i left chinatown around 11am. while packing my rear bike baskets, i noticed an asian man loading up the trunk of a car with georgia license plates. "you drive here from georgia?" i asked him. at first i thought maybe he didn't hear me, or purposely ignoring me, but he turned around and said yes. i found out he lives north of atlanta, and comes up to boston periodically to visit his aunt. it takes 14-16 hours to drive that distance, so normally he breaks it up with a stop somewhere, although one time when he was younger he did the drive in a single day. he told me the best place for asian food was toronto - and he's done the drive as well in that very same car all the way from georgia.
it took me 35 minutes to ride back from boston. instead of going home, i went directly to the cafe, geting there by 11:30am. i went down cambridge street, pass the library, pass memorial hall, skirted cambridge common, then onto garden street, all on cycle tracks. i was sweat-soaked, but after cooling off with a glass of ice water, i felt fine afterwards.
we were busy for a short stretch around lunchtime, but not busy the rest of the day. i made a new batch of tea eggs, i probably won't need to make another batch until saturday (for next week).
around 2:20pm all our phones started buzzing as a test of the federal wireless emergency alert system (actually 2:18pm). it was only for a few seconds. i was chromecasting youtube tv at the time and that stream was not interrupted, so somehow the alerts doesn't affect streaming cable channels.
it was so not busy that i managed to leave around 3pm. as it was still early, i thought about doing some more bike fixes in the backyard and maybe repot some plants. unfortunately there were so many mosquitoes outside, it made staying on the back porch unbearable. the only thing i did was plant the lone pennywort stem that actually rooted in the water (the others had no roots and would all die eventually). i used a plastic pot, put a layer of potting soil at the bottom (acting as fertilizer) before filling the rest with wet sphagnum moss. i then put the plastic pot inside of a ceramic pot (with no drainage hole).
i went to market basket to pick up a few things: trash bags, sweet corn, pretzel bites. i also got ingredients for making sandwiches and bought some peppered ham on sale. plus i stopped by the liquor store to get a powerball ticket with the jackpot at $1.2 billion.
when i came home i made a watermelon smoothie using the frozen cubed watermelon in my freezer.
from time to time i like to dabble in the world of comic books. i came across one unexpectedly today that was really good: do a powerbomb by daniel warren johnson. his style reminds me of paul pope, this kind of dirty dynamic ink brush art. the story is about an amateur girl wrestler who teams up with a down-on-his-luck wrestler to compete in an interdimensional wrestling tournament to win the ultimate prize.
around 9pm i made a sandwich for dinner: multi-grain bread, peppered ham, kewpie mayo, yellow mustard, and a smattering of salad greens. the sandwich was so good, i made a second one after finishing the first.
in the late evening the powerball numbers were announced. i didn't get a single match.