i went to bed last night at 3am, slept for 6-1/2 hours, woke up around 9:30am. i could've slept more on this one day where i didn't have to work, but i had things to do and needed to wake up. it rained overnight and the streets outside was still wet while the sky remained grey. temperature was climbing and it felt unusually humid. i felt compelled to go out for a run but waited until 11am to let the streets dry out a bit more.

i got home a bit after noontime. after a shower i was trying to figure out what to have for lunch, then realized i had some leftover barbecued drumsticks from yesterday. i also saw that sheri had left some beers and hard ice tea on my backyard deck. she must've left them outside yesterday because the box was soaked. she also left my a large plastic tote, and said i could keep it.

after lunch, i started making plans to run some errands. i had a list of things to do (clean the garden, clean the basement, make sauerkraut, make hot sauce, buy grass fertilizer, buy spray foam, get LECA for paperwhites), but ended up not doing most of them.

what i did do was package up the two pairs of on shoes my mother didn't want anymore and returned them to the nearby star market, where there's a fedex dropoff. afterwards i got a few groceries there before returning home to drop them off.

i got on my bike and went to whole foods. it was so warm, i changed into my short-sleeved polo, didn't think i'd wear that again this year. i went to whole foods to return a few amazon purchases (RJ12 phone splitter, gam3geaer 48-Y1 repeater controller cable). a woman was ahead of me returning a bunch of stuff at the self-service return kiosk, apologizing for making we wait so long. when she finally finished though, the machine was full, and i had to go inside to return my things. that turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because i saw from the corner of my eye some green canvas whole foods reusable grocery bags by the self-checkout station. i went and bought 3 (at $2.19 a piece).

next was market basket, where i collected some ingredients for making spicy mexican chicken soup. i had a large can of hominy i wanted to use up, and the original recipe called for hominy. while i was there, i helped a woman get down a case of seltzer from a high shelf. she was actually taller me, but the two of us worked together and managed to get the drinks down.

by the time i came home, it was almost 4pm. originally i planned on cleaning out my garden plot, but decided it was too late. i baked some frozen soft pretzels as a snack, ate them with generous squirts of yellow french mustard. i was going to do some retroactive blog work, but ended up not doing any of that either.

by 7pm i started making my spicy mexican chicken soup. i haven't made this recipe since december 2022, almost 2 years ago. like i mentioned earlier, i was using hominy this time instead of pearl couscous. i bought 3 lbs. worth of chicken breast. i didn't need that much (it was on sale) but boiled and shredded all of it, saving half for some future use. while i was waiting for everything to cook, i tried one of the twisted tea for the very first time. it kind of tasted like cheap ice tea with some alcohol (5%) added. i could probably easily make a better version using real tea and just add some vodka.

i left the soup to simmer for half an hour. i'm not sure if this step is necessary, since all the ingredients i was using were already cooked. i did this in the past to cook the pearl couscous. still, simmering it for a little while allows the flavors to blend together.

when it was all ready i scooped myself a big bowl. i added some shredded mexican cheese and chopped cilantro (i didn't have any scallions). it was okay, but the hominy had a rubbery texture and was too chewy. next time i make this recipe i'm going back to pearl couscous. they don't overwhelm the soup the way hominy does. i've made it with hominy in the past, but that was with homemade hominy that i constituted in a slow cooker for half a day. the texture of canned hominy doesn't feel the same, or maybe i simply added way too much.

i ate while watching game 5 of the world series. tonight was the last game in new york before the series go back to los angeles for the final 2 games. by the time i started watching, the yankees were already up 0-3. they added 2 more runs by the end of the 3rd inning. the dodgers were ineffective until the 5th inning. they took advantage of some yankee errors and scored 5 runs to tie the game. but the yankees came right back and scored in the next inning, bringing it up to 5-6. but the dodgers buckled down and managed 2 runs in the 8th. new york could sense that victory was about to slip through their grasps, with the dodgers needing just 6 more outs to win if the yankees don't score. and sure enough, the yankees didn't score after that. final score 7-6 dodgers win the world series!

freddie freeman won the MVP, it was the most obvious choice. watching the dodgers win felt like the red sox winning, with former red sox mookie betts, kike hernandez, joe kelly, and dave roberts on the team. wish i could go to los angeles this week to see the parade! dodgers won the world series in 2020 but with an abbreviated season and no parade. this is like their makeup world series.