i watered my houseplants this morning using used aquarium water (which i believe to have some minuter fertilizing properties) mixed with a good amount of mosquito bits (to get rid of the mild fungus gnat infestation). i tried the soda bottle watering attachment for the very first time. the pour spout was hard to use because i was tempted to squeeze the bottle to make the water come out faster but that made water come out of the sprinkler end. the sprinkler end is more useful, dousing the plants in a gentle shower. you could probably make your own by just puncturing some holes in the bottle cap, which is what produce vendors in china do to make their vegetables and fruit look fresher.

i called greater boston motorcycles (GBM) this morning to schedule a tuneup appointment. the phone rang for a long time until finally someone picked up. it wasn't the service department, it was a different department, the guy took my info and said the service department would call me back. i waited the whole day, never heard back from them. i'll try again tomorrow.

in the late morning i walked down to the community garden to water my plot. there was another gardener there directly diagonal to my plot. i've seen her before but we've never chatted until she broke the ice today by admiring my japanese eggplant. we ended up having a long chat about our plots. dorothea is her name, she's married to 2nd david, they have a young son who occasionally gardens with them.

i harvested some bokchoy leaves, some cherry tomatoes, some cloudy day tomatoes, and some ground cherries. i put the bokchoy inside of a tomato cage so it won't tip over. i noticed a new pale bitter melon joining my previous 2 shorter green bitter melons. it grew fast, i was in the garden on friday and all i saw were some tiny bitter melons, so it took just 4 days to grow to that size. at this rate i may have a full-size bitter melon by next week. i noticed my hyacinth beans, which have been growing rampant, have finally started to make some flower buds.

i had cereal for lunch then later in the afternoon went out to run some errands. first stop was walgreens to some aquaphor lotion, which i read is best for healing dry skin, which i have a patch in the crook of my arm after it got itchy and i scratched at it, causing a mild infection. i only wanted a small tube - 1.75 oz. - because i didn't know how well it'd work, and i only needed a tiny amount anyway. it was advertised as $4.77 online, but when i went to the store, it was something like $7.50. i went to ask the cashier, who got his manager - a young guy - who very curtly told they don't do online price matching. "but if i order it online i can still pick it up for the cheaper price, right?" i asked him. "yeah, you could do that," he said. so i went outside and tried to order it through the walgreens app, but for some reason it didn't work after a few attempts.

next i went to the indian grocery store next to market basket, searching for chili millis, which is a pakistani gummy candy. of course they didn't have them but worth a try. i then went to market basket to get some groceries. since my new fridge will arrive next tuesday, i didn't want to get too much stuff, especially anything frozen. besides, i had enough to eat as it is already, so it'll be a week of finishing as much as i can from the fridge.

back at home, i used my computer to order the aquaphor lotion. a minute after i submitted the order, walgreens notified me via text that my order was ready. i know some places with both online and physical stores have more expensive physical store prices. it's kind of a scam to gouge people who don't know how to order stuff online. target does this, but to their credit, when you show them the webpage with the cheaper price, they'll give you the online price. walgreens - at least the somerville avenue store - apparently doesn't do this.

so i went out again, this time walking back to walgreens. the same young cashier was there, and i told him i had an online order. "that same thing?" he asked. "yeah, that same thing," i replied.

today wasn't as bad as past days, but it was still warm and getting more humid. it was still cool inside my house (upper 70's) but by evening the temperature had crept up to 80°F so i turned on the AC briefly while i made dinner.

as part of my "emptying my fridge" strategy, i cooked up half a bag of frozen orange crispy chicken to go with a cup of rice. last time i had orange crispy chicken was mid-june. i also tried to use up some old frozen broccoli, heating them up first in the microwave. i think mixed everything together along with the orange sauce. in hindsight that was a mistake, because there was enough residual water in the thawed broccoli to dilute the sauce, so it wasn't as flavorful. i also cut up the last of my horned melon as it was starting to go soft in my fridge, drizzled with some hot honey.

taking out the trash, i tossed out two near empty and most definitely expired bottles of salad dressing. getting a new fridge is also a good opportunity to toss out some expired food in my cupboard, things that've been in there for nearly a 2 decades.

i cleaned out some more fido jars. i watched some pickled/fermented long beans videos on youtube, i've decided to ferment an entire jar of long beans. the 5L fido jars might be too big, but the 4L fido jars are a good size. i just happen to have 3 5L jars and 3 4L jars. 2 of the 4L came from the cafe, at one time fermenting sichuan paocai. the rubber gaskets were in bad shape so i ordered half a dozen new ones. they might not get here before i start fermenting a batch of long beans, but i can reused one of the better old gaskets. what i really need are some replacement wire bails (AKA wire lid clamps) but they're hard to find online and expensive. it's easier (and actually cheaper) just to buy a fido jar and strip off the wire bail from that jar.