yesterday i contacted a cambridge person on facebook marketplace about an adjustable 36x14x72" wire shelving for $15. i never heard back so i figured they already had someone lined up. what i didn't realize was the person - isaac - actually texted me back but i just didn't see it until i was already in bed. he agreed to meet tomorrow at 10am. i replied back to confirm before going to sleep.

drew was still at home when i woke up around 8:30am but was on his way out. he's doing research at the boston public library all this week and planned on taking the green line. google map told him to walk to magoun square, a distance of nearly a mile that involves climbing over a hill to get there.

i didn't leave until 9:20am, took the motorcycle to the cafe to get the car. i had just enough time to assemble the bamboo plate organizer (which i was using for a set of frying pans) before i left at 9:45am. i figured 15 minutes would be enough time but there was some traffic and i arrived a little late.

when isaac came down with the wire shelving it was fully intact. he tried to take it apart but it wouldn't budge, and he didn't own any tools that we could use to whack the shelves apart. we tried to get it inside the car but it just wouldn't fit, too long and too wide. some old ladies walking around outside wearing bathrobes saw what we were doing and let us borrow their hammer. using a piece of wood as support, isaac managed to disassemble half the shelving, enough so we could finally fit everything.

i drove home to grab the multi-task ladder that'd been sitting in my basement for many years now unused. i was about to head to belmont to run more errands, but realized since i had the car, i could go and get our thanksgiving turkey now. so i detoured to star market instead. they had the cheapest turkey ("we will not be undersold," they proclaimed on their weekly circular, with frozen turkeys at 47¢/lb.) with the caveat being you had to buy an additional purchase of over $25. i grabbed the largest turkey i could find in the freezer, one close to 25 lb. after that i continued shopping, adding drinks into my cart, bag of apples, bags of grapes, some chips. i ended up well over the $25 additional items. self checkout took a long time but thankfully the store was empty and there wasn't anyone waiting in line.

i finally headed to belmont. after unloading the supplies, i grabbed the ZMJH electronic bidet and drove to cushing square to return it at the UPS store.

i returned to the house where i used the bathroom before continuing with some additional errands. the heated toilet seat was nice. feeling adventurous, i tried the bidet function. i've used it before but never liked it and never used it since. it was a little jarring when warm water started spraying up my butt. the primary sensation was one of being tickled on the ass. after a few seconds i just wanted it to stop. left with a wet butt, the logical thing to do was dry myself off with some toilet paper. was i cleaner? i wasn't sure. so i still don't know if i'm using the bidet correctly.

back outside, i wheeled the mower from the garage and pulverized the remaining pile of dead leaves underneath the maple tree. there was an overwhelming stench of chicken manure. it wasn't so bad when it was dry, but the little bit of rain we had tuesday morning seemed to have activated the odor. instead of dumping the pulverized leaves into the compost bin, i dumped it into raised bed 0 and 4, hoping to cover up the chicken manure smell.

the wire shelving was pretty dirty. the previous owner used it in the kitchen, so there were drips of sauces and other liquids all over the wires. i decided to wash it outside before bringing it inside. after completely disassembling the shelves, i sprayed them with DIY power wash. i reattached the pump to one of the rain barrels so i could rinse and scrub the shelves. the stains were stubborn, they wouldn't come off. i ended up having to use two brillo pads to remove the stains. the shelving material itself is top quality stainless steel. other than a few minor rust spots, the shelves cleaned up to a shiny like new finish. i wiped everything dry before bringing the pieces down into the basement.

it didn't take long to assemble, especially since i had a rubber mallet. this shelving unit is for our overwintering pepper plants and whatever else can fit. because the plants were so tall, i only used 4 of the 5 shelves. i positioned them so they'd at least get a little bit of sunlight from the basement door window.

with that i was finally done. it was already after 2pm but it felt later, with just 2 more hours before sunset. i returned the car at the cafe and unloaded the supplies, including the turkey which i'd left in the back of the car. i retrieved my motorcycle and rode home.

i made it to market basket by 3pm via bicycle to collect a few more thanksgiving ingredients, including a gallon of milk and a bag of sugar for my flan, as well as clam chowder ingredients. i grabbed a checkout line which just happened to be the same one my neighbor jen was checking out from.

back at home, i put the cover on my motorcycle as it's expected to rain for the next 3 days. after a shower to wash off the yard work stink, i ate a container of stuffed grape leaves, my lunch. i wasn't very productive after that, managed to watch another hour's worth of say nothing, though i have plenty more shows to catch up on, including the second season of silo and the premiere of dune: prophecy.

drew returned home by 6pm. we chatted for an hour in the living room before moving into the kitchen where i was making a bolognese sauce with pasta. when we tried to figure out how much pasta to cook, we both surprised each other with how much we wanted to eat: drew a little dish, me a big bowl. we went back into the living room to eat around 8:30pm. it was very long afterwards (9:30pm) that drew prepared for bed, as he planned on waking up at 6am again to do work.

my father cooked some white ear mushrooms he bought yesterday, made a sweet soup with it along with some gingko nuts. apparently he'd been searching for these mushrooms for a while, packaged in these compact rectangular blocks that expand when soaked in water.

someone from small appliance called me this morning. it was an unknown number so i didn't pick up, but the person left a voicemail message. apparently the price on the t-fal heating element had gone up. it was no longer $41 but $51 instead. and "to protect ourselves" they no longer accepted credit card but wanted us to send a personal check instead. it was also a final sale (no return) and it'd take up to 2 months to arrive. knowing that a chinese knockoff of the same deep fryer costs just $80, it just wasn't worth it. i'm sure they're legit, but it all seemed really suspicious.

