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MAR

22

2012

my parents contacted me this morning via video chat from the airport in taiwan on their way back home. they should've gotten in touch with me a few days earlier so i could've given them a wish list of things to buy. now calling from the airport, it was a little too late.

i rode the fuji to belmont. temperature would hit 82°F so i wore shorts. the fuji is my lightest bike; i can hardly feel it when i ride (so i can't imagine biking on something even lighter, like a carbon fiber composite; although a lighter bike doesn't mean it's actually faster - it just feels faster because it's more maneuverable).

with my parents returning home tomorrow, i asked my sister to clean up the house. she said she'd get to it eventually, which i knew meant never. i waited until she left before i cleaned the living room and the kitchen. she did wash one of our parents' blankets and hung it outside to dry (soiled by the dog, not sure whether it's dirt, food stains, or fecal).

with the plum trees in delayed dormancy (when the blossom leaves are out 1/2"), it was time to spray with horticultural oil in order to get rid of the hard scale problem. we sprayed last spring and we had a bit less scales in the summer but it's hard to say if the oils helped or not. i didn't judge correctly and sprayed downwind, getting it all over my face and in my mouth and eyes. but there's really nothing poisonous about the ingredients (at least not to humans), 98% mineral oil and 2% inert. if that's all there is i really should be able to make my own instead of buying a bottle for $14.

something has been trampling raised bed 1. i noticed some of the stakes were moved but there were also small footprints in the dirt. i don't know what kind of animal did this, but a safe bet would be squirrels. not sure if the lettuces will come out now but i'm willing to give them a few more days. some of the peas have finally sprouted, but only like 10 out of the 50 i planted. did squirrels eat some of the seeds? not a big deal, i planted some more.

i played some skyrim on the 40" HDTV using the DVI-HDMI cable. the cable was short enough that i had to sit closer to the tv than usual. it worked fine, but there was some flickering on the top edge of the screen whenever i quickly moved my character. i've been thinking about getting rid of the tube tv in my own bedroom (which takes up a chunk of space) and replacing it with a large HDTV/monitor combo (much smaller, more efficient).

i ate some leftover pasta in the fridge for dinner. after feeding hailey, i drove one of the cars back to cambridge so i could leave right from my house to go pick up my parents tomorrow (also to get some gas).

in the foyer when i came into the house was a USPS notice saying they had a delivery for me but couldn't leave it on my doorstep because (handwritten) "unsafe to leave." there was instructions to come retrieve the package from the porter square post office tomorrow morning. this would've never happened with my old postal carrier but he's currently recovering from some sort of surgery so i've been having all sorts of mail packaging issues lately. based on the tracking number i was able to figure out these are the replacement XLC brake levers i ordered from awwyeah.com on monday (that's quick for free shipping!). what i'm most anxious for are the SRAM trigger shifters which should arrive on monday (based on tracking).

2 of the thai basils and 5 of the milkweeds didn't germinate so i was going to reseed. digging around in the milkweed containers, i discovered the seeds were germinating, they just haven't sprouted yet like the first seedling. so they do have a high germination rate after all, despite being only in the fridge for 2+ weeks. this is good, because the seeds i still have have grown moldy so these are the only ones i have. as for the thai basil, one of them did sprout, so i only had to reseed one other container.