everyone was at home by the time i made it to belmont this morning. nobody had any serious objections to the new color so we decided to stick with it. we did a good enough job yesterday that we didn't need a second coat, but i still went around and patched up a few light areas on the wall with a brush. after i was done with that we started a reverse clean-up: disassembling everything, tearing off the blue tape from the windows and floors, removing the pink rosin paper, and finally putting all the furniture back. this took most of the day but by the time we were done the living room reverted back to the way it was before, except with a fresh coat of paint. the mismatched furniture and rugs made the room seem less appealing, but that's an entirely different problem. i'm just the painter.

we also strategized our next move, and decided that my old bedroom (which was painted something like 8 years ago when i still lived at home) and the small bedroom (which my sister currently uses as her office) won't get paint during this iteration. what's next will be the hallway and my parents' bedroom, followed by the kitchen and sun room. given how long it took us to do just the living room, it wouldn't be too farfetched to estimate it'll be another month before we're completely finished. we can keep on painting as long as the weather stays warm enough that we can leave the windows open for ventilation. my next code project also starts sometime in october so once that begins it'll mean the end of my painting season.

i stopped off at the cafe for some homemade chinese dumplings before returning home.

i was in my garden earlier than usual for a change (3pm). any later and my garden will be entirely in the shadows. besides the weather slowly turning colder, the sun is also moving lower towards the horizon. during the peak days of summer, my garden would be in sunlight for the whole day.

spotted a new insect today: the longhorn bee - so called because of its very long antenna. they're actually important pollinators of sunflowers, which is no surprise because i found it on one of my sunflowers.

tomatillos are driving me crazy! because the actual fruit is hidden inside the husk, it's hard to tell when they're ripe, or even how much they've grown. the very fact that i even have tomatillo fruits defy logic, since they don't self-pollinate. either somebody else is growing them in the neighborhood, or my new theory is it's somehow hybridized with the small chinese lantern flower i have growing nearby, which belongs in the same family (but aren't really tomatillos though). then there's the two different kinds of "balloons," the green and the yellow.

watched a great movie today, the german film the lives of others. i first heard about it during the last academy awards, when it won best foreign film, beating out pan's labyrinth, which everyone expected to win. i've seen the poster, which prominently features a mysterious bald man listening to a pair of headphones. was he a DJ? or maybe taking a hearing test? so i finally got around to seeing this movie, and it's easily one of the best movies i've seen recently, a real triumph of the human spirit sort of film that makes you feel both sad yet good inside.

fell asleep watching the sox lose to the bluejays once again. actually, boston didn't lose to toronto, eric gagne did. that guy is the weakest link and beyond. not only did he load the bases, but then proceeded to walk the next batter, followed by giving up a 2 run hit. it was torture, and afterwards i made sure to avoid all sports news so i wouldn't have to endure any "highlights." i am feeling really bad about the red sox's changes right now. i know they're in the lead, but only by 2.5 games now. but in the roller coaster ride known as the red sox final weeks of the season, all it takes is one red sox win and one yankees loss to make me feel all better again.