i opened up the old broken heating element assembly to see if i could get any info about the reset switch. it was manufactured by a chinese company called changzhou foland with model number WQS-240N and a rating of 400V 16A 50/60Hz. i managed to find something similar on alibaba.com from a company called heng guan. the part itself doesn't cost too much - $1-5 - but the company only sells in bulk amount with a minimum of 100 units. i don't need 100 i just need one. plus they seem to be out of stock, so even if i managed to somehow order just one, they don't have anymore left. another idea i thought of is to buy a cheap deep fryer of similar specs - temu has a 3.5L model for $42 - and pilfer the working reset element. (much later i managed to find the original manufacturer website for the thermo cut out reset assembly, but no ordering info).

drew texted me around 1:20pm to let me know his plane from pittsburgh just landed at logan airport. i'd already warned him about the red line closure, and how shuttle buses were being used as a temporary substitute. he warned me he had a new look when he arrived, i told him i wasn't sure if i should be excited or scared. he ended up being on the bus in traffic for nearly 2 hours before finally reaching my place. as for the new look, i spotted him on my webcam, wearing a curly blonde richard simmon's wig.

for lunch my mother reheated the leftover sour fish stew from last night and added some rice noodles.

business-wise, it was an average day, busy around lunch time and a little bit in the evening before we closed.

when i got home, i wheeled my bike into the backyard to lock it up and saw drew working from the kitchen. he was not wearing the new look i saw earlier. he was minutes away from a zoom meeting. on the counter was the rent money. i left him alone but not before throwing a frozen pizza in the oven and baking it for half an hour. i ate 4 slices, leaving the rest for drew.

later we did some catching up. one interesting thing drew told me was he was surprised by how early the sun sets here (around 4pm). back home in pittsburgh, because of its more western geography, the sun doesn't set until around 5pm. he also had a nightmare bus ride from boston to cambridge, including a nanny with a toddler who decided to go number 2 on the bus.

drew went to bed around 10pm and planned on waking up at 6am to do some school administration stuff. i adjusted my scheduled heating accordingly. in the background was the cavaliers-celtics game. while talking with drew, i was also watching the game from the corner of my eye. boston managed to defeat the 15-0 undefeated cleveland, though the cavaliers did storm back after being down a large deficit, got close to catching to the celtics, but boston always had an answer. celtics also shot an insane amount of 3's, half of which went in.

the only bit of cleaning i did this morning was to bring some stuff down into the basement. i would clean more later tonight, as i needed to get to belmont to go on a baifu supply run. when i got there around 10:40am, my mother showed me a letter from their home insurance company. apparently they sent a letter 2 months ago back in september regarding their policy. we thought it'd be autopaid but it wasn't, so the insurance company cancelled the policy. the house was without insurance for the past 2 months without us realizing it. i ended up calling the insurance to see if they'd reinstate the policy. they said the only way was to re-apply, so i ended up being on the phone for half an hour negotiating a new home insurance policy. the new rate the agent gave me was $200 more that what my parents paid before, seems like we lost some long term customer discounts. i told the agent i'd contact him later.

we headed to baifu. besides their recent expansion, business seems to have really picked up, as they hired a dozen new employees (mostly hispanic), from driving the pallet trucks, to restocking the shelves, to sweeping the aisles. the place was abuzz with activity (also a little dangerous from all the pallet trucks beeping around the warehouse). we ended up spending $600 in supplies. a sizable amount of profit we make goes right back into purchasing materials.

since baifu didn't have everything we wanted, we still ended up going to chinatown. it would've been better to do it yesterday (sunday), when there was free parking for ming's market. we ended up going to c-mart, which has a small parking lot that can fit about 2 dozen cars, but the place was packed. my mother and i ended up getting off first while my father waited for an empty spot to open up. c-mart didn't have the special stem roots we needed to make our own beef noodle soup spice packet, so while my parents went to go pay, i ran down to ming's market to get the roots. i was supposed to rendezvous with my parents as they left c-mart, but i saw my father drive past me without seeing me even though i was frantically waving at him to stop. he ended up taking a huge detour when he could've easily stopped to pick me up.

we finally left chinatown by 1pm, returned to cambridge via berkeley street onto storrow drive. we dropped off the supplies at the cafe before heading back to belmont. my mother called my sister asking if she could bring esmei to the house, but once again she didn't answer her phone, it's been more than 2 weeks since we last saw her.

my mother made an egg & cheese croissant sandwich for lunch. what was missing to make it the prefect sandwich was some ham, as egg & cheese just wasn't savory enough.

i was back on the phone with the insurance agent. instead of shopping for a cheaper insurance, i convinced my parents to take the new policy, saving us all a lot of time. after that i called their bank to increase the credit limit on one of their credit card. i was on hold for what seemed like an eternity. instead of just sitting around waiting for the next available agent, i cradled the phone up to my ear and went outside to help my father spread chicken manure on raised bed 0 and 4.

it was warm outside - 60's - though it started to get a little cooler as the afternoon wore on. i ended up putting the phone on speaker so i could work better. i cleaned up RB4 and tilled the soil, removing the fencing so i had more space to move around. the chicken manure had a strong odor but not entirely unpleasant, just pungent, smelled like being at a farm. after about an hour's wait, i finally got an agent. while fumbling with the phone with my gardening gloves, i must've hit the wrong button trying to get our of speaker mode and ended up hanging up. all that waiting for nothing! i'll try again tomorrow.

after finishing the two raised beds, we cleaned up the western bed, formerly bitter melons and tomatoes. now it was mostly dead branches and weeds. we didn't add any chicken manure yet, wait until we clean up the other raised beds so we can add the manure at the same time. i have to come back wednesday to mow the dead leaves, so they won't clump up the grass.

