longer works. fortunately they sell replacement remotes on temu for just $5-6.