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i heard the rumor this morning: that al horford (and his pretty eyes) was returning to the boston celtics. but who did we have to give up in return? kemba walker and next year's first-round pick (16) along with 2025 second-round pick. celtics also get moses brown and 2023 second-round pick. no, not kemba! but as much as a nice guy he was, he was a weak link at times, and in the two years he was on the team, we never consistently got the kemba that was promised when we traded for him from the charlotte hornets. plus there was money consideration, he had a big contract payday coming ($36 million). i don't feel too bad for kemba. at the end of the day, he's still going to get his money, whether it's on the celtics, or playing for some other team (oklahoma city thunder). even though he's still relatively young at 31, these are his final years before dribbling off into the sunset for his NBA retirement. but still, i'm a little sad over what could've been had kemba been healthy. the same could've been said about kyrie irving, before he betrayed boston and left for brooklyn.

since i didn't visit the community garden yesterday and am not planning to visit the garden over the weekend, i figured i'd pay the garden a visit today (friday) to give the plants a deep drink of water. i noticed the children were gone, so that carnival field day event on wednesday could very well have been an end-of-school-year celebration. i hadn't planned on staying too long, but ended up working in the garden for nearly an hour. using a few spare tomato cages and a coil of chicken wire, i pushed back the goldenrods-sensitive ferns-daylilies to make some space behind the grow bags; otherwise those perennials were starting to grow into the tomatoes. so for the most part, growbag tomatoes are the largest, while the in-ground tomatoes are smaller. i did notice the one growbag tomato on the leftmost side is more yellow compared to the other tomatoes. i'll have to keep an eye on that one, maybe it's not getting as much sun since it's behind the striped mallow bush.

i noticed in one of the bitter melons that it was starting to form flowers. these look to be male flowers, but one interesting thing is the flower stalk forms out of a leaf, like a lilypad. i'd never seen anything like that (gourds/melons/cucumbers/squashes), it may be unique to bitter melons. after i finished watering and doing a bit of weeding (elm tree seedlings, rampant mint, rust-infected mallow leaves), i dusted the eggplants and ground cherries with diatomaceous earth. speaking of ground cherries, a fruit had fallen in the growbag, i ate it before leaving.

i was going to make some indomie mi goreng for lunch with a poached egg, but looked inside my fridge and decided that a salad would be the easier choice, and i could use up my arugula - some of which were already turning yellow.

i left for boston by 1:30pm. today was warmer than yesterday, sunny and dry. would've been a better day to do laundry in retrospect. i was only going to haymarket today, didn't have anything in chinatown that i needed. i got there by 2pm. there was a juneteenth flag raising ceremony in boston city hall this morning and i was hoping to get a good photo of the juneteenth flag. unfortunately there was barely any wind when i got there, and the flagpoles were behind the city hall building - which had even less wind exposure - so the flag was just sort of draped on the flagpole. afterwards i returned to haymarket to do my shopping.

today's haul: 2 bags of mandarin oranges ($5), 5 satsuma mandarin ($2), 2 boxes of strawberries ($3), a bag of mini sweet peppers ($1), and 2 bags of cherries ($6). a lot of vendors were selling cherries. the cheapest was a $1 a bag, but those cherries were rotten. now is cherry season, so i plan on eating as much cherries as possible within the next few weeks.

i left by 2:30pm. approaching inman square, i stopped by the 7-11 to get a slurpee ($1.91). usually i go with blue (raspberry, although my favorite is the blue slush puppy, which i haven't had in a long time), but this time i tried the peach. it tasted a little bit like sour plum drink, wasn't bad. i took some big gulps in the parking lot, enough to get a brain freeze, but putting the drink in my bicycle cup holder. it was a great feeling riding the rest of the way back, taking casual slips of icy beverage. simple pleasures!

i got home before 3pm, so it was still relatively early. i thought about going down to the cafe to drop off some stuff, but decided against it. instead i took a hot shower and changed into some dry clothes, before walking down to star market to pick up a few things on sale: corn (17¢ each, maximum of 6), utz potato chips ($1.67/bag), and a carton of chobani oat milk (97¢). there was also a sale on red seedless grapes (97¢/lbs.) but i tasted one of the grapes and it was pretty sour, so i didn't get any. after i paid i noticed something was off - they charged me $3 for corn when it should've been only $1. this happens a lot at star market, i don't know if it's because they discount system is so complicated, or it's a concerted effort to screw over unwary customers. fortunately i have plenty of time on my hands to go back and contest the charges. they ended up refunding me $2.

i never had oat milk before. its benefits are lactose-free, nut-free, and gluten-free - for those sad people who can't have any of those three items. and apparently it's also flavor-free, because when i tried it, i couldn't taste anything. there was a hint of oat (like an oatmeal taste) but if i didn't know i was drinking oat milk, i would've never been able to guess. it was also lacking a certain richness that comes from cow's milk because of the milk fat. oat milk is okay, but if i wanted to drink something without taste, i'd just drink water. it wouldn't be something i would buy, and definitely not if it wasn't on sale (normally it's priced $4.49 for 52 fl. oz.).

i explored tubi today. the free online streaming site actually has a lot of content, i was very surprised. i kept wondering how they made money since i didn't see an ads, until i realized my adblock plugin (ublock origin) was filtering out the commercials. i found a lot of japanese horror (takashi miike) and weird esoteric foreign films.

i had an encore of last night's dinner: crispy mandarin chicken with sichuan paocai and white claw hard cider (strawberry). one thing i did differently was to spray the inside of the rice cooker bowl with some non-stick spray; rice didn't stick this time around.

i ate while watching the 76ers-hawks game. i was rooting for atlanta, i really like trey young even though he's garnered a lot of haters. however philly ended up with the victory, now the series is tied 3-3, game 7 sunday night.

later i watched the jazz-clippers game. i tried some of the cherries, they were really good, i'm definitely buying more next friday. every time i buy cherries now, i think about my old roommate GC, who also loved cherries. whenever there was a sale at star market, we'd go there and stock up our fridge with cherries. anyway, i wasn't paying too much attention, and ended up switching the channel to watch some stuff on this weekend's free preview of HBO/Max.

i turned back to the game after midnight, and watched the exciting finish. apparently the clippers were down by a lot of points, but clawed their way back to win, taking the series 4-2. they face the phoenix suns sunday afternoon. i could go either way between the suns and the clippers. i like chris paul and devin booker, but i also like the clippers just because they have rondo on the team. but the game i'm waiting for is tomorrow night, game 7 between the bucks and nets. of course kyrie irving won't be able to play, but i also wouldn't be surprised if he suddenly suited up and showed up on the court, that would be so kyrie, always the center of attention. i rooting for milwaukee to finish brooklyn, mortal kombat fatality style.