my gardening duty was done yet, as i still had to water the plants in our basement grow room. that ended up taking another hour. i wish the temperature in the grow room could be lower, because the plants seem to be thriving too much while i'd rather prefer them to be growing slowly. the lantana is blooming while the jasmines have grown back all the shoots that i trimmed off weeks ago when i sprayed them with insecticide. it's hard lowering the temperature because the two spiderfarmer grow lights generate a significant amount of heat. at least we have a fan circulating the air, without it it'd probably be even hotter. conditions are so good that i saw a flower on one of the hanging tradescantia zebrina.

i started watering the orchids first, catching and reusing the water. orchid water is basically rinsing the wood chip growing media until they're soaked. i'm still not sure how bifenthrin interacts with the Bti bacteria in the water, that's why i water separately instead of mixing it back into the main bucket. after that i water the pileas. i use a similar technique as the orchids, rinsing each potted pilea, then reusing the water. i didn't spray any of the pileas with bifenthrin so its water runoffs are safe to reuse. the remaining plants i water normally. each jasmines get a cup, i don't want them to get too drenched. the only yellow sticky trap that caught anything was from a tradescantia on the shelf, a few fungus gnats. i'll need to keep an eye on them. i may be watering too much, as tradescantia prefer to dry out before watering, otherwise they might suffer root rot.

after i finished with the grow room, i watered all the potted peppers in the basement. i noticed some of them have flowered. i should really nip those off, but i think without pollinators, they won't turn into peppers anyway. finally i moved upstairs and watered the remaining plants in the sunroom. i went back to the basement where i refilled the bucket with rain water then added a tablespoon worth of new mosquito bits.

for dinner my parents made sour mustard fish (酸菜魚) broth served over rice. it was pretty good, but it wasn't sour enough, and i like my sour mustard fish sichuan style with lots of peppercorn.

i returned home soon afterwards as i had more cleaning to do. when i got back i put away some more stuff in the basement before taking out the red bike for drew to ride. the tablecloth on the dining table was filthy so i washed it along with some towels and some clothes. i contained decluttering the kitchen and guest bedroom, using the tried and true strategy of throwing everything into my bedroom. i also cleaned the bathroom, spraying the tub with scrubbing bubbles. for some reason the second bottle i bought had the sprayer malfunction again. i tried to fix it but in the end i used the sprayer from another foaming cleaner. with a specialized foaming sprayer, it doesn't spray as foam and isn't as effective. i then took a shower, cleaning the shower curtains while i was at it. the bathroom smelled of bleach afterwards.

i spent the rest of the evening shopping on aliexpress. 11-11 sales holiday is about to be over, so i was making a collection in my shopping cart. yesterday i bought a flash diffuser for macro photography (as seen in many youtube macro photo videos). tonight i bought a few bike bells, a misting sprayer, a mini RGB photo light ($4.79) that i'm actually going to use as a fancy bike light, some SAE and EC5 rubber dust caps, a pair of solar-powered wheel spoke lights ($7.69), cut proof wire gloves (for kitchen use), a hyacinth forcing vase ($4.38), some fridge magnets (mahjong tiles, kawaii food jars), an HF balun 500 watt dipole antenna ($22.81), a replacement antenna for my radio ($1.84), some stones (labradorites, yooperlites), a smart sensing interactive snake toy ($4.49) designed for cats but i think esmei would like to play with it as well, disposable tea bags ($1.59) for beef noodle soup spices, a turnable timer ($3.99) for my own kitchen, a wireless 12V car battery monitor ($13.99). apparently a lot of this stuff should arrive at the end of the month so the weekend after thanksgiving is going to be like christmas for me.

i was cleaning the house this morning. bringing order to entropy. every thing has a proper place, just need to put it back. slowly, surely, the house became tidy again. there's still work to be done, but i can see the finish line now.

while cleaning, i also made a batch of sauerkraut. i figured out how to use my cuisinart food processor and shredded a head of cabbage. the shreds aren't as fine as i'd like, but there's no denying that a food processor makes quick work of chopping. i added some salt and left it to reduce, periodically mixing it by gloved hand. i also added a tablespoon of caraway seed. when the cabbage looked properly reduced, i stuffed everything into a tall 2 quart wide mouth mason jar. i didn't think it'd all fit, but i pressed down with each layer of cabbage and managed to fit everything. i saved a piece of outer cabbage leaf, folded it up, and used it as a cover to keep the cabbage from floating. i screwed on a lid that i had a 3-piece airlock.

i finally left my house around noontime. i stopped by the cafe to put some items in the fridge/freezer.

my parents went to the waltham costco this morning so my mother could return a jacket and buy another one with a different size. unfortunately they were no longer on sale. they also found out that costco (at least the waltham) had changed their hours, they're now opened at 9:30am.

my mother made be a fried egg croissant sandwich. my mother was surprised how fast i ate it.

today was all about planting the bulbs. i took them all out so i could get a count. i also confirmed tha the red eyes mix was in fact a combination of 10 hyacinth bulbs (huge) and 15 red eyes (small). my plan was to plant them in the southern border bed, where we tried to grow some beans one season before realizing 1) rabbits would eat the seedlings, and 2) once the trees leaf out there wasn't any sunlight. it's perfect for spring bulbs though, because it gets sunlight in the spring before becoming shady in the summer.

i saved a few bulbs for forcing: 5 of each daffodils, and 2 hyacinth bulbs. i put them on a pulp fiber egg crate inside of a box and left them in the garage. to properly chill them, i need them to be cold but not frozen. temperature bween 35-45°F is ideal and they should be chilled 10-14 weeks.

