for some reason i didn't fall asleep until almost 5am last night. i was up until 3am, doing research on raspberry pi cases and various types of sensors. after that i was reading in bed, my new obsession is the american revolution, particularly the battles fought around boston. i then turned off the lights around 4am, but couldn't fall asleep, so grabbed my phone and did some more web surfing. though not particularly sleeping, i finally forced myself to sleep at 5am. i think a part of it had to do with stress, but also because i've been drinking a lot of teas all day. i try to stay away from the caffeinated bags in the evening, but maybe one or two got through.

i made myself a buffalo chicken salad sandwich for lunch. it was a lot of sandwich and i only managed to eat 3/4th, saving the rest for tomorrow (where i have another buffalo chicken salad sandwich waiting for me). i heard about the morning bicycle death in porter square earlier and watched the news coverage, not a lot of details, but just the image of the bicycle underneath the truck was information enough.

on A street arborists arrived to cut down an ailanthus tree. it was one of the neighborhood giants, taller than the 3 story houses nearby. it's a shame they took it down, it's absence really changed the personality of that street (for the worse). a closer examination later revealed that the tree was diseased, rotting inside its main trunk. maybe of natural causes (like disease), or human neglect after a branch injury, but i can understand why they chopped it down.

i also ran into dennis, who was calling my name. i didn't know where he was until i looked up and saw him on the roof of his house. apparently he was removing the white tarp he puts on during the summer to keep the top floor from getting too hot.

i haven't been to the community garden in nearly 2 weeks, not since i took kiki to the mt.auburn cemetery. has it really been that long? not much left to do anyway, the only plant still producing is the wild cherry tomato. there was nobody there. nevertheless, i still did some pruning, cutting all the garlic chive flowers so they don't go to seed. there's a kind of sadness because in 2 months the city will reclaim my plot and turn it into a paved pathway leading to sacramento field. i'm hoping maybe i'll get a good plot in the lottery. i was surprised my wild zucchini plant was still alive, with big healthy leaves, but no zucchinis. there were also a lot of tiny seedlings in the bare dirt, i think they might be larkspurs, i'll let them grow and collect them before the first frost (which i believe is typically the 2nd week of october). finally, i watered everything before leaving. as part of this season's gardening routine, i also checked my pokemon go and managed to catch a new creature, an abra.

in the afternoon i rode the motorcycle to belmont. my parents didn't get back from the cafe until the late afternoon. in the meantime, i added a few more channels to the roku lineup, including al jazeera english news. my father was heartbroken when al jazeera america went off the air back in april. we knew about the english network which was still operating, but for some reason the channel was blocked in te US. then i learned a few days ago that al jazeera english had been unblocked since the start of september. we can stream it live either from youtube or the roku. al jazeera reports on a lot of international news that none of the other networks ever carry (CNN, FOX, MSNBC, BBC), and the reporting seems to be objective and detailed. i feel i have a better understanding of the world after watching a few al jazeera news segments compared to regular news.

when my parents finally did come home, i helped them reserve a scooter for 2 days while they're in bermuda. i also let them borrow my panasonic lumix camera, as the canon point-and-shoot my mother typically uses has a scratched up lens because my mother didn't take good care of it. they were worried about hurricane matthew and how it'd affect the weather in bermuda; i'd been monitoring the forecast since the start of the week, and it looks like there will be an occasional shower while they're on the island, but the brunt of the storm will not affect them. they told me (surprise) that i had to take care of my grand uncle while they're on vacation for a week. not much, just involves bringing him his lunch and taking back the tray afterwards. after dinner i returned to cambridge. all the street side parking spots were taken so i had to park a block away on the private way.

i read a guide on minecraft that cleverly taught you python coding and utilizing various aspects of the raspberry pi (like interfacing with sensors). up until now i still didn't know what exactly was the purpose of minecraft, but now it's clear to me. i also finally picked up on the "internet of things," an expression i've been hearing a lot this week, but i thought it referred to some paranoid conspiracy of household devices spying on you, when it fact "IOT" is more to do with the things i've been playing around with the past week, creating devices that can interact with the real world and send back that data wirelessly onto the internet.

cristina went to the opera tonight and didn't come home until after midnight. she has a fancy company-sponsored dinner event tomorrow night, so she won't be home either, but told me she'd probably be back by 3pm to get dressed up before the dinner. the outdoor temperature tonight is supposed to drop into the 40's.