catone finally finished it's tranformation into a chrysalis this morning. i learned online that by looking at a spot below the black dots on the pupa one can tell the gender of the butterfly: in this case (a small vertical line) catone is a female monarch. i spent a good 20 minutes with the chrysalis on the kitchen counter photographing it using 2 wireless flashes. i really like using one of the flashes as a backlight.

after a brick of leftover lasagna for lunch and watching jeff session rescind the DACA program thereby sending nearly nearly 800,000 illegal immigrants into limbo who had since registered under the dreamers program. i can understand the viewpoint from both sides of the argument, but deporting all those young people when they essentially grew up in the US and for all essential purposes are americans seems like a heartless thing to do. it goes to the heart of the question, what makes an american?

i went to the porter square star market to buy some grapes on sale (99¢/lbs.). i wanted the black seedless but all they had on sale were greens, so i ended up getting a package. i took it to the cafe to give to my parents. i tried one of the grapes, afraid it'd be sour, but it turned out to be the sweetest grape i've ever eaten. not only that, but the perfect texture, hard, crispy, bursting with every bite.

i rode to belmont to water the garden and my grass patches. i ended up doing a bit more weeding and patching despite the hot and humid weather. soaked in sweat, i finally left. i stopped by the porter square star market to buy two more bags of those sweet green grapes before riding to the community garden for some watering.

while the habanero peppers are turning orange in belmont, the habaneros in my community garden plot are still green. they need some hot dry weather to get them to mature but i'm worried that those hot summer days are gone as we transition to autumn. regardless, nothing i can do but wait at this point. at least i still have some habaneros in belmont that will be good for making a hot sauce.

a knock on my door that i thought was bruce turned out to be nadya okamoto, running for cambridge city council. i've had political campaigners knocking on my door in the past, but never the candidates themselves. if elected, she will be the youngest council person in cambridge history at 19 years old. it's rare seeing young adults who know what they're doing at that age. she's got my vote come november! this will be the first council person i've met in person as usually when i vote for city elections it's sort of random (voting by name recognition or proximity to where i live).

in the early evening i cleaned out cattwo's jar and made a measurement: slightly bigger than this morning but not by very much. i removed one of the leaf pieces, nothing left but bottom stem.

i was about to leave right when li came back home around 7:30pm. i went to bruce's place to pick up some avocado bean dip he made. when i asked him why he made so much, he mysteriously answered that it was too complicated to explain. i ate it with some leftover corn chips i had in the house (left behind by karen back in early june). though it didn't seem like much, the dip was surprisingly filling, that combination of fatty avocado with bean proteins. i didn't feel like eating afterwards and didn't have my leftover lasagna, saving it for another day.

li was videochatting with his girlfriend while making dinner. he told me a few days ago that she's also an astrophysicist, and has been to europe a few times for research reasons, though i'm not sure if she's ever been to the US.