i began by digging up the bed. i pulled up some weeds: spiderworts, money plants, ornamental grass, creeping bellflowers. the money plants i replanted, at least the bigger ones. i also dug up a few small foxgloves that i also transplanted elsewhere. i ran into fern roots which i left alone. i added some cambridge city compost to the bed.

next i laid out the bulbs. the first section would be a combination of red eye daffodils and pink/red hyacinths. that would be followed by a section of altruist daffodils. the final section would be a bunch of dwarf sun disc daffodils. i read bulbs should be planted 2-3x as deep as they are tall. because some of the bulbs were rather large, i dug down to about 3 inches before planting them. this deep should prevent squirrels from digging them up, though i've never had problems with squirrels messing with daffodil bulbs. just to be safe, i put chickenwire over the bed to prevent critters and also to keep esmei from digging in the bed.

once that was done, i planted 25 siberian squill bulbs in the southwestern corner of the yard, near the 40+ year old gerbil graves. i've grown squills before but i remember the bulbs are tiny: these that i got were the biggest squill bulbs i've ever seen, about the size of acorns. 25 bulbs doesn't seem like enough. hopefully they'll grow and make more. squills look best when there's a blue carpet of them.

while i was tending to the bulbs, my father was doing some yard cleanup, like putting away the garden hose and raking the leaves. he also harvested all our rudbeckia seed heads. too bad they can only be grown in cages, as rabbits will happily eat rudbeckia seedlings.

when it was all over, my back was killing me from being bent down for so long.

for dinner my mother roasted some beef shoulder steak with potatoes.

when i got back home i continued watching the chiefs-bills game. i cheered loudly when the buffalo beat kansas city, ending the chief's 9 game winning streak.

i continued cleaning, but not as intense as this morning. the biggest thing i did was to vacuum the floors, emptied out a bin full of dust. all i have left is to bring a few things down into the basement, tidy up the kitchen, and throw some linens into the guest bedroom closet. i moved one of my umbrella plants into the living room. normally it'd live in the kitchen close to the southern facing french door, but for this week i'll put in the living room as decor.

my father brought the bulbs i ordered from tulipworld to the cafe this morning. they were all good sizes and heavy, with none of them sprouting yet. 3 assortments of daffodils and 1 package of blue siberian squills. the daffodils are altruit, sun disc, and red eyes. red eyes have the biggest bulbs, but it was only later i realized it was actually a blend, and the bag contains 10 pink/red hyacinths and 15 red eyes. i'm going to plant the bulbs tomorrow but saving a few daffodils for forcing projects. daffodils need 10-14 weeks of chilling before they will sprout. that's 3 months, so it won't be until february that i can force them to grow in water. in the meantime, i plan on leaving the bulbs in the garage to chill.

it got pretty busy today, the busiest day this week. saturdays are scary like that, there's no build up. it's pretty much as soon as we open customers start coming in. it wasn't until sometime after 2pm that we finally had a break.

i planted the rest of our paperwhite bulbs. it's been 2 weeks since i planted the first batch. this will allow the paperwhite blooms to staggered, so we can at least have a month of flowering. 4 a piece in two glass globe jars, and 1 bulb in a tall rectangular glass vase. i also packaged up one more bulb in a round glass container that i'm going to take home.

i started making my korean rice cake recipe because my 2nd aunt said she wanted to eat some. she brought refrigerated rice cakes but they were the flat oval kind. luckily we had 2 packages of classic cylindrical rice cakes in the freezer to use. everyone had a bowl. my 2nd aunt thought it was spicy yet didn't have enough flavor. later she said she could drink the spicy broth without any problem.

an hour before closing it got busy again. when we finally did close, my father was already itching to leave, while we were still cleaning up. in hindsight, we should've started cleaning earlier, so we could leave right when we closed. my parents ended up leaving before me, as i strapped the gopro to a chest harness so i could take a video of the colorful sunset that was happening. when i looked for my phone though, i couldn't find it. i had to check for its location my computer via google maps, where i saw it was nearly to belmont. i must've dropped it in the car when i was moving things.

when i finally got to belmont, i discovered the gopro didn't record at all. this happens more often than not, i'm really not happy with the unreliability of my gopro 9 black. it makes me want to retire this camera and pick up DJI osmo action camera instead. in fact, if there's a sale during black friday, i may very well get a different brand of action camera.

i was about to go in the car to look for my phone when my father took my phone out of his pocket. apparently he grabbed it by mistake.

i was going to help my parents install their new electric smartbidet toilet seat but they already installed it yesterday. the thing i really like when i first saw the new toilet seat was how it covered the toilet bowl rim. the one they had before didn't completely cover the rim and that always bothered me. it was however slightly overhanging in the front, but only because there isn't much back clearance so the toilet seat can't be pushed back any farther. feature-wise it's about the same as the old toilet seat, except this one doesn't have a night light.

everyone did their own thing until dinner: my mother knitting and watching some asian drama on netflix in the small bedroom, my father in bed surfing the web on his phone, and me in the living room surfing the web on my computer.

because we had a lot of leftover rice from today, we had fried rice for dinner. my father also made some sweet mung bean soup that i had after finishing my rice.

back at home, i started cleaning up the house a little bit. it still hasn't hit me that drew is scheduled to arrive on tuesday - less than 72 hours away. worst case scenario is i dump everything into a box and hide it in my bedroom until he leaves. that's the quick and dirty cleaning. i did wash all bedsheets in the guest bedroom. i'm hoping to wake up tomorrow morning and do some cleaning.

