today i ran a few errands. the kind of day that i should be at home with the air conditioner on watching daytime television and eating ice cream on the floor while drinking cans of cold soda, i decide to go out and run errands. called mass general to get one of my drugs refilled, brought my collection of disposable cameras to nanor on school street to have them developed (talk about old, i had an undeveloped disposable camera from 1986), and visited the harvard square fleet bank to check up on my wayward account.
on my bus ride into town, i met this talkative blonde in a short pink flower dress. we started talking about the weather but then immediately she started filling me in on the details of her life, how she recently resigned from a high paying financial job, how she found a new job in connecticut but doesn't know if she wants to relocate because her boyfriend lives in boston even though she has a family in connecticut including a 16 year old son (she's 40 by the way), how she really wants to get into corporate training with her 20 years of business experience, how the economy sucks right now and how it's harder for someone like her to find a job because there's lot less management positions available. maybe it's the heat. people feel that you're suffering along with them and feel the urge to share.
also on this bus ride was a glasses-wearing asian girl who asked me in broken english if i could tell her when we got to harvard square. i told her harvard square was the last stop, and that when the bus stopped, that was harvard square. when we got to our destination, she wanted to know where to take the no.1 dudley bus, so i escorted her to the the bus stop. it was then she asked me, "how long have you lived here?" which i immediately recognized as a loaded question to figure out my true nationality. "i've been here since 1980, originally i was from taiwan." she made a surprised look on her face, "me too!" i then immediately transitioned into chinese. "i was 1 years old in 1980," she told me in mandarin. i pointed to where the bus stop was and we said good bye. no further information was exchanged.
at the bank, all nice and cold with air conditioning, i talked with a bank representative about filing a fraud claim on my account. i was surprised to see my back had reverted back to normal, all my money back to where it was before, despite what i saw yesterday when i checked from the porter square atm. marco, my bank consultant, told me that there might be a chance it wasn't even fraud, that occasionally the bank makes mistakes and take out money from the wrong account. that's what i hoped happened, the other alternative, that someone stole my credit card number, is a less appetizing explanation.
i then grabbed the subway to porter square. while waiting for the train to arrive, i realized that it was totally unnecessary, that i could've easily walked to my place in cambridge. sure, it's a few minutes farther from porter square, but i'd save a dollar. 
walking from porter to my cambridge home in the blistering heat (although the weather was hot, the view was hotter), i ran into my father, also on his way over to the place. he had an old air conditioner in the back of the explorer that he and i installed in the master bedroom as a temporarily solution to this oppressive heat wave. we did some work around the house, i pulled out some nails from the floorboards, unscrewed some screws from the walls, took down the mismatched medicine cabinet from the bathroom, and did an inventory on my ibook of things to fix for the contractor, printing out a copy and leaving it outside the front door for him to pick up. we also staked the hydrangeas, and my father watered the garden a little bit.
back in belmont, i toured the backyard a little bit to see what new flowers are out. the day lilies are blooming, and in another week the bellflowers will be out as well. after the bellflowers, i can expect the mint, the bee balm, and chinese chives to flower soon afterwards. my mother and i decided to have a heat wave barbecue, because what better way to beat the heat on a hot summer day than by standing in front of an open gas grill and cooking up some italian sausages and barbecue corn on the cob?
 day lily |
 bellflower bud |
 green grapes |
 fennel flowers |
watching the news, i saw how some outraged boston community members were saying that gang members were "terrorists." being a "terrorist" is the worst thing you can be nowadays, with "pedophile" a close second. i guess in a way gang members do inflict a kind of terrorism on the city, but i think people will be throwing out the word "terrorist" more often now. like someone cuts you off in traffic, "f* you terrorist!" telemarketer calling your home, "f* you terrorist!" bad service at a restaurant, "good food, but i wish you wouldn't hire terrorists!" if used too much, the meaning of "terrorism" becomes diluted.
oh, another reason to be afraid of cats: toxoplasmosis. that's my new favorite disease. my other favorite disease is pellagra.