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in less than 2 hours it will be dawn (4:57) and i am still wide awake. just moments ago i put the finishing touches on a delivery for client E. this little side assignment in addition to the one i was working on before actually went over budget again, but since i charge per project, i kind of lose out in the end. i'm not even thinking about that right now though. i'm just basking in the post delivery euphoria.

today: went over to my parents' place, dug up some runaway bamboos1, visited home depot to get some fertilizer2, bought some slug poison (they've already eaten more than half of my lettuce seedlings3), and biked down to the new fresh pond trader joe's to go see a hawk's nest4.

it's cold tonight, upper 40's by the time i returned, but at least it wasn't raining.

right now i'm just going to go floss, brush my teeth, wash my face, and then go to bed. here's hoping for a drama free monday.


1 i think it's finally sunk into my father's head that we need to do something about the bamboo - like put down underground barriers so they don't overgrow the backyard.

i keep finding old morels in the bamboo grove. if i'd known there'd be more, i would've kept my eyes open instead of finding these leftovers that don't look very edible.

2 i borrowed the car and drove to the watertown home depot since i had to buy bags of fertilizer (one bag i can carry on my bike, but any more and it's a wobbly deathtrap). cow manure sold for $5.77 a bag (city folk price for bovine shit that on a farm would be free) and i also got a 3 cubic feet block of canadian peat moss ($8.97, beats a little bag of peat that sells for almost $4). couldn't leave the depot with my hands on some more seeds - a packet of burpee ruby queen hybrid sweet corn ($1.49). finally, some pea netting ($4.97, 5ft x 15ft).

3 slugs have been reducing my lettuce seedlings! at least i think its slugs. i didn't see any slime trails. i bought a can of ortho ecosense slug and snail killer ($5.97). despite the green-friendly name, i'm under no false impression that this is still a type of poison. the active ingredient is iron phosphate, and i was dismayed to read that it doesn't kill slugs immediately, but they die within 3-6 days. by then i won't have any lettuce left! so i also sprinkled some peat moss around the seedlings, hoping that they'll form a barrier from nocturnal predators (not sure if it'll help).

4 i rode down to fresh pond via concord avenue leaving belmont. my parents actually told me about the large group of spectators looking at a hawk's nest. my sister and i passed the group a week ago, thinking maybe they were amateur astronomers looking at the sun (a strange place to be doing it, so eye catching the location). when i got there, a man with what looked to be a 400mm telephoto lens on a heavy tripod was anchoring the group, along with a few other onlookers, some who had brought their own binoculars, or taking photos with their point-and-shoot cameras. there were supposedly 3 red-tailed hawk hatchlings in the nest but i only saw one. the parents came back before i left. i asked the man with the large lens if he'd put any of his photos online. "i don't do that," he replied, seemingly offended i'd even ask. "i just print them out large and hang them up." afterwards i went to trader joe's to get some snacks, including some vintage root beer ($4/4 - including ingredients such as triple filtered carbonated water, can sugar, wintergreen, birch, anise, sassafras, and tahitian vanilla - as for the taste? more complex than canned root beer, but probably not worth the added cost).