i also set up my own paperwhite vase. as i recall, it takes just a day for the bulbs to grow roots once exposed to water. once the shoots are a few inches tall, i'll start watering with a 5% alcohol solution to keep the plant from getting too tall.

there was a raptors-celtics game. there were 27 lead changes, much of which happened in the second half. no surprise that the game went into overtime, after another disastrous outing where tatum somehow was the guy taking the last shot despite his horrible clutch point performance. with the game tied once again close to the end of overtime, tatum once again got the ball. i was already preparing myself for a second overtime when the ball finally went in, giving boston the win. final score 123-126. there's been a lot of close games. i think it's a combination of the celtics being a little complacent having won the championship last season (not as hungry) plus opponents bring their A-game when they face boston for a chance to beat the defending champions. this season will be a good test for the celtics: if they want to repeat another championship, they have to learn to deal with increased scrutiny and elevated performances from the teams they face.

the secret ingredient to our beef noodle soup are special spice packets my parents import from taiwan. at the pace we're selling beef noodle soup though, we are nearly out of spice packets. this means the only solution is to "roll" our own. a while back my father and i opened a spice packet to figure out its composition. licorice, smoked orange peel, anise, and fennel are some of the main ingredients. there were however some unknown ingredients we couldn't identity. today i opened up another spice packet in an attempt to reverse engineer its ingredients. this time the composition was slightly different. licorice bark once more is the dominant ingredient, but this time around fennel and something known as aromatic ginger (AKA sand ginger AKA Kaempferia galanga) were also main ingredients. there doesn't seem to an exact amount to any ingredients. looks like we'll just have to figure out our own combination and test it out.

my parents were making a new batch of beef noodle soup which once again got me thinking about buying another stock pot. we have stock pots, but of varying quality and performance. we have a few thin metal stainless steel stock pots, but those don't retain heat very well and has a tendency to show errors on the induction cooktops. the only good stock pots are the ones with the thick bottoms. we only have two large capacity, one 10 quarts, the other 16 quarts. the 16 quarts stock pot was actually one that i found on the streets many years ago. it has a dent on the side (which was probably why the original owner tossed it out) but works very well, one of our best stock pots. i was actually thinking getting one even bigger to accomodate the quantity of beef noodle soup broth we make. something like 20 quarts or 24 quarts. that's the equivalent of 5-6 gallons of liquids. even at 5 gallons, the stock pot would weigh over 40 lbs, which would be very difficult to lift and pour. 16 quarts is as big as we can go and still have it be workable.

my godmother's son alex showed up in the late morning. he came by to look for some stuff in the boxes he keep at the cafe basement as free storage space. he's leaving for taiwan and japan tomorrow, taking his whole family, gone for 5 weeks. the kids will be out of school until next year. i grilled him on his preparations: what camera and lenses he was taking, if he has a data plan for his phone, does anyone in his party speak japanese, and if he got a JR pass.

my aunt showed up again in the afternoon. she'd already ate and just came by to chat before leaving.

we were busy today and it finally showed up in our profit margin. there's been busy days in the past where we look at the money we made and it doesn't seem to add up to the amount of work we put it. today was not one of those days. if anything, we were surprised, but only because my mother managed to sell 3 scarves she knitted, which was a chunk of unexpected change.

in the late afternoon - an hour before sunset - i went to trader joe's for some supplies. it was busier than usual, probably a lot of people left work early to do grocery shopping. they had everything i wanted except for cilantro. i did notice they were selling potted narcissuses, advertised as 'winter wonder' variety, for $9 a pot. the stems were a lot greener than our paperwhites (grown under more sunlight? more nitrogen fertilizer?), though kind of growing haphazardly in the soil instead of uniform like our bulbs.

one perk of working at the cafe this time of the year are the sunsets i see from our back entrance facing southwest. i haven't seen too many spectacular sunsets, but i like the colors the sky gets during twilight, golden yellow/orange on the horizon that gradually transitions to a blue/violet. i really ought to bring my drone one of these days and get a better aerial view with the sunset.

we made a batch of beef noodle soup with shoulder steaks instead of beef shanks. there are no tendons or skin with shoulder steaks, just good meat, so it cooks faster, with better results. my parents told me this is the cut of meat they used to use for all their beef noodle soup before they couldn't source it anymore and settled for beef shank is is similarly priced but different cut. anyway, because we made beef noodle soup, there's always leftovers, so i ended up taking a serving home for dinner. i followed the beaver moon home.

the first thing i noticed when i got back was a strange chemical smell in the house. it smelled like pinesol, or some other kind of household cleaning chemical. originally i thought my upstairs neighbors had dumped a load of cleaning solution into the pipes, but the smell was pervasive, in every single room in the house. i went down to the basement to check for chemical spills. there was a chemical smell but i couldn't find the source. i ended up asking my neighbors if something happened today. paul sheepishly replied that he was painting some wood and left an open container of paint thinner in the basement. those fumes combined with my forced air furnace caused the odor to permeate everywhere in my house. i went back down to the basement again and found the paint thinner before moving it outside. i turned on the air purifier and a few hours later the smell was mostly gone. it was bad enough at one point i actually thought about sleeping elsewhere for the night because i couldn't stand the smell.

i cooked some beef noodle soup for dinner. i coincided it with the start of the tyson-paul fight on netflix at 8pm. but i totally forgot these main event fights don't happen until the end of the evening, and there were 3 boxing matches before then. the main event didn't start until almost midnight. of course the netflix servers kept on crashing because so many people were tuning in. i tried watching on my HTDV, my computer, and my phone, all kept crashing. in the end i just gave up. the fight was boring anyway, both fighters seemed like they didn't actually want to fight as the rounds continued. i heard the crowd was even booing. jake paul won by unanimous judging decision. in the end it just seems like a publicity stunt.

it was cold enough this morning - temperature in the 30's - that i considered wearing some thermal underwear. but i decided to go with regular pants, hoping that my puffy winter jacket would be enough to keep me warm as i biked to the cafe. the shifter was still sticky. i think maybe the grease inside got gummed up because of the cold weather. i won't have a chance to fix it until this weekend.

i did replace the left bike bell, the one that i smashed to pieces when the bike fell over at the community garden yesterday afternoon. the one i had before was silver, this one was black.

none of us have seen my sister since she went crazy last thursday. even her car isn't outside her house. if she wasn't home, at least i needed to turn of the heat at her place. so i went over this morning, thinking nobody was home. it was pitched dark inside. moment i went in, i heard a dog barking. was my sister home? a short time later esmei came charging out of the bedroom. she was excited to see me, probably haven't had any real human contact for a week now. since my sister was home, i didn't need to do anything. i saw the bathroom light turn on and i quietly backed out of the place. it's probably the last time i'll be able to get into my sister's place because i'm pretty sure she's going to change the door code after i leave.

we got busy around lunchtime. a large grubhub order started it off. we knew it was large because the receipt kept on printing and wouldn't stop. thankfully there weren't many items, a few entrees, a few drinks. it was a delayed order, but it came in right during peak rush hour. thankfully we managed to fulfill that order as well as a handful of incoming orders.

after that it wasn't very busy. not counting the grubhub order, we barely made half the profit from last thursday, which was already a slow day. maybe it was just too cold for people to be outside. might be time to start thinking about dismantling the patio deck, since i can't imagine very few people would want to sit outside nowadays.

my aunt showed up unexpectedly, usually she comes on fridays. she came to tell my parents that her doctor recommended that she get hearing aids. it used to be in the past you'd need to go to a doctor and get "prescribed" a hearing aid for thousands of dollars. since 2022, the FDA has allowed over-the-counter hearing aid, so a few consumer electronic companies but gotten into the game, including sony. sony's hearing aid (CRE-C20) costs $1000 but it's so tiny it's virtually invisible. i feel like i may need a hearing aid someday soon as well. i often mishear conversations and have a hard time hearing anything if there's noisy background sounds.

our last order came in around 5pm. after that for the next 1-1/2 hours we had no customers.

my mother cooked up some salted pork stirfry with some homegrown long horn peppers (one of which was red), packed some for me in a bento box when i went home. i found my banana-shaped color wheel lights last night and installed them on my bike as i pedaled home. that's one advantage of fall-winter riding: it gets dark sooner, so more opportunities to try out various bike lights.

i ate as soon as i got home. nothing good was on television, i finally finished watching the penguin. i read a lot of good things about the finale, but i didn't think the series as a whole was that good. colin farrell's prosthetic makeup is amazing though, hard to believe that's not a real person but just farrell with a lot of makeup on his face. after that i watched an episode of say nothing. i saw a poster for it earlier, it looked intriguing. i went in with low expectations and turns out it's really good. based on true live events as well.

i had a great sleep last night: got to bed around midnight, read a few pages of my book, then woke up a bit before 9am. it was cool in my bedroom, but i prefer it like that, makes for better sleeping. the brightness made waking up easier.

i wrote t-fal customer support a message through their website about buying a replacement heating element. honestly, i didn't think they'd write back, at least not so soon, and wasn't expecting them to actually offer me a solution. they sent me a link to smallappliance.com. it looked exactly like 1800parts.com, which was one of the only other website i visited yesterday that sold the replacement heating element. their price was $33 plus $10 in shipping (as you recall, t-fal sells the replacement heating element on their website for just $19.50 plus $15 shipping onto to texas/minnesota). it was also a special order item, which meant it's take 2-6 weeks to deliver. i had serious reservations if 1800parts.com was even legit or not (their website is clunky to say the least, like it was designed in the late late 90's), and from the reviews i read online, there were many complaints. on smallappliance.com the part was $41 but with free shipping. the price difference isn't that much: t-fal $34.50 (won't ship to massachusetts) or smallappliance.com $41. chances are we'll end up ordering from smallappliance.com, seems like the only option if we want to repair the old deep fryer.

i called chip farm in bedford and asked if they had any chicken manure in stock. yes, the woman replied. when i asked if there was enough if i wanted to buy 5 bags, she giggled and answered yes, so i got the feeling they have a big supply.

i left by 11am, went to the cafe to pick up the car. it was a cold day, not as windy as the past few days, but temperature was only in the 40's.

i drove out to bedford, took me a little over 20 minutes. when i got the chip farm, i saw the flatbed trailer loaded with bags of precious chicken manure. i went inside the store and paid for 5 bags of manure ($9/bag). before loading the manure into the car, i went inside the petting zoo to check out the baby goats.

the chicken manure where in those thick plastic bags zipped-tied at one end. the bags were heavy - i'm guessing 40 lbs. per bag. i made sure to only take bags that didn't have any tears or holes in them, didn't want chicken manure falling out and getting everywhere. looking at what i had, i decided to get one more bag, never know when we could use some more chicken manure. i personally don't think it's that great, but my father seems to love the stuff. i personally prefer compost, which we make at home, but never in enough quantity for all the raised beds.

i drove back into town, the inside of the car filled with chicken manure smell. it wasn't too bad because the manure was bagged up, but there still was a faint odor. i stopped in belmont to drop off the manure. i didn't want to put them on the ground (some critters will eat the manure), so i put some on an outdoor table while the rest i placed on top of a stack of bagged mulch.

