this morning i went down to the basement and dumped out the bucket, about 2 inches worth of brownish water. wearing gloves and using a shovel, i scraped off the remnants of the soaked cardboard box and threw it all away. i then opened all the basement windows and ran the oscillating fan with the hopes of more quickly drying up the puddles in my upstair neighbors' half of the basement. finally, i set up a wyzecam in the basement, so i could monitor the leak, should it develop into something more catastrophic. this idea came to me this morning, and it gave me some peace of mind.

during the summer i like to put my houseplants out on the backyard porch to give them more sun and expose them to the natural elements. they grow a lot better outside, adding fresh new leaves, so that when i finally bring them back inside come fall, they'll have enough energy to last through the winter. my thanksgiving cactus is getting way too much water, which is starting to rot some of the leaves. i have to remember to bring it back inside when it rains. it probably could've used a cactus growing media, one with a lot of sand and good drainage. my 2 umbrella plant cuttings have also survived, and all the umbrella plants in general are doing well, putting out new leaves. the mother plant even sprouted some aerial roots.

in the late morning i went down to the community garden to water my plot even though there was a forecast of rain later in the evening. i haven't been there since sunday, and it was so hot and dry yesterday. plus i was supposed to water jen's garden, i checked the text she sent me, they left for vacation on saturday, so her plants haven't been watered in a few days. her plot has the look of a first year gardener, plants mostly in grow bags with not enough dirt, a lot of bare patches where she couldn't decide what to grow. to be fair though, she inherited the plot relatively late in the season, and even then it could be a sabbatical plot, so she'll have to move again next year.

after i finished watering, i headed out to market basket to get some groceries for this week. outside of permanently closed rf o'sullivans, i bumped into jack and we had a brief chat. he was coming back from his kendall square gym which was where he was also getting his physical therapy. he said the gym was empty, and not just because of the time of day, people (cambridge at least) for the most part are still leary of gyms. he showed me the seriously gnarly scar on his arm where they operated and inserted a titanium rod into his left humerus.

i decided to make simple ham sandwiches for the rest of the week, and picked up some bread, some deli ham, and various vegetable ingredients (lettuce, tomato, i had onion back at home). once i returned home i had a matcha latte for lunch.

i felt antsy the rest of the afternoon. it was a nice day outside - warm but dry - and i felt like i should be out, maybe find a place to fly my drone. instead i procrastinated and worked on retroactively filling in all the missing photos for my month of may blog entries. use one procrastination to push forward another procrastination.

i finally went out by 3:40pm. i walked up to spring hill where i found a nice empty parking lot across from the st. catherine of genoa church. i flew as far as union square (kingman road, a distance of 3827ft) before i encountered problems. it wasn't a signal loss issue, but the iphone gave me a warning of "device CPU fully loaded. related performance will be affected." i'd seen this one other time, when i was operating with the phone battery at less than 2% and forgot to turn on the "recharge with RC remote" option. this time around i think the problem was triggered by the iphone overheating, because it went into cool down mode by dimming the screen. soon after the video froze up and the control was intermittent. i decided to issue a RTH command to bring back the drone. while it was slowly flying back, i exited the DJI fly app and opened it back up. i was able to regain video transmission again, and was able to see the location of the drone on the radar map. once it was directly overhead, i cancelled RTH and landed the drone manually. even though i only flew for all but 12 minutes, i decided not to push my luck and pack it up for the day.

coming back, i stopped by star market to pick up some newman's own half & half lemonade ice tea. the first thing i saw when i went inside was a table full of pileas AKA chinese money plant. many of them had numerous baby plants too, so buying one was like buying 7-8 pileas. i checked for price but didn't see any but took a photo. when i got back home i sent maureen the photo. i was guessing maybe it cost $15-20, she told me i should get one, that it was destiny. i made the rationalization that if i can propagate the babie and sell them, i might be able to recoup the cost. so i went back to star market. fortunately there was a woman there organizing the displays (she was stocking the shelves with halloween candy in july) and she was responsible for putting out the pileas. she helped me look for the price, which was at the bottom of the pot: $10. i almost screamed, it was below what i was willing to pay. i calmly hid my excitement. i took a few minutes to pick the best one - one with a healthy adult plant but plenty of babies, and left with a pilea plant to call my own.

before the rain started, there were plenty of people walking around outside. i saw a gang of old ladies walking down the street like they were in a gang, didn't care if an oncoming car was coming or not.

around 7pm the sky got dark (sunset today wasn't until well after 8pm). not a simple cloudy dark, but almost like an eclipse dark, where it looked like it was at night. then it started raining, bands of which i watched from my window, heard it crashing against the back of the AC. there was also a lot of lightning but not so much thundering. the rain lasted for much of the night (even cancelling the red sox game), but the heavy stuff stopped after 8pm.

later in the evening i took a closer look at my purchased pilea. i thought it was growing in a holeless terracotta pot but that was just the outside; it was actually growing inside of a plastic pot. the soil looked a bit dry so i watered it with some aquarium water. the one that i got has a lot of babies - i counted 7. i'll divide them and grow them in separate pots. according to the label sticker, these were actually grown in canada. there was also an expiration date, i didn't know plants had those. maybe that's why there were no taxes on my purchase, that it's categorized as perishable food.

i made dinner around 8:30pm, just a simple ham sandwich. i also have some american cheese, i should add a slice as well. besides lettuce-tomatoes-onions and ham, i also slathered a layer of kewpie doll mayo. afterwards i ate half a bag of red cherries.

one last look at the bubbling paint progress of my bathroom: