i wasn't expecting to paint today but paint i did. and the most serious kind of painting too - oil painting. i was expecting to do some more cleaning but my father put in the rush order to get at least one wall of the kitchen finished so we can push back the stove and make more room. i suggested we paint that particular wall with oil to match the cabinets and to make the wall easier to clean, since it's prone to cooking splatter. after i taped the edges and put down the paper, i stripped to my underwear and turned my t-shirt inside out to start painting. the brush i was using was old and didn't absorb very much paint. what would then happen was the paint would either drip off like water or run down the handle whenever i did any upside down surfaces. originally i considered using a roller for the flat wall but the brush worked just as well. so i ended up painting the wall, underneath the overhead cabinets, one side of a lower cabinet, and the baseboards up to the door frame. after this prime coat dries, tomorrow i'll come back and do a layer of white semi-gloss top coat. since we want maximum protection, i might even do a 3rd coat.

it was an early day (i finished painting by 12:30) so i went back home, stopping by the garden along the way. the ragweeds have changed colors. not the leaves, but the nodules of their nonflowering flowers. not sure what the reason is, maybe to attract birds to eat them and thereby distributing the seeds. it's almost pretty in a very allergy-inducing sort of way. but i think once they're in this stage, they're no longer creating pollen anymore, so hayfevers (at least ragweed related) should be over.

the stems of the ragweeds are particularly attractive, something i never noticed before. they're striped and remind me of green candy canes. the leaves of the morning glories have mostly all wilted back, using all their remaining energy to produce complex seed capsules. having grown domesticated morning glories as a kid (i was trying to harvest the LSD chemicals), i don't recognize these wild forms. i should collect some seeds by the end of the season and sow them around all over the neighborhood, for no good reason other than the fact that i like morning glories and it'd be fun to beautify the area with nice flowers.

i think it's time to finally harvest the tomatillos. i don't think they're going to grow any bigger and while still waiting for the husks to turn completely yellow, some of them have started to rot because they've grown so heavy they're resting on the ground (where it's damp). i collected a few today but i'll return tomorrow and take as much as possible.

i'm still producing vegetables, despite the colder weather and steady decrease in sun exposure. tomatoes, habanero peppers (finally), and basil. i think these are the last ones however, nothing new is growing.

after a bagel for lunch i left for microcenter to buy an internal hard drive bracket for my dell dimension 1100. i looked online and the only place i found that sold them wanted something like $30. the one i bought at microcenter cost just $6. later, i went to trader joe's and got some snacks (including that ginger gummy candy i like so much). i went to the cafe to drop off some stuff for my parents before returning home briefly.

i went out again, this time to pet supplies surplus in malden to get some fish food and biowheel filters for the aquarium. i threw a handful of sunflowers in my mouth before i left and chewed on my seeds while i motored to the store. i couldn't help notice a pretty girl standing next to me in line at the checkout counter. she wore matching pink sweat shirt and sweat pants, and had a high-pitched voice. what was particularly striking however was her face: the color didn't match the rest of her body. i think she just had some sort of cosmetic procedure, dermal peeling/abrasion, whatever it's called.

back at home, i tried installing that hard drive bracket i bought. after fumbling around with it, i realized it wouldn't fit exactly into my pc. however, i think i can macgyver something with duct tape so everything should be okay. in the meantime, i went online and bought a 500gb drive.

i ticked off the hours until the start of game 5 of the ALCS between the red sox and indians. i made myself some salmon for dinner. the sox faced a possible elimination, but behind josh beckett's pitching, this was our best hope for a win. youkilis started the game with a solo homerun, but the indians came back and got a run of their own in the bottom half of the first inning. fortunately that was all they'd get tonight, as beckett just dominated them. i remember when the red sox signed up beckett last season that i wasn't particularly impressed. i didn't know who he was, but people in the know seemed to think very highly of him. his performance last year wasn't particularly noteworthy, but this season he's become the most powerful pitcher in baseball. who would've thunk? better than schilling, better than wakefield, even better than matsuzaka - who, let's face it - has sort of been a disappointment for the amount of money the organization spent to acquire him from japan. anyway, the red sox scored another run to make it 2-1, and it was like that for a while, this tense situation where just a single indian run would tie it and anymore they'd take the lead. it wasn't until the red sox got some insurance runs that i felt safe and knew we had this game. tonight's difference apart from the excellent pitching was a lot of the other guys contributed as well in terms of hitting. even with mediocre pitching, if the red sox can get their offense working, they should have a pretty good shot. game 6 saturday back in fenway.