i returned to the cafe by 12:45pm. i stayed long enough to try some of my 2nd aunt's korean inspired spicy grilled chicken wrapped in lettuce. it was okay, but we didn't have any korean ssamjang sauce, so the flavor was lacking. my 2nd aunt was inspired by all the korean soap opera she's been watching. she and my mother seem to be having a race as who can watch the most korean dramas.

i got back by 1:30pm. maybe it had something to do with how low the sun is in the sky, but it already felt late. i grabbed my tools and took the bike to the community garden. i haven't been to the garden in over 3 weeks, and have long since abandoned it, especially after the city turned off the water mid-october. there was still some sunlight in the garden so i didn't have to work in the shadows. my neighbor jen was there too, tending to her plot. an old asian lady wearing a face mask said hello to me and even knew my name. turns out it was liting's mother. even if i saw her face, i probably wouldn't have recognized her.

i spent an hour cleaning up my plot. basically i cut down all the dead growth. i also stacked all my tomato cages together, and piled the grow bags into a few discreet columns. a few of the grow bags had striped mallow plants that were still alive, i put those on the top to let them keep growing. i maybe come back one more time to do some weeding, noticed a lot of unwanted grass growing in my garden. but otherwise the plot is basically done for the season. time to start thinking about what i want to grow for next year.

i had 4 milk crates to take home. i stacked two on the back of my rear baskets, but they were too heavy and my bicycle toppled over, destroying one of my bike bells in the process. if i can't even get two, how would i get four? the solution was using my bungie cord to thread through the crates so they wouldn't just fall off if jostled. gingerly i rode home and managed to get back without all the crates crashing off my bike.

there were other things i wanted to do. like go to market basket, or possibly trader joe's. but i did none of those things. the only thing i did was to ride to the UPS store on somerville avenue to return the empty nespresso pods. i'd put them on my back porch to kill the vinegar flies and i think the freezing night temperatures did the trick. i saw the building opposite the UPS store that used to be a chinese restaurant has now been converted into a pot dispensary (called "the boston garden"). how many do we need?

i noticed my bike was acting kind of weird. the rear shifter - the only shifter i really use - wasn't engaging correctly. did it have something to do with my bike getting toppled over? and i just recently had all my bike gear replaced too! it didn't take too for everything to go to shit again. worst case scenario i can buy new shifters, but i think my gearing just needs some minor adjustments to get it riding correct again. unfortunately it was too late and too cold for me to do that today. maybe this weekend i can take a look.

once i was back home i didn't go out. another thing i had to do today was clean the house for drew's return next tuesday. but i managed to procrastinate and put it off, doing retroactive blog updating instead, so at least some minor good came out of it. i did do some light vacuuming in the evening, but what i really need is to declutter the house and wash the sheets.

trump visited biden at the white house today. a courtesy trump himself didn't offer when biden won the presidency 4 years ago. trump also announced more cabinet picks. kristi noem - dog killer - for homeland security. pete hegseth (who?) - fox news broadcaster - as defense secretary. marco rubio - little marco - as secretary of state. tulsi gabbard - democratic turncoat - for national defense. and matt gaetz - a supposed pedophile - as attorney general. the inmates are running the asylum now. would a republican led senate even confirm some of these picks? gaetz and hegseth are the two least experienced choices for their respective jobs. is trump picking people based on looks? i try to ration my daily intake of trump news. i learned from trump's first term that if you follow every crazy thing he does, it will only make you crazy as well.

i boiled some frozen homemade chinese dumplings for dinner. these were given to me when my parents went ono that canadian cruise. i prepared them during the halftime of the celtics-nets game (second of a back-to-back). once again, the celtics came out with a slow start. brooklyn had a 13 point lead in the first quarter. but the celtics got serious in the second quarter and took a 5 point lead going into the break. in the second half the celtics just dominated. nets never regained the lead, and close to the end of the fourth quarter boston led by 30 points. celtics win, 139-114. they don't play again until saturday.

i woke up at 8am, right when the heat kicked in. went to star market to get some boneless chicken thighs on sale before going to the cafe. temperature today was in the 50's but very blustery, with winds around 30mph and above. i struggled to get any traction on the bike with all that headwind.

we were testing the newly repaired t-fal deep fryer. my father cut up the chicken thighs i bought and marinated them for frying later. i sliced half a dozen russet potatoes to make fries, parboiling them first before drying.

delivery services like ubereats and grubhub is a good predictor of how busy we'll get. if we get a lot of delivery orders, that usually means it's going to be a busy day. today we got 4 ubereats orders all in the morning. we typically only average 1 ubereats. and according to prediction, it turned out to be a busy day, at least during the lunchtime period. i didn't mind though, being busy is better than not being busy.

by 1pm it was back to being calm again. my mother cut up the leftover baguette and served them with brie and quince jam.

my father and i finally tried out the deep fryer. right away we knew something was wrong because the led light wouldn't turn on. yes we fixed the safety switch issue, but there seemed to be something else wrong with the fryer. i went online in search of replacement parts. for some reason it's nearly impossible to find parts for the deep fryer. t-fal is an international company based in france, but their US customer service seems lacking. even parts of their website wasn't loading properly. i did finally find the replacement part we needed: the SS-994741 heating elemen for $19.50. that's the good news. bad news is it can only be shipped to california or minnesota.

i ended up driving to belmont to grab the new replacement deep fryer we bought but was planning on returning after we learned we can fix our old broken fryer. but it seems like the old fryer might stay broken for a bit more longer, so we have no choice but to start using the replacement fryer.

