last night i got in touch with a woman in malden who was trying to get rid of the hostas growing on her property. free for the taking and as much as i wanted (30 feet worth), the only caveat was i had to dig them up myself. so wrote back another e-mail alerting me to the fact that other people have expressed interests so it'd be on a first-come-first-serve basis.

i woke up early this morning and got in touch with my father, asking him if i could borrow the car. he said the car was at the cafe and he'd ride his bike into work. i went to the cafe with a shovel. my mother was there. she suggested i wait for my father to arrive so he could go with me to malden.

i ended up waiting about half an hour before he finally showed up. we drove to malden, using a never-before-traveled route suggested by google map, up cameron avenue to teele square, following curtis street beside tufts university all the way across the mystic river towards medford center. this was a lot quicker than the way we would normally go which is via route 16 along the alewife brook and mystic valley parkway (which is often congested).

it felt strange to arrive at someone's house and to start digging up their yard. i was instructed to simply show up and dig, no need to call or ring the doorbell since the owner wasn't home. 2 people greeted us; at first i thought they were the owners, but turns out they were neighbors looking to score some hostas as well and were trying to figure out where to start. my father didn't waste any time and began working the shovel. these hostas must've been growing here a long time because the roots formed a dense carpet. we ended up taking about a 6 feet section, me loading up the pieces into the car while my father continued digging. i was hoping for a few root stems, but ended up collecting more hostas than i knew what to do with.

my father stopped at my place so i could upload some hostas. we then returned to the cafe, where my mother packed me some lunch and i returned home via bike. last year i planted some hostas along the left edge of the alley way that leads to my backyard but a few of them died so there were gaps. i ended up planting about 7 new hostas, using a long bread knife to saw through the thick roots. i then ate my lunch, some leftover bamboo shoots with chicken and pork and rice. i'd yet to fully digest my meal before i was heading out again (around 1:00), this time to haymarket in boston.

the weather was pleasant with temperature in the 60's, so i only wore a light jacket. it's still too early for anything interesting to be in season. i bought: cucumbers, ginger, lettuce, apples, beets, lemons, scallions, cilantro, and pears. i thought the pears were forelles but the seller gave me a bag of bartletts.

i bought some of those produce thinking i could turn them into juice with my parents' juicer. my father fixed me up a juice drink using ginger, apple, cucumber, beet, and carrot. it had a magenta color and tasted spicy (from the ginger) and cucumbery. it was also sweet, but i couldn't tell whether that was from the apple, beet, or carrot. it tasted okay but borderline awful; i think maybe because i wasn't used to it, but i think i could learn to like it. i did feel more energized afterwards, like eat a big fruit and vegetable salad.

back at home, i finally got around to disassembling the jetter bike wheels. the front tire was a challenge to remove, and i ended up stripping some of the rubber edges. the tire itself was also old so it didn't hold up too well. the rear tire was far easier to remove; once i managed to pry off a bit of the tire with the lever, i was able to quickly run the lever along the remaining circumference. now i have the tedious task of truing the rims!

i finished my risotto leftover for dinner. sometime afterwards i had a sudden urge to use the bathroom (my lactose intolerance mixed with risotto cheese). when i went to go flush i was shocked by what i saw, a toilet bowl full of blood! turns out i have beeturia, which is an inability to digest beet pigments. it's weird because there wasn't that much beets in the juice, just a slice. maybe it's just very potent beet.

my roommate at dinner in the living room again. he told the latest gossip from his office, that one of the laptops was stolen from the building while everyone left for lunch.