the new heating element work flawlessly. we cooked some french fries as a test. unfortunately i put the raw fries into the freezer because i didn't think we'd be frying today, so when they went into the hot oil, it lowered the temperature, making it longer to cook. i also over-boiled the potatoes so they were nearly falling apart. the finished fries were super crispy but so much starch had been boiled off that there was hardly anything inside.

my father opened up the heating element assembly and figured out the problem most likely has something to do with the reset switch which doesn't reset anymore. the switch isn't that simple to replace because it's attached to a temperature sensor. getting our hands on the SS-994741 replacement heating element would most likely fix the problem, if one was available. i'll need to contact t-fal customer service to see if i can score the replacement part.

a status update on the vinegar flies problem: yes, we still had them this morning, but only 3-4, and i managed to suck up a few with the vacuum, which is now my favorite go-to way to get rid of these flies. after i did that, i didn't see any more flies the rest of the day. have we finally broken their life cycle?

i went home with another bento box stuffed with a chicken stirfry my father whipped up close to closing time. i ate as soon as i got back home while watching the in-season tournament game between the hawks and celtics. boston was favored to win, with atlanta missing trae young and bogdan bogdanovic due to injury. celtics had the lead for much of the game, but the hawks chipped away at the lead to finally stealing a victory in the end. this loss means boston is pretty much out of the IST on their very first game. they'd need to win their remaining 3 in their group (east C), including the surprisingly dominant cavaliers, which as of today are still on a 12-0 winning streak and haven't lost this season.

i went back to sleeping in the master bedroom again. i like the larger bed, feels more luxurious, and all the windows make waking up easier. the master bedroom is bright and spacious but a little cold, while the guest bedroom is small and dark but warm.

i went with my parents on a waltham supply run, first to costco, followed by market basket. being veteran's day and with a lot of people having the day off, both places were very crowded. i kept an eye open for leftover bulbs at costco. i found some hyacinths but didn't buy because i didn't know much they cost. besides, i'm not a big fan of hyacinths, even though they make good forced bulbs.

my mother didn't think we needed to go to market basket but we went anyway. we ended up getting a cartful of groceries. i got some gonsalves marmelada (quince jam) and admired the assortment of regional south american sodas.

we got to the cafe by 12:30pm to drop off the supplies before heading back to belmont.

we tried the marmelada on baguette with brie cheese. it wasn't as good as the quince jelly i made in the past, mostly because quince jam is made from pulverized quince while my jelly was made from filtered quince juice. it reminded me of chinese haw flakes, had a mealy texture, sweet but with none of the typical quince fragrance.

i went down to the basement to water the plants. since i sprayed last week, there hasn't been any signs of pests. the grow room felt antiseptic, clean. it was warm though, 70 degrees with 70% humidity. even though i trimmed off all the new jasmine tendrils, more grow back in just a few days. i decided to hold off on pruning, as flowers will only grow on new growth. the lantana has started flowering again. the bubblegum tradescantia seems to be growing well now that its growing indoors away from digging squirrels.

i wasn't sure if bifenthrin would kill the Bti bacteria in the water i use for watering, so i watered the orchids first, making sure i didn't pour the runoffs back into the main bucket. that many of the orchids are making flower spikes and one orchid in particular is already swelling with buds is a bit confusing. i always though orchids need a period of cold weather before they can be induced to flower. at this rate, in a few more weeks i should be expecting to see some orchid flowers.

after i watered the basement, i went upstairs and watered all the plants in the sunroom. i then brought all the wintering peppers into the basement. not in the grow room because it's too warm, but just in the basement, where temperature hovers around 60's and there isn't too much sun. the trick is to keep the peppers alive but keeping them dormant so they don't waste their energy growing. i also refilled my watering bucket, then added some more mosquito bits to replenish the Bti. i did see a few fungus gnats in the basement around the jasmines when i was watering. not enough to be concerned, as i also have yellow sticky traps to capture the adults.

we finally decided on an electric bidet toilet seat: the smartbidet SB-1000WR ($224) from home depot. my parents didn't want anything fancy, just something cheap that had the basic functions. one good thing about ordering from home depot is we can return the bidet toilet seat in the store if we don't like it. the seat is expected to arrive tomorrow. if i'm feeling ambitious, i might install it on wednesday.

i also made a temu and aliexpress purchase. one thing we needed is stainless steel flanged bolts for the grease trap. the bolts we currently have are mostly rusted. i had to get the bolts from aliexpress but the nuts from temu. i also bought some things from aliexpress because november 11th - 11-11 - is like chinese black friday, so a lot of stuff were on sale. from what my chinese coworkers told me, 11-11 started as a holiday for single people (get it? all those ones) to spend money on themselves.

for dinner my parents made a stirfry with salted pork and another stirfry with chinese celery. after dinner my father and i looked into jump starter cable for the motorcycle. i bought an EC5 to o-rings cable from aliexpress that i can use to jump start my motorcycle battery. however it doesn't have a diode safety block, so we were wondering if there could be any potential danger with the motorcycle battery backfeeding current into the portable battery. we won't know for sure until i test it in real life scenario. we then checked out what's new in public websdr and wondered why there wasn't more of them in the US (surprised MIT doesn't have one).

i got back home by 8pm. it was still warm, temperature in the lower 60's. the heat in the house didn't even kick in. i also made an order on tulip world: 3 assortment of daffodils (some i'll save for forcing experiments while the rest i'll plant in the belmont backyard) and a packet of blue siberian squills. i haven't planted bulbs in a long time, not since high school. those i planted 30 odd years ago are still alive and well, emerge from the ground every spring.